Homemade Tofu, Soy Milk, and a Vietnamese Ginger-Tofu Dessert

In Honolulu, I regularly pay more than I can stand for 12 oz. blocks of tofu and half-gallon containers of soy milk. After tax, the former usually costs around $3 and the latter around $6. I easily go through this much tofu and soy milk in a week, which means that in a month I pay around $40 for these two products alone. I decided to look around Honolulu for tofu molds but came up empty handed. After my fruitless two-week search I headed online, and in a matter of seconds I found a Connecticut-based company that carries what I was looking for. Although the mold cost $40, and shipping an extra $20, I figured that if the product wasn't a scam I could recoup that total in a couple of months.

Well, my tofu mold arrived yesterday afternoon. I was taken aback by how small it was, but was pleased that it came with several packs of nigari -- a coagulant derived from sea water and also known by the unappetizing scientific name of magnesium chloride -- and two cheesecloths for straining. (The mold, incidentally, is made from hinoki, or cedar wood, and its fragrance is like an early spring walk in the woods.) In the evening I went shopping for organic soybeans. (For those living in Honolulu, I found these at Kokua Market, 2643 S. King St.) A pound of these hard little yellow beans went for a mere $2.19. I splurged for a pound and a half and then raced home to soak my fresh new beans in water overnight.

I awoke at 6:30, and bam, it was tofu time! I unfolded the directions that came with my tofu mold and in 90 minutes I'd made two slabs of fresh tofu. What's more, it was delicious! Admittedly, it was too soft to cook with, but its softness made it perfect for a dessert I learned to love in Vietnam that uses hot ginger syrup (see below). There are many Japanese desserts that use soft tofu as well, so you can guess what I'll be eating after my meals for the next week or so. And not just that, but one byproduct from tofu-making is okara, which can be used in various dishes, too. (But more on that in a different post.)

With my second batch of beans I made soy milk. And one reason I'm sharing this is because I want people to know that they, too, can make soy milk without a tofu mold, and it's very easy to do.

Homemade Soy Milk Directions

1) Soak about a pound (400 g) of soybeans in water for at least 8 hours. (In the winter, soaking times are almost twice as long.)

2) Put soaked soybeans in a blender along with 3-4 cups of the soaking water.
3) Blend until the soybeans and liquid have reached a smooth, milkshake-like consistency.

4) Boil 7 1/2 cups of water. (I might recommend more water than this, as the soy milk that results tends to taste fairly strong.) Pour blended soybean mix into water and stir constantly until boiling again. Turn off heat and let mixture cool for about 3 minutes. Then simmer mixture for 7-8 minutes on medium heat.

5) Pull cheesecloth over colander and set colander in a large bowl or on a deep pan.

Pour mixture into cheesecloth and strain soy milk from solids. Keep the solids (okara) for use later in cooking.

A colander isn't necessary when you strain out the soy milk. I used

one in case I inadvertently spilled anything.

This is the okara, or the solids that remained after I squeezed the soy milk from the cheesecloth. Okara is incredibly nutritious and should be used within about two days.

If you only want to make soy milk, pour the liquid into a container and keep refrigerated until ready to use. Since the taste will be a tad bitter, you may want to dilute the milk with water, or add sugar, or both.

A cup of fresh hot soy milk

If you want to make tofu, however, continue on to step 6.

Directions for Making Tofu (continued from steps 1-5)

6. Add nigari coagulant (or substitute with 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice) to soy milk and let sit for around 30 minutes. You will immediately see the soy milk curds separate from the whey. The more you stir it at this stage the firmer your tofu will end up. (I need to remember this for next time...)

7. Pour mixture slowly into your thin cheesecloth-lined tofu mold.

Fold the cheesecloth over the tofu and fit the top of the mold over this. Distribute between 2-5 pounds of weight over the top and let it sit for 15-30 minutes until the water is pressed out of the tofu.

Remove the weight and top of tofu mold, then unfold and peel your cheesecloth from the tofu.

Agh! It's hideous, I know...but it tasted good. I'm hoping that future

attempts will teach me how to make it turn out looking better.

Place tofu into bowl or Tupperware container and cover with cold water.

For whatever reasons, homemade tofu doesn't last nearly as long as the store-bought variety.

