Chilli tofu bowl

I had a version of this in Toronto, it was so perfectly balanced with hot, cold, spicy, mellow, crunchy and smooth elements that I had to recreate it at home.

First you need to press the tofu.

Place it in between six sheets of paper towels and add something, anything heavy, on top. I used a casserole dish.

Leave it to ‘press’ for at least an hour — you want to get rid of as much of the moisture as possible.

Once the time has passed take out the tofu and chop it into adorable, tiny chunks.

Then dredge in seasoned fine cornmeal.

It is at this point you can put your brown rice on the hob. I cook mine with a lot of water and drain it afterwards.

Rice contains a lot of arsenic which leeches out into the water, so using excessive amounts of water at the cooking stage rids you of having over-arsenic-y rice.

If you don’t want to use rice you can always use bulgar wheat, quinoa or couscous.

Once the grain of choice is on you can preheat the oven to 200c and bake the tofu cubes for around 20 minutes, turning half way through.

At the half way point you can put the veggies in the oven too, you just need to remove the ends of the asparagus and broccoli and halve the baby corn.

Chuck in a little oil, I used rapeseed then add salt, pepper and a little soya sauce.

After ten minutes in the top shelf of the oven your veggies will be slightly charred and softened but still al dente — you can cook longer if you don’t like the crunch.

Once you’ve removed the tofu chunks from the oven place them in a bowl and while still warm add your hot sauce.

I used this recipe for the spicy chilli sauce, but you can use shop bought.

Add a little sprinkle of black onion seeds and sesame seeds and mix through.

Now you can assemble your tofu bowl.

First place the grain at the bottom, and add the roasted veggies at the side, the tofu can be placed in the middle and sprinkled liberally with more black onion seeds and sesame seeds.

Add some freshly chopped tomatoes, salad leaves, chopped spring onion and slices of avocado.

Finish with a generous squeeze of lime juice and always serve extra chilli sauce on the side.

Ingredients

. 1 cup brown rice . 220g tender stem broccoli . 125g fine stem asparagus . 130g baby corn . chilli sauce . 280g tofu . quarter cup cornmeal . tsp onion seeds . tsp sesame seeds . 1 spring onion . 2 tsp soya sauce . lime juice . avocado . 2 tsp rapeseed oil . salt and pepper .

Nutrition

Recipe serves 2, nutrition per person

• Calories: 698
• Carbohydrates: 93.5g
• Fiber: 11.5g
• Sodium: 888.5mg
• Protein: 31g
• Sugar: 7.5g
• Fat: 19.5g