1. 19 January 2010 · 09:07 PM ·

    Taco 013: Tofu Tacos with Roasted Tomato-Chile-Garlic Salsa

    So, I’m back. Tacos are back. We took a little break from each other, but it only brought us closer together, right? Time to move on. Now more than ever.

    Rick Bayless is my mom’s favorite “celebrity chef” - and I cannot say she is wrong to be his fan. Every meal she or I have ever had at any of his restaurants has been exceptional. Once, he @replied to something my mom asked him on Twitter and she pretty much flipped out for a week. Thus, it was not super surprising that last month one of my gifts from her was a Bayless cookbook.

    Now, for a book with a title like Salsas That Cook you might expect that it would be, say, majority salsa recipes. Turns out not to be the case. Much of the book is various recipes you can make using the half-dozen or so salsa recipes. Nonetheless, I wanted to make one of the signature salsas as a “featured ingredient” in tonight’s tacos.

    Other than the salsa, these tacos keep it pretty simple - they are basically just a vehicle. You can put this salsa on anything, really. We made a couple changes to Chef Bayless’ version for our purposes, making it a little better to marinate the tofu and giving me more excuse to use our kick-ass blender.

    A note on liquid smoke: I know, that stuff seems weird right? It kind of is. However, it is not gross and chemically like you might think. Recently, I came to have a bottle of Lazy Kettle Brand Hickory Liquid Smoke (ingredients: smoke) from a company up near San Francisco. It happened to be looking at me while I was taste-testing the salsa and I decided to put add a splash. It totally worked. Certainly, this is not mandatory for making the salsa.

    Sorry about that terrible iPhone photo up top, by the way. Yikes.

    Tofu Tacos with Roasted Tomato-Chile-Garlic Salsa - inspired by Salsas That Cook by RIck Bayless

    I. Salsa
    INGREDIENTS
    5 dried guajillo chiles
    4 small tomatoes (Bayless suggests plum, the only local ones we found today were greenhouse-grown “clusters”)
    1/2 of a small onion
    1/2 head of garlic
    1/4 tsp dried oregano
    1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
    1 1/2 tsp salt
    1/4 tsp sugar
    1/2 tsp ground habenero powder
    4 dashes of liquid smoke


    PROCEDURE
    1. Rehydrate the chiles in hot water.
    2. Set your oven broiler. Once it is piping hot, put whole tomatoes in on a baking sheet, as close to the heat as possible. Cook until roasty, toasty with curled, wrinkled skin and black splotches. Pull them out, flip them over with tongs, and put back under broiler until the bottom also looks delicious. This process may take 12 to 20 total minutes or so, depending on your oven. Mine took longer than expected.
    3. Decrease oven temp to 425. Place large-chopped onion and garlic cloves in a small roasting pan. Put the pan in the oven and set the timer for 5 minutes. When that timer goes off, toss everything around in there. Repeat baking and mixing a few times until onions are soft, brownish, and maybe a little charred.
    4. Take the rehydrated chiles out of the water and remove stems and seeds. Chop a bit. Put them in a large bowl with the tomatoes. Get out your immersion blender and blitz that all up.
    5. When then onions and garlic are done add them to the mixing bowl. Whirl again until nice and smooth.
    6. Add seasonings. Blend until mixed. Add as much water as needed to get a consistency you want - the paste will initially be pretty thick.
    7. Refrigerate until using.

    II. Tofu Tacos
    INGREDIENTS
    Roasted Tomato-Chile-Garlic Salsa
    1 block firm tofu
    canola oil
    lettuce
    tortillas

    PROCEDURE
    1. Press the tofu to get rid of excess moisture.
    2. Chop the tofu into little cubes, between mini-marshmallow and full-sized.
    3. Put the tofu in a bowl and toss around with a few glugs of salsa. Let this hang out a while. Probably at least 10 minutes.
    4. Chip up the lettuce into little shrivels. Crunchy!
    5. Heat a small dollop of oil in a skillet. Once the pan is very hot, stir-fry the tofu up quickly until piping hot and appealing to eat.
    6. Wrap it up in a tortilla and smother with more tasty salsa.