Spicy thai tofu with red bell peppers

Eek- over a month without a post! That’s just embarassing, especially considering I’ve been cooking pretty regularly.  I’ve even gotten a little inventive, with mixed results.  Most notably, there were the post-Passover charoset muffins.  Dylan is Jewish, if only culturally, and in the years we’ve been together, we’ve had a lot of fun at Seders, mainly because it’s an excuse to get a bunch of friends together and drink a lot of wine.  This year was a little different as we had little time to pull together a Seder nor do we know a single Jew around here. So we missed the social event, but I thought it only appropriate to make my Passover favorites, matzoh ball soup and charoset, the scrumptious fruity, nutty spread that is supposed to represent the mortar used by the Israelites to build walls in ancient Egypt.

I’d never actually made charoset before, but after seeing this Persian version called “Hallaq” in the New York Times, I was sold. Like cardamom? You’ll love this recipe. And although we truly love cardamom in the Superspark household, this bordered on excessive, to the point that Dylan refused to eat any more. Never one to throw away food (the horror!), I subbed our leftover charoset for the banana in banana muffins (from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything), creating the world’s first (?!) charoset muffins. Genius! Yeah, they’re still excessively cardamom-y, but it’s tempered by the other ingredients, especially when topped with jam. No lectures on integrating Passover foods into leavened products, please. Around here it’s called being resourceful. 🙂

So what does that have to do with spicy thai tofu with red bell peppers, you might ask? Well, that was another recent recipe born of resourcefulness. Falling victim to my bad habit of buying obscure ingredients for recipes that never get made, I found myself with a couple of rapidly aging anaheim chiles in hand. It’s awfully hard to find a good way to use them other than chile rellenos, it seems. I was a little skeptical of a tofu recipe I found in one of my cookbooks, but blindly proceeded to buy the remainder of the ingredients to make said recipe. After roasting the chiles (a not completely successful endeavor, as it turns out) and starting to mix the spices, I began to get a little skeeved out by the thought of sour cream, monterey jack cheese, peppers and tofu all in the same dish. Is it just me or does tofu not belong with dairy in a stir fry type dish? Yech…

So at the last minute, my old faithful friend Epicurious came to the rescue with this recipe featuring ingredients salvaged from other recipes. It was super quick and you know what? It was pretty great. It’s not an intensely spicy dish (though a few squirts of sriracha could fix that), but it had a great combination of flavors and textures for a meal requiring so little effort. It’s not exactly fancy dinner party fare, but I’d eat it any night of the week, with lunch leftovers to boot. Now what to do with those anaheim chiles?

Spicy Thai tofu with red bell peppers (serves 4)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup olive oil
2 large red bell peppers, seeded, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 14-to 16-ounce package extra-firm tofu, drained well, cut into 1-inch cubes
3 green onions, thinly sliced on diagonal
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (we subbed lemon juice)
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 6-ounce bag baby spinach leaves (we used frozen)
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil (we skipped- none on hand!)
1/3 cup lightly salted roasted peanuts (we substituted cashews)

1. Heat oil in large pan over high heat. Add bell peppers, ginger, and garlic; sauté until peppers just begin to soften, about 2 minutes.

2. Add tofu and green onions; toss 2 minutes. Add next 3 ingredients. Toss to blend, about 1 minute.

3. Add spinach in 3 additions, tossing until beginning to wilt, about 1 minute for each addition. (We used frozen, adding it all at once instead.) Mix in basil. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle peanuts or cashews on top.