Ellie, you're a braver woman than I am! Actually, my DH is violently allergic to tofu, so we don't eat it at my house. BUT there were several shows on the Food Network about tofu recently, I would go to their web-site and search for recipes at www.foodtv.com.
Tofu by itself is bland and not very palatable, so the trick is to season it up and eat it in smaller chunks.
One way you can use tofu is as a replacement for ricotta cheese in your favorite lasagne or pasta recipe. I'm not sure what kind of tofu you bought, but regular tofu can be quite high in fat. The lowfat tofu is (in my opinion) just as good, particularly if you're using it in a recipe where the taste is disguised.
You can also make a tofu scramble for breakfast. Saute peppers, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, or any other vegetable you like in non-fat cooking spray and 1 tsp. oil. Add crumbled tofu, salt, pepper, cumin, and mustard seeds (if you have any). Scramble the whole mix together like you would with eggs.
No guarantees, since I haven't tried it yet, but here's a recipe I found when searching for tofu recipes earlier. I forget where it came from, exactly.
Ingredients
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5 cups bottled pasta sauce (almost 2 26 ounce jars)
16 ounce box lasagna noodles
16 ounce bag frozen spinach, thawed it microwave (or leave it out for a few hours before you start cooking)
16 ounce package of extra-firm tofu, drained and crumbled
8 ounces of 2% shredded mozarella cheese
1 1/4 cup boiling water
Directions
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1. Preheat oven to 350F. To assemble, spread a 9x12 casserole dish or baking pan with 1/3 of the pasta sauce. Then layer remaining ingredients in this order: a layer of noodles, 1/2 of the spinach, 1/2 of the tofu, 1/3 of the cheese, another layer of noodles, another 1/3 of the sauce, remaining spinach, remaining tofu, another 1/3 of cheese, another layer of noodles, remaining sauce, remaining cheese.
2. Put the boiling water in a cup with a spout and pour evenly into each corner of the pan so that the water goes to the bottom. Cover the whole pan with aluminum foil and seal the edges all the way around. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour.
3. Remove foil and check with a fork to see whether noodles are soft all the way through. If not, cover and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes. Remove the lasagna from the oven, let sit for about 15 minutes, then serves.
Makes 8 to 10 servings.
(Note: You can cut the baking time about in half if you boil the noodles first.)
(Note 2: I'm not sure the nutritional info. I tried calculating it on my own, using DietWatch, and my very rough estimate came up with 234 calories, 4 g fat, 5 g fiber. No guarantees, though. This was computed for 8 servings.)
I'm not real experienced with tofu but we have made a couple of tofu dishes in my low fat cooking class. Here is what I learned. you should drain tofu on paper toweling to get as dry as possible. Cut into small cubes to put in your recipe. It will pick up what every flavorings is in the recipe. We made a Spicy Vegetarian Chili and put 1/2 Lb. of extra firm tofu (from the dairy case in the store) cubed into the chili. The tofu was added to the spices (onions, gr, peppers, garlic, chili powder, cumin, etc and the tomato sauce and crushed tomatoes and simmered 15 min. uncovered. Then add your canned beans. I do not like chili so brought my portion home to DH and he like it very much.
Another dish we made was a Fried Rice w/ pineapple and tofu. I liked this one very much. We again drained the tofu on paper towels and cut into 1/2 inch cubes. We heated a large skillet with 1 Tabl. of peanut oil and added the cubes of tofu and cooked 8 minutes or until golden in color.
I drain the tofu (firm lowfat) and cut into large pieces. Season it with salt and pepper and maybe garlic powder. Brown on all sides in a frying pan sprayed with PAM or the like. Serve on the side with steamed or stirfried vegs and brown rice. Very nice.
