Hello again, my apprentice chefs! I am back from my long trek around the mysterious land of Middlesex County, South-Western Ontario, with exotic new foods and cooking techniques. Without actually looking, I assume that you have become slack and wasteful in your pursuit of culinary knowledge, so let me remind of the rules of this gastronomic temple: no buying new ingredients, no looking at the recipe, and no throwing a dish out because it is “unfit for human consumption.”
Much to my surprise, some people don’t like to eat the same thing over and over until your ingredients run out. News flash sheeple: you can save money on inventory costs by minimizing your ingredients. You can only eat one dish at a time, so if you buy ingredients for two dishes then the second set just takes up valuable space and money in your cramped and unsanitary apartment. Do you think the auto industry uses just-in-time production because management are masochists who really appreciate the extra stress having no inventory entails?
But anyway, someone (who will remain un-named) decided that he or she didn’t want to eat syrup-covered-tofu wraps for dinner three days straight. To her or his credit, he or she then took it upon herself or himself to make a delicious new tofu dish while adhering to my three laws of foodie-dynamics. So without further ado, I present Dad’s Homemade Tofu Fries.
Start with a block of tofu. Cut it into French-fry-esk rectangular prisms. Now take three bowls. Into one, put an amount of flour. Add salt, paprika, and some but not all of the other spices in your cupboard. If you don’t have flour, my understanding is that wheat is basically grass, so you could try using that instead. Mix.
Crack an egg, and put the egg (with shell) into the second bowl. Now remove the shell and think how your actions are similar to those of participants in the infamous Milgram experiment.
Into the third bowl put the egg shell. That’s your compost.
Get a fourth bowl and add panko, paprika, and any of the spices that didn’t go into your flour bowl. Should you be out of panko, I suspect crumbled Olive-Oil-Cracked-Pepper Triscuits, actual breadcrumbs, or finely chopped M&Ms would suffice.
Now put a pan on the stove, and load it with butter. Once the butter starts to melt, do as follows: Dunk a tofu prism in flour. Once the tofu is covered in flour, take it out of the flour bowl. Dunk the same tofu prism in the egg. Once the tofu is covered in egg, take it out of the egg bowl. Dunk the same tofu prism in the panko bowl. Once the tofu is covered in panko, take it out of the panko bowl. Place the same tofu in the pan. Repeat the previous 7 steps 10 times. Repeat the previous step until you run out of tofu. If you run out of tofu while on another step, you totally screwed up the dimensions of the tofu prisms. Have you seriously never had fries before?
Once the tofu cooks, take it out of the pan. (Man, do I really have to explain everything to you?) Eat it. Goes well with katsup, on top of a salad, or as a light mid-morning snack. Happy frying!
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