
The Heir to a Tofu Dynasty Finally Learns to Make Tofu - dankohn1
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/nyregion/the-heir-to-a-tofu-dynasty-finally-learns-to-make-tofu.html
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ConfusedDog
\-- Mr. Eng asked one of his parents’ former employees how much baking soda a
particular recipe called for. He said, “A cup.” ... “Like a coffee cup?” “No,
this one cup that we had at the shop.” The cup, naturally, had been thrown
out.

This is so hilariously like my Chinese mother-in-law, get angry recreating her
receipt at my house because why would anyone not using her "standard" sized
cups (giveaways at the mall). She is not the only one, so is my grandma and
mom.

~~~
jimmies
I have a Nepali friend who was at the time doing a Ph.D. in biology. Part of
his daily routine is to do DNA/RNA extraction, which is highly time-consuming
and precise. It involves using pipettes to transfer a minuscule amount of
stuff from one tube to another, wait for hours, spin it, add some enzymes,
spin it, etc. Sometimes you do what you're instructed to do from the kit and
the extraction still doesn't produce a useable result.

He had a pretty snuggly relationship with his advisor, and from time to time
would bring his food to the lab to share. He told me one day, the advisor
decided to ask him how to make the food. Like any biologist, she came to his
house with a notebook, fully expected to be able to take notes. She expected
him to show her the recipes like what you do in the DNA extraction. Instead,
what he told her was... put a reasonable amount of this herb and that herb
into the pot, then cook until done. She got frustrated and threw the notebook
away and gave up the dream of cooking Nepali food.

I am Vietnamese and there's that special Vietnamese dipping sauce recipe that
I wanted to make to treat my Chinese friend at the time I stayed at her place.
I got really frustrated when I was following a recipe to make it and couldn't
get it right and wasted 3/4 of what I bought. My friend was like... so... let
me try. And she just mixed shit randomly, tasted it, and tried adding more
shit by her instinct, and it worked!

I do enjoy cooking by the book from time to time. At the same time, there is a
lot of Asian food that is made by instinct. It is part of what made the food
interesting. It made the food part of an envolving species instead of being
fixated.

BTW, learning from mistakes, my biologist friend now has a website with real
recipes you can sorta follow, please like and subscribe™ if you want to make
Nepali food: [https://avikarn.com/foodblog/](https://avikarn.com/foodblog/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Instead, what he told her was... put a reasonable amount of this herb and
> that herb into the pot, then cook until done._

Maybe I'm a biologist at heart, but this is what really annoys me in the
cooking scene. "Reasonable", "a pinch", "add to taste". It's like with the
famous owl drawing tutorial - "1\. Draw some circles; 2. Draw the rest of the
fucking owl". You have to already be an experienced cook to be able to use
such recipes.

~~~
munificent
When I was first learning to cook, I found this very frustrating too. Like,
why can't someone just write down the precise amounts of everything and then a
great recipe could actually be reliably shared and repeatable?

My moment of enlightenment came when I realized that many of the fundamental
units of cooking are wildly variable. A recipe for baked potatoes that says
"Add 1.3582 grams of salt" can have as many significant digits of precision as
you want, but it won't fix the problem. One potato might be 50% bigger than
another. Even potatoes of the same size may vary in water content, starch,
etc. Even different kinds of salt vary in how salty they taste.

When a recipe says "Add 1-2 tsp salt" or "adjust to taste", it's not that the
recipe is _vague_ , it's that it's _parametric_. What it's really saying is
that the ingredients you already have going will influence how much of _this_
new ingredient you need so that's where you need to make some choices. The
vagueness itself, compared to other ingredients which have precise quantities,
is a useful signal for you to know which parameters need tuning and which
don't.

