Day One: Southern Soul

On Saturday, we rolled out our first of two weekends celebrating Southern Soul food gone vegan.  Mac and Cheese, Chicken-fried Tofu, Sauteed Kale, we hit on all the iconic foods that have been revived since the 80's under the Nouveau Southern banner (cf. Bill Neal, Watts Grocery).

Highlight of the Meal:  Hands down - the chicken-fried tofu.  It was so good it made me think Chef Matt should be freezing those cutlets and packaging and selling to the Whole Foods freezer section.  Here is his description of how it's prepared:

I always assumed "chicken-fried" was just a fancy term for breadcrumb-laden slabs of meat but it turns out it's actually beef boiled over in chicken stock, then breaded and fried. Using that method, I took cutlets of dehydrated extra-firm tofu and reconstituted it in boiling bouillon before breading and frying it up and finishing with gravy. If Paula Dean wanted to live to see her ankles ever again she'd be whipping up grub like this....

The soundtrack:


For next time:  Our second and last weekend for this menu is Saturday night.  We have adapted the menu to an a la carte system.  Check it out here.