Breakfast of champions

When I first met my one and only, the apple of my eye, as they say…she was a vegan! A what? A vegan!! You can imagine my total disbelief when I found out she didn’t eat eggs. How would would I ever make her brunch? How would I cure her hangovers if I couldn’t cook up some greasy potatoes and bacon, let alone eggs? My world of food was crumbling before me, and I needed a way out!

Luckily for me, I found two solutions:
1- She is no longer vegan, and will now eat eggs and cheese (as long as the chickens are free range and the animals producing the cheese were treated to weekends in the South of France and bi-weekly massages)
2- I learned to make a damn good tofu scramble.

Tofu scramble you say? Read on…

VEGAN TOFU SCRAMBLE with a side order of veggie bacon
Tofu scramble is like scrambled eggs, except it’s not, and that’s what makes this a successful dish.
I have many variation on this recipe, but the homemade green salsa version seems to be a hit.
If making salsa just doesn’t fit your time constraints, go ahead an buy a jar…I won’t tell anyone!

SALSA
4-6 Tomatillos (husked, and if feeling fancy, seeded)
2 shallots, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
1 fresh jalepeno
1/4 Cup Fresh cliantro, chopped
1 can (4 oz) chopped green chile peppers (make it as “hot or not” as you like)
Salt and pepper to taste

Toss the ingredients into a food processor, and pulse into a desired texture. For our purposes, we don’t want too many chunks, but not a pure liquid either. Once you’re done, put the salsa into the fridge. We only need it later.

TOFU SCRAMBLE
1 package of firm to extra firm tofu
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves
Green Salsa
Vegan butter, or soy butter, or almond butter, you get the idea
1 package of vegetarion bacon. I use YVES CANADIAN VEGGIE BACON
Olive oil (EVOO)
Toast

Start by heating a frying pan with vegan butter. Fry up the veggie bacon, much like you would real bacon. (I need to say, but not too loudly, that YVES VEGGIE BACON is so good that I like it better than real bacon!) Once the “bacon” is cooked (a little charred and crispy), put it aside.

Now take a medium sized frying pan, or better yet a wok, and slightly fry up the onions in the olive oil. Throw in the garlic, make sure you don’t burn it! Cook that for about 4 minutes.

Now comes the fun part. Take you firm tofu and crumble it into the onion/garlic mixture. I find the smaller the crumble the better. Also, to make it easier, I crumble 1/3 of the tofu at a time. Let it cook in the frying pan for about 5 minutes, mixing it around a lot, and getting a nice brown on the tofu pieces.

Now it’s time to add that homemade green salsa (or bought salsa if you weren’t up to making it). I use about 1 cup to 1 1/2 cups per package of tofu. The goal is too moisten up the scramble, without it getting too runny.

Remember that “bacon” that was cooked awhile back? Rip it up into medium chunks and throw it into the scramble. Cover the whole creation, turn down the heat to low, and let it sit like that for a good 5 minutes.

Serve with a side of toast on a plate.

This recipe is meant to serve four, but honestly, me and that special someone can easily polish off the entire thing.

ENJOY!