Tofu stir-fry with peanuts, leek, mushroom, and green cabbage

Before starting this blog, I would post recipes on various other sites on the internet. In the interest of compiling all my food postings on one site, I reprint them here. Originally posted 13 January 2008.


If you get very good tofu, it's worth eating plain, with soy sauce. Alternately, marinate in soy sauce mixed with water, but be careful not to make it too salty, and add right at the end to a stir-fry, just long enough to heat up.

Before adding the tofu, heat an inch or two of vegetable oil in a wok, along with peppercorns, whole cloves, star anise, and one dried hot chili. When spices start to darken, remove from heat and strain out spices. Discard spices, and toast unsalted peanuts in the spiced oil until they start to darken. Remove peanuts and set aside, leaving oil in wok. Toss peanuts with a little salt and some aniseed.

Add to the wok washed and finely chopped leeks (onions, garlic, shallots, etc.), and cook a little bit. Then add sliced mushrooms and drain some soy sauce from the marinating tofu. Toss briefly, and cover with lid of wok to steam (this helps preserve the mushroom flavor). When mushrooms are cooked, remove from wok, leaving as much liquid as possible in wok.

Slice a green cabbage in half, remove core, and slice thin from pole to pole, and half the slices along the equator. Add to wok, cover, and steam to reduce. When cabbage is soft, add and (re)heat leeks and mushrooms and tofu, but not the tofu marinade. Cook off as much liquid as possible, and toss in peanuts at the end.