words yvonne teh

To many in the West, tofu is an insipid excuse for food but in the East it has been the heart of a multitude of tasty delicacies for centuries. Yvonne Teh takes a personal look at why tofu is such an Asian favourite.

What does the word ‘tofu’ mean to you? Although chances are that pretty much everyone will envision a food item that’s primarily milk-like in colour, it is also just as likely that your cultural background will have an impact on the texture you imagine this soy product will have, the way it is prepared, whether it is a savoury or sweet dish, and, perhaps most markedly, whether you eat it because it is good for you or because it is just plain delicious. (For the record, nutritionists have verified that tofu is high in protein, low in salt and calories, and has no cholesterol. On the other side of the coin, tofu by itself is quite bland. However, since it readily picks up the flavour of other foods cooked with it, it can become quite the tasty treat!)

Another perceived aspect of tofu that differs markedly according to one’s cultural and culinary heritage is variety. Traditionally, tofu is made by pureeing soy beans, cooking and then filtering the resultant soymilk through cloth, coagulating the milk, then pressing the resulting curds into blocks. It may sound simple, but from those curds people in Asia create a diversity of tofu offerings many people residing elsewhere can’t imagine, let alone dream about! And we’re not including those other soybean creations that include edamame (the Japanese dish that literally translates into English as ‘twig bean’ and consists of soybeans in the pod boiled in water with condiments like salt, and served whole) or tofu’s close relative doufu nao (soymilk curds whose name literally translates as ‘tofu brains’). Or even soybean drinks like the tao cheong that one often looks forward to in Shanghainese restaurants as much as the specialist ‘little dragon’ dumplings called xiao long bao!

At the same time, even while the names for the sometimes silky food in various Asian languages may initially read differently, saying them aloud will highlight that the Indonesian and Tamil tahu, Malay and Thai taohu, Vietnamese dau phu, Fukienese tau-hu, Cantonese tau-fu, Mandarin doufu and Japanese tofu are recognizably derived from a single root. Also, although there were times when tofu was more popularly known in English as bean curd (the somewhat literal translation of the Japanese name) and there were early 20th century print references to ‘soy bean cheese’, ‘soy cheese’, ‘soja-bean curd’, ‘bean cake’, ‘bean jelly’ and ‘soy cake’, it seems that tofu is now one of those Japanese words, like teriyaki and tsunami, that has become wholly incorporated into the English language.

But why the Japanese tofu and not one of the Chinese names for this ancient source of protein? After all, even the Japanese accept that the creamy block derived from the green bean Glycine ussuriensis originated in China where, to this day, it often is said there is a tofu shop in pretty much every village. In fact, it is generally recognised that the Ch’ing I Lu written by T’ao Ku dating back to around 950 CE is the earliest existing document to mention the bean curd. (Less accepted but sometimes put forward as a still earlier referent is the Ben Cao Gang Mu attributed to mythical Emperor Shen-Nong who supposedly lived some 5,000 years ago and who has also been credited with the introduction of tea drinking and hailed as the father of herbal medicine and Chinese agriculture.)

It seems the name all boils down to a strange of quirk of fate. Whereas pioneer Western writers, like the German scientist Oscar Kellner and the Americans Henry Trimble and C F Langworthy, who had become acquainted with tofu through Japanese sources used the native name, their contemporaries who learnt of ‘bean curd’ from China didn’t. (Among those was the Russian-German Emil Bretschneider, physician to the Russian legation in Beijing, whose monumental History of European Botanical Discoveries was first published in 1893.)

Looking back, one can’t help but wonder, though, whether some degree of social snobbery had a hand in the adoption of the name. In China, tofu has been a basic, staple and popular food common among the lower classes since as far back as the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 CE) while, in contrast, it has long been associated with the upper echelons of society in Japan. Introduced to the Land of the Rising Sun either by Japanese Buddhist monks who visited China or by Chinese Buddhists who went to Japan to proselytise, the eating of tofu soon spread to the court nobility. Did that have an influence on the worldwide spread of the name ‘tofu’? In any event, and on a personal note, when I visited Japan in the summer of 2006, the most expensive meal I had wasn’t, as many might expect, sushi or sashimi but tofu!

At the branch of tofu specialists Umenohana in the delightful Kyushu Island temple town of Dazaifu, I had a traditional multi-course kaiseki meal that introduced me to a variety of savoury dishes that paired tofu with ingredients as diverse as shrimp, sea urchin, salmon roe and baked cheese, as well as allowed for tofu to be enjoyed on its own. I was impressed with the variety of tofu in the thoroughly filling meal – from that which was smooth as silk to the rough and wrinkled ‘tofu skin’, from the delicate and light as a feather to that which was firm and substantial, from boiled cubes served in soup to deep-fried rather dry morsels, from… you probably get the picture! However, even though I half expected it, no bean-curd dessert was forthcoming to finish things off at that tofu-heavy Japanese lunch.

That is not to say the Japanese don’t make and enjoy tofu desserts – including one concoction that combines the bean curd with black sesame and others in which fluffy, sweet tofu is used where Westerners would expect whipped cream. But it might well be that Hong Kong is ground zero for tofu desserts: for it was in a Chinese restaurant in Asia’s World City, after all, that a Los Angeles-based Japanese friend of mine declared that she had what she considers to be the best tofu desserts in the world!

That restaurant is in Tsim Sha Tsui and it also happens to be the favourite of relatives of mine from Malaysia who visit it nightly for tau-fu fa (tofu flower(s)) whenever they visit Hong Kong. Despite their not being the biggest eaters in the world, they nonetheless are well capable of devouring whole tubs of the stuff, hot or cold, in cool weather or warm!

Still, for those with lesser appetites, that same dining establishment also offers smaller portions, customers having the choice of a sugary sweet syrup as an accompaniment or a topping of colourful fruit like mango or strawberry or even other beans, including red and green. Perhaps the most spectacular of all, though, is the dessert served in a clear bowl surrounded by smoking dry ice – quite an experience, especially for those who mainly encounter tofu as a meat substitute – think tofu burgers – and who couldn’t possibly imagine that the humble tofu could stimulate such creative instincts.

Ask most Hong Kongers though and it seems they will have a favourite tofu place, often quite different from others’! To some extent, the diversity of responses is the result of the wide variety of tofu to be found and consumed in the HKSAR. On a personal note, I love ‘regular’ deep-fried tofu but cannot make myself try the variant of it known as chao tau-fu (smelly or stinky tofu) – its very strong and distinct aroma never fails to remind me of dirty open drains. Also, while I will happily try a great variety of sweet tofu desserts along with something spicy like the Szechuanese mapo doufu, I tend to shy away from those vegetarian restaurants that specialise in making tofu look and taste like various kinds of meat and every other type of food besides, well, tofu.

All in all, it can seem as though each and every one of the Fragrant Harbour’s neighbourhoods possesses its particular ‘famous’ tofu place; some of which, though humbler than others, are beloved and looked upon as local landmarks just the same. Like the spartan stall at Central’s Graham Street Market or the ancient shop in Kowloon City where the owners’ cat roams free unless too busy lapping up its allocation of soybean milk! But one thing is common to them all – in conversations about tofu little is said about the substantial nutritional value of this lowly soybean derivative. Mostly people only talk about how tasty it is!