This is a good one. I really don’t know where to start.

So, let’s do it chronologically.

The tofu newsfeed that I get through Google brought a refreshing note today: House Foods America Corp. has decided to install solar technology at its facility in Orange County, Calif. to help the environment – and reduce demand on those good, old-fashioned power grids.

“Great!” I thought. “Bean curd, eaten as part of a balanced diet, is healthy for you. Now, this company is cutting down on its electricity consumption through solar use.”

The news included how many pounds of carbon dioxide will be saved because of the move, 675,000 yearly, according to a post at RenewableEnergyWorld.com.

Then, I thought: “Hmm. I hadn’t heard of House Foods America.”

So, I searched for their company online.

The news even got better because it looks like the company runs its own Japanese-style curry restaurants in the United States, largely in California.

As you know, man, I dig curry as much as I like soybean cake.

The Japanese-style curry sauces that the company dishes up have origins in India. Actually, the company said, the British introduced curry to Japan a century ago.

Also, the company’s curry sauce has over 30 types of ingredients, including cardamom and cumin.

“Excellent,” I thought. “Keep going.”

So much so, that the PDF showing all those ingredients is worthy of a poster.

Then, more curry facts came trickling out from the company:

Many spices in curry are also used in Chinese herbal medicine.

Personally, I lean toward Chinese herbal medicine that is pure and good for the body - and not remedies that might be pumped up with artificial ingredients that could harm y0u down the road.

And just how popular is curry in Japan?

A poll taken in Japan indicates that today, nearly 95 out of 100 people name curry as their favorite food.

“Plausible,” I said to myself. “Very plausible.”

Of course, I am biased – meaning, I’m pro curry.

The company even has a vegetarian menu for visitors to its curry restaurants.

So, what more?

Well, from a bean curd perspective, House Foods America has worked with the incredible culinary genius behind all those fabulous, mouth-watering dishes from Director Ang Lee’s classic movie, “Eat Drink Man Woman.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the movie, have a look below at what I think is an inviting scene to Chinese cooking.

Keep in mind that the clip shows the cooking process from the beginning – so skip this if you’re not interested.

But you know what?

I’ve never been able to cook like this, even though I’ve tried.

I’ve fired up woks to get the high heat and flames that chefs at restaurants can get.

No dice.

I have not mastered the true taste of Chinese cuisine.

That could be one reason why I’ve enjoyed going to China and standing outside restaurants to watch cooks prepare gastronomical delights.

If you’re interested in the trailer for “Eat Drink Man Woman,” have a look below.

It’s a great movie – one worth renting, one worth telling others about.

Did you catch that one clip of the father taking out his own roast duck from the cooker?

It turns out that the chef behind all those great dishes is Chef Theresa Lin, who is from Taiwan.

Many people have dubbed her “The Julia Child of Taiwan,” according to House Foods America.

She worked with House Foods to introduce the public to various tofu dishes – including a steamed bean curd and fish dish and a vegetarian tofu shirataki noodle salad with cabbage, carrots and celery.

It looks like the key to this salad is Sichuan peppercorn oil, which also is used in mapo tofu.

Yum.

On Lin’s Web site, there’s plenty to read about her. You can even watch one of her cooking shows online.

But I went straight to her recipe page. If her site comes up in Chinese, try using Google’s translation service.

You’ll be able to get the idea of what is being said.

Given her talent, I know this is a minor point.

But there was another Chinese chef from Taiwan, Fu Pei-Mei, who has been called the Julia Child of Chinese cooking.

I guess it really doesn’t matter.

It’s all food to eat, especially when your hunger demands taste.

It’s all good stuff.

I have long been a fan of Family Style tofu – known in Mandarin as “jia chang doufu.”

During one of my China swings – I think when I studied there - I would frequent a down-home restaurant, spot the waitress and say: “jia chang doufu.”

I’d order the dish repeatedly: Tasty. Inexpensive. Filling.

When prepared just right, the dish offers the proper amount of meat with fried, tender soybean cake and enough hearty sauce to mix with the rice in your bowl.

So naturally, when I spotted a recipe from Fu Pei-Mei, I thought I’d give it a try.

I wanted to keep the oil as little as possible. So, I substituted ground turkey for the pork. And I used store-bought, pre-fried tofu.

Overall, the dish was good. It calls for a chili and bean sauce, which is fried with ginger, garlic and ground pork or turkey and later mixed with chicken broth.

So the chili sauce has a nice, more subtle spicy flavor than if you added it directly to the tofu.

