A British favourite, Friday night chippy chips!
BUT you're veggie or vegan?! NEVER AGAIN WILL YOU ENJOY SUCH PLEASURE!
You're wrong. Keep reading, you'll see why...
For this recipe, the fish is replaced with tofu.. (hence Tofish.. clever right?!) and I'm going to show you 2 different ways to coat your Tofish.. classic crispy batter and a baked breadcrumb (for those that fancy it a bit lighter) both super simple to make, and ever so satisfying.
You will need: Potatoes of choice, Block of firm tofu, Nori sheets / dried seaweed sheets, Lime juice, Salt and pepper, Turmeric, self raising flour, a bit of plant milk, a dash of malt vinegar, water, vegetable oil to fry, panko breadcrumbs, and a tin of mushy peas.. lovely jubbly!
Now, do this....
Chop your potatoes into chips, your call on how chunky or thin you want them.. it's your meal. Put them in a pan of cold water whilst you do these other things..
Drain your block of firm tofu and place on kitchen roll. Press the tofu firmly but carefully to get as much moisture out as possible. Slice into.. well, slices. Like this...
Take a sheet of Nori, cut to size and wrap a piece around one side of the tofu. I am using dried seaweed sheets, which are a little bit different to Nori and are not as easy to work with. I had to rinse these before use to make them more pliable, but the process is the same.. wrap tofu in seaweed!
In a small container, squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lime, then place the Tofish tofu side down into the lime. This will give it a zingy freshness! You can leave these to sit and marinade in the lime for about half an hour. Have a cuppa tea.
Next, we need to get our chips sorted. Turn the pan on and boil the potatoes for only about 5 minutes. We just want to start the cooking process and get some rough edges on the chippy chips. Drain the chips in a colander and give them a little shake to make the edges fluff up. Then, spread them evenly on a baking tray, lightly drizzle with oil or oil spray, salt and pepper, and bake for around 30 minutes until they look like chips.
Whilst the chips are in the oven, we can make the batter for the Tofish. In a bowl, mix about 100g self raising flour, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1tbsp malt vinegar and enough water to make a batter similar to pancake batter. The batter won't taste like vinegar, this will just react with the raising agent in the flour and make extra bubbles, which will help puff and crisp up the batter! Mmmmmmmmmm....
For the fried version, make sure you have a pan of of oil about 2cm deep heating up. It will be ready to use when a drop of batter floats and sizzles straight away. Coat the Tofish slices in flour, and then dip in the batter. Carefully place in the pan, away from yourself so you don't get any nasty oil splashes and fry for a few minutes each side until golden. Remove from the pan and drain excess oil on kitchen paper. You can keep if warm or crisp it back up again in the oven whilst your chips cook.
For the baked version, coat your Tofish in flour as before, and then into your plant milk. press the Tofish onto a plate of panko breadcrumbs until covered. Put this onto a baking tray, lightly drizzle or spray some oil and bake in the oven until golden and crisp.
Once your Tofish and chips are both cooked to perfection, all that's left to do is heat up your mushy peas, grab the /salt, vinegar and a slice of bread and butter and dig in! Now, doesn't that feel good? Happy eating!
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