A white jelly made from beans

Isabella Bird mentioned "a white jelly made from beans" in her book, Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. She meant, of course, tofu. Right now we have only two kinds of tofu in the house. At least, I think we have only two kinds. Every now and then another container shows up, pushed back into a corner of the refrigerator and forgotten when more tofu blocks the view. When we came back from a brief stop by Yoshie's parents' house on Saturday, we had five containers with three kinds of tofu in the car. We already had two kinds at home, but that didn't stop Yoshie from getting more from her favorite store.

There are several good reasons for having lots of different kinds of tofu around all the time, at least in our house. First, Lee is awfully picky about food, but she'll always go for plain, cold tofu, especially kinugoshi dofu, the soft kind ("silken"). She's even more fond of zaru dofu, the really soft kind that forms in a circular basket (a zaru) so it isn't pressed. Next, we all like tofu, and especially in summer it really good to have some food, especially a high protein food, that doesn't need cooking and, because it has little flavor of its own, goes with almost everything. Finally, it usually has a very short list of ingredients. Even in the U.S., where I can at least read all the names of ingredients, I don't like to buy foods with long list of things I may or may not know by name. Here in Japan, potato chips often include konbu (a sea weed) as a flavoring ingredient and wasabi is usually mostly (western) horseradish with a little actual wasabi mixed in, mostly for color. So it's good to buy simple food.

Tofu can be extremely simple. You take soybeans (usually, though there are other kinds), soak them, grind them, boil them, and strain the liquid to get soy milk, add a coagulent and wait a bit. Then usually you press the tofu into a mold, which makes it harder and gives it a shape. (Unless you just put it in a basket for zaru dofu.) The traditional coagulent in Japan, for most kinds of tofu, was nigari, magnesium chloride extracted from sea water, which is now often replaced by calcium chloride. Nigari, since it's traditional, if often credited with making a better tasting tofu. Calcium chloride, on the other hand, makes a tofu that's higher in calcium, which isn't a bad idea.

The Soy Info Center has an interesting story about how calcium sulfate replaced magnesium chloride in tofu production in Japan during World War II because the government wanted to use the magnesium to build planes. The tofu in my refrigerator right now says it's made from soy beans and nigari. It's the real thing.

• Yoshie's favorite way to have tofu is in miso soup.
• Lee's favorite way is totally plain, though she used to put ketchup on until a few months ago.
• My favorite way is cold, with grated ginger and soy sauce.

But my real favorite is goma dofu, made from sesame seeds instead of soy beans, but more on that another time since it's an off-white jelly not made from beans..