Crispy Stuffed Tofu Puffs

My husband doesn't like eating tofu puffs. But I love it a lot.

This is one of the ways that he will eat it. These can be eaten as a snack or as a dish. It's great as party finger food too.

Daikon Beancurd Stew

A meat free dish. Flavourful, delicious!

It's easy to cook, goes well with rice.


I think I've cooked this 3 times, I think.. or at least twice :)
I slurp the gravy like soup

Thanks Peng for this recipe...

Seaweed Tofu Rolls 紫菜卷豆腐

It was in 2001 that I came up with this dish.

It was inspired by my first taste of Agedashi Tofu. And for many years I have cooked it many times, this way.

I've taken the pics of this dish many times throughout the years, starting from the first few months of blogging, and each time I cooked this again.. LOL. I just never shared this recipe for almost 7 years, not that I was reluctant too, but just never got around to do it.

Tofu Stuffed Pumpkin Blossoms - Flowers #2

Squash blossoms recipes are common on the internet. And they are usually stuffed. To me, why not I eat pumpkin blossoms too and a quick search on the internet confirmed that it is eaten as well.

As some of you might know.. I am currently contributing to Nourish! Mag. Not sure how long this will last but just taking every moment of it with joy. This is one of the featured recipes.

Actually I made these before the magazine and I decided on a pumpkin series theme, but since the boss liked my pumpkin flower recipe, then the rest followed. I did a series on how to eat the whole pumpkin, from leaves, seeds, fruit and of course the blooms.

Braised Tofu with Mushrooms - Pressed Tofu #3

The day after I cooked this dish, I got some feedback from my BIL via my MIL.
“Yesterday’s dinner was the best”.
I was very surprised.

That night I cooked a simple stir fried cos lettuce with garlic, this braised tofu with mushrooms and clams in broth (a modified version). He didn’t touch the clams as he is trying to avoid foods that may trigger pimples. So, all he ate was this tofu and the lettuce.

Pan Fried Spicy Tofu Cubes with Basil and Mint - Pressed Tofu # 2

My mint was thriving in my garden. Lots of it. I can't consume it that fast because my hubby isn't a fan of it. I use it mostly for garnishes and give most of them away to relatives.

Wok Messed Tofu 涡塌豆腐- Pressed Tofu #1

涡塌豆腐Wo Tart Dau Foo
The “tart” here is the same as in “一塌糊涂 Yat Tart Woo Tou” which means “in a complete mess”, “In utter disorder”.

So how come this tofu is given this name?
It doesn’t look messed up, does it?

Actually, the tofu is slightly messed up.

Crispy Mashed Tofu 脆口豆腐 - Tofu # 3

I first ate this tofu about 20 years back. It was popular back then.
Nowadays, I don’t see many restaurants serving this anymore.

There was a short period of time when few young men started a “Tai Chau 大炒’ eatery few doors away from my mom's shop. One of the guys was the son of our long term customer, Ah Sor 阿傻 (nickname meaning Silly Man, or Mad Guy), who has become a family friend. One day my mom just casually asked him how to make this crispy tofu, he apologized that he can’t teach her, but he can make her some.

Hot and Sour Tofu Slices -Tofu # 2

Recipe created in July 2011

Remember I had a bird's eye chilli plant in my garden? It was very HAWT when my FIL bought it. As time went by, it was no longer as HAWT.

The HAWT compound in the chilli is capsaicin and the amount fluctuates depending on the weather. If day is hot and nights are chilly, then the chilli will be HAWT. If the night's temperature is still warm, or not much different from day.. then that's it la... no more HAWT HAWT. So, if you ever go to Cameron Highlands, don't buy flowers for goodness sake. Buy chillies, bird's eye chilli, that is if you like them HAWT. Taste those grown uphill and notice the difference.

Crispy Dried Scallops with Tofu - Tofu # 1

Recipe made in May 2011

Tofu used to be poor man’s food. But tofu isn’t all that cheap nowadays. Unlike in those days, when I was doing marketing for my mom, a piece of silken tofu wrapped in cloth was just 20 sen. And fried small blocks of tofu were 10 sen 3 pieces. How long was that…. 20 years ago. Tofu was dirt cheap.

Nowadays tofu are much much more expensive and err… I have no idea how much it cost at wet markets now. It’s been long long time since I’ve stepped foot in one early morning to do my marketing. But those in supermarkets are ranging from RM80 sen to 2.90 per block, depending on which range one is going for.

