Quinoa with mushrooms & pan-fried tofu

By Tali Simon | August 6, 2012

This dish started as an excuse to sink my teeth into pan-fried cubes of tofu. Because they’re just so good!

It’s hard enough resisting the urge to eat them all fresh from the stove. But that was good practice, because next I had to keep myself from picking them all out of the quinoa.

It’s a good thing I like quinoa, too. And mushrooms, of course. It isn’t for nothing that probably half the recipes on this blog use mushrooms.

Nerd alert! I just went through my recipe index and counted. There are actually 16 recipes with mushrooms. My mistake.

Anyway, the great thing about this dish is that it’s light enough for summer (we had it as a Shabbos lunch dish, which was perfect), but it won’t seem out of season in the fall. In fact, if you’re insanely organized, you might want to put this on your Succos menu.

…Not that I’m thinking about my Succos menu. Seriously. I’m not.

The sweetness from the honey in the tofu marinade goes beautifully with the quinoa’s fluffy texture and nutty flavor.

So whether you feel like serving this on a Monday night, with Shabbos lunch, or sometime this Succos, you really can’t go wrong.

Quinoa with mushrooms & pan-fried tofu

Ingredients

2 cups (uncooked) quinoa
4 cups boiling water
300 grams tofu, cubed and drained on paper towels
5 Tbsp soy sauce
3 Tbsp honey
3 Tbsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp canola oil
1 (400 g) can mushrooms, well drained

Directions

1. Rinse quinoa in a strainer and press gently to release excess liquid. Add quinoa to a pot with the 4 cups of boiling water, stir once, and cover. Reduce heat to low and simmer 13 minutes. When the timer goes off, turn off the heat and leave the pot covered for an additional 10 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

2. Meanwhile, whisk together soy sauce, honey, and sesame oil. Yes, you can do this with a fork — but trust me, the whisk really does make a difference. Place tofu cubes in a pie plate (such as Pyrex) and pour marinade over them. Cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes, flip tofu over, and marinate for another 15 minutes.

3. Heat canola oil in a non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Carefully transfer tofu to the skillet — reserve the extra marinade in the pie plate! — and fry on two (opposite) sides until gorgeously browned, about three minutes on each side. Transfer finished tofu to a plate lined with a paper towel to drain any excess oil. Resist the urge to make them disappear.

4. Scoop the mushrooms into the still-hot skillet and saute 1-2 minutes on low heat. This helps infuse them with some of the now-flavored oil left from frying the tofu, and also heats them up a bit so you’re not stuck combining cold mushrooms with hot/warm quinoa and tofu.

5. Transfer quinoa to a pretty serving dish and mix in a few spoonfuls of the reserved marinade, to taste (you may not need all of it, so add a bit at a time). Add tofu and mushrooms and toss evenly. Serve right away, warm, or even room temp (and cold is good, too!).