Blandest thing on the menu right? correct! however there are reasons. The majority of those packaged tofus that you see in oriental supermarkets are imported from Asia. The very fact that the expiry date is some time 2013 probably allows us to assume that it was probably made months and months ago. Would you expect a piece of beef to retain good flavour if it was left in a box for 10 months before consumption? If you ever have the urge to burden yourself with the most annoying process in the world, give tofu making a go! it is however definitely worth it. Fresh tofu does have nutty notes and a really unique texture that is a million miles away from the almost rubbery texture you may be familiar with.
I bet your expecting me to leave you a recipe right? WRONG. I have spent the last 3 days pissing about with dried soya beans and a chemical called GYPSUM powder, apparently some derivative from a rock that is actually calcium sulphate. All i know is that if you eat too much, your teeth begin to feel like they are erroding.
So if im not going to leave you with a recipe, whats the point of this posting? My tofu experience is just another example of how the world of molecular gastronomy is but a refinement of oriental cooking methods, whether it be the use of various gelling agents such as gelatine, agar agar or carageenan, or the mysterious case of the soup filled Shanghai dumpling,or the use of milk curds which seems to be so popular these days at Noma, Elbulli etc. (effectively the process that has been used for hundreds of years in China for making bean curd skins) or even the use of every type of starch under the sun from wheat starch to tapioca starch to sweet potato starch. Chinese cuisine is so much more then just chilli, spring onion and ginger, the science behind some of the processes would humble even the likes of Heston.
Why the video at the top of the posting? well, most of the video is pretty irrelevant, barring the part at 1 minute 10 seconds when the trampy looking village boy appears to put a microscope up to his face and look at something. What is he doing, and why is he looking at the stars whilst at work in the tofu factory? Well, having unsuccessfully been attempting to make tofu, i found a little part of recipe in 'modernist cuisine' that said that the beancurd mixture must have a Brix reading between 10-12. Thats right! our village boy, although dressed as though he was getting ready to mop the place down, was in fact using a REFRACTOMETER to measure the Brix reading of the tofu, to ensure that is was of the correct water content before adding the coagulating agent. Who uses one of them? well if you were travel the land, you would probably find that the only chefs who could 1.know how to pronounce 'refractometer' and 2. know what use it would have in a kitchen would be the top pastry chefs, and Heston and his crew.
Chinese cuisine, you never fail to amaze me! Chinese food in London, you really are selling our cuisine so short these days, lets get back to the days of using refractometers and making our own tofu. Sat Bains and Tom Kerridge both got their 2nd Michelin stars today, why is Hakkasan the only Chinese restaurant with any stars? well too much chef squatting and spitting in the back alleyways of kitchens and not enough refractometry is the answer!
