Delicious Tofu: Recipes and Lore from the Land of Tofu for Meat Lovers and Vegetarians

By Angela Chang

Delicious Tofu is a well-researched and carefully-crafted cookbook, written by a native tofu chef. Angela Chang was born in China and raised in Taiwan, where tofu is inseparable from the culinary landscape. The following features are what make this book stand out: • It offers an unprecedented mixture of authentic information with engaging stories from Chinese history, legends, and current tofu culture for reading pleasure, as well as helpful culinary background. • It reveals the fact that tofu is for both meat lovers as well as vegetarians. To achieve the best results, the book introduces a wide range of cooking methods plus traditional and creative dishes. Readers will find a rich repertoire of little known techniques, tips, shortcuts, and even global tofu dining guides. • One chapter is devoted to tofu varieties found in the market, a hidden treasure that even some native tofu users have overlooked. These tofu “jewels” come pre-seasoned and ready to serve, deliciously healthy and convenient options that are worthy of exploration. “Angela Chang’s Delicious Tofu is a marvelous resource for anyone who wants to learn about the history and nature of tofu. Too often we think of tofu as nondescript and uninteresting. Quite the contrary, in the hands of a masterful chef like the author, tofu becomes one of the most remarkable ingredients in the repertoire of human foodstuffs. Encyclopedic in scope and engagingly written, Delicious Tofu is sure to delight and edify novices and cognoscenti alike. - Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Pennsylvania “Angela Chang has been proselytizing for tofu for years, determined to break down the barriers that keep so many Westerners from fully appreciating its delicious versatility. Here she makes it accessible to one and all, with irresistible storytelling and enthusiasm that draws you into her world.” - Faith Bahadrurian, Food writer and restaurant critic “Angela Chang’s debut book was the first to enable me to make authentic home-style Chinese food. Here she’s turned her attention to that most versatile and underappreciated protein, tofu. The result is encyclopedic in scope, chock full of engaging history and informative anecdotes, and a treasure trove of inviting recipes. It may be a cliché to say that one recipe is worth the price of the book, but for me Chang’s Pork & Tofu Stew belies that cliché.” - Pat Tanner, Award-winning food writer, restaurant critic, and radio show host

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781684093809

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Delicious Tofu

Recipes and Lore

from the

Land of Tofu

Angela Chang

For Meat Lovers and Vegetarians

Copyright © 2017 Angela Chang

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

Photography by Eric Su and Wolfgang Lian

ISBN 978-1-68409-379-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68409-380-9 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

History of Tofu

The Health Value of Tofu

Fundamentals of Tofu Cookery

Tofu Culture

Ingredient Glossary

Index

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my loving parents and all those teachers and mentors who helped pave the way for my culinary career.

明朝 蘇平 詠豆腐詩

傳得淮南術最佳 皮膚褪盡見精華

一輪磨上流瓊液 百沸湯中滾雪花

瓦缶浸來蟾有影 金刀剖破玉無瑕

個中滋味誰知得 多在僧家與道家

Su Ping of Ming Dynasty—On Tofu

The Prince of Huainan’s method is said to be the best:

Peel the beans, reveal their quintessence within.

Jade liquid spills over the grindstone;

Snowy flakes tumble in the boiling broth.

Steeped in an earthen jar, it resembles the moon’s reflection;

Sliced with a golden knife, it forms flawless jades.

Who recognizes its savor?

The Buddhists, mostly, and the Daoists too.

清朝 高士奇 詠豆腐詩

採菽中原未厭貧 好將要術補齊民

雅宜蔬水稱同調 叵與羔豚廁下陳

軟滑爾偏諧世味 清虛我欲謝時珍

不愁飽食令人重 何肉終漸累此身

Gao Shiqi of Ching Dynasty—On Tofu

Gathering beans in the fields, never scorning their humble origins —

Another Essential Technique fit to add to the Welfare of the People.

Elegant in its simplicity, best combined with humble fare,

Hardly a thing to be lumped in with mutton and swine!

