simple asian-inspired dinner for two beansprouts

If you're pressed for time, as I was when I made this meal, have no fear! Mamatouille's here!

Luckily Seattle's full of Asian markets and our closest and favorite is HT Oaktree Market, on Aurora Avenue/Highway 99. The Japanese and Korean sections are close to each other so it's a simple matter of buying white sticky rice (I have a rice cooker), furikake (seasoning for putting on top of rice), and Korean nori (our favorite seaweed--it's cooked with sesame oil and salt).

I can also hop on over to the produce section for tofu, and for this "recipe" (I use the term loosely because I just threw it all together in a few minutes, with no guide whatsoever) I used the firm kind ("cotton").

So basically I cooked the rice in the rice cooker, and while that was steaming I drained the tofu as much as I could and then dried it with paper towels, chopped it into bite-size pieces, and pan fried in some sesame oil and seasoned salt. Then I just topped the rice with furikake, opened a packet of seaweed, dripped a bit of okonomiyaki sauce (sweet/tangy brown sauce) onto the kiddiewinks' plates for tofu dipping, and that was it.

You could go further and make ginger carrots (which our guys adore) or some roasted kabocha/Japanese pumpkin (our market also sells whole kabocha in the produce section for a pretty sweet deal) but do whatever you need to do to maintain sanity and your schedule.

Itadakimasu!