Good food needn’t be fancy. A Lan reports on the joys of eating tofu.
Now in my thirties, I have clear memories of curling up on my grandfather’s lap, back when I was a small child. He’d sit on an old wooden bed and smoke a china-bowl pipe, his ancient, shrivelled hands breaking grilled tofu into pieces and dipping the morsels into salt.
As a child, I thought that the tofu chunks look unappealing, but the adults seemed to enjoy eating them. It was common to see cyclo drivers eating this dish by the roadside during their breaks. At that time, Hai Phong still had many flamboyant trees, and low, small houses. If I shut my eyes, I can still smell the scent of grilling tofu.
Even today, grilled tofu is eaten by most Vietnamese families. This food is still offered in cheap bars, where customers enjoy its pungent taste. Tofu is used in all sorts of ways: dried, boiled,| steamed. This ingredient, however, is rarely serve at feasts or fancy dinners.
Most Vietnamese people consider tofu to be humble fare. It is cheap and readily available. Asia, people have been making food from soy beans for centuries. Tofu and other soy products are associated with devout Buddhists, who are vegetarians for religious reasons. Soy products are used to make meat-substitutes that sometimes look and taste just like meat.
Vietnamese tofu dishes
Visit any market in Vietnam and you will see women selling tofu out of flat baskets. Shoppers come to know who makes the best tofu, and these popular vendors sell out early. In Hanoi, Dau Mo (tofu from Mo Market) is considered a speciality, like basil from Lang village or soy sauce from Ban village.
The tofu makers in Mo village have their own secret, although all tofu com similar ingredients. Perhaps the tofu makers in Mo village observe better standard of quality control, using better ingredients and refusing to cut corners to obtain a short-term profit. Making tofu is time consuming. Producers are up most of the night in order to get their tofu to market at dawn. First, one must grind the soy beans, then filter them before cooking, cooling, packing, compressing and peeling the resulting tofu. Each step requires careful and experienced hands.
Today, the old villages of Ke Mo are but a memory. The streets feature shop-houses and high rises. Even Mo Market is long gone, having been demolished to build a shopping centre. Food-lovers in Hanoi, however, still recall the excellence of Mo tofu.
Mo tofu
Tofu-makers produce a range of products. The output of the first step of production is tao pho, a white, condensed pudding that is served as a dessert with: syrup. Very popular with women, this is a good snack on a hot summer. In northern Vietnam, tao pho sellers often ride bicycles with a barrel of tao pho behind them. The vendor uses a flat spoon to ladle thin layers of tao pho into a bowl before adding syrup.
Vietnamese tao pho
Vietnamese tao pho street vendor
Today, as people are increasingly affluent, the more sophisticatedly, Japanese style of tofu is gaining popularity. The purest of tofu cooking process, this type of tofu may be found on buffet tables and fancy feasts. In my view, this type of tofu is too soft, breaking apart as soon as one takes a bite. For daily fare, I prefer the ordinary, traditional Vietnamese tofu.
Some afternoons, I sit at a roadside restaurant under a flamboyant tree and enjoy the rich taste of grilled tofu flavoured with turmeric. This dish never fails to remind me of my childhood. Good food need not to be expensive. Good food is food that is eaten at the right time and place – and that makes you feel good.
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