Marinate tofu in soy sauce overnight in the fridge. Then grill it. Grill it like a red blooded American would grill a delicated piece of meat.

Or, this is one of my favorite tofu recipes: http://www.yutopian.com/cooking/appetizer/FTF.html

You can ignore the Sichuan pepper and just use regular old black pepper. And I find a dip made with simmering a tiny bit of sugar in a quarter cup of light soy sauce (or just dumpling sauce) to be better than sweet and sour.

Also, extra firm tofu can go in pretty much EVERY stir fry, especially the veggie ones.

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Also, if you feel lazy, use the Lee Kum Kee brand Sichaun (Ma Po) Tofu Sauce---available in pretty much every Asian grocery store that sells Chinese groceries, including the small tiny one here in the middle of Western MA---to make your own Ma Po Tofu. Cook some minced pork, slap sauce into frying pan, throw tofu cublets into pan, mix, all under medium heat. Takes somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on how much extra ingredients you throw in. It's not extremely authentic or anything, and is a rather crude imitation of the original, but it's damn good. And did I mention that it takes about 5 minutes?

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Get some rice cooking, preferably basmati. Dice the tofu and do what you can to get moisture out of it. Slice an onion. If you have bell pepper, cut that up too. Toss it into a hot pan with some veggie oil or butter; cook until soft. Add half a bag of defrosted California Blend frozen veggies or broccoli. Add the tofu, plenty of curry powder, salt/pepper, and some liquid (chicken/veggie stock, water, sake). If you have almonds and/or raisins, put them in and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Optionally, add a bit of yogurt just before serving over cooked rice.

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pick up a copy of Deborah Madison's book "This Can't Be Tofu" I have tried almost all of the recipes....and they are all pretty easy and there wasn't one that I didn't like....my favorite - Hoisin simmered tofu....I serve it over jasmine rice with broccoli and carrots....yum!

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Cut the tofu into slabs and marinate or just brush with good bbq sauce, then grill or bake. It's best to bake tofu at a really low temp (300-325) for 40 minutes or so - it firms up the texture without drying it out. If you are grilling, also keep it on a lower heat, but mainly just grill until you've got great grill marks on each side of the tofu. Extra firm tofu (especially the kind kept in water) is great eaten as is, cut into pieces in miso soup or diced into a somen noodle salad. This means you don't have to cook it much when you do cook it, so no worries there.

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I might have to try that quick Ma Po recipe--though, to be honest, I can cook the authentic stuff pretty quickly at this point, since I know the recipe off the top of my head.

Sarah--later this week (probably Monday evening or Tuesday morning) I will do a blog post on Tigers & Strawberries for a stir-fried extra firm tofu recipe that will only include things that you probably have in your cupboard and vegetables that you can get at your local supermarket or farmer's market. It will be finple and fast--I promise you.

I would do it tonight, but I already have stuff thawed to make ja jiang mein.

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This uses the silken tofu (not extra-firm) but it's one of my favorite tofu recipes ever. You can make a yummy tofu pesto sauce by combining about 1/2 a block of tofu, a big, big bunch of basil leaves, the juice of 1 lemon, 1-2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup or so parmesan cheese, salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Process until smooth. Next, heat gently over low heat (just until warm) and toss with the hot pasta of your choice, some sauteed mushrooms and sliced cherry tomatoes.

And since it's tofu, you won't feel that guilty about adding even more cheese!

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