Lovers' Tofu

恋爱豆腐果 (Liàn Ài Dòu Fŭ Guŏ) literally means "lovers' tofu." The provenance of the name is not immediately clear when you look at it.

Unless you have a very different notion of love than I do.

One story behind the name says that it was invented in Guiyang during World War II. Air raid sirens were common; citizens frequently found themselves waiting for the all-clear. These long hours in close quarters were fertile ground for two things: love and hunger. Love has a way of taking care of itself. The hunger was staved off by the creation of this dish. As new romances flourished, the lovers ate this tofu, giving it its distinctive name.

Whether or not this story is true, lovers’ tofu remains a popular dish to this day in Guiyang. Other than the name, the distinguishing characteristic of this variation of tofu is that it is stuffed chock full of other ingredients. The tofu itself is somewhat unremarkable: crispy, yellow exterior; very soft, white interior. This relative blandness is probably wise, as the stuffing packs a powerful punch. Each vendor’s recipe for the stuffing is different, but most will include chili powder (typically of the málà variety), ginger, scallions, soy sauce, garlic, and a generous handful of zhé ĕr gēn. (Zhé ĕr gēn is both common and distinctive in Guiyang's cuisine. It is the root of this plant and it has a powerful medicinal taste.) Notice that each of those ingredients has a strong taste on its own. Put them all together in one concentrated mélange and it is very strong indeed. Honestly, it was almost too powerful to eat. Remember that this is not a sauce or a seasoning—it is a pile of these ingredients inside the tofu. Like I said above, you become thankful for the basic non-flavor of the tofu. 

Thanks, tofu.

To be sure, 恋爱豆腐果 is a powerfully flavored street food. And that's good--it's nice to have a strong flavor sometimes. For roughly 3 - 5 RMB it makes a nice snack, the memory of which will stay with your taste buds for a good long while.  Eaten alone or shared with a lover, you can't go wrong with lovers' tofu.

Dou Hua Mian

As much as I hate to admit it, not everybody is interested in eating delicacies like pigs' brains or stinky tofu. Perhaps you're one of them...I don't know. For people like this, travelling through China can be a daunting prospect. China is full of foods that are unusual to folks accustomed to Western food, and some of the less intrepid among us, in their hesitance to dive whole hog (in a manner of speaking) into the Chinese experience, survive in China on McDonald's and KFC. This post is for those people.

Chinese food--even Chinese street food--has some great gateway options for people who are reluctant to eat the more adventurous foods. A classic foreigner dish in restaurants, for example, is the Xihongshi Chao Dan (西红柿炒蛋), or tomatoes and eggs. It tastes great, and all of the ingredients are completely recognizable to a foreign palate. In the realm of street food, one great gateway option I recently tried is called Dou Hua Mian (豆花面), and I had the great pleasure to eat it in Zunyi. Dou hua is basically very soft tofu. Sometimes it's translated as tofu pudding. Mian just means noodles. Here's a picture of the dish as it was prepared for me in Zunyi:

The ingredients are as follows: flat, fettuccine-shaped noodles; dou hua; mint leaves; chives; pork; peanuts; a bit of spicy sauce (optional). Reader, it tasted just like an Italian noodle dish. The dou hua tasted almost identically to ricotta cheese (which, I suppose, is why vegans use tofu in their lasagnas). The taste was so familiar to my Western palate, it almost didn't seem like Chinese food. But Chinese food it was. And street food, at that.

To you, oh timid-stomached foreign tourists, I say that you needn't be afraid of Chinese street food. Judicious, yes, but afraid? Certainly not. The Dou Hua Mian in Zunyi is a perfect example of a nice gateway between Western food and Chinese street food. It can be yours for the low price of 8 yuan.

Stinky Tofu

You can always smell it before you see it. Stinky tofu, or Chou Dou Fu (臭豆腐) in Chinese, has an incomparable and instantly recognizable smell. Several different cities in China have their own versions of stinky tofu, but they are all variations on a theme: it's tofu and it smells terrible. Changsha's version is one of the more famous and more foul smelling of the varieties. Imagine you are casually walking down the street in Changsha, checking out the local shops and doing some people watching, when out of the blue you run into a wall. You are surrounded by a mephitic fug, as if somebody were burning a pile of Satan's used gym socks that have remained unwashed since his horrendous puberty. It takes a moment to track down the source of this olfactory assault, but then you see this:

A guy on the street frying up what looks like soft charcoal briquettes. There's your stinky tofu. How does it get so stinky? So black? It has been fermented with special, secret ingredients (Wikipedia says "The traditional method for producing stinky tofu is to prepare a brine made from fermented milk, vegetables, and meat; the brine can also include dried shrimp, amaranth, mustard greens, bamboo shoots, and Chinese herbs") for several months.

Now, I'm not the first to say it and I hope I won't be the last, but here's the thing: it tastes much better than it smells. For 4 or 5 yuan, you get a couple of chunks of stinky tofu topped with some pickled vegetables and some cilantro. This being Hunan Province, there is some spicy stuff thrown in as well.

The tofu is soft and warm, with a taste like a fine cheese. The black part adds a touch of crispiness to the outside of each brick, holding the insides in just long enough to get into your mouth. When mixed with the toppings, it is a perfect representation of Hunan food: salty and spicy, and oh so delicious. So, I urge you: next time you have the chance, go against anything your nose is telling you and give the chou dou fu a try. You won't regret it.