Tofu is eaten throughout Vietnam, yet transforming hard soybeans into soft white blocks requires far more water, heat, skill and physical effort than their modest appearance suggests. In Mu Cang Chai, northern Vietnam, one family begins work at four in the morning so that its tofu reaches the market perfectly fresh.
At 4.00 a.m., I stood in a family workshop staring at a basin of wet soybeans and reconsidering how urgently I had needed to know where tofu came from. The question had seemed entirely reasonable the previous afternoon. I had eaten tofu throughout Vietnam: fried until golden, floating in soups, tucked beside noodles and sometimes sharing a plate quite happily with meat. Eventually, I asked myself how it was made. The answer, it turned out, began several hours before breakfast.
Outside, it was still completely dark, and the workshop was lit well enough for the family to work – but not, apparently, for me to photograph them. Their hands moved confidently through the shadows while my camera searched for light and found mostly optimism.
The household was already hard at work. A fire burned beneath a large cauldron, water filled deep basins, and the soaked soybeans waited beside a machine. The family moved with the calm efficiency of people for whom four o’clock was a perfectly normal working hour. I followed with the rather less convincing efficiency of someone trying not to yawn.
Tofu has an image problem in parts of the Western world. It is often presented as a pale substitute for something more exciting, usually meat. In Vietnam, nobody seemed burdened by this debate. Tofu was simply food: inexpensive, versatile and perfectly capable of appearing alongside pork or shrimp without suffering an identity crisis. One particularly memorable dish was bun dau: cold rice noodles, herbs and crisp cubes of fried tofu served with mam tom, a fermented shrimp sauce of extraordinary confidence. Even when there was no sign advertising the dish, the sauce usually announced its presence from a considerable distance.
The tofu I was watching began with dry soybeans soaked in water until they softened and loosened their skins. The soaking time depended on the temperature. In Vietnam’s warmer south, a few hours might be enough; in the cooler northern mountains, especially in winter, patience became another ingredient. The softened beans were fed into a machine that ground and separated them into a thick white pulp. Water was added, and the mixture went through again. Then once more. By the third pass, I had stopped thinking of tofu as a simple food. It was becoming difficult to believe that these battered soybeans would eventually turn into anything as delicate as tofu.
The resulting pulp was filtered through a fine cloth and squeezed by hand. A milky liquid flowed into the basin below: fresh soy milk. The remaining solids were put aside for feeding pigs. Very little was wasted, and the pigs emerged as enthusiastic beneficiaries of a process they had done nothing to assist.
Water seemed to be everywhere. Basins were filled, emptied and filled again as the beans were soaked, ground, filtered, cooked and cooled. Tofu may arrive on the plate as a neat, dry little block, but its childhood is extremely aquatic. Fortunately, water was abundant in the mountains around Mu Cang Chai.
The soy milk was poured into a large cauldron and heated over a wood fire for about twenty minutes. Steam filled the room and softened the cold morning air. The wood fire gave the workshop an ancient atmosphere and provided plenty of heat and drama, although surprisingly little flavour.
After heating, the soy milk was transferred to large basins and left to cool slightly. Then came the stage that required more judgement than any written recipe could provide: coagulation. Sour soy whey saved from an earlier batch was added to separate the curds from the yellowish liquid. A small quantity of salt and another acidic coagulant could also be used, but the old whey already knew the job. The amount mattered. Too much could make the tofu hard and sour; too little could leave it excessively soft. The family judged it by experience, stirring and watching as the smooth soy milk separated into delicate curds. “Add until needed” sounds straightforward only when standing beside someone who already knows what correct looks like.
Gradually, the mixture began to resemble cottage cheese. It was still hot when it was ladled into a wooden mould lined with cloth. The cloth was folded over the top and the mould placed beneath a press so that the remaining liquid could drain away. The press performed tofu’s final transformation: from a loose collection of curds into one large, coherent block. After roughly fifteen minutes, the cloth was opened. Where there had been liquid and fragments, there was now a warm white slab with straight sides.
The block was lifted into cold water to cool and help it keep its shape, then cut into smaller pieces ready for sale. By now, morning had begun outside. While much of Mu Cang Chai was waking up, the tofu had already soaked, travelled through a machine three times, survived boiling, separated, reunited and undergone a cold bath. It had accomplished more before breakfast than I had.
Watching the family work changed the way I saw the tofu blocks at the market. Their smooth surfaces concealed hours of soaking, grinding, filtering, heating, judging, lifting and pressing. What looked like one of the simplest foods on a Vietnamese table was the result of a process in which almost every stage offered an opportunity to get the texture wrong.
Mr. Tên Thành and Ms. Chup Cai Anh, Mu Cang Chai
No Comments