Tofu!

We were over at the house of our friends Beth and George last weekend for dinner. After the meal, I was holding Zachary, and noticed a book on their shelf:

William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, The Book of Tofu, Ballantine, 1975.

and started leafing through it. I was being rather noncommittal, but Beth asked if I wanted to borrow it. I said "no", but kept leafing for a while, and eventually changed my mind. Anyhow, it explains in great detail how to make tofu, and many things soybean-related...

To make an admittedly not very long story shorter (it is way past my bedtime), we ended up getting a few pounds of dried soybeans from the grocer. After soaking them while I was off at work (and a bit longer yet -- about 14 hours), I made my first batch of tofu!

In all, I blended

1-1/2 cup dried yellow soybeans (organic, locally produced)

which were soaked in 6 cups of water for 14 hours. These were drained, and then pureed in the blender with

2 cups cold water
2 cups boiling water

in two batches. The puree was added to

7-1/2 cups boiling water.

This was taken off the heat immediately after the puree was added. The mixture was passed through a colander lined with cheesecloth, and the solids reserved (for later, I guess. There are recipes for them...). The liquid raw soymilk was then put back on the stove, and brought to a boil. Once boiling, it was simmered for 7 minutes. At this point, it's drinkable soymilk! (Before this point, the raw soymilk/soybeans aren't suitable for human consumption due to the presence of an enzyme that inhibits protein uptake. Cooking destroys this enzyme.) And indeed, it was tasty soymilk!

At this point, I tried something from the book which didn't work. I added

about 2-3 tablespoons of drippings from damp sea salt

to enough water to make 1 cup. This was supposed to coagulate the soymilk. But it didn't work. So I tried a second mixture

1/4 cup lemon juice mixed with 3/4 cup water

and this worked! (Yes, I just added it to the rest...) There is a fairly delicate procedure where one adds the diluted juice slowly from the bottom up in the soymilk to avoid damaging the curds... I'll leave that part to the book. Anyhow, about 6 minutes later, there were copious curds floating about, and indeed the entire pan was probably a big huge chunk! I carefully transfered the contents to a cheesecloth-lined colander, wrapped them up, and placed them under weights (a large pile of canned beans and tomatoes). The pressing lasted about 15 minutes, while I cleaned up the kitchen. I cleaned one of the sink basins, and filled it with cold water. Carefully removing the weights, and sliding the works into the cold water, I was able to unwrap the now solidified block of tofu under water. I cut it into four smaller pieces, and the result is what you see! Freshness (and lateness of the hour) being what it is, this was possibly the best tofu I've tasted!