Sunday, June 26, 2005
Yong Tau Fu
by venitha
I'm feeling a distinct lack of... chopsticks?
One of my first food court meals here was Yong Tau Fu, a Chinese soup. You fill your bowl with selections from its buffet (an amazing variety of greens, cabbages, mushrooms, bean sprouts, peppers, tofus, and seafood balls), they cook it up in a broth, and serve it as a hot soup over noodles. You add your preferred amount of chili sauce and eat it with a big Chinese spoon and chopsticks, which are ideal for picking up the large chunks of all the tasty morsels within.
It didn't take me long to start thinking I could make Yong Tau Fu. We've been enjoying lots of salads as we experiment with the vast array of new vegetables available here, and there must be something else to do with them, but what? Our usual sources of protein have been replaced by a bewildering variety of seafood balls and tofus, surely best cooked, but how? Those little hot hot hot Thai peppers are adorable and tempting, but what to do with them? Yong Tau Fu is the perfect solution.
Honing our technique and hunting down ingredients has provided a great deal of entertainment. Jim's favorite find? A flat spicy slightly fried tofu, cut into strips. Mine? The chilies, of course!
I'm looking forward to the the arrival of the big pots in our ocean shipment, and we will have to buy some chopsticks and Chinese spoons of our very own. Yong Tau Fu is a far cry from Campbell's Chicken and Stars; it is decidedly NOT edible with a Western spoon.
How unexpected that I move to hot humid Singapore... and learn to make soup!
venitha
One of my first food court meals here was Yong Tau Fu, a Chinese soup. You fill your bowl with selections from its buffet (an amazing variety of greens, cabbages, mushrooms, bean sprouts, peppers, tofus, and seafood balls), they cook it up in a broth, and serve it as a hot soup over noodles. You add your preferred amount of chili sauce and eat it with a big Chinese spoon and chopsticks, which are ideal for picking up the large chunks of all the tasty morsels within.
It didn't take me long to start thinking I could make Yong Tau Fu. We've been enjoying lots of salads as we experiment with the vast array of new vegetables available here, and there must be something else to do with them, but what? Our usual sources of protein have been replaced by a bewildering variety of seafood balls and tofus, surely best cooked, but how? Those little hot hot hot Thai peppers are adorable and tempting, but what to do with them? Yong Tau Fu is the perfect solution.Honing our technique and hunting down ingredients has provided a great deal of entertainment. Jim's favorite find? A flat spicy slightly fried tofu, cut into strips. Mine? The chilies, of course!
I'm looking forward to the the arrival of the big pots in our ocean shipment, and we will have to buy some chopsticks and Chinese spoons of our very own. Yong Tau Fu is a far cry from Campbell's Chicken and Stars; it is decidedly NOT edible with a Western spoon.
How unexpected that I move to hot humid Singapore... and learn to make soup!
venitha