It _is_ a problem that it means you can't guarantee a new recipe will come out
great the first time you make it, especially if you are a new cook. You're
basically turning a knob blindly to see what happens. But for most recipes,
there isn't really an easier solution. Imagine a recipe like, "Weigh the
potato and then immerse in water to measure its density. Add a quantity of
salt based on the following formula..." Would that work? Maybe. Would it be
less work than just trying it a few times and getting a feel for it? Probably
not.

~~~
oppositelock
It's not just weight that's variable, it's flavor too!

I cook all of my family's meals, and when I started out years ago, I tried to
write down recipes exactly, weigh everything (how much is a cup of flour when
density varies?), but then I realized, all the damn ingredients aren't the
same twice.

Carrots can go from bitter to sweet, potatoes can range from starchy to gooey,
herbs can be really subtle, or really strong, it depends on the weather. Even
in my own garden, the herbs are completely variable. The only thing that seems
consistent is meats and inorganic things like salt. Corn fed beef is different
from grass fed beef, for example, but within each category, pretty consistent.

So, frustrating as it is, it's near impossible to write a perfectly
reproducible recipe.

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Obsnold
If anyone is interested in making their own tofu I found these books to be
quite good.

Asian tofu by Andrea Nguyen The book of tofu by William shurtleff and akiko
aoyagi

The first is a bit more basic but covers a range of Asian tofu and is easier
to get into.

The second is very dense with information and is more specifically about
Japanese tofu but after getting started with the first book I much prefer
referring to this one.

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leemailll
Homemade tofu is incredible easy to make, it's only soybean, of course, water,
heat, and Glucono delta-lactone

~~~
onion2k
"<doing the thing> is easy, you just need to know how to <do the thing>" isn't
very helpful.

~~~
leemailll
If you really want to try I can give you a recipe: 1\. 180g dried soybean
soaked in water overnight 2\. drain the water then put in 1100ml water in a
food processor 3\. grinding for 1 min 4\. filter the liquid 5\. measure the
liquid weight or volume for weight of glucono delta lactone, 3g per 1000g or
1000ml, dissolve it in water as little as possible, and then add to a large
bowl big enough to contain the liquid 6\. boil the liquid, after boiling turn
to mid heat for 5min. Then filter. now you have soy milk 7\. remove from heat,
stir to dissipate heat 8\. slowing pouring to the bowl added with glucono
delta lactone, pouring toward the wall not the bottom of the bowl 9\. cover
the bowl with paper towel or cheese cloth, then the lid, waiting for 30 mins

voila now you have Douhua
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douhua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douhua)),
which often seen in China as a breakfast dish

to get tofu, just drain the water out, to do so put the douhua in some
container with holes at bottom and then add weight.

~~~
adrianN
Is the result much better than the stuff I find at the supermarket? Because
that sounds like at least on hour of work.

~~~
mikekchar
Let me put it this way... It's better in the same way that fresh home made
bread is better than store bought bread. Now imagine that you live in a
country (like Japan) where the average person thinks that a baguette is
essentially a big hotdog bun that has been sitting on a shelf for 2 weeks.
That's the equivalent of the tofu that you tend to buy in a supermarket in the
US. It is possible to buy good store bought tofu, but usually it is
unavailable unless you have a big Asian population nearby. Like bread in
France, you really want to go to the tofu store in the morning for your tofu
because day old tofu is tasteless and horrible (just like day old bread).

Whether or not you can actually make great tofu at home without a _lot_ of
practice is debatable, but at the very least the average person can make
something that is worlds apart from the lifeless, bitter chunks of woe that
the supermarket calls tofu. If you get a chance to go to a real tofu
restaurant in Japan or China, you should leap at the chance. It's just like
your first trip to a boulangerie in Paris -- mind blowing.

~~~
nihonde
Not to take away from your point, but Japanese baked goods—especially breads
and pastries—are extremely high quality, even if they’ve got a local spin that
might turn off the hardcore purists.

By the way, I just bought a homemade kurogoma dofu today from the little shop
in my neighborhood here in Kyoto. It’s not “real” tofu, but it’s mind-
meltingly great!

~~~
SECProto
I think you missed the point of the grandparent comment. It referred
specifically to what "the average person thinks [is] a baguette". I love
Japanese baked goods, lots of super light fluffy bread, great pastries. But
crusty, fresh baguette is not something I saw much in three years of living in
Japan. Every supermarket had bread in a bag that was called バゲット and looked
like baguette — but every one got the texture all wrong.

Just like there are places (Asian groceries, etc) to get good tofu in North
America, I'm sure there are places to get good baguette in Japan. But the
average person would think of what they can get in their local supermarket,
which is decidedly not-good.

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eeZah7Ux
The gentrification of food :(

~~~
bpicolo
Local artisans have been a critical part of food culture for
hundreds/thousands of years.

Plus, the shop is selling tofu bricks for 2 bucks. I would call this a great
example of the opposite of gentrification - bringing something back to its
humble roots while allowing for sustainability in the modern economy.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
Did you even read the article? People leave the shop after seeing tofu being
sold for $2 instead of $1

