Soy Intimdated!

I can't be the only one who is intimidated by food, right?  I mean, you hear that there is a food that's supposed to be good for you and you find room in your food budget to purchase said food, and then you are just too intimidated by the stuff to utilize it.  Please tell me it's not just me.

Well, anyway, at my grocery store the other day I saw a package of tofu.  Mind, I've used tofu in smoothies, or in ways that basically make it unrecognizable, but I wanted to try to make a tofu thing that would cover other foods that I am letting go of in my diet for the most part, read: CHEESE.  

Let me tell you, I am a CHEEEEEEEEESE girl.  I love the stuff.  All of the stinky, strong, mild, sweet, pungent, piquant, smooth, velvety creamy, sharp, aged milk of cows.  LOVE. Welp, for the most part, cheese is out.  Yes, there are some opportunities in the goat and sheep milk arena, and I love those as well, but I wanted to see if I could make something truly beneficial for myself.

So, I did.

I also am a snacky lunch kind of person, and had planned to utilize the tofu into a creamy/cheesy dip to eat with some sourdough discard crackers I'd made.  So, I heated a tablespoon of ghee, added some finely minced onion, added some red miso once the onion had started to brown, and then a few ounces of the tofu, drained and smashed that all up and added a good pinch of nutritional yeast.  I sprinked the warm mass with some garlic powder and prayed for a decent tasting thing.

 This is the result: 

It's not very appealing looking, and next time I'll probably smooth it out with the food processor (and I'll likely scale it up which is what I'll post below).  Obviously, I also made some tuna salad (skipjack tuna, yogurt, dill, onion) and the combo was pretty nice on my crackers.

Firm Tofu Onion Spread

1 14 oz package of firm tofu in water (drained and mashed)

1/2 medium onion, minced finely

2 tablespoons of ghee

2 teaspoons of red miso

Pinch of salt - to taste

Pinch of nutritional yeast - to taste

Good sprinkle of garlic powder, or one garlic clove minced finely

Drain tofu, set aside.  Mince onion (though if you are going to use the food processor, you could just dice it though mincing it fine made it cook quickly).  In a small skillet, melt the ghee, when it's warm, add the onion and a pinch of salt to caramelize.  When the onion starts to brown, add the miso (it adds a salty, umami flavor that adds to the cheesiness) and stir this together.  Add the mashed tofu and cook a bit till any water is cooked out of the tofu, it resembled scrambled egg at this point for me.  Then add a good pinch or two of nutritional yeast - maybe 2 teaspoons, but I didn't really measure.  A good sprinkle of garlic powder and let it cook until the garlic is incorporated.  I would put the warm mixture in a food processor and pulse till smooth, but it's not necessary and will look as pictured if you don't run it through the food processor.

*Optional variation: add a teaspoon or so of thyme to the cooking onions if you'd like more of a French Onion Dip flavor.

ETA: I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this.  It's not as creamy the way I made it (mashed and not processed), but it was quite tasty.  I will likely do this dip again, but I did a smaller version using only 2.5 oz of the 14 I had available to me as a sample.  The next few days will have other tofu experiments because I have still 11.5 oz to play with.

Let me know what you think!