Curried peanut sauce bowl with tofu & kale

January 21, 2015

With Cindy away, I was looking for simple meals that would stretch to a few serves of leftovers - old classics like quinoa salad, basic braised tofu, kale and chickpea salad and miso-curry pumpkin all got a run, but I decided to sneak in one new meal as well. I'd had my eye on this curried peanut sauce bowl in Isa Does It for a while and slotted it in on an otherwise quiet Wednesday night.

It's not a very time-consuming recipe, but there is a bit going on: you've got to steam the kale, fry the tofu, cook up the peanut curry sauce and cook whatever grain you're having as the base of your bowl (quinoa in this case). It means that every burner of our stove was in action, which is always a little overwhelming. It was worth the kitchen chaos at least - the curried peanut sauce is thick and tangy, like the best kind of spicy satay. The tofu and kale worked well, but you could happily pour the sauce over any combination of veggies and protein.

Curried peanut sauce bowl with tofu & kale

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Isa Does It)

tofu

1 tablespoon olive oil

500g tofu, cut into 2cm cubes

1/2 teaspoon salt

kale

1 small bunch of kale, rough stems cut out and leaves shredded

1/2 teaspoon salt

peanut sauce

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tablespoon minced ginger

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup water

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

3 teaspoons curry powder

2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

2 tablespoons tamari

2 tablespoons agave nectar

2 teaspoons sriracha

for the sauce

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and saute the garlic and ginger for about 30 seconds. Add the water and, once it's warmed up a bit, add in the peanut butter, curry powder, vinegar, tamari, agave and sriracha. Stir everything together - as the mixture warms up the peanut butter will liquefy and combine with everything else. After it's nicely mixed together, taste and add salt or more curry powder as desired and then leave, covered, while you make the rest of the meal.

for the tofu

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over high heat. Throw in the cubed tofu, sprinkle with salt and fry, stirring often for 5-10 minutes, until the cubes have a nice golden char going on.

for the kale

Pop the kale and salt in a steamer (I used a pair of stacked bamboo steamers) over a pot of boiling water. Steam for about 5 minutes, until it's cooked but not soggy.

Serve it all over rice or quinoa and garnish with coriander if you've got some.