Jake's away

Jake, my lovely American boy (not in the Estelle/Kanye way) is away for xmas and I wont be flying out to Austin after xmas day, so I'm alone in the flat, which means.... all my favourite foods.

Is it wrong that I'm quite excited? (When I'm not missing him desperately of course!)

Although the boy likes indonesian food, I don't think he can stomach it every day, and he definitely can't stomach it when it's low carb (don't ask!). Alth

ough I only learned to cook via osmosis, I do know a lot of my mother's recipes, but also I like to experiment and see what I can make that's tasty with her flavours.

Whilst in NYC in April I had some cold stuffed tofu, which was...alright... but needed something... meat! And a certain crispiness. I like tahu best when it's crispy on the edges and soft inside.

The stuffing was actually with pork (sorry mum!) mince, galangal, coriander, scallions, some home made (by my mother) sambal, pepper, and kencap manis (which is a very thick indonesian soy sauce) I also threw in various spice, cumin I think... other things, whatever I had to hand really, I would have u

sed more veg if I had any, finely chopped broccoli would be good I think or pak choi, there was pak choi in my original stuffing.

The tahu has been marinating overnight in toasted sesame, 1/2 dark, 1/2 light soy sauce, a drizzle of thai fish sauce, garlic and ginger. I then let it sit wrapped in kitchen paper for a bit to get the moisture out, carved it up into triangles and stuffed with the pork/spice mix.

Now if I wasn't lazy I probably would have dry fried, it's the best way to get some crispness on the tahu, but I couldn't be bothered after all the fuss of today, so I put the stuffed tahu squares in a baking dish and shoved it in a hot oven.... 20 minutes later I sprinkled with more coriander and some really lightly toasted sesame seeds, et voila. Pork stuffed tofu, it just needs some stir fried brocolli/pak choi and some drizzled chilli sauce (although the stuffing was pretty hot, damn mouth burning sambal!)

I really enjoyed it, it was a good combination of the light texture of the tofu and the denser stuffing, the tofu wasn't bland (it really soaked up the marinade and the juices from the stuffing) and had good crispness on the edges, the tahu took some of the chilli heat from the stuffing as well. I would definitely do this again, but possibly still dry fry them for extra crispiness.

Sorry about the picture! It looked fine on my phone, as always I should have got my DSLR out! They did taste (and look) better than they do on this sad plate :(