Ideally, you should use fresh tofu within just a few days of making it.

Mine turned out quite soft, which meant that I really couldn't use it for cooking. With the soft tofu that I had, I decided to make a simple dessert that I used to enjoy straight from the pots of sidewalk vendors in Vietnam. It's called đậu hủ gừng, which is basically soft tofu with a sweet and spicy ginger sauce served warm. You can make this with any soft tofu available at your local store or market.

Đậu Hủ Gừng

2 cups water

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 2-inch piece of ginger, cut into 1/4-inch wedges and crushed

12 oz. soft tofu

1. Add water, sugar, and ginger to a small pan, stir to dissolve sugar, and boil for 12 minutes. You can add more ginger and boil longer to give the sauce more of a kick. You may also want to include more water to dilute its sweetness.

2. Pour sauce hot over tofu and enjoy.

A bowl of soft tofu in a sweet, hot ginger sauce

Many of you have probably heard of recent studies indicating that tofu eaten in middle age may increase the likelihood of dementia or even brain shrinkage in later life. This may or may not be true. And until scientific research definitively bears one or the other truth out, I'll continue to eat tofu and drink soy milk, the more so now that I'm able to make it at home.

For anyone interested in the tofu mold I bought, the product can be found at http://www.simply-natural.biz/Tofu-Kit.php

And for a video on how to make tofu (or soymilk), this may prove useful:

As a final word, I just want to mention something about the cost savings I'm expecting to enjoy with my new tofu and soy milk making capabilities. Without looking into this all that carefully, I'm guessing that I spend close to $450 a year on these foods (roughly $9/wk), but I should be able to get by spending less than $150 (less than $3/wk) for the soy beans necessary to make them myself. Saving $300 isn't going to change my life, but it is a nice way to save a little money. And what's more, in a year I'll end up with close to 100 pounds of uber-nutritious okara to cook with, all as a byproduct. I'm not sure if so much okara is a good thing or not, but I guess I'll find out soon...

Agebitashi (Deep-fried Vegetables in Soy and Mirin Broth)

Sometimes, when we're too busy or tired to go all-out on a meal, we like to head to a Japanese grocery in Honolulu called Marukai and buy sashimi. Once we return home it's easy to whip up a pot of miso soup, some boiled spinach, and of course rice. Easy, quick, and healthy. But today, once we found ourselves at Marukai, we decided we wanted a lot of vegetables. Japanese vegetables. And we wanted them so that we could make agebitashi, which we haven't had in a long time.

Agebitashi is simple to make, and the ingredients for the dish are hardly exotic. If you can find Mirin, dashi, daikon, and Japanese eggplant, you'll have no problem making this dish. And the daikon, while nice to use, isn't what I'd call essential.

Here's what you need to make agebitashi:

1 cup Mirin

1 cup soy sauce

3 cups water

2 teaspoons dashi

Vegetable oil for frying

4 Japanese eggplants, halved and sliced lengthwise

2 zucchinis, cut diagonally into 1-inch wedges

4 sweet peppers, quartered and seeds removed

1 lb or more of green beans, the ends snipped

1/2 daikon, grated

Got all of it? Good. Now here's what to do with it:

For the broth

1. Pour Mirin into pot or pan and bring to a boil.

2. Add soy sauce, water, and dashi. Stir to mix and let sit on high heat for about 5 minutes (don't let it reach a boil).

3. Pour broth into a large container and leave until your deep frying is completed.

For the veggies

1. Put a sufficient amount of vegetable oil into a deep pan for deep frying and heat on high.

2. After cutting all your vegetables as described above, pat dry with a towel. (This cuts down on hot oil popping when you introduce your washed veggies.)

Halve the eggplants and then cut lengthwise

Cut the zucchini diagonally into 1-inch wedges

Quarter your sweet peppers and snip the ends off your green beans

And make sure to pat your veggies dry after washing and cutting them

3. When oil is hot enough, add veggies a handful at a time. Make sure to turn them over halfway through.

4. Whenever a batch is done, drain on newspaper or paper towels.
5. After draining, add veggies to the container holding your broth.

