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In tofu’s birthplace, a chef who knows needles and a Bean Curd Industrial Park

 

The recent China Daily article highlighting tofu’s birthplace of Huainan in Anhui province reminded me of one thing.

I’m going to have to return to the area.

My visit will not focus on the glitz and glamour that has accompanied the area’s annual event, the Chinese Bean Curd Culture Festival. In September, Korean pop star group, Super Junior-M, highlighted the festival which attracted crowds.

Rather, it will be to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the chefs, both famous and ordinary, who have expanded our understanding and satisfied our taste buds with this food that goes back 2,000 years.

What do I mean?

Reporter Miao Jie captures one good example in writing about the annual festival:

It also offered diners a chance to sample a variety of cooking methods, including steaming, pot-roasting, frying and boiling. One chef particularly impressed attendees with his ability to cook a wafer-thin sheet of tofu so that it was so tender a needle could easily pass through it.

Now that I read that sentence for a second time, I’m uncertain if the chef actually pierced the wafer-thin tofu sheet with a needle or if that was only hypothetical.

No worries. I get the point. It’s good stuff.

I also want to have a look at the region’s Bean Curd Industrial Park, which brings together like-minded businesses that specialize in production and distribution of soybean cake.

My only suggestion to the business leaders who came up with the name: Um, you might want to keep the words, “Industrial Park,” out of the equation.

Try something like: The World’s First Bean Curd Gastronomy Zone!

Or something like that. You don’t need to use the exclamation point.

But you get the idea. 

I’ve visited industrial parks before. You get the sense of warehouse space or a worker assembling some machinery or driving a fork lift.

Oh, but I do like the article.

I’ve written about tofu’s origins. But I like how this article pointed out something that I overlooked, that Liu An was an emperor and that his grandfather, Liu Bang, was the first emperor of the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).

Also, Liu An’s birthday is Sept. 15 – which is the start of the annual Chinese Bean Curd Culture Festival.

So: Mark your calendars.

The date and festival roll around yearly.

In other bean curd news, Asiana Airlines – a South Korean flag carrier – will start serving kimchi with tofu on its flights, as well as mung bean pancakes, The Korea Times reports.

You know: On those long flights, it’s always refreshing to have delicious food.

My thanks to A Beautiful Mosaic for the mung bean pancake recipe.

Speaking of Niang Tofu, my wife found some recipes for the dish - which is popular among the Hakka ethnic group in China.

After you’ve found one that you like, you can use Google’s translation tool to get the directions in English.

The photographs alone are worth a look.

The dish is noteworthy because you can put ground meat, fish and shrimp on top of the tofu.

Then, you can steam it and eat it. Or, you can fry it and add a sauce.

My wife tells me that “niang” means to let the flavor appear over time – kind of like making wine.