I added some crispy fried dried scallops to my tofu this time and it was well enjoyed by my family.

To-Full Blooms 花开富（腐）贵 - Vege Blooms # 3

Tofu (to-full) cakes with cherry tomatoes... that's what this is. I made this 2 days ago to fill up my themed week. I only had 2 posts in hand initially, and trying to submit to AB, I had to start this week's theme w/o a Full-House (3of a kind).

Beetroot Tofu Salmon Parcels with Brocolli Xmas Tree - Red/Green Week # 3

I wanted to do a Brocolli Xmas Tree, but has been contemplating between Chinese style or Western style.
Not until Mike's relatives came back for the weekend, and I'm hosting them a dinner did I finally decided on how to do it.

It'll be Chinese style :)

Kwong Sai (GuangXi) Stuffed Tofu 广西酿豆腐 - Heritage Week # 2

My mother's parents came from GuangXi, China. If you've heard of the beautiful mountains of GuiLin, that is located in GuangXi. But my maternal grandparents are not from GuiLin, but from Rongxian 容县, which is located in the South of Guangxi. So that makes me half Cantonese half Guangxi. Can I speak the Guangxi dialect? My mom refused to teach us, saying that this dialect is of no use here. No one speaks it, so there's no need to learn. My mom speaks Guangxi, Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew and Hokkien. But her kids can only speak Cantonese. Pathetic.... I may not know how to speak the dialect, but once I hear someone saying "Ngo Eew Lei " (I'm calling you) I know that person is of Kwong Sai origin as they speak "call" as "Eew", unlike Cantonese it's  "gew", or Hokkien is "giu", or Hakka it's "gew" as well. KwongSais will 'Eew" you.

When the KwongSai Chinese came to the then Federation of Malay States, they settled in areas where there are mines and rubber estates, doing 'dirty jobs' that is not done by the other dialects (Hokkien-businesses like  grocery shops, Hainanese-food, Hakka and Cantonese -Mining, Teochew-rice and liquor) Most of those in Perak settled along Perak river, mostly from mid Perak up to the north. Towns like Lenggong, Manong, and Kuala Kangsar and all small villages nearby these towns is where you find the most KwongSai Chinese. Other places with lots of Kwong Sais are in Pahang-- Bentong and Mentakab. If anyone that knows the whereabout of other Kwong Sais, please tell me. I'd love to know.There is one facial trait among the KwongSai, and that is the forehead 广西额头 which is typically wide and flat, with a high hairline. My friends who are KwongSais especially the men, they do possess this typical forehead (I won't say all, but just those that I happen to know). Even my mom has it, so does my brother.

Sesame Oil Beancurd Stick Chicken - Confinement Month # 7

When I saw this recipe on Little Inbox's, I knew, I'll cook this for my confinement.

I don't like to eat the same thing over and over again, so I am eager to try out anything suitable during this "restricting" month to broaden my menu. And it's a family friendly recipe. I dine with my family every night, therefore I do not consume real confinement dishes at night. Real confinement dishes are like rice wine chicken or ginger fried rice. Super heaty food! I do hear of people eating ginger fried rice every morning and rice wine chicken for every meal. KILL ME to eat like that. I never will.

Thousand Layer Tofu with Miso Sauce

What's thousand layer tofu?
It's actually a thawed frozen tofu that looks like it has many many layers inside. The outer parts of the tofu seem to have better layers and the inside ones has tighter layers.
I didn't come up with this idea, but got to know about it through Wikipedia and googled for more information on it.
You can use it for steamboat, pan fries or what ever sauces. I tried it with Miso sauce.

How to make this?
I used a block of Japanese Style Tofu (not egg tofu) and froze it. It looks yellowish when frozen.

Then, I thawed it over night in the fridge and it went all pock marked

Then slice it

Then I placed one piece on my palm, and gently press with the other palm to remove excess water

Then pan fry it, and arrange it nicely on a serving dish. Dilute some miso paste in boiling water, making it a lot more concentrated than your regular miso soup and drizzle it over the fried tofu. Top with sliced spring onions.

Next week,

6 Days of Cookies :)

Salted Egg White Tofu

Why waste the salted egg whites? Salted eggs are no longer as salty as yonder years. I remember when I was a kid, I’d squince when I eat the salted egg whites and would only take yolks.
But the salted eggs nowadays seem to have lost their salt. Not that salty, but still salty.

