I love to make vegan versions of classic national dishes – it’s so much fun. It shows vegans can have as much enjoyment as anyone else, but without hurting animals. This katsu curry & panko tofu is no exeption. It’s important to use the right ingredients though, so I recommend using a Japanese curry powder for the best taste. It’s not easy to find, unless you have a Japanese food shop near you, but you can order it on-line easily. Rice wine & Mirin are also ingredients that you should add, an Asian mini-market style shop will stock them.
I say panko breadcrumbs, but hey I mean wholemeal home-made ones. So don’t throw your crusts away, either eat them like mum said, or turn them into breadcrumbs! In fact breadcrumbs on the cheese sauce layer of pastitsio, lasagne, sheppards pie & moussaka adds extra crunchiness. They’re dead easy, to make – break crusts or stale bread into thumb sized pieces & blitz in a food processor, Then toast in the oven to dry them and brown them & store for later use.
There’s a debate about what kind of tofu to use, but I think either medium firm or firm. Extra firm is too solid for my liking. Medium firm gives the best results, but needs careful handling to avoid it breaking. The best kind comes from a Chinese mini-market – British supermarkets sell rubbish tofu at high prices. I suggest slicing each block into four large slices horizontally & cooking them like that, then cutting into triangles if you wish. You need a very sharp knife for that however.
The sauce wants to be nice and creamy, and not too thick nor too thin. Adding in the veggies – apple, potato & carrot in small pieces adds to the nutritional value. Nice sticky well cooked short-grain brown rice is essential to balance the sauce and tofu. To achieve this, use a little extra water – say 3 1/4 times the volume of rice as water instead of 3 times. Serving with pan fried Bok Choy, spinach, spiced cabbage, or beans sprouts finishes a Katsu Curry & Panko Tofu well.
Katsu Curry & Panko Tofu
Ingredients
The Tofu
- 600 g medium firm tofu from Chinese supermarket. you can use firm, but the texture of the medium firm is much better - although more difficult to handle.
The batter to coat the tofu
- 15 g wholemeal pastry flour
- 15 g gram flour optional - but use 15g more wheat flour
- 15 g cornflour optional - but use 15g more wheat flour
- 75 ml/g soya or non-dairy milk unsweetened
- 25 g aqua faba optional - use more plant milk to balance
The Panko style breadcrumbs
- 100 g wholemeal bread crumbs
- 2 teasp garlic granules
- 2 teasp onion granules
- 2 tbsps nutritional yeast
- ½ teaspoon lo-salt
- 2 teasp ground black pepper
- 2 teasp ground cumin optional
- 40 g Oil for frying about 2-3 tablespoons
Veggies to go in the curry sauce.
- 225 g carrots cut into 1cm pieces 2 medium carrots approx
- 275 g waxy potatoes cut into 1cm cubes or sections. 6 smallish potatoes approx
The Katsu Curry Sauce itself.
- 25 g cold pressed avocado or rapeseed oil 2 tbsps approx
- 250 g yellow onion diced finely 1 fairly large onion approx
- ½ medium granny smith or similar apple optional
- 30 g of freshly grated ginger or very finely chopped. you can sub with paste
- 20 g garlic crushed approx 4 cloves
- 2 tbsps Japanese curry powder that's using S&B or Indian if you can't source S&B. I have also used 10 servings of Kibi Japanese curry powder.
- 1 teasp turmeric
- 20 g gram flour or cornflour 2 rounded tbsp approx - corn flour is best
- 500 ml vegetable stock low sodium
- 200 ml coconut milk full-fat (canned)
- 2 teasps tamari or soy sauce low sodium
- 2 teasps coconut sugar or 2 teasps maple syrup
- 1/2 teaspoon low sodium salt more to taste
- 2 teasps rice vinegar
- 2 teasps mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine) or maple syrup,
- 1 tbsp white miso paste optional
- 15 g tomato puree 1 tbsp approx optional
Instructions
The vegetables to go in the sauce.
- Finely chop the, potato (and carrots) into 1 cm sized pieces
- saute together for around 12 minutes. The actifry is great for that, but a wok will do too.
- When they are starting to brown remove from the heat and set aside.
Making the katsu sauce
- Chop the onion finely and add to the heated oil in a largish mediteranean casserole, frying pan or wok. Saute on a medium heat for a few minutes.
- Add in the garlic and ginger (and apple if using it) and continue sauteeing.
- When the onions are translucent and nice and soft, add in the curry powder and turmeric and continue to saute but on a lower heat as the spices can burn easily.
- In a separate jug, mix the gram flour or cornflour with a little of the veg stock and mix to a paste, then add in the rest of the stock and stir until homogenous.
- Add in the coconut milk, all the other ingredients in the Katsu curry list and the gram flour stock mixture whilst stirring continuously.
- Bring to the boil and simmer gently as it thickens - stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick and burn. Add more liquid if necessary.
- As you start preparing and frying the tofu, add the set aside veggies to the sauce, so that they can finish cooking.
- You can also remove say a 1/4 of the sauce and blend it very well with a stick blender and then add back in. This gives a very rich smooth sauce but is optional.
Making the Panko Tofu
- Slice the 3 blocks in a 600g pack of tofu into 4 to give you 12 reasonably thick slices. Any thinner and it's too difficult to handle. You can marinade in soy sauce and chilli garlic sauce if you wish, but that's best done some time before.
- After marinading, you can press the tofu to remove some of the water - use the same dish you used to marinade the tofu. Placing it on kitchen towel can make the batter stick better, but is an optional additional step.
- mix the milk, aqua faba and flour(s) into a medium thick batter. It mustn't be too thick, but wants to be thick enough to stick to and coat the tofu.
- mix the panko breadcrums and other coating ingredients together and place them in a shallow bowl.
- Dip the tofu in the batter, and then in the bread crumbs - pressing it gently into the mixture to get the breadcrumb mixture to adhere to the tofu.
- Pan fry or bake in the oven until golden brown. Baking in the oven doesn't give such a good result, but does avoid it breaking up as you turn it over. Turning it over requiresa a bit of skill to stop the crumbs coming off or it breaking.
- You can cut the finished panko tofu in half diagonally to make 24 pieces - but it's very tricky unless you have a super sharp knife so generally I don't bother. Pour the sauce into a well in the sticky brown rice, and serve 4 each of the panko tofu triangles on top (or 2 whole slices). Add any additional veggies on the side.