But before I call this dish one that is truly ”worth trying,” I need to cook it a few more times. Though it would add oil and time to the dish, I think I’d try it with the way Fu prepared the bean curd in her tofu sandwich recipe.

The store-bought tofu saved me the effort of frying the bean curd. And I pan fried it to give it a crispier texture.

But the inside needs to be more tender. Fu’s original recipe calls for taking tender bean curd and frying it in a pan. My only concern is that it would stick to the pan.

I just noticed that her recipe calls for 4 cups of oil for the frying. Her cookbook was published in the 1970s.

I’d also add more chicken broth to get more of that hearty sauce.

That said, give it a try. Add and subtract what you’d like.

Finding the right balance with ingredients is one of the objectives involved with cooking.

I estimate this dish cost about $3 or so, presuming you have corn starch, chicken broth and other smaller ingredients. It took me about 30 minutes to make.

Keep in mind that different Chinese restaurants, especially ones in the United States, offer some type of Family Style tofu. But the cooks might prepare it differently.

It’s easy to do that because, given the name, the cook or owner can always say: “This is how my family has always cooked this.”

The recipe below is adapted from Pei-Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.

If you like her recipes, her cookbooks can be bought online.

I like her Volume II cookbook because she only included photographs and instructions in English and Chinese. There’s no narrative.

Also, for the dish I cooked, I added to the amount of green onions, ginger and chili sauce to boost these flavors. And I added cilantro.

The ingredients I used – which are listed below – differed slightly from Pei-Mei’s recipe.

Ingredients:

• Fried tofu (8 ounces)
• Her recipe calls for tender tofu cut in triangles
• Chopped or ground pork, chicken or turkey (3 ounces)
• Chopped ginger (1 teaspoon)
• Smashed garlic (1 tablespoon)
• Hot bean paste (1 tablespoon)
• For this, I used Guiyang Nanming Laoganma
• Salt (1 1/2 teaspoons)
• Sugar (1 teaspoon)
• Sesame oil (1 teaspoon)
• Soup stock (1/2 cup)
• Cornstarch paste (1 tablespoon)
• Green onions (1 tablespoon)
• Cilantro as a garnish

Steps:

• Coat pan with oil.
• Pan fry tofu for crispier texture.
• Keep an eye on the heat. Turn pieces.
• Skip above steps if you like.
• Fry the meat. I used turkey.
• So, I added a dash of chicken bouillon powder and cooking wine.
• Add ginger, garlic and chili and bean sauce.
• Add the fried tofu.
• Pour 1/2 cup of soup stock in pan.
• Cover the pan.
• Turn heat to low.
• Let sit for a few minutes.
• Add salt, sugar and cornstarch paste.
• Add the green onions and cilantro.
• Serve.

Her directions never say when to add the sesame oil.

I added it at the end, right before I tossed the green onions and cilantro on top.

Chef Fu Pei-Mei certainly figured something out in this yummy, crunchy and slightly chewy tofu dish that she named “ma la dou yu.”

It’s served with a sesame-chili-green onion sauce.

Instead of the bean curd remaining soft, it becomes crispy. And instead of other ingredients, such as peanuts (see tofu salad below) or broccoli remaining crunchy (to balance the soft soybean cake), the bean sprouts keep their chewy texture.

Alone, the sprouts and fried tofu skin wouldn’t be completely satisfying – possibly a bit dry and you might sense the lingering oil used for frying.

So, I’m glad she concocted a sauce of sesame paste, chili oil and green onions.

In the end, this rolled sprout dish lets you work with tofu skin – which you might have eaten at dim sum restaurants.

The sauce complements the fried tofu and soft sprouts.

Also, you can serve something that would make for a memorable meal or appetizer for relatives, friends and special guests.

My sense is that it would prompt questions of genuine intrigue, similar to what my wife and I have fielded with her cold, dry tofu salad. 

There is a downside if you follow Fu’s exact recipe: It calls for deep frying in oil.

Granted, that makes for a delicious, crispy exterior. But it adds to the fat content.

So you can truthfully tell others: “It’s a vegetarian dish!” But you might not want to dine on this every day.

An alternative is to use less oil and pan fry. Steaming the tofu-sprout roll is possible. But you’d have softness both inside and outside the roll.

So, give it a shot. I like it because it’s different from the tofu dishes that you often see at Chinese restaurants in the United States.

The sprout rolling is similar to how people make the Chinese spring roll (“chun juanr” in Mandarin), which is popular in the Shanghai area. But spring rolls use dough skin. 

If you have the condiments already, the tofu skin dish should cost about around $3 to $4. That also depends on how many rolls you make.

