MFK Fisher eating processed food on Buford Highway

A recipe for tofu pancakes

When I was in high school I wanted to be a food writer like MFK Fisher. I didn’t know much about her, except that she was an Important Food Writer, and when I didn’t want to be dead, I wanted to be important. I remember reading some essay she had about eating peas in like… the slopes of france or something. switzerland maybe? The peas were freshly picked out of the garden and cooked with cream, or perhaps butter-coulda been both. Pretty sure the ending was that this was the only way to eat peas, but it may have been something else. It was so evocative, even though the only thing I remember now is “peas,” and it developed in me this great desire to be like her. A Writer, you know, a serious one. With profound beautiful thoughts about things like peas. I wanted to be able to capture a place, a feeling, as well as she captured the feeling of… those being really good peas. She wrote about peas in a way that made me dream of eating peas on an alpine slope somewhere, maybe prepared by someone wearing a dirndl or the french equivalent of one, which otherwise was not actually all that interesting to me.

For me there are a few foods burned eternally into my memory, like those peas MFK Fisher ate on the side of some european mountain somewhere, perhaps the most vivid of which is the house foods tofu patty mix. I remember with shocking detail exactly where I was when I first had it, and I remember almost nothing about my life. It was at the Buford Highway Farmers Market, which was probably my gateway drug for grocery stores, it’s not a farmer’s market at all, actually, but a terrifically huge grocery store where you can get international food.

But to say that it sells “international food” undersells the truth of it: many of places sell international food. There’s a whole aisle for it at a lot of grocery stores, but when I was a kid it was where you’d find refried beans and soy sauce. “International.” What made shopping on Buford Highway special was that if you only knew english, you felt like a tourist. As a kid who had only ever gone abroad on a five day orchestra trip to lodon and paris, this felt like another world. The feeling of being able to drive 45 minutes and feel, for a few minutes, like you had left the country. It wasn’t like you’d left the country and gone to a specific other place, the store served, more or less, every national group that had a diasporic community in Atlanta. There was a Romanian aisle, Indian, Korean, Ukrainian. Of course it was Atlanta, so there was a ton of Mexican stuff, and that was why we were there.

I’m pretty sure my dad and I had been there looking for banana leaves, adobo and a huge hunk of pork shoulder for him to grill for a party. We’d only go out there a few times a year, before a big party and when he had to get his Indian import scooter serviced, because the only place that would do it was, predictably out on Buford Highway, not too far from a Hindu temple that might have been, at one point, the biggest in the US. We’d buy 2 liters of different jarritos flavors for the kids, and maybe a huge bottle of señorial sangria, then we’d wander through every aisle looking at things that we didn’t have at kroger. Cleaning supplies in languages we didn’t know, jams from ukraine, horrible nasty russian chocolates full of brandy, fruits we’d never heard of before, every part of organ meat. This day, down just past the organ meat there was a stand set up and an old lady frying pancakes and handing out little plastic cups with a piece of pancake and a drizzle of kikkoman yuzu ponzu on top. It was the first time I ever had ponzu, and it was the first time I ever loved tofu. I made us buy both that day.

I’ll never be MFK Fisher, but I think about the peas thing often, especially when I have something in a Place—heotteok in Namdemun market, tiny perfect strawberries in a park in London, Juanita’s (the best tortilla chips in the world) at any kitchen counter in any state with my friends. I never actually read much more of her work, because I am a lowbrow sort of person. Perhaps that is why for me the equivalent of her beautiful memory about eating freshly picked peas in the month of june cooked by her grandmother (I really don’t remember anything about this except the peas) is of me standing in a frigid grocery store in suburban atlanta eating ultra processed fried tofu. It was a beautiful memory, I guess partly because processed foods are designed to make you feel this way.

I wrote a recipe for tofu pancakes ages ago, it was a lot of work, and my effort to replicate, as exactly as possible, the house foods tofu patty seasoning mix. I love that stuff. It’s terrible for you, I assume (ultra processed foods give you cancer or something, ugh) but it’s delicious. Given how rare it is to see this mix in stores I seem to be one of a small number of people who love this powder.

This pancake doesn’t taste like the house foods one, but it is very delicious in a different way. It has more “natural” things in it namely a single vegetable, but also corn starch, so it holds together better, and hondashi and msg for flavor. I wouldn’t do it without the MSG, personally. I got one of the seasonal shakers when I was in Japan at new years, it has the aji panda mascot dressed as a dragon, and I love it. Highly recommend!

The proportions here are all wrong, sorry about that. I made this recipe with what I had leftover from making this recipe, namely 2/3 or so of a block of tofu and a third a bell pepper. If you happen to have those things lying around: give this a go! You could probably scale it up (in fact I am sure that you could it would be weird if you could not, actually) but I didn’t, so I just wrote out what I used. A bit of bell pepper and the crushed wakame is sort of in the tradition of Japanese home cooking which is all about having different colors (this is very reductive, but generally accurate if you want to read someone actually explain it Washoku is a great book). The wakame also helps to absorb excess moisture in the tofu. This was sort of inspired by a very traditional Japanese tofu pancake which I have never actually eaten.

Put some ponzu on top for the full experience.

Tofu Pancakes

• 9 oz medium firm tofu (firm would probably work too, but not extra firm)

• 1/3 bell pepper

• 1/2 tbs corn starch

• 1/8 tsp hondashi (or mushroom powder if veg)

• 1/2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

• shake of onion powder

• few shakes of MSG (“pinch”)

• 1/8 tsp crushed wakame

• 1 tbs (more to taste) soy sauce

• pinch lactic acid (optional)

• 1/3 cup panko

Wrap tofu with towel, let drain. Finely chop bell peppers.

For the wakame: take a pinch out of the bag, and crush it. The measure of 1/8 tsp seems like a very small amount but remember that this little guy rehydrates to voluminous size. To crush the wakame use the flat of a heavy knife and sort of… grind it? Realizing now I probably could have used my mortar and pestle but the thought didn’t occur to me at the time. Don’t bother trying to chop it, you’ll just make seaweed fly all over the place. Do try to get it as fine as possible, but some bigger chunks are fine, whatever. Don’t stress too much over the amount it’s not that serious.

Mix everything dry except the panko in a medium bowl. Whisk to combine, etc. Add tofu, smooshing it to very smooth with a rubber spatula or your hand (tofu gets really cold though, I’m not sure why but whenever I crush it with my hand I feel like I’m doing one of those cortisol stress tests.) Add soy sauce and bell pepper, continue smooshing around. Let sit for about 15 minutes to let the wakame absorb some of the excess liquid from the tofu mixture.

Heat medium sized frying pan over medium/medium high. (I like my 10 inch carbon steel for this rather than my 12 inch because the smaller area means that it is easier for them to cook evenly.) Add panko to mixture, stir well. Get pan thoroughly hot then add oil, make sure the oil is also thoroughly hot. Divide mix into six. Scoop out one and smush it into a patty with your hands, you want it to be very packed together because they will break apart quite easily in the pan. Fry until browned and crispy(ish). Don’t flip early—easier said than done, I know. I try to peer at the sides and see if those are starting to brown before I flip.

For me this made six pancakes. Due to my current status of living alone I ate three and saved the other three for lunch the next day. I microwaved them, which was fine, but I think pan frying them again might be better. After microwaving them I sort of broke them up so it was just seasoned tofu mess instead of pancakes. Mixed it into my rice, looked heinous but tasted good.