Time to try tofu

At the Vegetarian Cookery School way back in 1999 we made tofu, from scratch using soya beans, but my recollection is that no one would eat it! It’s not been high on our list of ingredients either, so I was surprised the other day when OH suggested we give tofu a second chance. Given that our search for Quorn had drawn a blank locally – no Quorn within a thirty mile radius – I wasn’t particularly optimistic. Some time ago I did buy a cardboard box of something resembling tofu from Intermarche, but I’m ashamed to say it went out of date and turned mouldy before I dared to try cooking it.

SuperU has recently had a bit of a renaissance and increased the selection of fruit and vegetables, so I was more hopeful there. My question: ‘est-ce que vous avez du tofu?’ brought frightened looks to the face of the assistant stacking shelves, and I thought the manager would be called to evict me. However, we were far more successful on a trip to a new discovery – the Bio Coop in St Junien – where we were able to choose between plain, smoked and Japanese flavoured fresh tofu in blocks or a range of chunks, strips and diced tofu. Spoilt for choice, we selected oak-smoked tofu, produit de France.

Tofu originates in the Han Dynasty of China over 2000 years ago. There are many theories about its discovery. Legend suggests that it was discovered by Prince Liu An (179–122 BC), but it is more likely that it was discovered when soya beans were accidently contaminated with seawater. The earliest reference to tofu in the UK is 1770 – that’s about two hundred years before the 1970s which was what I’d expected. The manufacturing process is similar to dairy cheese. Fresh soya milk is curdled using a coagulant and pressed into a block which solidifies as it cools. Various consistencies are available, from silken tofu which is light to solid blocks and dried, all depending on the coagulant used in the process.

Given our previous bad experiences with bland and rubbery tofu I needed to find a recipe with a good strong flavour. My first experiment, adapted from the website One Green Planet, proved to be a huge success. I thought the original version was a little lacking in vegetables, so added a courgette and red pepper sliced into batons. I also tweaked the spicing a bit to get a little more depth of flavour and added a squeeze of lime juice. The advice to remove the chillies before serving is wise – they were hot! hot! hot!

Chilli and garlic tofu