Soft and smooth, it suits the tastes of the whole world;

Plain and unassuming, it shuns passing fashions.

No need to worry that a full belly will weigh one down —

What accumulation of flesh could ever burden this body?

— Translated by Brendan O’Kane —

Acknowledgments

The preparation for this book was a long and eventful journey with twists and turns reminiscent of life dramas. Now that the book is finally in print and has taken on an inviting appearance, I am gratified that I have not disappointed those who have lent me their helping hands and supported me in various ways. The long process of writing this book has often brought happy surprises, such as meeting exceptionally generous and kind friends who filled my life with intriguing events and joyous memories.

To reveal the key elements that prompted me to write this book, I need to go back about half a century when I was struggling for higher education under financial challenges. I am deeply indebted to my late mother, who insisted that I go to an English college run by Providence Sisters from the United States, even though she needed to borrow money for my freshman year. My mother was a successful businesswoman in China before the Communists took everything away. She never lost her upbeat spirit that things would turn around if we tried our best. I was amazed how right she was when our wish was miraculously granted—I won first prize in a college prose contest. Fortunately for me, that first place was considered an unusual honor for the school, which immensely pleased Mother Gratia, the founder of the Providence College (now a university), who gladly granted me a three-year scholarship. For this timely financial aid, I am eternally grateful to my alma mater. I also thank the school for providing a superb environment to learn the English language. My academic achievements not only helped me win another scholarship from Ball State University in Indiana for my MA in English, but also helped pave the road for my future food writing and publishing career.

When I was in college during the 1960s, Taiwan was still a developing country. Money was tight for most households; worst of all, there were hardly any jobs for students. Nevertheless, as an optimist, I never felt depressed about being poor. To save money, I learned to cook from my family. I could not afford to eat meat, but tofu and vegetables were cheap and plentiful. In fact, I was ahead of many home cooks when it comes to using tofu. While everyone else was doing the easy Mapo Tofu, I was so ambitious that I ventured into the more complex but tastier Braised Fish Tofu. This I did because a caring former middle-school teacher in the neighborhood took me under her wing and frequently gave me butterfish and tiny shrimp from a nearby brook where her husband fished as a hobby. At the time, it never crossed my mind that decades later, instead of working as a translator and ESL teacher as planned, I would be switching my profession to the culinary field and becoming a cookbook author and tofu expert.

People often listen with disbelief when I tell them that I became a good cook through frequent entertaining. Like many Chinese super home cooks, with passion and creativity, I have been able to navigate kitchen tasks with ease and a sense of enjoyment. Both my husband and I have the same passion for good company. While our relatives are thousands of miles away, during special holidays, we are thrilled to treat our friends like family, bringing them together and feeding them with good food. Entertaining has given me the chance to create new recipes, sharpen kitchen skills, gain feedback, and be constantly inspired. The reward is greater than the time and energy spent. I am profoundly grateful to the guests and friends who never tired of eating my food and continuously supported me while I worked on my tofu cookbook.

I am especially obliged to two special groups that taught me a great deal about American food culture and gave me fresh ideas how to create many of my recipes for all my cookbooks. I joined the Culinary Society of Philadelphia during their peak years of the l990s. It was an excellent place to discover great friends and gorgeous food. Their year-round programs were both educational and entertaining. We would visit such places as pastry factories, vineyards, organic farms, and upscale restaurants such as La Bec Fin. Their most exciting events were the Spring Gala for fund-raising and Christmas Potluck—both brought members together as though we were one big, happy family. I can’t thank CSP enough for allowing me to find a few lifelong culinary friends.

The Montgomery Woman’s Club is another culinary treasure in Central New Jersey although its primary mission is social work and charity. Interestingly, most women who join the club are very skilled cooks, and most of their potlucks are filled with top-quality dishes. One of the charities I hold very dear, and to which I have donated much of my time, is the Crawford House, a rehabilitation center for women with emotional issues. It was very touching when each season, many good-hearted volunteers from the club would bring their best dishes to feed these halfway-house girls, giving them hugs and encouragement to boot. To my happy surprise, my tofu dishes are forever popular there. Apparently, the girls in Crawford House not only want to return to normal life, but also want to follow a healthy diet.

