Chicken Fried Tofu Sliders with Spicy Peach Slaw

Potluck parties are the best, aren’t they?! Your friends all bring a dish, you get to sample so many different things and everyone is stuffed and happy. I’m the kinda of girl that wants to try every dish (even the weird looking ones) – I just don’t want to miss out on life and food. So the thing about potluck parties in the South is there’s a lot of brown food. Bacon in the potato salad, mini hot dogs wrapped in dough, burgers, obviously. I never would have given all this brownness a second thought but I had to go and marry a long-time vegetarian. I didn’t become a vegetarian overnight but I did start eating a lot less meat and cooking a lot more vegetables. It was difficult at first, making dishes with a variety of colors and textures so you don’t miss the main ingredient. But I love a challenge and experimenting with food and with all that learning and tasting this blog was born. Yay! So the way I eat now seems pretty normal to me but it’s the potluck parties that quickly turn me into a freak – ‘here comes Grace with her weird hippy food’. Ha! I’ve gotten used to it by now and even embraced it but the thing is I still like crispy, brown fried things every once in a while. And when Mark (my hand model) and I go out to eat he’ll order the fried pickles over the kale salad in a heartbeat. So when the super cute and funny Emily and the sweet and lovely Gina teamed up and organized this amazing blogger potluck my first thought was: yaaaay! and my second was: I want to bring something buttery, crispy, tender, juicy and golden brown. That’s where these tofu sliders come in, they’re kinda like fried chicken without the chicken and they’re pretty amazing. While I was outside trying to snatch up the last bit of light with my camera (while also stuffing my face) the 5 year old neighbor boy came by and wanted a sample. I gave him some and told him it was a chicken nugget (is that bad?!). He loved it and did a little chicken dance and wanted more.  So these golden nuggets of goodness are totally made for sharing with friends, the hippy freaks and brown food lovers alike. Be sure to check out all the other tasty treats in #soletspigout roundup of summer potluck recipes, like these s’meaches (s’mores + peaches) oh my! Heaven! Oh and Gina and Emily have been giving away a bunch of cool stuff everyday this week, just head over to their blogs to enter lots of awesome giveaways. Happy potlucking my friends!

For the Chicken Fried Tofu

16 oz extra firm tofu

generous amount of neutral, high heat oil, like rice bran

Wet Ingredients (for the tofu marinade) 

1 egg

1/3 cup kefir

2 tablespoons mustard

1 tablespoon tamari (or soy sauce)

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

Dry Ingredients

1/2 cup of bread crumbs

1/3 cup of flour

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2  teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon smoke seasoning (optional)

Ingredients for the Spicy Peach Slaw

1/2 green cabbage

1/2 small red onion

2 peaches

1 jalapeño

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Spicy Mayo Spread

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 garlic clove, minced

Directions 

Mix all the wet ingredients together really well. Slice tofu into pieces of desired thickness (no thicker than 1/2 an inch). Dry pieces well and soak in marinade for at least an hour. While that’s soaking make the slaw! Thinly slice all the ingredients using a mandolin or your super star knife skills. Toss ingredients with vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. To fry the tofu, heat a generous amount of neutral oil in your pan on medium/high heat. Coat the marinated tofu pieces with the dry mix. Fry until golden brown, about 1 to 2 minutes per side. To make the mayo spread just mix up the ingredients well, smear on bread, assemble with ingredients as shown and devour!

Notes 

I made ciabatta rolls using this recipe. It was pretty easy and worth the effort, resulting in a nutty, tangy, crusty bun! yum!