Kimchi-Glazed Tofu on Salad

My final recipe for 2024

Hello everyone! This will be the last post of 2024, which seems crazy to say since I’m struggling to face the fact that Christmas is less than a week away.

Based on a piece I read recently about there being too many recipes nowadays — framing them as the fast fashion of the food world, a view I both agree with and don’t — I was inspired to look back on the past year of work.

I quickly realized that it’s been another busy one for writing recipes, that I might be part of this problem. There’s been one per week in this newsletter, plus two other projects that required dozens of new ones to create, which all in, adds up to a lot of recipes in 2024. This is on top of many others since I started this career about 15 year ago.

I flipped back to an old blog recipe, which was the basis for a kimchi salad I ended up including in Start Simple, and thought — hmm, maybe in 2025 I can revisit some of these old ones? I like to explore old appetites to see how they hold up.

In fact, just in the past week I revisited these two for a few cookie boxes I sent out:

For the biscotti, I tried a turmeric element instead of saffron (I was at my dad’s house and he didn’t have any). The flavor was so interesting, I quite liked it. But I forgot that the baking soda in the recipe would produce a red tint due to its chemical reaction with the turmeric. Tasty, but not what I was going for.

And with those Buttery Maple Nuts, I found that I loved using walnuts, with all their crevices for capturing bits of the spices and herbs. I mixed in an egg white that I had leftover from other baking, and loved that, too, how they made the crispy glazed nuts extra craggy, more candied. Since these were gifted, I tossed the nuts in a little more sugar right out of the oven, too. These were all good tweaks that I will certainly do again.

So is any recipe ever finished? I suppose that some of them are, but I very rarely stop tinkering. I’ll always want to try new flavors and ideas, adapt them for ingredients I have handy, and sometimes just adjust the nutrition. Perhaps this relationship with recipes is part of why I don’t think that there being lots of them is a bad thing. There’s more inspiration and source material to draw from.

In today’s recipe, I wanted to see how my salad could be a little higher in protein, or at least incorporate tofu in an interesting way. It evolved into a really good, and really simple, kimchi-forward “glaze” on tofu. Hot out of the pan, I spooned it over salad greens.

The tofu softens the lettuces slightly (you could just as easily serve it over rice), and then for a little extra richness, a fried egg with a runny yolk makes it very satisfying. It’s loaded with rich, assertive flavor.

Wishing you all happy holidays and a happy new year! Thank you as always for reading and cooking along. We’ll have much more of that in 2025. —Lukas

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It was an honor to be part of this conversation on Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD with a bunch of food people (all Substackers) I so admire. Thank you

Nicki Sizemore

for inviting me! It was terrific to discuss the holidays with Nicki,

Hetty Lui McKinnon

,

Andrea Nguyen

,

Sarah Copeland

, and

Ellie Krieger

.

Holiday Special with Hetty McKinnon, Ellie Krieger, Andrea Nguyen, Sarah Copeland and Lukas Volger

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Kimchi-Glazed Tofu on Salad Greens

• I love this as a salad, but it’d go just as well over cooked rice or other grain, with the egg, too.

• Don’t “drain” the kimchi of its juices — the saucy and liquidy stuff adds to the glaze.

• If you don’t eat fish or shellfish, be sure to check the ingredients on your kimchi and buy a vegan one.

• My preference here is firm tofu, which will hold its shape but remain a little custardy once it’s cooked.

• If you didn’t want to go the tofu route, I think this kimchi treatment could also be good with pan-seared mushrooms — Hetty’s recent tip to dredge her portobellos in cornstarch before searing them has got me thinking!