To enrich my tofu recipe repertoire, I often turn to my two best restaurant friends, John Lin in Morristown, New Jersey, and Margaret Kuo in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Both are successful and well known in their areas. They contributed unusual generosity and enthusiasm to their communities and friends, which makes them stand out among their peers. We seldom see each other due to our busy schedules. But each and every one of our meetings is a feast for the palate as well as for the soul. They generously order the most elegant dishes and sit down to enjoy them with us like a family. John’s wife, Alice, is a genius chef who frequently invents new dishes and great-tasting sauces. I feel extremely privileged that quite a few recipes in this book are special gifts from their restaurants.

John Lin has an exceptional and thoughtful way to care for friends. While taking a trip to Taiwan in 2014 for the photo-shooting for this book, I was astounded to receive a phone call from John’s brother-in-law, Tom Yang. Even though we had never met before, Tom greeted me and my husband with great enthusiasm, taking us for sightseeing and meeting a tofu maker. To my amazement, Tom Yang, a middle-aged, charismatic gentleman, is no ordinary business person, but a preeminent scientist who has made tremendous contributions to the Taiwan hi-tech industries. My gratitude and respect for him significantly increased when he offered to help research for my cookbook.

My adopted niece, Jane Wan, in Taipei also made significant contributions to this book. When I visit Taipei and need a place to stay to work on my cookbook, she jumps at the chance to offer me her cozy little house. I am forever thankful to Jane, who treated me just like a real auntie. While living with her, she always sees to my comfort and makes sure I get enough help from her housekeeper. I felt flattered when she took some of my tofu dishes to share with her office friends. The positive feedback makes my work more meaningful.

I must also mention three dear, lifelong good friends who are no longer with us. Li-Ching, my childhood friend, was like a sister to me for 57 years. We supported each other in every way and often exchanged cooking secrets and daily life experiences with genuine love. To mark our eternal friendship, a memorial garden has been dedicated to her in my backyard since 2010. Joe Colanero, my culinary partner and mentor for 18 years was an extremely caring friend. We worked together as vegetarian and tofu chefs at Philadelphia Conventions many times, and we greatly enjoyed inviting each other to our home parties. To remember the fellowship we shared before his passing, I keep close contact with his wife, Loretta. I also cannot stop mourning for Barbara Walsh’s departure, which happened recently. She was a very successful culinary professional until she sustained injuries from work. Barbara was a great beauty who was also endowed with such a delightful, caring character. She was one of the few American friends who fell in love with my soft tofu dishes and became a great supporter of my tofu project. She was like another sister to me.

I would have to write a separate book to thank all the people who have touched my life in great ways. To make a long story short, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Mr. Stephen Mathews at Page Publishing for accepting my manuscript without long deliberation. I like his straightforward style when he told me that he had grown up with Chinese cuisine and believes the Chinese can turn an ordinary ingredient into a delicacy—just like the Italians. He has great confidence that the Chinese, the inventors of tofu, will showcase the best information on tofu cookery to the world. I must admit, a cookbook like Delicious Tofu, having a wide scope of information and over a hundred photos and artwork, was not an easy ride for any production. When things were not going smoothly, it was Paula Breheny who was always there to guide me through those bumpy roads. I am deeply thankful for her kindness and encouragement. I also felt extremely fortunate to have a dedicated and diligent coordinator, Kathryn Koller. She and her designer team put in a tremendous amount of effort to meet my demand of excellence, tirelessly making corrections again and again. The end result of the page design is a magnificently appealing cookbook that is sure to lure readers. Kathryn and her designers deserve my sincere gratitude for their masterfully crafted work.

