I am never going to win with the traditional recipes from the old country - these would be inexpertly executed versions of my grandmother’s legendary matzo balls and kugel. Instead, I try to reimagine a dish I love within the dietary restrictions of the holiday: no leavened bread, no corn products, no rice or whole grains, no legumes. (Growing up with the yearly Passover semi-fast has been an education in corn additives, I will tell you, but that’s a story for a different post.)

This year, I focused on dessert. Several bakeries manage to make Kosher for Passover cakes and cookies from matzo crumbs, but these have the cardboard-y taste and alarmingly fake consistency of diet foods. Instead, I coopted this addictive matzo bark recipe from Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn. But what should go with it? Why, ice cream of course!

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Greek Walnut Pie

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

To make the pie filling, combine in a medium-sized bowl, then set aside:

• 1 cup honey
• 1 Tablespoon whole wheat flour
• 1 Tablespoon melted butter
• 2 eggs or 3 Tablespoons of soymilk mixed with 1/2 teaspoon of arrowroot powder
• 3/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups chopped walnuts

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Soft/Silken

Soft/silken tofu is undrained tofu, and it contains the highest moisture content of all fresh tofus. Its texture can be described as similar to that of very fine custard. In Korea and Japan, traditional soft tofu is made with seawater. Because it is nearly impossible to pick up this type of tofu with chopsticks, it is generally eaten with a spoon. Edamame tofu, which I had once at a Japanese restaurant, is a Japanese type of tofu made from edamame (fresh green soybeans); it is pale green in color and often studded with whole edamame.

Now, you’d pretty much use silken or soft tofu when you want to make something creamy, such as puddings, mousses, and pie fillings. You can also use it for salad dressings and sauces, and silken tofu also works great in baked goods instead of using chicken’s eggs. I’ll get back to that in a sec.

So, when you go to look for silken tofu in the grocery store, you may find soft and silken in the refrigerated section. But you may also notice that silken tofu is packaged in aseptic boxes that do not require refrigeration. Mori-nu is the most popular/common brand of this type, and it will usually be found in the Asian section, by the soy sauce, etc. If you don’t use the whole amount, as with all tofu, submerge it in water in a container, and store it in the fridge once you open it. Changing the water daily will help keep the tofu fresh for up to one week. But you can keep this vacuum-packed/aseptic box of tofu in your cupboard for up to a year without opening it.

It can start to get confusing when you look at the aseptic box of tofu and notice that – even though it says "silken" — it will also say soft, firm, or extra firm. These are just degrees within the texture of silken tofu itself, and you can notice slight variations. So, even if it says "extra firm," this is not the type of tofu you’re going to take home to grill or stir fry. It’s much too soft for such a purpose. Anyway, in terms of these variations within silken tofu, my advice would be to follow recipes as they’re noted (if a recipe calls for Silken Soft, use it; if a recipe calls for Silken Firm use it). But in general, silken firm is a good standard to use for making silky, creamy dishes.

I mentioned before that silken tofu is also great to use in baked goods instead of chicken’s eggs. You can find information about this in a podcast episode called Better Than Eggs, but you can also pre-order my new baking book, The Joy of Vegan Baking for more details on baking without chicken’s eggs. Here are some tips for using silken tofu. Whip ¼ cup of silken tofu in a blender or food processor until it’s smooth and creamy, leaving no chunks. You may need to turn off the food processor and scrape down the sides.

I find the silken tofu “egg” works best when you want rich, dense, moist cakes and brownies, but you can use a little less to create lighter cakes, such as our Blueberry Orange Cake, which is one recipe in our Tofu and Tempeh recipe packets. There are other recipes in that section, which call for silken tofu, such as the No-Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie and the Chocolate Pudding Tart with Raspberry Sauce. They’re also in the new cookbook, but if you can’t wait, you can order them online in our online cookbook recipe packages.

Many grocery stores carry the Mori-Nu silken tofu these days, but you should definitely find it in a natural foods store. If your local grocery doesn’t carry it, request it. Look for vacuum-packed silken tofu on the shelves rather than in the refrigerated section. If you still can’t find it, I sell it in my online store, and it’s the organic one that I sell. Because soy beans are a highly sprayed crop, and many soy beans are genetically modified, I do recommend buying organic anytime you’re buying a soy bean-based food, whether it’s tofu, tempeh, soy milk, miso, or just edamame soy beans. As the standards are now, if something is certified organic, it is not genetically modified. But stay tuned.

