So since starting this blog I have managed to burn rice, savagely over-spice soup, ruin ravioli,  set off the fire alarm in the middle of a dinner, drop a bunch of glasses and smash them to smithereens, break a plate and now this “mysterious” mark has appeared on my wax table- cloth.

Am I talented or what?

Anyway, I made the smoky maple marinated tofu yesterday and it turned out great. The tablecloth might not agree with that statement, but my taste buds certainly do.

I’d like to say I’m surprised that I like the tofu, because well…it’s tofu. Who the hell actually likes tofu?  Well, it turns out I do. If it’s cooked the right way. None of that boring on-its-own shit. It needs flavour, and it needs the water pressed out of it. Otherwise you might as well set up a table in your shower stall, get in, sit down, and chew on your bath sponge. Trust me, that will be a very lonely, wet, meal for one.

So I followed the instructions and pressed the water out, like a good little thug. Then I got marinating.

This is what it looked like:

Then later…much much later….I got ready to cook myself some tofu. I thought I’d have it with noodles and other random leftovers, so I set the table (pre-tablecloth melting) and got out the frying pan to get started. Then I put it away again realising I wouldn’t need it. I hadn’t read the recipe properly. It was an in-the-oven-job, not a frying pan-job. Whoops. (I know, I know, I broke the cardinal Thug Kitchen rule: read the goddamn recipe.)

I would say that THIS WAS THE EXACT MOMENT THAT IT ALL STARTED TO GO WRONG.

Because, if I had read the recipe properly I wouldn’t have gotten stressed, and wouldn’t have got flustered while trying to multitask. It was all because I knew my kid was hungry and I had to hurry with dinner.

I went from thinking relaxedly and arrogantly: I just need to fry some stuffs ‘I got this’ to being all like FAAAAAACKKKK! and getting all flappy in the kitchen, like a crazy chicken launching itself off the back of another lesser bird, after trying to ride it rickshaw.

I mean the tofu itself was beautiful. It had so much flavour you could slap someone across the face with a piece of this tofu while they were queueing at the postoffice, and the guy standing behind them in the line would be able to taste its smoky salty goodness.

Why would you bring tofu to the postoffice? Well, I don’t fucking know! Why the hell would you try riding another bird rickshaw?!

The point I’m trying to make is things were getting out of hand.

But.

The Tofu was good.

See for yourself:

This was after the first basting. Yeah, you heard me. Basting. You baste that tofu like a motherfucking meat eater would baste a big succulent bird. Baste like you’ve never basted before.

After basting and more oven time it looked like this:

See how it’s a smidge darker? That’s the good shit right there. Relax, it’s not burning. I can see you worrying. ‘That’s the right way to do it, so calm the fuck down.’ You know how I know it’s meant to look like that? Coz the Thugs told me so on page 76.

Anyways, I had this one little extra strip of plain tofu to spare so I thought for shits and giggles I’d dry fry it like the Thugs suggest on page 154.

This was my ultimate downfall.

I thought I’d burnt that one fucking tiny strip of tofu, so I quickly grabbed it off the stove and set the pan down to rest on the table. 2 seconds later and my table-cloth had a hole in it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I actually did one of those weird double takes and put the saucepan back down on top of the hole, and then lifted it back up again, almost as if, the second time the hole wouldn’t be there.  I mean what was I expecting in that moment? That the Universe would jump out from behind my refrigerator, like the prankster that it is, and go: Just Kidding!! There’s no hole here!

Well, that didn’t happen. The hole remained.

And the dry-fried tofu was crunchy and good. It’s hard to be angry when you’re eating something tasty.

(Sort of looks like fried halloumi doesn’t it? Don’t worry, no cheeses were harmed in the making of this recipe.)

Anyways, I served up my tasty dinner with the smoky maple tofu and it looked like this:

I served it with noodles, and home-made tabbouleh salad with some beans mixed in, coz let’s face it you can never have too much protein. (Okay, once again experts would disagree with that statement, and probably so would that heavily damaged post-Atkins diet kidney. But hey what’s a fucked kidney or two between friends?) *

*For the Record, I have no medical knowledge whatsoever. Except maybe knowing how to put a plaster on my finger after nearly decapitating it in the kitchen. Here are some pictures to remind you who I truly am in the kitchen, and bring us full circle from my original statement at the start of the blog.

Others leave a successful performance with a mic drop. I leave a disastrous kitchen experience/blog post with the sound of glass shattering.