Friday, June 08, 2012

The amazingly versatile tofu noodles

A couple of days ago, I had lunch with a colleague at Lao Beijing in Chicago's Chinatown.  In case you are not aware, celebrity chef Tony Hu owns a bunch of restaurants and they are also quite good.  Lao Beijing has some terrific vegetarian choices that we sampled that day.

We ordered the vegetarian buns as soon as we sat down, because those take 25 minutes to steam.  Then we ordered sauteed Chinese squash (絲瓜) and tofu noodles sauteed with vegetables.  Unfortunately they did not have Chinese squash and we switched to deep fried eggplant instead.  The eggplant turned out to be surprisingly good, crunchy and flavorful thanks to a spicy chili sauce.  I had never had tofu noodles before and came away amazed by this versatile food item.

Tofu noodles is, obviously, made from tofu, and is therefore low carb.  It is a little chewier than the rice noodle, and tastes light like a rice noodle.  Being a tofu product, it picks up the flavors from the sauce or soup it is cooked in.  Our tofu noodle dish was lightly flavored and full of fresh vegetables.

I looked up the product afterwards and found that it comes in all kinds of shapes, and while low carb and low calorie, has a nice 10% calcium content.  I love expanding my repertoire of food all the time, and am glad to have found this little treasure.

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