Tofu

For a richer dressing, add half a cup of coconut milk and a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter to the dressing.

Perfect for a luncheon or light supper, this nutritious salad combines the satisfying crunch of romaine lettuce with savory bites of tofu. (See photo)

This is a sweet fried rice with a pleasing bite of ginger. Before you begin to stir-fry, cook rice if you don’t have any left over, and have everything prepped and close at hand.

Why order takeout when you can create classic Chinese flavors so easily at home?

We think this inventive adaptation of a classic Italian dish is so good that it will soon show up on menus in the old neighborhoods. You never know.

This delightfully tangy tofu pairs especially well with Greek or Italian dishes.

You can make the sauce with other fruit spreads, such as peach, apricot, or strawberry. Make extra sauce—it will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.

We think that this may be the most useful recipe in the book. Baked tofu is a reliable standby and can be dressed up to suit almost any menu. Whip up a marinade, pop the tofu in the oven, start cooking rice or pasta, and decide on a vegetable or salad. Baked tofu is also a nice addition to stews, sautés, sandwiches, and salads.

Sesame-crusted tofu is firm and flavorful enough to please even the tofu-phobic. (See photo)

This sauté makes an attractive and satisfying supper; chilled, it makes a delicious side dish or salad. (See photo)

Tofu, ever the chameleon, lends itself to pairings with a multitude of sauces for nutritious and easily prepared meals. This is a favorite.

Here’s a meatless variation of a classic northern Chinese noodle dish. We love the contrast between the hot, saucy noodles and the cold, crunchy raw vegetable toppings. The sauce will keep in the refrigerator for 3 or 4 days, so you can make the sauce and prepare the toppings ahead of time and then cook the noodles when you’re ready to eat.

For a delicious Italian dinner, serve this flavorful combination of portobello mushrooms, bell peppers, and plum tomatoes with brown rice or on your favorite whole-grain pasta.

This recipe will eliminate all doubt that good-for-you tofu can be tasty, too!

We call this Cheddar tofu because of the texture. Imagine soft tofu, silky against your tongue, infused with a rich Cheddar flavor. It’s pretty awesome stuff. You can use it in exactly the same way that you would real tofu. It happily sits center stage as the main component in a salad or soup, or it can be diced and incorporated into a dish much like gnocchi or small dumplings. We use both the high- and low-acyl gellans at a ratio of 0.2 percent of the weight of the other ingredients. The gellan makes it relatively heat stable, and it holds its shape beautifully when cut or molded.

Whenever I make this for lunch I always think, “I should make this more often.” It’s a pleasant change-of-pace spread that can be served on fresh bread or, better yet, stuffed into pita.

When I serve this to lunchtime company, even tofu skeptics love it! For me, it’s a throwback to tuna salad, something I gave up many years ago, though I still liked its taste. This is especially good served in warm pita bread. I also like to mix leftovers with macaroni for a “tofuna”-noodle salad. For more information on baked marinated tofu, see page 136. For this recipe, it’s best to use a baked tofu product that comes in large chunks like Soy Boy’s Tofu Lin, rather than the type that comes in small cutlets.