He ended up studying at the agricultural school in Montargis and developed a passion for promoting tofu in France. It’s said he was first sent by the Chinese government to attend a French military school as a spy. Li Shizeng, a spy-turned-tofu enthusiast and political activist, is often credited with making tofu a more widely accepted food outside of Asia. It was one of the earliest documents on record mentioning tofu in the West. While East Asia has been munching on tofu for more than 1,000 years, it took a lot longer for it to catch on globally.īenjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ founding fathers, wrote a letter while he was in London - with some soy beans attached - raving about a “Chinese cheese” in 1770. Tofu travels the world: Ben Franklin and a Chinese spy He believes making it this way helps Okutan stand out from other tofu places in Kyoto. This is collected and adjusted to a concentrated level - “that is our secret” - to produce the shop’s own coagulant, which is added to the freshly extracted soy milk to make tofu. The salt produces a natural seawater solution due to the humidity. Straws layered with coarse seasalt are hung around the humid basement. You need to accumulate a wealth of experience and cultivate your senses by seeing tofu with your eyes and touching it with your hands,” says Ogura. You cannot make the tofu, even if you have learnt the process. It’s then followed by the famous yutofu - cubes of tofu boiled in dashi broth. It begins with goma tofu - a cold sesame tofu pudding - and dengaku tofu. Mukashi-tofu, or “olden days” tofu, is the restaurant’s signature set. Ogura left his own business to devote more time to his family’s restaurant when he was in his 30s. “After my father asked me to help, I became interested in the depth of tofu.” “When I was young, I had no interest in tofu, and only really liked the dengaku tofu (skewered tofu with a miso glaze) that my grandmother used to make for me,” says 47-year-old Tadasuke Ogura, the 16th-generation owner of Okutan Kiyomizu. The ingredient is still made from scratch in the basement, daily. Okutan, founded more than 380 years ago, is one of the oldest tofu restaurants in Kyoto. Today, the art of traditional tofu-making is well preserved in Kyoto, where restaurants dedicated to temple food and traditional cuisine are still aplenty. It’s commonly believed that Buddhist monks visiting China then brought it back to neighboring countries like Japan. Okutan: A three-century-old tofu restaurant in Kyotoīut historical records mentioning tofu only started to appear in the 900s during China’s Song Dynasty. The Mora ethos is about “modernizing a tradition like tofu and educating people to incorporate it in their diet.” With Mora and the factory, Lau says that she is not trying to persuade everyone to become vegetarian - Mora isn’t a vegetarian restaurant - but hopes that by showing people how soy is made and how fresh tofu tastes, people will appreciate it more. “It’s something that we need to think about,” she adds. “It’s really saddening realizing I’m being part of it and wasting a lot of these natural gifts,” says Lau. In the last decade, she says she noticed some ingredients had become harder to source. I want to be one that’s making good in the world as well,” says Lau. I don’t want to be just a fine dining chef. “Mora’s concept came about during Covid-19 because I was pondering who I want to be as a chef. Lau says that the pandemic is also partly responsible for the opening of Mora. Opening in 2022, Mora has already made it to Michelin’s online guide and there’s a two-month waitlist for those who want to dine there.
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