Shades of Brown – 15 Minute Dinner

Although this defies the rule of eating a spectrum of colors at every meal, I think this improvised dinner came together quite nicely. I had a craving for the nutty flavor of kasha, which cooks in under 10 minutes. This was so simple, I’m not sure I can even write a recipe for it, but I’ll try. I’ll just describe what I did in recipe format.

I (mostly) followed the box instructions to make the Kasha:
Put up kettle of water to boil
Heat ~1Tbps. olive oil in frying pan over high heat
beat 1 egg
mix in 1 cup of Kasha until coated
add egg/Kasha mixture to pan and stir constantly until Kasha begins to dry out and separate
turn the heat down to low
add 2 cups of boiled water to pan, salt generously, cover
cook 10 min. covered

Meanwhile….
Open packet of firm or extra firm tofu and press out some of the water
slice tofu into nice slabs
coat in marinade – I used grated ginger and Hoisin sauce. I only cover one side of each piece of tofu with the marinade. Then I put the pieces back together so that the coating rubs off onto the unmarinated sides. This saves me the trouble of flipping over the pieces to marinade each side.

While the tofu is marinating – cut up your vegetable
I used a squash that we had left over from our last CSA share of 2009 – way back in October. I think any type of gourd or squash would work well here.
Cut up squash and place into microwave safe bowl with 1-2 inches of water at the bottom
Cover and microwave until soft and tender, drain liquid
It took about 8 minutes to cook this thick skinned squash
I would have like to add coconut milk to the squash, but I was out, so I seasoned with salt/pepper and some herbs

While squash is in the microwave and the Kasha is finishing up, cook tofu.
Heat frying pan over medium high heat
coat with olive oil (~2 Tbsp)
Place slabs of tofu into oil
Cook several minutes on each side until tofu develops nice golden crust

Serve and enjoy!