It took us about 30 minutes to make this dish. I’m sure the more you make it, the faster you’ll get.

I also tried to figure out why Fu used “yu” – the Chinese character for fish – in the dish’s name. My wife suspects the rolls might remind people of fish.

One lesson that I learned with using tofu skin, which comes in 2-foot by 2-foot sheets: Try to buy them frozen so it’s easier to make the rolls.

After they thaw, you can cut them. If they seem dry before you start rolling, the water from the sprouts will make them moist.

Bean curd skin can typically be found in the dry tofu area at Asian markets.

The recipe we used is from Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.

Her Volume I and Volume III cook books can be purchased online. I certainly appreciate the fact that she shared her cooking knowledge with others.

Step-by-step photos, ingredients and printed instructions are below.

Ingredients:

• Bean sprouts (about 10 ounces)
• Bean curd sheets
• AFC fresh bean curd sheets (8 ounces) are one brand
• Sesame paste (1 tablespoon)
• Soy sauce (2 tablespoons)
• Sugar (1/2 tablespoon)
• Sesame oil (1/2 tablespoon)
• Vinegar (1 teaspoon)
• Chopped green onions (1/2 tablespoon)
• Fried sesame seeds (2 teaspoons)
• Brown peppercorn powder (1/2 teaspoon)
• Red hot pepper oil (1/2 tablespoon)
• Vegetable oil (1 1/2 cup)

Steps:

• Prepare the sprouts.
• Put them in boiling water for 10 seconds.
• Add salt (1 teaspoon if you want).
• Remove and place in cold water.
• Remove. Squeeze dry.
• Cut bean curd skin into 5-inch by 8-inch strips.
• Place sprouts on skin (closest to you).
• Roll as many as you’d like.
• Heat the oil in a pan.
• Place rolls in and fry.
• They will turn golden brown.
• Turn them over.
• After they are golden brown, remove.
• Place on paper towels or napkins to remove oil.
• Let them cool for a few minutes.
• Cut in half or thirds.
• Prepare the sesame paste sauce.
• Place the sauce on the cut rolls.
• Top with cilantro, if you’d like.

We didn’t have any sesame seeds or peppercorn powder. Still, we were happy with the dish.

As I’ve noted before, Andrea Nguyen of Asian Dumpling Tips has posted great information on the skin - called “fu pi” and a similar dish that uses shrimp.

Since I last posted information about Fu Pei-Mei, I’ve realized there are people in the world who enjoy her cooking.

If you’re one of those people, you might like the blog, Pei Mei A Day.

UPDATE: On Sept. 7, the company that makes these frozen bean curd skins issued a recall for at least one specific batch.

It’s best to call the company for updates about using them.

In terms of complexity, these tofu sandwiches bathed in a green onion-and-ginger sauce rank up there. At least for me.

The preparation took at least two hours – much longer than I thought.

But this dish, in the end, was fantastic. It combines crispy, pan-fried firm tofu with the subtle flavors of the green onion and ginger.

It’s worth serving family members and special guests. Really.

They might think you’ve enrolled in some fabulous Chinese cooking class.

The thinking behind these bean curd sandwiches from Chef Fu Pei-Mei is layered and sophisticated. She published her recipe in Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, which is in English and Chinese.

My wife, Dan, and I used ground turkey to keep the fat content low. Chicken and pork are other options. If you don’t prefer meat, you can leave it out.

I’m used to some cooks stuffing tofu with meat or seafood and then frying it.

But Fu adds an extra step: By adding the stuffed tofu in a sauce of onions, ginger and chicken broth, you cook the bean curd for a second time.

The green onion and ginger flavors add subtle flavors that I appreciated. The flour-fried tofu meshes with the chicken broth sauce, which is thickened by starch. Inside the tofu, you have a layer of ground meat.

In a way, it reminds me of the stuffed tofu that I like at the restaurant, Hing Loon, in Seattle.

The difference, though, is that there’s a sense of accomplishment in making this dish at home. You also can watch how much salt and oil you use in the dish.

Because frying is needed, you will use oil – about a half an inch in a small frying pan. When I prepared the chicken broth, I used a dollop of soup paste.

I forgot that the paste can be salty when there’s not enough water. The next time, I’ll be more cautious to have a less salty taste.

It’s also a good idea to use firm tofu. Even the medium-firm tofu that I bought was a bit too watery.

The meal started out on a day in which I told Dan that I would cook since she makes all of the tofu dishes.

I pulled out Fu’s book. I cut the tofu carefully, put the meat inside and began coating it with flour. I’m glad Dan realized that my coating was too light.

