this rarely happens: dinner pissed me off. just a little, but still, it was aggravating to say the least!
i went to make the 3-way sesame coated tofu from vegan planet-something i know i’ve made before- but i’ll be damned, it wasn’t what i had remembered.i remembered it being fairly simple, but it was in fact a pain in the ass! first, i’d like to say that vegan planet is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks and this was only the second failure out of the gazillion recipes to pick from so dont use this as a reason to not pick up the book- its a household staple here!
so, what went wrong? well, you take a tahini based sauce, coat tofu in it, and then roll them in sesame seeds before pan frying. getting the tahini sauce to a great consistency was difficult, it was either pasty, or watery with no balance, and trying to get the seeds to cling was nearly impossible. i ended up dumping the seeds into the sauce, and dusting the tofu in cornstarch so that the sauce/seed mixture would stick. this worked, but it didnt give you the same visual effect.
the sauce really wasn’t that flavorful after all of my tinkering, so i added ginger and chinese 5 spice. i also went ahead and made a concoction of braggs, chili and sesame oil, mushroom sauce, and other spices to coat the veggies with because the recipe didnt have anything for them besides the sesame oil. and when it was all said and done, i still dumped hoisin sauce over everything to make it more palatable. *this actually made it super attractive! the hoisin picked up the fallen seeds and kind of glued it all back together. lol.
i was going to add a picture, because it actually looked good when i was through, but i cant find my usb cable. i’l do it tomorrow.
EDIT: robin robertson, author of vegan planet red my post last night, and is going to try to get to the bottom of my tofu conundrum! We both feel that the issue lies in the tahini sauce, and mine came from the coop bulk bin so it could have been not stirred enough=too much oil? the quest continues!
instead of pictures of my trashed kitchen, i give you……CATS!
boo!
he insists that shoulders are just extra warm chaise loungers made especially for him. 
