This is a riff on a recipe that I found on New York Times Cooking. I say “riff” because while I intended to follow the recipe, once I got started, I realized it wasn’t going to happen.
Check out the original recipe here.
For the marinade:
I used the juice from a jar of pickles that I realized too late, I do not like. But it still turned out good. I can’t wait to try it with pickle juice I like!
I did not use hot sauce because the pickles I used the juice from were already spicy pickles. But I did use red pepper flakes.
I let it marinate a day longer than the recipe said because we ended up making alternate dinner plans on the night we were going to have it. It was fine, feel free to do this if you need to.
For the Dip and Dredge prep:
Why should I use ½ cup of Dijon when that much was not needed? Same with the flour. I’m not into wasting food. So, I just used what I felt was necessary and still had too much of both of those.
For assembly:
I didn’t want to buy a whole head of cabbage so I just got a bag of coleslaw mix. I figured that would be better because it’s a mix of cabbages. Variety, the spice of life!
I also didn’t use that much oil just because I didn’t have that much on hand. I had a small container of oil in the fridge that was leftover from frying something previously and then the rest of the vegetable oil I had in the house. It probably was only one inch thick in the pan. I used a small pan so it would be deeper and I worked in batches.
OK with all that out of the way…
These turned out about 100 times better than I had hoped. When I smelled the marinade, after the tofu sat in it for 2 days I was not hopeful. It was not pleasing.
But I persevered, and I’m glad I did.
I put the fried tofu pieces on a nice brioche bun (from Imperfect Foods), topped with the coleslaw and since I wasn’t a fan of the pickles we had, I used dill pickle relish.
It was very tasty, but I felt it could be better if the mayo was mixed into the coleslaw mix as well as the relish. I also felt it needed a piece of cheese.
So here are the ones that I made.
While I was eating it, I was pretty amazed at how the inside actually looked like chicken!
Then Greg wanted another sandwich (a good sign) but since we were out of brioche buns he used a hoagie roll. He did mix the mayo, coleslaw and relish and also used cheese. I tasted it, it was MUCH better.
