Hello! It’s been *checks calendar* three weeks since I sent a newsletter. Time is weird! It’s a weird time! I have no excuses.
Before I get to today’s recipe, which is a true revelation that I hope you try, a few things:
I started writing the Master Class column for Midwest Living, in which I interview a chef about a recipe from their restaurant and then break down little tips and tricks and tidbits. …so if you ~happen~ to subscribe to Midwest Living, you can see that article in the May/June issue. It’s on summer rolls from chef Thai Dang of HaiSous in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. (The restaurant is currently closed, but it’s high up on my list to go to whenever we can do things like travel again!!! They also have a coffee shop and cafe next door, which has, among other things, egg custard coffee, a classic drink in Hanoi. I find myself sighing a lot more than I used to, anyone else!!!??)
And remember how I mentioned some work with Number 1 Sons? It’s happening! You can read blogs posts on black beans, Jerusalem artichokes, and buckwheat groats — plus learn about local farmers and producers — here.
Ok, recipe time: I had a craving for tofu. We did not have tofu. And so I made tofu.
Before you think this is a super complicated project that you could possibly never do, here is the buried lede: YOU CAN MAKE TOFU FROM ANY DRIED BEAN THAT YOU WANT, AND IT’S ACTUALLY REALLY PAINLESS!!!!
!
I followed the directions in this article by Kate Williams in KQED, using white tepary beans we bought from the Heard Museum in Phoenix.
Long aside: The beans are from Ramona Farms, also in Arizona; the story behind both Ramona Farms and the beans is really something: as Sean Sherman wrote in a NYT article, “The Diné (more commonly known as the Navajo) seed savers even protected them during the Long Walk of 1864, a brutal forced march to eastern New Mexico, hiding the beans in their clothing. This is an amazing bean that can withstand and even prosper in the most extreme heat and drought.” And as the Ramona Farms folks write on their site, bavi (aka tepary) “were cultivated for at least a thousand years by the Natives of the Sonoran desert, the Akimel O’odham and Tohono O’odham, who continue to grow them on their reservation lands with summer rainfall in arroyos and limited irrigation along the Gila River.” Ramona Button of Ramona Farms found seeds that her father had kept in a trunk in the old adobe house she grew up in. As she writes on her website: “We were able to get started with those few seeds of each color and learned how to produce the beans on a small scale. Once we perfected our production techniques, we were able to develop our bean project into a larger enterprise and now market our beans in the local community and surrounding areas, in different colors and package sizes.”
So I used these very special beans because they are currently the only ones in our cupboard. You can use literally any bean, which will result in varying colors and flavors. Maybe you could use black bean tofu in a spicy tomato soup, or fry up slices of cannellini tofu with anchovies, capers, and herbs. Pinto tofu seems like a good candidate to top sopes and douse in salsa, no? (Also would def go well with a little chorizo or something fatty and spicy.)
This homemade tofu has a different texture from a soy-based, store-bought one, in that it is quite smooth and custard-like (it doesn’t have that crumbly or almost rubbery feel that some tofu does). Also, since there’s flavor from the beans, it’s a nice little bite all by itself. (The added salt helps :)). For cooking, it held together perfectly when slid into a spiced coconut and carrot broth situation. I think it’d fry up well, though you’d probably want to use a non-stick or extremely well-seasoned cast iron pan just to be on the safe side. We have a little left, which I’m going to thinly slice and treat to this spice-infused oil and sesame seed preparation I wrote about in my first newsletter.
Please note, as Williams does in her article, that this is not technically tofu, since tofu is made from bean curd. This combination of beany liquid cooked with cornstarch is more of a jiggly savory pudding, but that doesn’t sound very appetizing, now does it?
Homemade tofu from any bean, adapted from a recipe on KQED
1/2 cup dried beans, soaked in water for at least 8 to 12 hours
2 cups water
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt (I used 1 teaspoon; next time I’ll use 3/4)
About 1/3 cup cornstarch
Have a loaf pan at the ready. Drain and rinse the beans, then blend with the 2 cups water until smooth. (Unfortunately you do need some sort of blending gadget here; unless you think you can get very creative with a mortar and pestle? You could use a food processor and maaaaybe an immersion blender.)
Position a strainer over a medium saucepan, then line with cheesecloth, a clean kitchen towel, or a nut milk bag. (I use this one a lot.) Pour in the bean liquid, then use the cheesecloth/towel/bag to squeeze out all the liquid you can. Set the leftover pulp aside for now.
Add the salt to the liquid, then bring a low simmer over medium heat. Reduce heat as needed to maintain a slow simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. The liquid will thicken (depending on how starchy your beans are, it might thicken a lot).
Reduce heat to low (just to keep the liquid warm, not to simmer) and ladle a big spoonful of the liquid into a bowl. Sift 3 tablespoons of cornstarch into the bowl, then whisk until smooth (be sure to remove any lumps). Whisk the cornstarch mix back into the pot, until smooth. Increase the heat back to get a simmer and cook, whisking constantly, until it’s really thick and starts to pull away from the sides of the pot. If it doesn’t thicken, add 1 tablespoon more cornstarch at a time (using the same method) and try again. (Mine thickened using just 3 tablespoons of cornstarch — maybe the beans are more starchy than others?)
Scrape the mixture into your loaf pan (you don’t need to grease it!), smooth the top, and let it cool to room temp before covering with a towel or beeswax wrap and chilling for a few hours (or up to overnight). Slide your set tofu onto a cutting board and cut it up however you’d like! It’ll keep for 1 week in the refrigerator.
For the leftover pulp: I wasn’t sure what to do with it (other than maybe drying it in the oven and seeing if I’d somehow end up with bean flour) so I tried cooking it with water and accidentally added too much salt. (I know this newsletter is called Needs More Salt but sometimes I’m wrong, ok?) It has the texture of cream of wheat, which isn’t a bad thing, but I really didn’t feel like dealing with it so I divvied it up in an ice cube tray and froze little cubes to use as future soup thickeners. (Freezing food that overwhelms you in small quantities and hiding it in soups is a great way to avoid wasting it.)
Ending this with a little tip I found useful: You can use cream of tartar to clean stuff! I found this giant jar of cream of tartar in my baking supplies a while ago, asked Instagram for help with what to do besides make a million snickerdoodles, and Instagram delivered. I’ve since used it to clean the toilet (yum) and coffee stains from my favorite mug.
I’m usually not bothered by cooking and food stains — It shows that you’re using things you have! It’s memories of former meals! That beet-stained cutting board has character! Who wants everything to be perfect and shiny, anyway??! — but part of me knows this is a little lie I tell myself to cope with signs of decay and age. Getting coffee stains off of a mug is like reclaiming a very small, insignificant thing that I didn’t know I missed.
So here’s to confronting the little lies we tell ourselves to get by; maybe we didn’t have to lie in the first place.
Stay safe out there.