Firm/Extra Firm Tofu

You’d use firm or extra firm tofu when you want to grill it, bake it, stir-fry it, stick it on a skewer – basically when you want it to keep its shape. So even if you’re using it for something like an eggless egg salad, the recipe for which is also in my online cookbook as well as demonstrated on our cooking DVD, you still want extra firm tofu, because you still want it to have body, you still want it to have texture.

Now, the more you cook with tofu, the more you understand what textures and brands work best for your purposes. I’ve raved about Wildwood’s tofu for years, and I continue to rave. Their super firm is really a fantastic tofu, and its distribution is spreading far and wide, so ask your local grocer to carry it. It’s really firm and full of texture, and it’s just delicious. But, because it’s so firm – the SUPER firm, that is – if I’m making something like a tofu scramble, I like to use a combination of extra firm and super firm – or even firm and extra firm. If I use all super firm, the result might be scramble that’s too rubbery, so I just know I like to do a variation of textures to get the result I want. And you’ll get there, too.

Same goes for something like medium tofu. If a recipe asks for medium, just use it, but I don’t really use it that often. Again, as you get more comfortable with the different textures of tofu, you’ll know what brand and texture you need based on the dish you’re making.

Freezing Tofu

Another thing you can do with firm, extra firm, and super firm tofu is freeze it, and this is my favorite thing to do. So you come home from the store, tofu in hand, and it should be in a tub of water or at least in a vacuum-sealed package with water. Just throw the whole thing in the freezer. Don’t open it, don’t do anything: just throw it in the freezer.

When you’re ready to use it, take it out of the freezer, thaw it out on the counter for a few hours – basically, before you go to work. It thaws faster on the counter than in the fridge, so just thaw it on the counter and perhaps not in direct sunlight. Now, open up the package, and dump out the water, etc. At this point, you’ll want to hold the block of tofu over a large bowl or over the sink, and squeeeeeze out all the water. It will literally be like a sponge. Tons of water comes out after you’ve thawed it.

So what’s the advantage of doing this? Well, you’ve squeezed out all this water, and you can literally see how porous the tofu is. So what does that mean? Well, you’ve gotten rid of all that water and created all this room/all these pores for a marinade to soak into the tofu. So, marinate the tofu in your favorite marinade for an hour or even over night. Then, add it to your sauté pan with just a little oil – or just on a nonstick pan with no oil at all – or put it on the grill. It’s delicious.
The other thing you’ve done is change the texture completely. Tofu already has great texture when it’s really firm, but it’s even chewier after having been frozen and thawed. I, personally, like the texture even better than if it wasn’t frozen at all, and I LOVE just regular tofu. I usually use this chewier tofu on my salads – just cut up into little cubes. I just love the texture. Also, at this point, it’s also great to crumble up and add to pasta sauce or to chili. It’s very chewy, and some people really like it that way because it adds that satisfaction that people seemingly get from chewing fat/flesh.

I’ve heard naysayers of vegetarianism say "well, vegetarians clearly have some kind of latent desire to eat meat if they want to eat vegetarian meats or if they ’seek out’ that meaty, chewy texture.’ And I couldn’t disagree more. People don’t necessarily stop eating animal flesh because they stopped liking it – they stop eating animal flesh because they don’t want to contribute to animal cruelty. Also, we don’t crave the flesh of animals. We’re not true carnivores who salivate at the thought of eating bloody muscles and raw flesh and sinews and tendons. In fact, that makes us really sick. What we do crave is flavor, we crave familiarity, we crave texture. So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting that chewiness, that texture. So, there you have it. Freeze it, thaw it, squeeze out the water, and enjoy the chewy texture.

Now I just talked about how to press tofu to get the water out by freezing it and thawing it. You can press the tofu without freezing and thawing it first, but you don’t really press out as much water as when you use this other method. But if you wanted to try it, you can just wrap the tofu block in a dish towel, put it on a plate, and put something heavy like a bunch of heavy books or a heavy pot. 20 minutes later or so the towel will be soaked through with water, and you’ve pressed out some water, but again, it’s not as much as if you freeze it first. Try it yourself, and you’ll see what I mean.

We still have more to say! In Part III, I’ll offer some very specific ideas for preparing tofu!