Cooking Outside the Block: Tofu Noodle Salad with 🌶️ Chili Crisp

+ 411 on Pressed Tofu Sheets -- the sturdy, al dente tofu you need to know better

Hello there!

I hope your weekend hasn’t been too hot. We’ve had warm and cool temperatures in Santa Cruz. Yikes, in Napa last weekend at Cookbook Fest, daytime temps were in the 90s and if you weren’t under some shade, it was sweltering! There was plenty of wine and liquor but I stuck with water and heavily iced lightweight cocktails.

Over 1,000 people attended, including Bruce V., a three-year-old whose father was teaching him Vietnamese language and cooking. What an honor to know that my books are shepherding a new generation of cooks.

The Everything Cookbooks (EVCB, I’m a co-founder) podcast crew and I did a live recording with debut authors Toriano Gordon (Vegan Mob) and Anna Voloshyna (Budmo) which will air later this year. And on the topic of EVCB, if you’re curious about how cookbook shops choose what to carry, listen to this week’s episode with former chef Ken Concepcion and Michelle Muncial, the Filipino-American owners of Now Serving.

It’s extra meaningful whenever folks bring their books for me to sign so never hesitate to do that! A few pics to show you how CookbookFest went (Bruce is in row 2, center):

Now, about pressed tofu sheets! slices What are they?

I didn’t know if you’d be interested in this type of tofu, but Tim and Amanda separately bought it for the spicy yuba (tofu skin) recipe. Once they opened the package, they realized that it wasn’t right tofu. What should they do?

Could they use it for the tofu skin recipe? Kinda yes, but I wasn’t sure until I tried it out a few days ago.

Tofu 411: What are Pressed Tofu Sheets?

Imagine a thin layer of tofu that’s been pressed so firmly and under so much pressure that it’s mostly devoid of water. That’s gāndòufu (干豆腐, dry tofu), which is sold as stacked sheets, mostly about a scant 1/8 inch thick but there are some that are about 1/32 inch thin.

Peel off a sheet and you’ll notice how sturdy it feels, kinda thick like khaki fabric, but nubby like linen or flax. The texture comes from coagulated soy milk curds being are pressed on pieces of coarse fabric.

Why should you try pressed tofu sheets?

• Failsafe. Gāndòufu cannot be ruined. You can cut, tear and wrap with it.

• Texture. The tofu sheets are like al dente tofu pasta. They have more chew and heft than block tofu.

• Nutritious. Pressed tofu is high-protein tofu because it’s super duper dense.

• Cooks and keeps well. Pressed tofu sheets retain their shape in a stir-fry, soak up broth and and sauce flavors like a dream, and keep for a long time in the fridge and freezer.

Pressed tofu sheets are popular in northeastern China. Don’t know where that is? North and east of Beijing. Among the notable places is Harbin, the city where a renowned ice and snow festival is held.

A language note: gāndòufu isn’t the same as dòufugān. If you move the “gān” after “dòufu” you get a different type of dryish tofu tofu — the thicker slabs of pressed extra-firm tofu that’s sold plain, seasoned and baked, or smoked.

• Pressed tofu sheets = gāndòufu (干豆腐)

• Pressed tofu slabs = dòufugān (豆腐干)

Gāndòufu is commonly sold as rectangles, circles or fringe-like coils. What’s in the above photo is all made from the same stuff — pressed tofu sheets.

What to do with Pressed Tofu Sheets?

Many things, including using it as a vegan wrap that’s akin to how you’d serve Peking duck. Only here, the wrap is eaten without the duck; the protein-rich tofu sheet stands in for the flour-based wrapper and the duck.

Below, for the sauce, I mixed 1/4 cup Korean doenjang fermented bean paste with about 1 tablespoon agave syrup, 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil and water. I aimed for a salty, fatty, slightly sweet flavor.

Here’s another idea — use them for a spicy, tangy tofu and vegetable salad! It literally takes 15 minutes, faster than the yuba tofu skin because prepping the sheets is easy peasy.

Here’s how the tofu sheet salad got made in my kitchen this week:

Pretty simple, right? Yup, but you do need some pointers. Below you’ll find:

• Tips on sourcing (where and what brands to choose), storing and prepping pressed tofu sheets

• Notes about ingredients for the salad

• Suggestions for substitutions and tweaks

• The recipe in text and as a downloadable PDF!

The following content is part of the PTFS tofu journey, an ingredient deep dive for paid subscribers. Such content takes a lot of resources to produce so consider becoming a paid subscriber, if you’re not already one! I welcome your support on all levels.