I collect food like other people collect knick knacks. While I plan out the week’s menu in advance and shop accordingly it still doesn’t stop me from tossing in various other things into the grocery cart. Lately, to use up some of the surplus, I’ve been trying to cut back on the pre-planned meals and improvise in order to use up everything I’ve been hoarding. This recipe was the result of me poking my head into the pantry and trying to figure out what I was going to have for dinner at the last minute.
I’m one of those people who actually likes tofu, even though it is pretty tasteless by itself.
Instead of adding in plain tofu I decided to marinade it before I tossed it into the oven to bake. I used a mixture of garlic (sorry, I was having a lazy food blogger day and used the stuff from the jar), ginger, sesame oil, maple syrup and rice vinegar. I was short on time so the tofu ended up just soaking for five minutes.
Going into the oven.
After 10 minutes at 450 I took them out of the oven to turn them.
After 20 minutes they were done. They look a little burnt but it’s just the marinade that makes them look so dark.
Instant soup. *gasp*. I can’t find dashi or dried wakame where I live so I ended up using instant soup packets. Even though I try to avoid using pre-packaged food sometimes I don’t have much of a choice.
I had some soba noodles that had been hanging around the pantry for a while that I decided to add to the soup. I love soba even though I don’t think about using it often. The noodles are made out of buckwheat flour and have a hearty texture and a slightly nutty taste.
Also some green onions.
I threw all the ingredients into the pot and let them boil away until the noodles were tender.
For an improvised meal this was pretty good. I liked the flavour of the tofu but next time I will let it marinate a lot longer so that the flavour gets stronger. The broth was savoury and went perfectly with the taste of the noodles. For a veggie meal this was rather filling. I don’t make a lot of Asian meals so this was a nice change.
