Food and Drink

This bean curd packs a punch

By Wang Wen (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-25 07:52

Bean curd will go bad if it is left out for two days, but it can become edible again after fermenting for up to three months. Then it is sufu, or fermented tofu, also known as Chinese soy cheese, a traditional food common on Chinese tables. In Mandarin, it's called furu.

As a kind of fermented food, sufu has a strong pungent flavor of soybean sauce and liquor, because some elements from beans change into liquor after fermentation.

Sufu can be used in small amounts as aromatic seasoning in various dishes. The most popular one is water convolvulus with sufu, a typical Cantonese cuisine. The taste and nutrients in sufu also melt or blend into dishes.

There are different varieties of Chinese-style fermented tofu. The most typical is mold-fermented tofu in pale yellow cubes.

To make firmly pressed tofu is cut into cubes, inoculated with spores of a mold, then left for about several days at 15-18 C until each cube is covered with a cottony-white mycelium.

The freshly molded cubes are then placed in crocks or bottles with salt spread on each layer. After about two months, the product is ready to eat.

Wang Liying, chief engineer of Beijing Ershang Wangzhihe Foods, which produces Wangzhihe furu, a time-honored Beijing brand, said all the materials used are almost the same as those used 1,000 years ago.

Nobody knows the exact origin of sufu but it was said to have been invented by Liu An, grandson of Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).

However, staff members from Wangzhihe say their founder discovered sufu more than 340 years ago.

The founder of the Wangzhihe brand was a scholar named Wang Zhihe, who came from Anhui province to Beijing to attend the imperial examination in 1669. He failed the examination, but stayed in the city to sell bean curd while waiting for the next examination.

One day in summer, he cut some leftover bean curd into cubes and put salt on top of it, left it in a jar and forgot it until the autumn. When he opened the jar, it had a strong smell but a special taste. Wang started to sell the stinky bean curd, which is a kind of sufu. It became popular and was even introduced into the Forbidden City as a daily dish for Empress Dowager Cixi, who called it qingfang (green cube). It contains vitamin B which normal bean curd lacks.

As well as green cube, Wangzhihe also makes red cube (hongfang), a Beijing specialty, and white cube (baifang), a variety from South China. Red cube is tofu fermented with red rice koji, which is added as a second source of enzymes and also adds flavor and color. Red rice koji is believed to invigorate the circulation of the blood.

As an old cuisine, sufu is confronting a modern problem: it is popular among older people, but not with younger generations.

"I am not sure whether it will harm my health as it tastes too salty," said Wang Yuan, a 28-year-old woman living in Beijing. Wang said although her parents like sufu and steamed bread for breakfast, she prefers bread and cheese.

Wang Liying said Wangzhihe is trying to attract younger customers, adding that the nutrient value of sufu has not yet come to the attention of young people. Sufu contains more nutrients than bean curd and they are more easily absorbed than from bean curd, she said.

Wangzhihe has a 600-square-meter exhibition hall where it provides the public with information and exhibits about the production, history and nutritional value of sufu.

The hall only accepts group reservations at present as company staff members act as the guides.

China Daily

(China Daily 05/25/2011 page)