Description: One of the popular Japanese side dishes. This is served in Izakaya (Japanese bars), Japanese restaurants or even at home. No need to prepare specific ingredients.
Serves: 2
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• Tofu – 1 box or 300g
• Spring onion or chive – chopped, 2 tablespoons or 10g, according to personal taste
• Daikon radish (mooli) – grated, 40g
• Ginger – grated, ½ teaspoon or 1g, according to personal taste
• Potato starch – 20g or as needed

Sauce:

• If the measurement is difficult, you may cook double the amount and just use half for this recipe
• Soy sauce – 1/2 teaspoon
• Mirin cooking wine – 1/8 tablespoon
• Sake cooking wine- 1/2 teaspoon
• Dashi stock – 100 mL of bonito or kombu kelp dashi stock (You may cook it from scratch – boil the water, switch the heat off, then add 5g of bonito flake wait for 3 minutes, then sieve them with kitchen paper or fine cloth. Alternatively, use extract dashi powder 0.5g + 100 mL of hot water)

Method

1. Add soy sauce, mirin, sake and dashi stock in a pan. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes and keep it aside.
2. Cut the tofu into 8 pieces and wrap them with kitchen paper to remove their water (make sure to let it absorb the water as much as you can to coat the potato flour well and avoid splashing water when you fry).
3. Put the potato flour around it and fry in a non-stick frying pan until it gets crispy and the colour changes to light brown.
4. Serve in a bowl with grated radish, spring onions/chive and ginger. Then pour the sauce.

Nutritional Values Per Serving

Kcal	Protein	Fat	Carbs	Fibre	Sugars	Salt	Saturated Fat	Vitamin B1	Phosphorus	Magnesium
128.4	8.6g	4.1g	14.3g	1.2g	3.1g	0.3g	0.6g	0.2mg	119.2mg	55.5mg
6.4%	17.2%	5.9%	5.5%	4.0%	3.5%	4.7%	2.8%	22.5%	22.7%	20.6%

Nutritional Tips

Dashi is used in a selection of dishes, and it is a combination of kombu (large, dried seaweed/kelp) and bonito flakes. It can be made from scratch or we can obtain ready, dissolvable powder or dashi bags from a Japanese/Asian supermarket. This is inevitable when making Japanese traditional dishes such as miso soup, udon soup, simmered dish or agedashi tofu. There are different types of tofu: silken, regular, firm, extra-firm. For agedashi tofu, it would be easier to cook with a harder type of tofu as soft tofu can be easily broken. Softer ones are more suitable for soups and contain more water. Therefore, generally the firmer the tofu is, the higher it is in calories, protein, and fat.

When I was young, there were tofu trucks which drove around the town to sell their handmade tofu. Now, things have changed and most products are produced by machines, so I hardly see those family businesses which I miss. But this was how Japanese people’s diets were in the past. There is one Japanese anime called “Initial D (頭文字D)”, where the main character’s father owns a tofu shop. Tofu is processed soybean curd and is made from boiled soybeans, a coagulant and nigari (usually, magnesium chloride). There is a place where you can do a tofu-making experience in Japan. I went to the one in Kyoto and that was an amazing experience. This is how important tofu is for Japanese cuisine.

Eating tofu or other soy food products more often than animal products for proteins would lower the intake of saturated fat and cholesterol. This may help to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.