6. After ladling your agebitashi into serving bowls, top with a generous pinch of grated daikon and mix it.

Grate half a daikon

Agebitashi is best served with rice. Regular steamed rice goes nicely, but if you want to add some nutrition to your normal rice, try making it into takikomi gohan (one version of Japanese "mixed rice") like this:

1. Into a pot of uncooked rice and water add chopped aburage (packaged slices of fried tofu), konnyaku (a gelatinous substance derived from a type of sweet potato), and chopped carrots.

2. Add a mixture of 1 teaspoon of dashi with 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and 2 tablespoons of Mirin.

3. Add the chopped leaves (about 1 cup) from one daikon radish.

4. Cook as you would normal rice.

Before cooking it, the takikomi gohan should look something like this:


And when cooked, you can expect this:


When all of this was done we included miso soup and simmered Japanese pumpkin (kabocha no nimono).

Miso soup with aburage, konnyaku, sliced daikon, and homemade red-and-white miso paste

Simmered Japanese pumpkin (kabocha no nimono)

And then it was time to eat. We broke open some Tiger beer and stuffed ourselves full to bursting.

Note: Agebitashi is delicious when served hot, but I guarantee that it'll knock your socks off after you've refrigerated it long enough (i.e., overnight) to let all the flavors of the broth absorb into your vegetables.

Curry Soup with Spinach

Here’s a long post. Half of it is useful, I hope, as it describes a recipe I particularly like. The other half however, deals with a more random subject: an “Honor Scrap” meme that was recently given to me.

Okay, first to the recipes.

Curry Soup with Wilted Spinach

I don’t like the “wilted” in the name of the recipe, and don't understand why it's called a curry when no curry is called for, but that’s the way it was published in my old and beautifully food-encrusted Sunset Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. This is without a doubt my favorite vegetable soup. The flavors are extraordinary, with the broth coming close to the sweet-sour varieties one comes across in SE Asia, and it's really light and refreshing. And yet, with the inclusion of boiled spinach it can easily serve as a meal, particularly if you have some good, thick bread, and perhaps some balsamic vinegar and olive oil, to pair with it. The recipe also mentions that cooked brown rice goes well in the soup if you’re looking to make it heartier. Finally, this soup is just flat-out healthy. I try to make this twice a week if possible, just to have on hand. A small bowl makes a great mid-afternoon snack, and it goes well as a side dish for most dinners, too.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 teaspoons finely chopped ginger
1 medium-size tomato, chopped
1/2 teaspoon each cumin, ground coriander, and ground turmeric
Generous pinch of cayenne pepper
2 14 oz cans vegetable broth (or 1 qt homemade)
1 pound spinach (stems removed)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Half a bunch of cilantro
Chopped roasted peanuts, cashew nuts, or pistachio nuts (optional)

Directions
1. Melt butter in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic, and ginger. Cook, stirring often, until onion is lightly browned (5-7 minutes).

2. Stir in tomato, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tomato is soft (about 8 minutes). Blend in vegetable broth.

3. Bring to a boil over high heat and continue to boil until reduced to 3 cups. (I don’t wait that long.) Meanwhile, rinse spinach and, with moisture still clinging to its leaves, place in a medium- to large-sized pan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until leaves are wilted (4-5 minutes). Transfer spinach to a colander and press down on it to extract as much liquid as possible.

4. Spoon spinach into soup bowls. Stir lemon juice and cilantro into hot broth. Ladle broth into bowls. Garnish with peanuts. Delicious both hot or cold.




It looks like I was honored with an “Honest Scrap” meme. I don’t really know what it is, but I understand that I’m supposed to: 1) choose a minimum of seven blogs that I find brilliant in content or design, 2) list the blogs’ names and links and notify the recipients that they’ve been given this “award,” 3) list at least ten “honest things” about myself.

To be perfectly honest, I usually don’t go in for these kinds of things as they feel a little like chain letters, but I do feel honored that Anna at Chef Wanabe, a blog that I’ve admired and visited regularly for some time, thought highly enough about my own blog to bestow this on me. So here goes.

