If someone had told me even two months ago that I’d be sitting there flushed with excitement, emotionally invested, spending even several hours a day watching television, I’d have told them to… take a long hard look at themselves. Because ever since I moved out of my parents’ place at twenty (let’s politely call it that), I’ve basically never watched TV. And even before that — not much.
And since those were the gloomy, dark times of the Polish People’s Republic, when television actually deserved to be called “public” and a mission wasn’t just an empty slogan, every week late in the evening (Thursdays, I think) I’d sit down to watch retrospectives of the world’s greatest directors. Sometimes Werner Herzog — whose films had a huge impact on my innocent teenage mind — sometimes Akira Kurosawa, sometimes Federico Fellini. Though Fellini never really spoke to me. Too elaborate and too intellectual.
Ingredients
For the dish:
- 3 fairly thin slices (50 g) smoked tofu
- 4–5 fresh wild garlic leaves
- olive oil for frying
- 3–4 asparagus spears
- 1–2 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes for topping
- orange juice
(for one portion)
For the pasta:
- 500 g wheat flour
- 1 cup (250 ml) warm water
- 1 tsp salt
- 50 ml oil
- smoked salt
Method
Pasta:
Knead the flour, water, salt, and oil into a dough. I do it in a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. Leave the dough covered with a kitchen towel for half an hour.
Tear off pieces of dough and shape them into long dumplings, slightly thicker in the middle and tapered at the ends. Cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. About 8–10 pieces per serving.
Dice the tofu fairly finely.
Finely chop the wild garlic leaves.
Heat olive oil in a pan and fry the tofu, stirring, so it browns as evenly as possible on all sides. The tofu should be lightly crispy but not hard and dried out.
Once the tofu reaches the right crispiness, add the asparagus spears. Pour in two or three tablespoons of orange juice and reduce for 2–3 minutes.
Sprinkle with the chopped wild garlic and finally add a little black salt.
And THEN GET IT OFF THE PAN AND ONTO THE PLATE IMMEDIATELY.
Arrange the dumplings on the plate, place the asparagus on top, then the tofu together with all the olive oil and sauce.
Finish with nutritional yeast flakes.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.