Mr Falafel's British "Fish n Chips"

This recipe comes from Mr Falafel on the newsgroup alt.food.vegan and it is a great vegan version of the traditional fish and chips. Tastes pretty good and it is as close as you will get to the experience if you are vegetarian.

• Ready In: 24 hrs 30 mins
• Serves: 2

Ingredients

• 1  cup flour
• 1  cup beer (a good stout works well)
•  paprika, a good sprinkling
• 1  pinch  salt and pepper
• 1  lb firm tofu, frozen and thawed
•  lots  oil
•  malt vinegar
•  frozen  chips or 3  potatoes, hewn into finger shapes

Directions

1. A couple of hours before you eat (preferably the day before) drain your tofu.
2. Then place the block of soya matter between a couple of sheets of paper towels.
3. Now place a good size book on top of that.
4. What you are doing here is getting the excess moisture out of it so it can soak up the malt vinegar.
5. Let it squeeze for an hour or so, then place the tofu into a bowl of malt vinegar and place it in the fridge.
6. You don't really need to cover the tofu with it, but the more the better.
7. Let it marinade for as long as you can, preferably overnight.
8. To make the beer better simply mix the equal amounts of flour and beer along with the spices.
9. Dump a whole bunch of oil into a deep pan or wok until it is about 2 inches deep and heat it up on a nice hot stove burner.
10. Cooks up your chips and place them in a warm oven.
11. While it is heating, take the marinated tofu out of the fridge and pat it dry.
12. Cut it lengthwise into bars about 2 inches wide.
13. When the oil is real hot, dunk the tofu bars into the batter and toss them in the oil one by one.
14. Be sure they are thoroughly thoroughly with the batter!
15. Deep fry them until the batter turns a nice golden brown, and be careful to not let them stick together.
16. Fish them out and place them on some more paper towels.
17. Place chips and tofu onto a plate and serve right away!