Thursday, October 10

Curry Tofu Tacos with Pinto Beans & Kale Slaw

Rating: 4.75

You guys. Make this. Seriously. It’s that good. I was poking around on PPK the other day and this little gem of a recipe popped up. As much as I love my cookbook collection, and I do love it a lot, I was looking for something new and fun to make. I found it. The recipe says it takes 30 minutes, but it took me a little longer. I’m kind of a slow cook. Anyway – at first glance it seems like a lot to make, but it’s really not. All three components are pretty simple and work together amazingly well in the finished product. I made the kale first since it doesn’t get cooked. I forgot to put the salt in and had to add it after the fact, but no worries. It was perfect. And I do mean perfect. I’ll make the kale slaw on it’s own just to have as a side with other things. The dressing is a creamy avocado & tahini dressing that is drool worthy. And let me tell you, this dressing resulted in what I am now calling “the avocado situation”. The only ripe avocados in the organic bin were overripe – by a lot. The non-organics were all way under ripe. But, there were bags of four avocados in the organic bin. I found one that had two ripe and two unripe. OK. Now I have three extra avocados to use this weekend. We don’t use them that much since I’m just now learning to like them so this could be interesting. Anyway. Next I did the tofu. I kind of half-assed pressing it and only did it for about half an hour. I was a little bit worried Seth wouldn’t like the tofu since it doesn’t get marinated and only has a bit of olive oil, tamari and curry powder on it, but he loved it. I did too. Instead of grilling it, I opted for the broiled version so it would be a little chewier. This seemed important since I only kinda sorta pressed it. I tried getting grill marks on it in the grill pan after I took it out of the broiler, but for some reason, no matter how high I cranked the stove, it just wouldn’t get the marks I wanted. No biggie – that was all for show anyway. While the tofu was broiling I did the beans. Simple and easy and oh so tasty. Since I usually buy dry beans in bulk instead of canned, I soaked and cooked them ahead of time so they were all ready to go when dinnertime rolled around. I normally prefer flour tortillas, but I decided to go with the corn as the recipe called for. I’m glad I did. I just nuked those in a wet kitchen towel until they were nice & hot and then we piled them high with all the yummy fillings. We used more beans in each than I think we were supposed to because the recipe says it makes 8 tacos and we probably had enough beans for about 6. I didn’t dress all the kale, but I did chop it all and set some aside along with a little bit of dressing to have leftovers for lunch. I took one bite, looked at Seth and declared that we had a winner. He took one bit and gave the verbal thumbs up of “mmmmm”. Seriously, y’all need to make these.