The production of this cookbook involves a long list of people who helped me in various ways. First and foremost, I am thankful to my husband, Humphrey, for helping solve my computer problems, organizing all the photos for the recipes, and driving me to all food-related events. I felt so blessed to have a good friend and computer expert, Philip Lung, to help maintain my computer. I am also deeply indebted to two local food columnists and loyal friends, Faith Bahadurian and Pat Tanner, for providing me with important food-related information and feedback for my book in progress, and for writing blurbs for this book. For the final title of this book, I am so fortunate to have Professor Victor Mair (who also wrote a blurb for this book) and his friend Paula Roberts to help me make the right decision on choosing the title for this book. For the art work of Chinese traditional tofu making on page 16, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the Yen family in Shenkeng. Their willingness to lend this picture to help illustrate how the old-fashioned tofu production looks is a valuable contribution to the promotion of tofu culture.

For editing, I want to offer my sincere thanks to the following friends: Lorraine Sichel, Katharine Wood, Erica Brindley, Pat Ellard, George Goeke, Professor Victor Mair, and Beverly Leach. For research, my thanks go to Raymond Seto, Michael Sheu, Olivia Chen, Alberta Wang, Vicky Huang, and Sue Yu.

I am also grateful to many others who have supported me during the many years it took to create this cookbook: my son Dr. Raymond Chang and his family, Joseph Zavaglia Esq, Jonathan Lomurro, Robin Asbell, Elle Wilson, Donna Brennan, Joseph Ridgway, Greg Kollar, Betty Ann Litvak, Cathy Raphael, Wilma Soloman, Dolores Sung, Sister Donna Fu, Madeline Chow, Miriam Chow, Ana Chang, D. D. Chen, Chiung-Yao Lee, Molly Sung, Anne Lee, Jenny Kuo, Teresa Yah, Lily Jiao, Yie Yie Chu, Sherry Chen, Hwei Hsu, Diana Lin, Teresa Sun, Kun Ming Chang, Flora Lee, Lung Tan, Gene Tan, Shia Yu, Angela Hsieh, Doris Wang, Doris Ma, Kong-Gene Tan, Wei-Chung Tan, Margaret Wu, Chinyi Young, Jean-Fong Wung, and Fong Tan.

Introduction

The increasing popularity of tofu in recent decades has taken the West by surprise. Some people describe its rise to favor in the Western health-food world in terms of a Cinderella syndrome that rises suddenly at the grassroots level. No doubt, this can be attributed to the various scientific studies that have done a great job confirming the substantial health benefits of tofu in recent years. It would be inaccurate, however, to assume that the general public will soon be embracing tofu as part of their diet. Apparently, the health value of tofu alone is not enough to convince picky food lovers to adopt it. Our culture and media have a long way to go in educating people about the immense culinary potential of tofu. While I am seldom surprised to see skeptics shake their heads at the mention of tofu, I was especially disheartened by a TV commentary in which a young woman described tofu as the worst thing ever invented for the table. Such a comment was my call to arms; it incited me to teach the world about the value of tofu cookery and to change its still rather negative image in the West.

Disturbed by the fact that tofu was generally considered to be no more than a diet supplement for the health-conscious in the West, I was eager to find ways to improve the image of tofu and show how it could also be a delicious, highly sought-after comfort and gourmet food as it is for Asians. While promoting my two previously published cookbooks during the early years of 2000, I had close contact with numerous friends and readers who enthusiastically provided me with their insights and observations. One friend told me that a lot of the tofu cookbooks lack adequate information and authentic recipes. Their stories on tofu may have convinced some tofu newcomers to adopt it, but unfortunately, the all vegetarian recipes in those books sometimes turned the average meat-eating reader away.

