This tofu is amazingly good. Not only is it delicious hot out out the pan, but it’s surprisingly good leftover. I thought the texture might suffer, but it didn’t. This dish can be fiery hot but it’s easy to cut back on the pepper.

If you’re interested in the recipe, it can be found online here. But I have a few notes and observations – things I’m going to change the next time I make this. First, the recipe is characterized as healthy and fast. I didn’t find the prep work to be fast – a lot of things to chop and prepare, but once it’s done it cooks pretty quickly. There’s still the step of frying the tofu in batches first, but once that’s done the final dish is almost ready. This would make for a fun working dinner party, with everyone doing part of the work. I also don’t see how anything that contains fried tofu and requires 11 tablespoons of butter for four servings could be considered healthy. Normally I’d give the recipe the benefit of the doubt and follow it to the letter the first time, but I cut the butter back to 4 tablespoons – and I think it could be cut back just two tablespoons. Swapping the butter out with Earth Balance would make the dish vegan.

My last couple of observations are on ingredients. I took the time to find sweet soy sauce (I found it at 99 Ranch Market) – it’s very distinctive and I think it makes a difference. It’s worth it to search it out. I’d also cut back on the pepper – I think just half the amount would be fine.

• Black Pepper Tofu (Plenty, p. 44)