Many months back, some time around Chinese New Year, I was trying to use up 30 egg whites after making a Prune Layered Cake. A blogger friend, SK Fong suggested I make tofu with egg whites. Yeah, rather than making yellowish tofu, egg whites are perfect to retain the whiteness of the soy milk.

So, what I did with the 3 salted egg whites from the salted egg yolk chicken, is to make this into a steamed tofu dish. But then again, please taste the egg whites before you embark on this. Add additional regular eggs if your egg whites are salty and add more soy milk. Just keep the ratio of egg to soy milk, 1:2 and you’ll be fine.


Salted Egg White Tofu
Recipe source: Wendyywy, inspired by SKFong

3 salted egg whites, about ½ cup
1 cup unsweetened soy milk (actually can use 300ml, 250ml is quite firm)
1 sprig spring onion, thinly sliced
1 tsp cooking oil
2 drops of sesame oil

1. Prepare steamer and bring water to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, combine egg whites with soy milk, whisk to combine.
3. Put cooking oil and sesame oil in steaming dish. Rub with fingers or brush so that the dish will be well oiled.
4. Pour the egg white mixture into prepared dish and sprinkle sliced spring onions onto the egg.
5. Steam on medium low heat(lid on) for 10 minutes or until set. Touch the center of the tofu, if it has turned solid and nothing sticks to your fingers, it’s done.

Verdict: Somehow this steamed tofu is much firmer than my other homemade egg tofu. But it's slightly crunchy, like egg whites usually are. It could be due to the eggs being just egg whites and not whole eggs. Egg whites have better coagulating effect than yolks. The spring onions added a wonderful aroma to the tofu. Delicious!

Steamed Tofu with Prawns and Glass Noodles

When I saw this on 3 Hungry Tummies, it looked so so delicious.
When I served this for dinner, everybody says it's so delicious.
Credits to 3 hungry tummies for creating this yummylicious dish.

I did some minor adaptations, by lining the base with glass noodles instead of wrapping the tofu with it, so that the glass noodles will have juices from the tofu and prawns because glass noodles need a lot of liquid during the cooking process. And I also used soft tofu, instead of firm tofu.

It's actually very simple, not much rules here.

Steamed tofu with Prawns and Glass Noodles
Recipe source : 3 Hungry Tummies

Ingredients:
As much soft tofu as you like,
As many prawns as per pieces of tofu.
As much glass noodles as you like, just soak them until they get soft before you use them.
Garlic oil for drizzling
Light soy sauce for flavouring
Sliced spring onion for garnish, and definately extra aroma and flavour.

Method
1. Soak glass noodles until soft, Drain and snip shorter. Place in steaming dish.
2. Cut tofu into prefered sizes. Arrange on top of glass noodles
3. Arrange one piece of prawn on each tofu.
4. Steam on high heat for 10 minutes.
5. Drizzle with garlic oil and light soy sauce and top with sliced spring onions.

Three Cups Tofu

Actually I think I’ve only eaten 3 cups chicken once, and I don’t really remember much of it.
But when I saw this on Shirley’s blog, gosh, I just got to try this.

Shirley used pressed tofu of which she found it not silky smooth after braising and suggested silken tofu to her readers instead. Well, I fried half of my local silken tofu cubes in my wok, and I had to discard all of them into my tummy cos they were totally unpresentable and stuck to the wok. Then I fried the other half of the silken tofu in a non stick pan. Phew, they looked much better, but there was only half. Not enough!!!! Luckily I had another block of pressed tofu in the fridge, supermarket pressed tofu in a plastic box. I just used that … fried it and cooked with it. Frying pressed tofu was a breeze :)

Weirdly, after all the braising, I couldn’t distinguish between the silken tofu and the pressed tofu. Both were soft, but porous after all the frying and braising. Unlike what Shirley had said that hers were not soft. Mine was soft, but rough and porous inside. But I do think that Tofu made with only GDL gives a rubbery texture when cooked for a prolonged time, because I once had that for steamboat and the tofu was rubbery but not porous. Yucks!!! Some sites also mentioned that no water should be added to 3 cups dishes. So, maybe it’ll be better if the braising is not done to ensure one gets a nice smooth center, as braising draws moisture out from the tofu, thus making it either porous or rubbery. I don’t have any other experiences with 3 cups dishes, so, I’ll leave the decision to you, to braise with water/stock or not to braise. I might not braise it the next time I do this.

