Kinda like a party in your mouth. Of course, everything’s a party in your mouth when you’re vegan. My sense of smell and taste got a lot more sensitive after I stopped eating animal products, particularly dairy. The fat in cheese, cream and butter really numbed my tastebuds. I find I like subtler flavors these days and think everything is too sweet. Who knows. I was feeling ambitious tonight.
I threw a good pinch of saffron and a couple of green cardamom pods. I’m showing you brown cardamom too… but it’s not right for pairing with saffron. The flavor for brown cardamom is WAY more intense. Good saffron has gold tips and deep red ocher coloring. Sometimes it’s dyed with turmeric or other things… EEK! You can tell if it’s it has been dyed if the saffron is uniform in color.
I prepared my brown rice in the microwave because it’s easy and I’m a little lazy. Is that going to be a problem? Lazy or not, I do recommend removing the cardamom pods before serving the rice. Leaving it in risks you or someone else biting into it and tasting how I imagine lemon cleaning solution would taste. Meanwhile I combined in a bowl:
1 cup of almond meal
3-4 tablespoons of arrowroot starch (any starch will do)
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
salt to taste
I chopped up my tofu and ‘breaded’ it. I spread it out on a foil lined pan that I sprayed with olive oil and threw a handful of slivered almonds onto it to keep the tofu from sticking.
I baked it at 350F/175C for 15 minutes covered in tinfoil and took it off for the last 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes browned the edges and made it pretty. I sliced up some avocado because I had a ripe one and kind of liked how the beige, yellow and pale green looked together. Everything got a light dusting of sea salt, I drizzled some balsamic vinegar on the avocado and then I ate it. The end.
Just kidding. The buttery avocado was balanced by the balsamic vinegar. The light saffron was perfect with the avocado and with the nuttiness of the almond crusted tofu. The light lemon, floral, spice aroma from the cardamom brought out the honey and olive aromas in the saffron and tied the whole thing together… like that rug from the Big Lebowski.
This is Christie, signing off.
Turning Veganese 
Looks delicious. Will need to make this with you soon.
This looks amazing! I’m going to try it sometime, but with a sub for the almonds.
Also, I love a good Big Lebowski reference.
Coconut works well too. I’ll probably make some toasted coconut tofu (same process, substitute coconut flour and shedded coconut) with mango and saffron when mango comes into season in a few weeks. 🙂 Don’t worry, it won’t pee on any of your rugs. I miss your face!
[…] I decided to buy some kumquats (also cumquats) at my farmer’s market because, though I’m familiar with them and their silly name, I’ve never actually tried them. The idea of putting an entire citrus fruit in my mouth took a little while to warm up to since I associate the zest of lemons and orange peel with bitter aromatic flavors. This is probably one of the strangest mouth adventures I’ve been on since it was almost nothing like I expected. The peel was sweet but still had the bite of a traditional citrus fruits and the flesh of the fruit was delightfully sour. That part was over quickly though since the fruit is very small and I went back to the creamy sweet flavor of the peel. I would love to chop some of these babies up with some mint, red onion, crushed red pepper and vinegar to serve over almond crusted tofu. […]
[…] lunch today, I decided to make some of Christie’s almond crusted tofu. I was about to dump the leftover breading when I got the crazy idea to make some almond crusted […]