One of my American friends, Donna, who lived in Taiwan for years and happened to be a tofu lover, sent me an e-mail with these enlightening views: I think the media in this country are unaware of the fact that tofu originated in China over two thousand years ago, where it evolved into a glorious tofu culture that spread to other Asian countries. There is a gold mine of time-honored, great-tasting Chinese tofu recipes waiting for newcomers to discover and enjoy. There is no need to hurry reinventing tofu recipes by totally ignoring the all-important foundation of tofu cultures. She recommended that I first present the traditional tofu repertory and then offer a host of variations that showcase new creative presentations. And she ended by adding, If I were to teach tofu cooking, I would learn from the inventor and developers of tofu, the Chinese.

Awakened by such encouragement, I began to look through some popular tofu cookbooks. After a cursory review, I was disappointed to find that many of them follow the same format, focusing on narrow topics. They begin with a long discussion on tofu’s health benefits, launch into an explanation of how to drain tofu by pressing with heavy objects, how to make tofu at home, and end with a discussion of how to make sauces and dips out of soft tofu. Oh, what a gigantic mistake, I thought. How can soft tofu be reduced to dips and sauces only? Soft tofu is a national favorite food in China, used extensively in hundreds of amazing and popular dishes. In fact, it is well loved by most regions in Asia. No one should ever believe that soft tofu is not for cooking. Blunders like this happen when people who hail from tofu regions of the world fail to introduce and guide the novices in the art of tofu cookery. The Chinese are proud of their tofu culture, but it’s rare to find a food expert willing to devote the time to write a comprehensive tofu cookbook in English. As a tofu lover since childhood, I decided to tackle this challenging but meaningful task.

The production and packaging of tofu seem to be undergoing a lot of changes these days. It is no surprise that some newcomers to tofu cuisine find themselves lost when it comes to buying cake tofu. The best-tasting cake tofu I ever had was made with mountain spring water and eaten within a couple of days after it was made. However, this is impossible for today’s larger manufacturers to emulate. To make tofu widely available to consumers near and far, there is no better way than using water-packed containers, which can be kept refrigerated for weeks. An easy way to flavor naturally bland tofu is to marinate with salt, vegetable, or chicken broth (or light soy sauce) for at least a few hours or overnight. Usually, soft tofu picks up flavor faster than firm tofu. To help the firm tofu to absorb flavors more easily, many Chinese chefs will boil it in water for about 30 minutes or until it becomes spongy. Detailed discussions on how to use cake tofu and other tofu varieties will be one of the major features of this book. I will not repeat topics that have already appeared in many tofu cookbooks; instead, I will concentrate on topics that will be most useful and interesting to readers.

The Invention of Tofu and Its Impact

Tofu was not an intended invention of Prince Liu An of the Han Dynasty (179–122 BC), whose goal, rather, was a longevity pill. Nevertheless, it has had a tremendous impact on the world throughout history and has saved countless people from starvation during difficult times (during WWI and WWII, even some Westerners were fed Chinese soy products). Back then, when tofu was not fully incorporated in traditional Chinese cuisine, its bland taste was only tolerated by the very poor and the Buddhist monasteries. We must give a lot of credit to the Chinese monks and nuns throughout the history, who have done a remarkable job in upgrading the taste of tofu by creating hundreds of high quality soy-based vegetarian dishes (this has made Taiwan a mecca for vegetarian food). It was also the ancient Chinese monks who spread tofu to Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries. A recent report from the leading Chinese paper, World Journal, has this touching story about the use of soy milk–making skills: Since the year 2000, a team of Chinese Buddhists in Central America has saved hundreds of thousands of hungry locals by teaching them to make soymilk. This area grows the best soybeans in the world, but the local people did not know how to use them for food. The story should serve as a testimony that soy food is an important solution to world hunger, and the Chinese can certainly play a significant role in helping to make diets around the world a lot healthier.

Why There Should Be a Chinese Tofu Cookbook in English

Undeniably, Chinese have developed a highly sophisticated tofu culture since the time it was invented. However, for some reason, the Chinese are not savvy promoters of their food culture in the West. Perhaps that’s the reason why most tofu cookbooks in the United States mention so little about Chinese tofu except that China was where tofu was