A few nights ago my friend Leigh Saluzzi posted a link to a couple of recipe zines she’d created. Recipe zines are the best – for somewhere around $3 a pop you can get some really great new ideas and often times, a personal story about each recipe that goes beyond the typical “blah blah this is a chocolate cupcake” you get in conventional cookbooks.
So far Leigh has created two volumes – Volume 1: Marlene Southern Food Memories Made Vegan and Down Yonder Volume 2: The Metal Years. Obviously the Metal Years caught my eye, but the recipe listing for Volume 1 sold me on that one too. Plus, you know…$3. With Leigh’s permission I’m going to share a killer recipe from Volume 2 with you now, but check out the other 100% vegan recipes you’ll find in both volumes:
- Proper Sweet Tea
- Preserves Milkshake
- Savory Breakfast Jackpots
- Strawberry Salad with Candied Cashews and Buttermilk Dressing
- Kinda Spicy Potato Salad
- Summer Tomato Tart
- Squash ‘em Sandwiches
- Frito Corn Fritters with Green Onion Cream
- Snickers Cake
- No Bake Chocolate Cherry Bars
- Tripp Sunrise Muffins
- Savory Grits with Garlic Mushrooms
- Scattered, Smothered, Diced and Greened Home Fries
- Chicken Fried Tofu Casserole
- Lentil & Kale Enchiladas
- Krystal Mini Pizzas
- Chocolate Testa-mint Cookies
- Don’t Be a Dick, Be a Dude Black Forest Pie
- Cocoa Puff Bars with Whiskey Glaze
- Purple Fuzzy Fizzy Punch
Frito Corn Fritters? Shut the fuck up, dude. What are you waiting for? Dig $6 out from in-between your couch cushions and get them both! Do you have suggestions for other vegan recipe zines I should check out? Leave them in the comments!
If you’re wondering why the photo just shows the tofu it’s because my pictures of the finished dish were ugly but it tasted really good!
Chicken Fried Tofu Casserole
By Published: August 11, 2014
I decided to keep the instructions exactly as Leigh wrote them because I think it will help you to see why we get along so well.
Ingredients
- 1 lb extra firm tofu pressed well
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
- 1 Tbs cornstarch
- 1 Tbs salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp celery seed
- 1 tsp dried rosemerry
- canola or peanut oil for frying
- 1 & 1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk divided
- 1 medium onion diced
- 2 celery stalks diced
- 2 medium carrots peeled & diced
- paprika, red pepper & vegan cheese shreds optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and oil a casserole dish.
- Take your tofu and cut into even sized pieces. I like to make large squares of tofu by cutting the block into thick slices, then quartering each slice.
- In a large skillet or pan, pour enough oil to fry one side of your tofu, at least ½ inch of oil. A 9” or larger round skillet is best for this recipe. Heat oil over medium high heat.
- In a small bowl, add 1 cup of soy milk. In another small bowl, mix together the flour, nutritional yeast, cornstarch, salt, pepper, celery seed, and rosemary. When your oil is nice and hot, begin breading the tofu by dipping it into the milk, then coating it in the flour mixture. Then it goes into the oil to get browned up. Once one side is browned, flip that shit over to get the other side done. Take the tofu out of the oil and lay on a paper towel lined plate.
- Turn the heat on the oil pan down to medium, then add the onion, celery and carrots to the same oil you used to fry in. Cook veggies in the oil until the onions start to go translucent, about five minutes.
- Add the rest of the flour breading mixture you have left over from the small bowl. Stir the flour mix around with the oil and veggies, lightly browning the flour. Then slowly add the rest of your soy milk and stir everything together to make a gravy. The mixture will thicken as it heats. Once thickened a bit, take the mixture off the heat.
- Line the bottom of your casserole dish with a single layer of fried tofu. Spoon the veggie/gravy mixture on top of the tofu layer. Add the rest of the tofu to the top for a final layer. Sprinkle the top with vegan cheese shreds, a few dashes of paprika, and some red pepper flakes. Bake uncovered for about 20 minutes, until heated through.
- Eat so much that you have to unbutton your jeans.
- Natalie's Notes: I'm about as Yankee as it gets, so I think I may have used too much oil to fry my tofu because I ended up with too much oil in my gravy. If you are also not accustom to frying food, you might want to use less than 1/2" of oil and see where that takes you. I also don't like vegan cheese shreds so I skipped those but I think crumbled crackers or corn chips would also be nice on top for texture.
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love. thank you for sharing!!