Tofu with miso sauce

The end of a challenging week and another cold winter's night called for a good dose of protein, bolstered with a hearty flavour. Glad for an excuse to fire the oven up, I made an all time winter favourite, tofu with miso sauce. Baking tofu gives it quite a different flavour and texture to steaming or stir-frying it, particularly when it's slathered with this delicious miso sauce.
The shallots also have quite a different flavour when roasted whole. While it was all baking in the oven I fried up some vegetables with some soba noodles in an impromptuyaki soba. It's important in macrobiotic cooking to try to use several different cooking methods in the one meal, to balance the energy of the meal.

Tofu with miso sauce.
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cut firm tofu into slices about 7cm thick, and then cut these into squares.
3. Place whole shallots along the bottom of an oven dish, and arrange the tofu squares on top of the shallots, so that they are leaning on each other like dominoes.


4. In a suribachi (Japanese mortar and pestle), mortar and pestle, or just a bowl, combine two tablespoons of dark miso (my favourite is brown rice miso, but barley miso is nice too) with the juice of half a lemon, or to taste. Blend into a smooth paste. Add 1/4-1/3 cup of water and puree until smooth and creamy.
5. Spread the miso sauce over the tofu squares evenly, so that each square has some sauce on it.
6. Place oven dish in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Prepare accompanying vegetables and grains of your choice.
7. Take out of the oven and sprinkle sesame seeds and sliced shallots on top of the tofu and miso sauce and place back in the oven for a further five minutes.
8. Serve and devour! (in a balanced, macrobiotic fashion ;)

This recipe was taken from the Changing Seasons Macrobiotic Cookbook, by Aveline Kushi and Wendy Esko.