Ginger Baked Tofu with Soba Noodles

This weekend was filled with good friends, good food and good music. To document the good fantastic food, I created one long post with three recipes, but decided it was recipe and picture overload. WHOAH, we don't want that.  Instead, I will post a series of recipes and pictures from this past weekend through the coming days.
On Thursday, I used a recipe I found in the CoOp weekly ad for the base of a soba noodle dish, that I whipped up without a real recipe.  After finding the ginger tofu recipe, I spent most of the week pondering what else I could add in with the tofu to make it a meal.   For months I have been dying to try soba noodles and these seemed to be just the ticket for the tofu.  Soba noodles are made from buckwheat flour which make them high in protein (10 grams/serving) and whole-wheat.  WIN-WIN!  I have never baked tofu.  I usually fry it in olive oil on the stove and couldn't wait to try baking it.
I also added in some sauteed asparagus, red and yellow peppers carrots and topped it off with slivered almonds. To my surprse (I don't have much experience with japanese/stir fry/noodle dishes) it was delicious and will definetely give me reason to experiment more with these types of dishes.

Please pardon the formatting of this recipe, I'm not used to writing up my own :)

First, I made this tofu:

Ginger Baked Tofu (recipe from People's Food CoOp)

1 pound extra firm tofu, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1/4 cup sesame oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic (I used 4 cloves)

1/3 cup tamari (soy sauce)

1/3 cup Mirin (sweetened rice wine, I used riesling wine and it was perfect)

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 tablespoons freshly minced ginder

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Place tofu cubes in an oven-safe pan that has a rim on it.  Brush the tofu with the sesame oil and bake for 30 minutes, flipping each piece over after 15 minutes.  Drain any excess oil from the pan.  

Mix together the remaining ingredients in a small bowl and pour over tofu.  Cook for another 20-25 minutes, or until the tofu is firm and the sauce has reduced.  

While the tofu was baking, I cooked the soba noodles on the stove and sauteed a bunch of aspargus, the red and yellow pepper and carrots in some extra virgin olive oil.  The tofu recipe makes an abundance of the ginger sauce; when the tofu was done baking I simply mixed everything together in a large pan.  There was enough sauce to cover the noodles.  Slivered almonds added the perfect crunch.  I was hesitant to post a picture with this recipe, as it is difficult to make brown soba noodles in a dish with poor nighttime lighting look appealing....but I hate when recipes don't include some type of picture.  So, here it is.  I promise it tastes better than this photo makes it look!