Warning! This stuff is like candy! You may never eat normal food again!
Mirin Glazed Tofu
Ingredients
firm tofu
ginger root
garlic clove
hot peppers
mirin
soy sauce
sesame oil
green onions
udon noodles
The key idea here is that we cook the tofu in ginger, garlic, peppers, & soy, and then seal it all in with carmelized mirin. So it's basically hot, spicy mirin candy. I don't specify quantities because it's easy to vary the taste on the 3 axes of taste presented here (sweet, sour, & hot).
Try to get real mirin, instead of aji-mirin, which is a corn-syrup based mirin-flavoured substance; in the states I can usually find Takara mirin.
Slice the tofu into chopstick-able chunks, say an inch long, 1/4 inch thick, 1/2 wide.
Heat a small amount of oil in a small fry pan with a couple hot peppers, which you might rip in half to get more seeds out. As an aside, sesame oil evaporates much faster than olive oil, so you might want to blend some olive oil in, depending on how fast you cook.
When hot, toss in minced garlic, chopped ginger root, and lay down the tofu in a semi-orderly fashion.
Fry the tofu until light golden on the bottom; rotate and add chopped green onions, of about equal volume to the tofu.
Let the onions contemplate the concept of frying for maybe a minute, 2 tops, and then drown the mess in shoyu & mirin. For me "drowning" usually means about 1/4 cup of each for a 1/2 pound of tofu.
Keep the heat at medium or so, wherever you were cooking the tofu, stir it fairly frequently, and let the shoyu evaporate and the mirin cook down. Try to get good coverage on all the tofu; pull it off the heat when most of the liquid is gone.
Serve on udon noodles cooked in really spicy broth. Goes well with dark beer, like porter.
For the college students in our midst, it should be noted that this tasty meal costs about $1.50 to $2.00, sans beer, and takes about 8-10 minutes to make.