For a long time, we had a Chinese family living next door.
Their house was open for gatherings of their church and occasionally they would invite us, too. We didn’t know a word in Mandarin — tīng bú dǒng came to us later — but we definitely enjoyed their potluck dinners.
On our Russian-Chinese border, they installed an old gutted grill refurbished with the high BTU burner where they cooked Chinese — a real deal — all year round.
Linda, the woman of the house, was open and eager to share her food and one of us — mostly me but not always — was hanging around that grill watching her in action.
If I was not around, Linda would later knock on the door and bring a sample of her cooking. Boy, I miss her so much!
Once they came from Philly where they travel to for a particular special tofu and Linda brought me a plate with a white block in which she made a dent scooping out the middle. The dent was filled with a deep red oily grainy mush spilling artistically all over. It is now I know this mush as chili oil, then it was new.
— Try. It’s good, — was her usual insensitive. Another thing that united Linda and me was our brusk Russian-Chinese English without “please-&-thankyous.”
And good it was. Excellent!
Linda moved, we traveled to China. I fell in love with the food, people, and country. And my every Chinese cookbook has a version of Linda’s spicy tofu — a simple excellent dinner for a heat wave.
FOR THE MIX OVER A TOFU BLOCK
— 3-4 Tbsp soy sauce
— 1 tsp rice vinegar
— 1 tsp sesame oil
— some chile oil/crisp
— 1 tsp something sweet: sugar, maple syrup
TO GARNISH
— toasted sesame seeds
— scallions
— cilantro
— mint
— basil
#food #cooking #chinesefood #tofu #chilioil #heatwave #dinner #homemade
in the thread). The Five Spice tofu is a delicious snack in the evenings if I am still peckish. It is very compressed and mildly flavoured. It needs no cooking, so is excellent added to salads and other dishes.
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