In southern Thailand where I was born, turmeric is very common, and I grew up eating turmeric as part of my daily diet. We put turmeric in almost every dish, and we even have one dish called “gaeng leang” or “yellow curry” because we use so much turmeric in it. Whenever I helped my mom in the kitchen, my fingers got stained for days!
When I first moved to the U.S, I found that turmeric was not so common, and that made me forgot about it for a while. Like everything, when it’s out of sight, it’s also out of mind.
It came back to me when I happened to read an article about the benefits of turmeric. Some research says curacumin in turmeric has a powerful anti-inflammatory, which is a strong antioxidant that can fight or even cure some kinds of cancer. The article brought so many memories of eating turmeric back to me. How could I forget about that yellow root I didn’t like when it stained my hands?
I wanted to add turmeric back to my diet, so, I started to search for it again. To my happy surprise, it wasn’t hard at all to find turmeric powder. Sometimes, I can even buy fresh turmeric like we use in Thailand. As more people know about its benefits, it seems to be more popular nowadays.
One day, I was craving the salty taste of garlic and turmeric in my mother’s fish dishes so much. I decided to try making that dish, but replaced the fish with tofu. It turned out very similar to what I wanted, and satisfied my craving!
So, here is another way to add turmeric in your diet:
What you need:
- A block of firm tofu–I use sprouted tofu whenever I can.
- Garlic
- Soy sauce
- Turmeric powder
- Coconut oil
How:
- Finely chop the garlic
- Cut tofu into thin slices (so it can get crispy easier), and save some tofu juice.
- Mix the tofu, garlic, turmeric and soy sauce together. Put the saved tofu juice in too as we need to make the mixture liquidly. Make sure all the pieces have this mixture on them (you can use a rubber glove to prevent your hands from being stained). Let them sit for about 2o minutes to marinate.
- Heat the coconut oil on medium heat in a frying pan, then lay the tofu slices in one by one. Make it only one layer so they all get crispy evenly.
- When you hear a crispy sound and the tofu looks crispy, flip it and continue cooking ‘til it’s evenly crisp on the other side too.
- Don’t for get to scrape all the crispy, salty, garlic crumbs–they are the best. Try this with a bowl of warm Thai Jasmine Rice!
Finely chop the garlic
Cut the tofu into thin slices
Mix the tofu, garlic and soy sauce together in a mixing bowl
Let them sit for about 20 minutes
Cook one layer in the frying pan and fry ’til it all looks crispy
Do you know turmeric? What do you think? Share your stories with me–I’d really like to hear about it!
