Mad about the soy

Its origins are lost with the nomads of ancient China, but tofu proves there's more to soybeans than our favourite oriental sauce, says Fuchsia Dunlop

The soybean is native to China and has been cultivated there for more than 3,500 years. An astonishingly rich source of protein, it is fundamental to Chinese cookery and food culture, and has become one of the defining characteristics of the Chinese way of eating. Soy sauce is considered one of the seven household essentials (alongside salt, oil, vinegar, tea, rice and firewood), and it can be argued that bean curd, or tofu as it's often known in the West, has a place equivalent to dairy products in European food cultures.

No one is sure about the origins of bean curd. Legend says it was invented in the second century BC by Liu An, the king of Huainan; some argue that a stone relief excavated from a tomb of the same era depicts a bean-curd workshop. The earliest written reference to bean curd, however, is in a 10th-century text, and the Liu An legend only began a few hundred years ago, during the Ming dynasty. Some scholars have suggested that bean curd was first made by nomads who migrated south and hankered after their customary cheese; others that it was developed by a rural doctor who would have been familiar with soy milk and had gypsum in his medicine chest. All that is certain is that by the Song dynasty it had become a popular food.

'Flower' bean curd and firm white bean curd are just the most basic forms of this most versatile foodstuff. In the markets of Hunan, there are stalls piled high with a dozen different varieties. There are slices of golden smoked bean curd (la gan zi or xiang gan); treacly blocks of stewed aromatic bean curd of various kinds (lu dou fu or xiang gan); deep-fried bean curd puffs (you dou fu); 'hundred-leaves' sheets of leather-thin bean curd (bai ye); waffle-like 'dried orchids' that have been cut into trellis patterns and deep-fried (lan hua gan); and 'bound chickens' (kun ji), tightly tied rolls of thin bean curd that are used by Buddhists as a chicken substitute.

There is also fermented bean curd (dou fu ru), a chilli-laced relish that can be as sublimely rich and creamy as a high blue cheese. Fermented bean curd is eaten as a relish with rice congee or noodles for breakfast, or simply nibbled at the start of a meal, to whet the appetite - just a morsel on the tip of a chopstick is enough to send your taste buds wild with umami excitement. It is also used as an occasional seasoning in Hunanese cookery. Along with soy sauce, black fermented beans and winter-sacrifice beans, fermented bean curd brings to Chinese vegetarian food some of the rich and savoury tastes that one associates with meat and poultry. Here are two Hunanese dishes to try at home.

Peng's home-style bean curd

This dish is the creation of one of the most famous of all Hunanese chefs, Peng Chang-kuei, who has lived mostly in Taiwan since he fled the Chinese mainland at the end of the civil war. Although it was invented in Taiwan, its Hunanese roots are plain to see in its rich, savoury taste and the pairing of black fermented beans and chillies, and, of course, because it's a variation of the traditional home-style bean curd recipe.

Mr Peng, who started making it in the late Sixties, never intended to serve such a humble dish in his restaurant. 'I used to sit at the front of the restaurant, and although the customers knew my name they didn't recognise me,' he told me when I met him in 2004. 'One day I was hungry, so I called my chef over and asked him to make me some bean curd, giving him detailed instructions on how to cook it. I ate it with a bowl of rice, mixing them together as I went along. Every customer who entered the restaurant had to pass by my table, and soon someone asked a waiter if they could have the same dish, which wasn't on the menu. The dish arrived, and another customer saw it and wanted some too, and soon it spread like a rash over the whole restaurant. In that one day we sold 23 portions of "Peng's home-style bean curd"!'

Serves 2 as a main dish with rice and a vegetable, or 4 as part of a Chinese meal.

75g boneless lean pork, thinly sliced

1 tbsp Shaoxing wine (or medium-dry sherry)

¼ tsp salt

1 block firm bean curd, drained (about 550g)

3 spring onions, green parts only

2 fresh red chillies

200ml groundnut oil for deep-frying

1 tbsp finely chopped garlic

3 tbsp black fermented beans, rinsed

200ml chicken or vegetable stock

¼ tsp dark soy sauce

¾ tsp potato flour mixed with 1 tbsp cold water

½ tsp sesame oil

2 tsp chilli oil (optional)

Put the pork in a bowl, add the Shaoxing wine and salt, and mix well; set aside.

Cut the bean curd into oblong slices, about 1cm thick. Cut the spring onion, greens and chillies into thin diagonal slices, discarding the chilli seeds as far as possible.

Heat the oil for deep-frying over a high flame until it reaches 180-200C/gas mark 4-6. Add the bean curd in 3 or 4 batches, and fry until the slices are just tinged with gold; drain and set aside on kitchen paper.

Pour off the oil, reserving 3 tablespoons. Clean the wok, then reheat it over a flame until smoke rises, add the reserved oil and swirl it around. Add the chillies and garlic, and sizzle for a few seconds until fragrant. Add the pork, and as it becomes pale, throw in the black beans, stirring all the time. When all is hot and fragrant, pour in the stock, add the bean curd and dark soy sauce and bring to the boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer for several minutes to allow the flavours of the sauce to enter the bean curd. Add salt to taste, if necessary.

Add the potato-flour mixture and stir as the liquid thickens, then stir in the spring onion greens. Finally, off the heat, stir in the sesame oil and chilli oil, if using, and serve.

For a vegetarian version, omit the pork and use a vegetarian stock.

Hand-torn cabbage with vinegar

The Cultural Revolution was not only a time of infamously bad food, but also of bizarre displays of political correctness in every aspect of life. One of my teachers recalls queuing up for lunch in a work-unit canteen, where you had to recite a saying from Chairman Mao before you could collect your meal. The man in front of him, who clearly had a black sense of humour, insisted on reciting passage after passage of the Chairman's works. No one dared laugh as the political maxims flowed, and no one dared interrupt him for fear of being labelled a counter-revolutionary. So the food got cold, everyone in the queue seethed with silent fury, and the man got away with his bitter joke.

No doubt the menu consisted of everyday vegetables with a meagre portion of grain. The following is the kind of simple vegetable dish that might have been on the menu. Despite its modesty, it's rather nice. The round white cabbage is known in Hunan as 'wrapped vegetable' (bao cai), and its leaves are wrapped slightly more loosely than the more common white cabbages in the West. You can use the same method to cook Chinese leaf cabbage.

400g white cabbage

3 dried red chillies

4 tbsp groundnut oil for cooking


2 tbsp Chinkiang (brown rice) vinegar

Use your hands to divest the cabbage of its leaves, and to tear them into bite-sized pieces, or you can shred the cabbage if you'd rather; then set aside. Cut the dried chillies in half lengthwise and discard the seeds as far as possible.

Heat the wok over a high flame until smoke rises, then add 3 tablespoons of the groundnut oil and swirl around. Add the cabbage and stir-fry for a few minutes until tender but still a little crunchy. Reduce the heat to a minimum if necessary, in order to avoid singeing.

When it is approaching tenderness, push the cabbage to the side and pour the remaining tablespoon of oil into the space at the base of the wok. Add the chillies and sizzle briefly in the hot oil, before mixing it into the cabbage. Season with salt to taste.

When the cabbage is ready, add the Chinkiang vinegar and stir the dish for a few moments to allow the flavours a chance to fuse, then serve.

· Fuchsia Dunlop's Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook is published by Ebury Press at £25. To order a copy for £23 with free UK p&p, go to <a href=" or call 0870 836 0885"

· Nigel Slater returns next week