Well, Shirley didn’t mention how much tofu to use as 1 block can be really ambiguous. 1 block of pressed tofu at the wet market here is just 2 X2X1 inch. And there’s one stall in Kampar that sells block tofu that measures 6x3x2. So, I pretty dunno how much and I just used approximately 400gm. I find my dish being slightly oversalted (maybe my soy sauce is salty???? I dunno) and I will use 500gm next time, that is if I ever do this again. Or just reduce the 3 Tbsp each to just 2 Tbsp each of sesame oil, light soy sauce and wine.

Overall, this is a nice tofu dish.

3 Cups Tofu
Recipe source : Kokken 69

400gm pressed tofu, cut into cubes
Half bulb of garlic, skin on, hard ends cut off, lightly smashed
3 stalks of spring onion, white parts only, cut into 2 inch lengths
1 inch ginger, sliced

3 Tbsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp light soy sauce
3 Tbsp Shao Xing wine
¼ tsp sugar (It's sweet enough for me, after adding this, I found it too sweet)
1 cup water (I didn’t use stock cos I find the aromatics used above is flavourful enough)
Handful of basil leaves (as much or as little as you want)

1. Fry tofu until golden and crisp. (I do this in a non stick pan as a regular wok is so difficult to fry these delicate things). Drain and set aside.
2. Heat wok and put in sesame oil.
3. Fry garlic, green onions and ginger until fragrant and slightly golden
4. Put in fried tofu cubes and put in light soy sauce and Shao Xing wine. Toss it until it sort of dries up.
5. Put in water and sugar and let it braise until the water dries up and you start to see oil on the base.
6. Put in basil leaves, give it a toss and turn off the heat.

Steamed Flower Bowl Tofu

I saw this type of steamed dish quite often on China's sites.There are many variations, some serve it with sharkfins, some in superior broth, and some with noodles. It is actually called "Steamed 3 Silk", or 扣三丝

After lining the base of the bowl with the "silk" They just stuffed extra  silk (egg, hams, mushrooms or whatver) into the bowl cavity to steam. Instead I used tofu as the filling. And I used egg as the tofu's binder.
Sigh, the egg might be a wrong decision, as you can see, the egg has covered up most of the "flower".

Anyway, I quite like this dish.

70gm ham

3 filament crab sticks

1 egg, fried into a thin ommelete

1 Chinese Black Mushroom, soaked

240gm pressed tofu (firm tofu)
1 egg
½ tsp salt
Dash of pepper

1. Cut ham, crab sticks and ommelette into long thin matchsticks

2. Line a heatproof bowl with heat proof cling wap.

3. Put mushroom on base of bowl, cap side down.

4. Arrange ham, crab stick and egg strips in bowl.

5. Mix tofu with egg, salt and pepper.

6. Pour tofu mixture into bowl and steam on high heat for 5 minutes and medium heat for 15 minutes.

Steamed Layer Stuffed Tofu

Recipe inspired by SweeSan

Stuffing
150gm minced pork
50gm shelled prawns, finely chopped
2 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked and finely chopped
½ tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
Dash of pepper
1 heaped tsp cornstarch
½ tsp sesame oil
1 egg, beaten

Mix everything together except egg. Lastly drizzle in half and egg first, mix and adjust consistency with more egg if needed. The consistency should be spreadable but not dripping.

Assembly
1 piece silken tofu about 350gm, sliced horizontally.
See picture for instructions. You can cut as many layers as you like and spread the stuffing.
Steam tofu on high heat for 25 minutes.

Gravy
1 shallot, finely chopped
1/2 red chilli, finely chopped (omit this if using hot bean paste)
1 level Tsp bean paste or hot bean paste
½ tsp preserved black beans (dau see), chopped
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
½ tsp cornstarch +1/3 cup water
2 tbsp oil

1. Heat oil in wok, saute chopped shallot until fragrant. Put in red chilli, bean paste and black beans and saute until fragrant.
2. Put in oyster sauce, light soy sauce, sugar and cornstarch solution.
3. Bring to a boil and let it reduce to prefered consistency. Dish up and pour onto steamed layered tofu.