She pointed out that had I fried it in a pan, the sandwiches would have fallen apart. So, she put more flour in a rice bowl and began dipping each sandwich.

As one of the final touches, we added some fresh cilantro from our garden. My wife also put sesame oil on top to add more flavor.

We’ll certainly be making this dish again.

Oh yeah, the second dish that night was fried broccoli, red bell peppers and garlic. We just placed everything on one dish.

Photos, ingredients and cooking steps are below.

This recipe is from Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.

The book I have is from my aunt. It was published in the 1970s. Back then, it only cost $5.

Her Volume I cook book can be bought online.

Ingredients:

• Firm tofu (16 ounces or whatever you can get)
• Ground pork (4 ounces)
• This is optional. Or use chicken or turkey
• Salt (1/3 of a teaspoon for ground meat)
• Cooking wine (1 teaspoon)
• Cornstarch (1 teaspoon)
• Flour (1/2 cup)
• Vegetable or olive oil (3 tablespoons)
• Green onions (2 tablespoons)
• Ginger (1/2 tablespoon)
• Soy sauce (2 tablespoons)
• Salt (1/2 teaspoon)
• Soup stock (1/2 cup)
• Cornstarch (1/2 tablespoon for mixture)
• Water (1/2 tablespoon)

Steps:

• Mix the ground meat with salt, wine and cornstarch.
• Cut tofu block horizontally.
• You’ll want four 1/4-inch slices.
• Coat each tofu piece with flour.
• Spread a layer of ground meat on one or each piece.
• Make them into sandwiches.
• Cut each sandwich into six or eight pieces.
• Coat thoroughly with flour.
• In a frying pan, cook over low heat.
• After they’re golden brown, remove.
• Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in pan.
• Fry the green onions and ginger for a few seconds.
• Add the soup, soy sauce and salt.
• Add the tofu sandwiches.
• Cook on low heat for about 5 minutes.
• Add the cornstarch paste and 1 tablespoon of hot oil.
• Serve hot.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, Fu Pei-Mei demonstrated more than 600 recipes on her television cooking show in Taiwan. Photo printed in Pei Mei's Chinese Cook Book Volume II. Copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.

She has been described as the Julia Child of the Chinese culinary world.

Over her nearly 40-year televised career in Taiwan, Fu Pei-Mei demonstrated how to cook more than 4,000 Chinese dishes.

She was fluent in Mandarin, Japanese and English. She traveled the world, and particularly in Asia, to help others improve their gastronomical skills.

I came across one of her cook books, Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, as I do other things in life. I stumbled upon it. I was visiting my parents in California and grabbed it to read at home.

I thought it was a cookbook that I bought in Hong Kong or Southern China years ago.

It turned out, thanks to a name written inside, that it once belonged to my aunt. I quickly found Fu’s recipe for tofu sandwiches.

But only recently did I set time aside to make them. They turned out better than I expected.

Fu’s life reads like many others of an earlier generation in which boundary incursions in Asia were more common.

She was born in Shandong province, according to her biography in Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II.

She studied at a Japanese high school in Dalian, located in a region that was once referred to as Manchuria.

Her father was a successful businessman. As a child, she became interested in the “culinary arts.”

Her cooking tutelage came from various well-known chefs throughout China, according to Pei Mei’s Chinese Cooking Book Volume II.

From the book:

She also went to Japan for advanced study on food nutrition. Through endless practice and eager research, she has perfected numerous Chinese recipes in line with the trend of the modern cuisine development in the world.

In the 1950s, she had arrived in Taiwan and had established the Chinese Cooking Institute in Taipei.

The early 1960s saw the start of television in Taiwan. She began her televised cooking show at the Taiwan Television Co.

She judged cooking contests in Hong Kong, conducted lessons and demonstrated her culinary skills to groups ranging from the Chinese American Cultural and Recreation Association to the Taiwan Tourist Bureau.

Back when airlines in general cared about serving satisfying food in their cabins, she served as a special consultant to China Air Lines in the 1970s.

Her task was “to improve the food service on its overseas flights.”

Her cooking career did especially well from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Taipei Times reported.

In online reviews of her Volume I cookbook, her fans rave about her work. One person who goes by J. Wang from California writes in an Amazon review:

There are many dishes that are now lost (due to lack of being made in restaurants), and these are invaluable to any serious foodie collector.

She passed away in Taipei on Sept. 16, 2004. She was 73.

UPDATE: If you’re a fan of Fu Pei-Mei, here’s a blog devoted to her cooking, Pei Mei a Day.