VEGAN JAPANESE

Tim Anderson is a chef and author specialising in Japanese cuisine. He is the owner of Nanban, a Japanese soul food restaurant in Brixton and has written four cookery books: Nanban, JapanEasy, Tokyo Stories and Vegan JapanEasy. Listen to Tim on episode 190 of the Olive magazine podcast.

Sichuan-style hot and numbing tofu with ancient grains (mapo tofu)

1 HOUR 40 MINUTES | SERVES 4 | EASY | LC

A couple of years ago, I was so hell-bent on making the perfect mapo tofu that I cooked it four times a week. I tried many recipes but kept coming back to the classic pork version – a shame really, because mapo tofu is so nearly vegan. Then I realised that it was the meat’s texture, not its flavour, that was so important to the dish. So instead of replacing pork with something soft like mushrooms, I tried using chewy wholegrains (namely freekeh) instead – and voila! We had vegan mapo tofu lift-off.

There exists in Japan a sort of domesticated version of mapo tofu, which