Fearn Smith: Hi! My name is Fearn Smith and my husband Guy Weigold and I on the farm café here in Portland. We opened in 2003, so we’ve been around for about five years now and one of our most popular dishes is the Herb Crusted Tofu with mushrooms Marsala. We’re going to demonstrate that for you today. Actually, the recipe looks daunting so it’s seems like there is a lot of ingredients, but its actually pretty simple procedure and its going to be fun to show you how to make it. So, let’s start with the Tofu -- I want to talk a little bit about this particular brand, it comes from Ota Tofu, they are a local Portland Tofu factory that’s been around since 1918, I’m sorry. I tried to memorize exact date. So, they’ve been around Portland for over hundred years, they’re established. Let’s say.

They use non-GMO organic beans and what we can do, is start with a pound, a Tofu; we need to press some of the water out of this. Okay, so we’re just going to use a couple of plates balancing on top and it doesn’t take very long maybe about 20 minutes, so you can see after about 20 minutes a lot of water has come out from the Tofu and what we’re can do is, just going to pour off the water. Now I’m going to show you the secret cutting method, so what we do is basically go -- we want to do four slices so. And then, we turn it up on its side and cut the triangles. Tofu cutlet, now what we are going to do is marinade, so we put these guys in here and we’re going to use one cup of Marsala, which is a fortified cooking sherry. One-cup water and one cup light soy sauce.

We would like to mix it up a little bit, but it blends in really easily. Al right, so, we’re going to put this in the fridge for about half hour, but you could certainly leave it in there longer; the longer it marinades, the more flavors you’re going get into the Tofu. Tofu can be kind of blend on its own, so let’s get as much flavor in there as possible. It looks like it’s been about an hour; let’s scrub that Tofu. Okay, next step breading. We use breadcrumbs, we use a little bit of Panko at the restaurant, but I think a 100% breadcrumbs is great for anyone cooking at home because you’re just going to dredge and fry and it’s going to stay nice and crispy. We do use a lot of fresh thyme in the breading thus the herb-crusted tofu, okay. So, look at that beautiful brown color just put that right in here and just toss it around, it sticks really well, you don’t need do any kind of preparatory work for that. So, once you have it coated, we’ll go over here to your frying pan, use just a little bit of canola oil.

Get our Tofu cutlets frying. Now, we’re going to let this fry until it gets nice and crispy golden brown, while this is frying; I’m going to have Russell our Sous Chef demonstrate the Marsala sauté. Okay, guys this is Russell Pears, he is a Sou Chef with The Farm Café, he is a master in making this Tofu dish. What he is doing now is, heating up his pan with some canola oil. He is adding the sliced onions, he like to just have this onion sliced, he likes the big piece, but he likes some kind of thin; they cooked down really well that way you he wants to get a nice caramel color on there. He likes to add just a little bit of salt with each addition of each ingredient, also I want to mention to on the Tofu, we do use a extra firm Tofu you can see that it needs to hold that shape and we wanted to have some texture. So, its good to use the extra firm Tofu even though you are pressing, you’re actually getting more firmness after the water is extracted.

Look at that beautiful golden color and its got a great crunchy texture to it. People love that; they love the contrast looking soft Tofu and a crunchy crust on the top. So you can see now the onions are starting to brown this just going to add a lot of flavor to this. Now he is adding these our sliced Crimini mushrooms or sometimes called brown mushrooms. We get our mushrooms from food river organic company, so they’re all organic. Okay now you can see that the mushrooms and onions have a nice brown color on them, that’s the color what you’re looking for and what he is adding now is the Herbs de Provence it typically has a little lavender in it and he is just leaving that on top and letting the onions to continue to brown in the bottom because we don’t want the herbs to burn in the pan and that’s what happens, we get a lot of Herbs, dried Herbs on the actual pan itself. So, he is going to let those basically reconstitute and pop there. Look at that beautiful color and now we’re going to add some Marsala, more Marsala. Now he is going to let that cooked down all the way until it’s almost dry. Next what we are going to do is called declassing and that’s what he is going to add a liquid to the sauté, that’s going to enable him to scrape up all those yummy bits. What we use as this product called silk creamer and it’s different than soymilk. It actually has a higher fat content, which is important for emulsification; it gives you the right texture.

Now this needs to cook down as well this is finished product. We’ve got that silk creamer cooked down and we’re ready to plate. Okay, so we start with a mount of mashed potatoes, we use mashed potatoes that are all seasoned to frosted garlic and rosemary. You are certainly welcome to use any of the mashed potato recipe that you know, but if you are interested in learning the recipe there’ll be a segment for the future. Look at that, beautiful. We’ll we’ve Herb Crusted Tofu with mushrooms Marsala. Now if you want to find out more about the farm café, we have a website thefarmcafe.net or if you would like more information on the recipes go to everydaydish.tv. Thanks bye.