Monday 22 August 2016

Cocoa Jerk Tofu

A while back my mum came over for lunch and found me putting together a cocoa jerk sauce for some tofu.  I felt slightly concerned that she tasted the marinade and told me it was really spicy.  My mum has always loved the bite of chillis far more than me.  If she thought it was hot, chances are I would.

As you can see, in the above picture, there were rather a lot of ingredients.  Yet most of them are store cupboard ingredients.  The only ingredient I didn't have was the hoisin sauce.  So I winged it with some lemon juice, plum vinegar and ume boshi vinegar.

I cooked it in my new casserole dish which makes a handsome serving dish.  The packaging said I should not bake it above 200 C.  Luckily my oven rarely reaches any temperature so I am pretty easy going about such advice.

I served the jerk tofu with roast pumpkin and brown rice.  Below is a tub of it that I took to work.  It was sort of nice but it was so hot that it left me gasping.  I reduced the spicy ingredients slightly but if I make this again I will reduce them even more.  Because I liked it but just found the heat was ratcheted up too far for my liking.  Even E agreed and he usually likes more spice than me.

So there you have my first attempt at a jerk seasoning.  I really liked its darkness if not the spiciness.  I was interested to read Cindy's post about her jerk seasoning that she bought in America and how spicy it was.  So I guess it is meant to be spicy.  The great thing about making these dishes at home is that I can taste all the flavours without too much spice for comfort.  It has taken me years since I first bookmarked a jerk seasoning recipe.  Hopefully it is not so long before I try a jerk seasoning again.

I am sending this dish to Jac for Meat Free Monday, to Choclette for We Should Cocoa, and to Kimmy and Mary Ellen for Healthy Vegan Fridays.

More chocolate savoury dishes on Green Gourmet Giraffe:

Cocoa Jerk Tofu
Adapted from Superfoods for Life, Cacao by Matthew Ruscigno via Tastespace

Sauce:
1/3 cup vegetable broth
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup tamari
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons hot sauce (I used sriracha)*
2 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon (15 ml) lemon juice (or balsamic vinegar)
1 tablespoon plum vinegar (or plum sauce or hoisin)
1 tablespoon ume boshi vinegar
2 teaspoons curry powder*
2 to 3 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste (I left it out)
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1/4 tsp ground pepper* 
pinch chili powder*

300g hard tofu
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 zucchini
1/2 tomato

Mix together all the sauce ingredients.  Toss through the tofu and vegies and rest for at least 30 minutes.  Bake at 200 C for 30 minutes, turning midway through.

*NOTES: I found this really spicy (and I don't do really spicy) so next time I will reduce the asterisked items.  And I used half a tomato just because I had one there.  A whole tomato or no tomato would be fine.

On the Stereo:
Fallen Angels: Bob Dylan

18 comments:

  1. Ah so this is the savoury Cocoa dish you mentioned to me last month. Looks good and I may just have to make it. though I may have to wing it as I don't have plum vinegar, plum sauce or hoisin, ume boshi vinegar I love Jerk seasoning and often make mock meat balls with the addition of it, yes it is spicy.

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    1. Thanks shaheen - I am sure you could find something for the sauce because there are so many flavours ad especially lots of spices I am sure you would love

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  2. Oh no.. sorry this was too spicy. I wonder if your curry powder or chili powder is more spicy than ours, since I have a very low spice tolerance and I remember eating it without problems.

    Shaheen- I used tamarind concentrate which worked well instead of hoisin sauce.

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    1. Thanks Janet - I kept the chilli powder to a minimum but I probably should have also put in less curry powder and hot sauce and just gradually add them to check how hot I wanted - would not be too hard to adjust the recipe to my level of heat

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  3. I've never seen a jerk recipe with cocoa before! It's such a contrast to the one I made, since yours seems to be based on dry spices and mine was more of a green herb/chilli paste... certainly they seemed to have heat in common. ;-)

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    1. Thanks Cindy - either had I but I like cocoa in a chilli so it made sense - and though there were lots of dry spices there were also some wet ingredients to make it into a marinade which I guess you could keep in a jar and use what you needed - wonder how long it would last

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  4. Wow that was three words that I never expected to see together! :D An interesting sounding dish!

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    1. Thanks Lorraine - ha ha - am glad I can still surprise even you with all your exposure to so many recipes

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  5. Sounds delicious! I'm not a huge spice fan, so I'll have to omit the hot sauce, but everything else sounds lovely =) I'm probably defeating the purpose of "jerk" tofu, but ah well ;p

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    1. Thanks Kimmy - I would probably use way less hot sauce until I tasted it next time - you and I don't need to miss out on the jerk flavours just because we don't like lots of heat :-)

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  6. This sounds delicious. I like spicy so I think this could be a winner for me. I have most of these ingredients at home already so this might just find its way onto the menu plan for next week. Thanks for sharing :)

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    1. Thanks Lisa - I hope you enjoy it - it doesn't have lots of strange ingredients so is fairly accessible

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  7. This sounds fantastic, if hot. I am often a bit daunted by long ingredient lists but you're right, most of these are staples I have.

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    1. Thanks Kari - once I put all the ingredients in the marinade it was pretty easy (and even the marinade wasn't hard to put together)

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  8. The cocoa powder is an interesting ingredient. I have read that jerk [insert ingredient] is meant to be quite hot, but I would like to try it one day, even though I don't like things too hot.

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    1. Thanks Cakelaw - strangely enough I have been interested in jerk recipes for a while but never realised just how hot they are - recommend you make it at home and control the heat!

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  9. Ooh I love, love, love this Johanna. Getting the chilli balance is always difficult as we all seem to have such a different tolerance. Jerk seasoning is delicious and as it comes from the Caribbean is nice and hot - I do like my chillies! Great recipe which I'm looking forward to trying out. Thanks for sharing this with #WeShouldCocoa. I'm a bit late with the round-up, but hoping to get it finished later this evening.

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  10. You come up with the best ideas. We don't eat tofu often enough, but this is seriously tempting me. Thanks for entering it into Meat Free Mondays. I featured your recipe this week.

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