Recipe (Tofu)
Tofu in bamboo basket
I’d like to offer you two recipes.
Do you know Tofu which is also called soybean curd?
It’s very tasty and nutritious.
I do hope these simple recipes are truly beneficial for you.
Even if you don’t have enough time or ingredients actually to make,
it is always interesting to know how to make traditional foods, isn’t it?
Kanji
General pronunciation for 豆 is ma-mé, whereas for 大豆, we pronounce 豆 as “zu”.
And now, I proudly introduce another pronunciation for 豆.
That is “to (u)”.
To sum up, there are three pronunciations for 豆: 1) ma-mé, 2) zu, 3) to(u).
As you have wisely guessed, 豆腐 adopts the pronunciation 3) to(u).
Furthermore, we can not forget that Natt0 納豆 also uses this pronunciation.
Recipe 1: basic type
Let’s taste Tofu with soy sauce.
I recommend you add some wasabi or ginger as a condiment.
Wasabi
1) Let’s prepare soy milk
- Soak soybeans in water to soften
- Grind the above 1) to make puree
- Put the raw puree in a cotton bag and squeeze it in a pot. The squeezed liquid is soy milk.
2) Let’s solidify the soy milk.
- Pour the soy milk in a pot
- Place the pot on the heat and mix it lightly from the bottom
- Add coagulating agent in the pot
- Cover it and leave it for a while
- Spread cotton in a wet wooden box and gently put the above 4) in it
- Place the lid and weight stones to drain the water.
Recipe 2: Age-dashi Tofu
Second recipe is Age-dashi.
Age-dashi is a dish with tofu deep-fried (age) and served in hot broth, Dashi.
Not limited to the soup, we use Dashi quite often in our daily cooking.
Agedashi
- drain the tofu enough.
- coat it with potato starch
- deep-fry it in oil
- prepare hot dashi soup (thicker than soup for noodles) in a container.
- put the deep fried Tofu in it.
To make dashi, visit here⇒ Japanese Umami
- Agedashi is also pronounced as Agedashi Dofu.
Just like Amasake and Amazake, the difference is caused only by the preference in pronunciation.
Generally speaking, we prefer the pronunciation of Agedashi Dofu in our daily life.
But I use Agedashi Tofu here, because the relationship with Tofu becomes more clear by doing so.
Fried Tofu (Atsuage)
Fried Tofu called Atsuage is also very popular in Japan.
As its English name shows, we make Atsuage by frying solid tofu.
It’s much harder than Agedashi.
Unlike Agedashi, home made Atsuage is not so common. We usually buy them at stores, instead of making for ourselves.
Grilling, stir-frying, stewing with other ingredients, we cook Atsuage in various ways.
