Shanxi cuisine has a long history, which can be considered to have a history of more than 2,000 years. Food is the embodiment of culture and a specialty of the countryside, preserving the taste of the ancient and tracing back to the events of history.
"Viciously repay Wu'an pit Zhao pawn, innocent tofu substitute for punishment." Millennia of continuous cooking and frying, it is difficult to comfort the long flat film screen. This is a poem written by The Jincheng poet and calligrapher Li Huiying for Gaoping roasted tofu.
Speaking of which, we have to mention an idiom - talking about soldiers on paper, which is synonymous with the Battle of Changping in 260 BC. At that time, Zhao Kuo only knew how to fight according to the military book, and did not know that he was defeated by the Qin general Bai Qi in one fell swoop, and 400,000 Zhao troops surrendered but were killed by Bai Qi. The cruelty of baiqi aroused the hatred of later generations, so they compared tofu to white meat, boiled and eaten in water to vent their anger. Unexpectedly, people felt quite fresh after eating, and had a different flavor, so "roasted tofu" was passed down in Gaoping.
In the village of Taniguchi in Takahira City, there is a temple named "Skull Temple" because of its skeleton appearance. The "Skull Temple" is the only temple in China that commemorates the dead of soldiers in the Warring States period. The most authentic place to make it is Taniguchi Village, where every household makes roasted tofu.
Tofu is the first ingredient for roasted tofu. The soybean used to make tofu is a local soybean in Gaoping. The quality of tofu production is directly related to the taste of roasted tofu. Rural people go to bed early, every night around nine o'clock, before going to bed, they will soak the local specialty soybeans into the bucket to make the beans swell.
In the middle of the morning, I got up and lit a fire to burn water. While boiling water, the pre-soaked soybeans are stone-ground into a paste and fed into buckets. Then pour these raw into a large vat, and when the water in the pot is boiling, pour all the boiling water into the tank filled with raw soy milk.
The raw soy milk in the tank is then filtered with a filter made in a gauze barrel frame. Squeeze the soy milk into the basin below with a drumstick. Fresh milky white raw soy milk is pressed all over the basin, and finally only some "waste residue" is left in the gauze, also known as "white brain pulp". The spice for eating roasted tofu comes from these "waste residues", stirred together with ginger and garlic with these waste residues, plus a little salt, which is the ingredient used to eat roasted tofu, commonly known as "dipping head". Then put the raw soy milk in the pot and boil it, and then what comes out is the soy milk we usually drink.
Pour the soy milk back into the jar and order the tofu with the mixture beforehand. Gypsum point tofu is a very magical process, soy milk in the gypsum powder under the catalytic action of a full tank of soy milk slowly into, and at this time the tofu flower, is what we usually drink.
Finally, these bean blossoms are poured into a homemade wooden mold for precipitation, and after about three hours, the loose bean blossoms will turn into a whole white and tender tofu. At eleven o'clock in the morning, the bean blossoms that had been suppressed for three and a half hours had turned into pieces of tofu. At this time, it really entered the stage of roasting roasted tofu. Remove the tofu from the mold and cut it into 3 cm thick and 6 cm square pieces, neatly arranged on top of the bamboo board.
The preservation of tofu has always been a big trouble, and it will become sour after a long time, but the clever Gaoping people's way to protect tofu is very simple. Tofu is burned, the focus is on burning this word, and the fire for burning tofu is most suitable for charcoal fire. Place the iron frame on a charcoal fire, then stack each slice of cut tofu evenly on the iron rack, and when grilling, you need to turn each piece of tofu until each piece of tofu is roasted to a golden brown. This allows for a month in winter and two weeks in summer.
When eating, the white meat is boiled in water and the dipping head made by the white brain pulp is simply delicious.
Like a small handicraft workshop, the maximum amount of roasted tofu per day is 300 pieces of roasted tofu, and the price is fifty cents a piece.
Takaiaki tofu is a popular local specialty food, and has a deep mass base in Gaoping. Whether rich or poor, old and young, women and children, office workers or passers-by, as long as they pass by the roast tofu stall, they will stop and spend a few minutes to taste a few pieces of roasted tofu. It is now not only a nutritious and tender food, but also a cultural accumulation with rich humanistic connotations, and a precious heritage left by history to Shanxi people!