Thought Process
Harkness Pizza Night Tofu Nuggets That Will Make You Want to Sing “Come Sail Away” Half-Naked in Your Kitchen Ingredients 1-2 blocks extra firm tofu (extra points if you can find tofu from Twin Oaks Co-op!) 4-6 cups of canola, soy, or peanut oil for frying
Dry Ingredients 1 cup cornmeal ½ cup nutritional yeast flakes (NYF) 1 Tbsp + 1 tsp salt (plus extra to taste) 1 Tbsp broth powder (vegan beef or chicken flavor is ideal, but vegetable is also good. If you don't have this, then pulverize a bouillon cube) 1 Tbsp paprika 2 tsp onion powder 2 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp ground black pepper Lisa Neumann ’13 and Katherine Pardue ’14
½ tsp cayenne (double to make it SPICY) ¼ tsp ground thyme (optional)
Directions
Hark! A Vegan Café BY JEFF HAGAN ’86
hark! café, in downtown minneapolis, got its start on the front lawn of an off-campus house on South Pleasant Street in Oberlin in the fall of 2014. That’s when friends Lisa Neumann ’13 and Katherine Pardue ’14 began imagining a place where their co-op friends would all want to work. The café’s name pays homage to Harkness, of which they were both members, and, indeed, another of their Harkness friends does work there. “Any other interested Harkies are encouraged to contact us with your application,” says Neumann. The two signed a lease on a space in a restored historic building in March 2020—just as Minnesota went into lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Neumann, the baker, and Pardue, the chef, operated Hark! as 12
1. Pour oil in a deep fryer or a deep pot and heat to 350-375°F. To test your oil’s heat, toss in a test piece of tofu and see if it bubbles and rises to the top quickly. If it sinks to the bottom, the oil is not yet hot. 2. Whisk dry ingredients together in a large metal bowl and set aside. 3. When the oil is hot, cut tofu into 1.5" cubes. Quickly rinse tofu in water. 4. Toss tofu in the dry mix until every piece is thoroughly coated. 5. Fry tofu for 3-5 minutes or until the cubes are brown and slightly puffed. 6. Drain tofu on wire cooling rack or kitchen towels and lightly dust with salt to taste. 7. Add to pizza, dip in favorite sauce, or eat hunched over a bowl with eight of your closest friends at 1 a.m.!
ELIESA JOHNSON
RECIPE
a carryout kitchen for nearly a year, offering a wide range of dishes and baked goods that are plant based (the duo went vegan out of environmental concerns surrounding the animal agriculture industry) and gluten-free (a necessity for Pardue, who has celiac disease). In January 2021, they opened Hark! as a sit-down restaurant. Much of the menu reinvents the kinds of food the two grew up on, drawing inspiration from Neumann’s Betty Crocker cookbook and Pardue’s Louisiana French and Sicilian family cuisine. This recipe, however, has its roots in Oberlin. “Katherine was the master of making this deep fried tofu and would often make it for a large group of us late at night, when everyone got back from the ’Sco or the Feve and was ravenously hungry,” says Neumann. Although some of the directions are set forth in the title of the recipe, the Oberlin Alumni Magazine’s test kitchen asserts that substitutions may be made for attire and song choices.