First, my list of seven blogs:

1. http://selbyfood.blogspot.com/
2. http://bangsar-babe.blogspot.com/
3. http://sweetcharitypie.blogspot.com/
4. http://www.sugarlens.com/
5. http://www.sippitysup.com/
6. http://www.agirlhastoeat.com/
7. http://tanglednoodle.blogspot.com/

For any of these seven, I hope I haven’t passed this on to you for the umpteenth time, or that you’re opposed to memes. If I have, or if you are, no worries; even if you pass on it, know that I enjoy your blogs enough to want to introduce them to the wider public and honor them in this small way!

Okay, now for the ten things that I decided to reveal about myself (coming up with these is harder than it sounds):

1. As a kid, I ate virtually nothing but hamburgers, Steak-Ums, and grilled cheese sandwiches. I’m not sure how I survived, but I never eat those things now.

2. Starting in college, I became vegetarian for eight or nine years. I was forced to take a break for five months while studying in Japan and living with a host-family, and then gave it up after my second long stint in Vietnam.

3. My vegetarianism started after reading only 70 pages of Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation.” I still have the book on my shelf, but I haven’t finished it because I’m afraid of turning vegetarian for another decade of my life if I do.

4. During my first meal with my Japanese host-family, I was fed the worst meal a vegetarian could possibly eat: beef served nearly raw. I managed to get through the meal by hiding mouthfuls of the very chewy meat in my napkin and flushing it down the toilet mid- and post-meal.

5. Back in high school, I was voted “sexiest legs” during my senior year. There’s no doubt in my mind that if a new vote could be called I wouldn’t even rank.

6. As a kid, I used to have contests with myself to see how many grapes I could fit inside my mouth without choking or my mom finding out or having them all spill out like a slit bag of marbles. I think I managed 40-something.

7. Now that I wrote that, I really want to see how many grapes I can fit into my adult-sized mouth.

8. The first time I ever “drove” a car was at the age of 14. My dad threw me the keys from the garage to pull it forward from beneath my driveway basketball hoop. Not realizing that the car would actually move forward after pulling the automatic handle into “D,” I panicked and proceeded to press my foot on the accelerator rather than the brake and hung a right into a stone wall just a few feet before running over my dad.

9. The second time I ever drove a car was at the age of 15. I persuaded my older brother to write a sick note for me so I could skip school in the afternoon, and then convinced him to let me drive home. Unfortunately, when forced to wait at the only stoplight between school and home I found myself facing my mother and grandmother from across the intersection. She followed us home, called my dad, and my brother and I were grounded for something like half a year. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 17. Then I promptly got the only two speeding tickets I’ve ever gotten in my life.

10. I’ve gotten into the habit of talking to my pet molly fish. I haven’t given it a name, but it gets excited like a dog when I look at it through the glass and call it “Little Buddy.”

Warm Goat Cheese Salad

This salad is fun to make, at least for me, and is a nice alternative to most salads I generally throw together by doing nothing more than washing, slicing, and combining ingredients. It also tastes fantastic. If you like goat cheese, this is worth a try. It does have walnuts, however, so if you're not a fan of them, or are allergic to nuts, you could leave them out or perhaps substitute for them with something else.

I got this recipe from Sunset Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, which my mom gave to me about fifteen years ago when I was doing the vegetarian thing. I still use this cookbook a LOT and recommend it highly to anyone who's looking for delicious meatless dishes. I have several vegetarian cookbooks, and none of them compare to Sunset. In fact, none of them even come close.

This recipe takes about 15-20 minutes to prepare, and another 10 minutes or so for baking the walnuts and broiling the goat cheese.

Ingredients
3/4 cup walnut pieces
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
6 oz medium-firm goat cheese (chevre)
10-12 oz mixed salad greens (I use sweet baby lettuce)

Directions

1. Spread the walnuts evenly in a large shallow baking pan and bake in a 400 degree oven for about 5 minutes, or until they turn a dark golden brown. (Be careful; walnuts burn easily, at least in my oven.)

2. Combine vinegar, mustard, and oil in a bowl, then mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Cut the goat cheese into 6 equal pieces and place in the original pan with walnuts. Broil about 3 inches below heat source for around 3 minutes or until your cheese is speckled brown and slightly melted.

4. Arrange mixed salad greens on 6 plates.

5. Place a piece of warm goat cheese in the center of each salad and sprinkle with nuts. Serve with dressing. Makes 6 servings.