Ingredients

• 400g of plain, firm tofu (not the smoked kind!),
• four tablespoons of soy sauce,
• two teaspoons of red miso,
• a thumb-sized piece of ginger,
• two or three cloves of garlic and
• (optionally but for my taste most importantly) a tablespoon of the spiciest chilli powder you can find.

Steps

1. Cut or grind the ginger and garlic into small bits.
2. Mix the soy sauce with the miso, chilli powder and ginger and garlic bits in a large enough bowl to mix the tofu.
3. Press as much water out of the tofu without crumbling it, cut it into 1cm cubes and let it marinade. Let it sit for a few minutes at least; ideally an hour. Do mix it every now and then; the tofu should be thoroughly soaked.
4. Heat oil in a frying pan.
5. Using a tablespoon add the tofu to the pan, keeping the marinade from dripping into the pan. This leaves quite some marinade for other purposes or to add onto the fried tofu later. Don't add it to the pan before frying, you'll create pure carbon.
6. Fry the tofu on all sides until it's crispy. This can take quite some time if you want it extra crispy.
7. Keep your guests from eating the tofu out of the pan. Seriously, this is the hardest part!

This yields a bowl of very crispy, spicy, salty and most importantly umami tofu. Add it to all sorts of dishes. I mostly eat this tofu to rice dishes and wraps. In a lot of recipes you can replace its umami ingredient, like meat or cheese, with the do-it-all umami tofu. This does change the dish, often for the better.
Be aware that the do-it-all umami tofu is very intense. Ensure your other ingredients leave room for its salt; a lot of vegetables, for example, work great.

Backstory

It was only four years ago when I had tofu for the first time. I was very sceptical at first; tofu was a bad attempt at substituting meat in my expectation. Turns out, tofu doesn't taste much like meat at all and doesn't attempt to. Over the last years I experimented a bunch and found that not just soy sauce but especially miso suits it great. So do try this tofu out, regardless of its potential of making a political statement.