The history of tofu

Liu An, the king of Huainan, is the grandson of Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Western Han Dynasty. In BC 164, he was named the King of Huainan, and his capital was located in Shouchun (now the Chengguan of Shouxian County, Anhui Province). The famous Bagong Mountain in ancient and modern times is on the edge of Shouchun City. Liu Anya is good at Taoism and wants to live forever. He spent a lot of money to recruit alchemists. Among them, Su Fei, Li Shang, God Bless, Leibo, Wu Bo, Jinchang, Maobei and Zuohao are called "Eight Gong". Accompanied by eight masters, Liu An climbed the North Mountain and built a furnace for refining the elixir of life. They took cold water from three springs in the mountains, namely "Pearl", "Big Spring" and "Horse Running Spring", ground bean juice, and then cultivated Danmiao with bean juice. Unexpectedly, the alchemy failed, and the bean juice and salt mixed into a fragrant, attractive and white thing. The local bold farmers ate it and it tasted delicious, so they named it "tofu". Beishan was renamed "Bagong Mountain" from now on, and Liu An inadvertently became the ancestor of tofu. Since Liu An invented tofu, dozens of villages and towns in Bagongshan, Fiona Fang have become veritable "Hometown of Tofu". With tofu, there will naturally be tofu dishes. Bagongshan people, not to mention ordinary housewives, even 14-and 15-year-old dolls can make several tofu dishes with different flavors, such as tofu, egg tofu, hot sauce tofu, fried tofu and so on. After the reform and opening up, the "tofu shops" on the streets of Bagongshan can be seen everywhere and are well known. They simmer, cook, fry, fry, or slip away ... They gather their silk and carve their talents, which not only attracts local people to indulge in it, but also attracts people from neighboring cities and counties such as Hefei and Bengbu to this "tofu feast" from time to time, and even guests from Germany, Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hong Kong, Taiwan Province Province and other countries and regions often gather at the foot of Bagong Mountain. Tofu culture gradually spread throughout China. Zhuge Liang, born in Liang Daikang (now Nanjing) in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, is the author of 130. Jiangsu, which is adjacent to Huainan, is obviously "the moon comes first by the advantage of the water" and was first influenced by the tofu culture. So far, Jiangsu people have listed tofu, gluten, mushrooms and bamboo shoots as four vegetarian dishes in donkey kong. After the Song and Ming Dynasties, tofu culture spread more widely, and many scholars and celebrities also entered the ranks of disseminators. Su Dongpo, a great writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, is good at eating tofu. During his two to four years as a magistrate, Yuan You personally made Dongpo tofu. Lu You, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, also recorded the making of tofu dishes in his "Collected Works of Weinan". More interesting is the book Emperor Kangxi and Tofu written by Luo Song, a minister of the Qing Dynasty. During Kangxi's southern tour of Suzhou, the emperor's new gift to the minister was not gaudy drama, but tofu dishes with human touch and local flavor. With the spread of tofu culture, people all over the country constantly develop and enrich the methods of making tofu dishes according to their own tastes. There is a kind of "pocket tofu" in eastern Sichuan, which is characterized by milky white soup, olive shape, soft texture and delicious taste. Mapo tofu, which is well-known in Chengdu at home and abroad, has five characteristics: spicy, fresh, tender and spicy. It is a famous food in Hubei, a famous dish in Hangzhou, mirror tofu in Wuxi, shredded chicken sauce in Yangzhou, moldy tofu in Tunxi, and fermented bean curd with bean curd skin as raw material. When tofu dishes go to the more distant frontier, the unique flavor will be more abundant. For example, Jilin is popular with "vegetarian chicken tofu", which is bright in color and rich in five flavors; There are also "Clam Almond Tofu", almonds for relieving cough and moistening intestines, and China Rana for clearing brain and improving eyesight. Tofu is soft and tender, pure and milky in color, and sweet and refreshing for short-term consumption. In addition, Koreans use beef, vermicelli, eggs and tofu to make "Meiyun soup", Guangxi Zhuang people have a famous dish "steamed tofu ball", and Yunnan Dali Bai people have "wax snail tofu", which is tender, smooth, spicy and spicy. "Snail bean curd with crystal sugar" is a folk tonic for nourishing yin and reducing fire and treating neurasthenia ... In this way, in the long-term social development, tofu from Bagongshan in Shouxian County has finally spread all over China, gradually forming eight series of China bean curd: First, water bean curd, including thick north bean curd and delicate south bean curd; The second is semi-dehydrated products, mainly blinds and thousands of sheets. The third is fried products, mainly fried bean curd and fried gold wire; Fourth, halogen products, mainly including spiced dried tofu and spiced shredded tofu; Fifth, smoked products, such as smoked sausage and smoked belly; Sixth, frozen products, that is, frozen tofu; Seventh, dry products, such as tofu skin and oil skin; Eight is fermented products, including well-known tofu milk and stinky tofu. Among these eight products, there are tender tofu from Bagongshan in Huainan, Anhui, white tofu from Guilin, Guangxi, Shaoxing tofu from Zhejiang, Kedong tofu from Heilongjiang, triangle tofu from Guangdong, stinky tofu from Wang Zhihe, Beijing and dried tofu from Wuhan, Hubei. , have become famous tofu products at home and abroad. For more than two thousand years, with the cultural exchange between China and foreign countries, tofu has not only traveled all over the country, but also moved to the world. Speaking of this period of history, we have to mention Jian Zhen, a great monk in the Tang Dynasty. In Tianbao 12 (AD 757), Jian Zhen traveled to Japan and brought the method of making tofu. Up to now, Japanese tofu packaging bags still have the words "Tang Chuan dried tofu made in Huangbaishan Royal Huainan Hall", and many tofu recipes directly adopt Chinese names. Such as January Couple Tofu, February Bao Li Tofu, March Pill Tofu, April String Tofu, May Fish Tofu, etc. After Japan, neighboring countries such as North Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines also learned from China about tofu making technology. Later, with the footsteps of a large number of American laymen, American tofu went to Western Europe and North China, and almost all countries in the world produced and sold soybean food. At the same time, people all over the world have enriched the tofu culture with their own wisdom and customs. For example, Japan in the east uses natural pigments as raw materials to make red, blue and green colorful tofu; According to local resources, the Korean people made bean curd soup with different flavors: bean paste bean curd soup, Harbin bean curd soup, Mingtai fish bean curd soup and so on. Indonesians generally like to eat "fried tofu"; Vietnamese in Myanmar have created "egg-blossom tofu" and "assorted dishes" in Southeast Asian style. It is particularly worth mentioning that "Baku tea" popular in Singapore and Malaysia is actually one of the tofu dishes. In the United States, businessmen process tofu into delicious fast food, such as tofu salad, tofu hamburger, tofu ice cream, tofu roast duck, tofu wedding cake and so on, which are very popular in the market. Since 1980s, there has been a noticeable "bean curd fever" in the world food and nutrition science. Tofu food with high protein and low fat is more and more loved by people all over the world and has become a delicious and healthy nutritional product unanimously praised by the scientific community. Tofu is one of the most widely used and popular cooking materials. It is made of soybeans, mung beans and black beans through soaking, grinding, filtering, boiling, refining, solidification and molding. The protein content of bean curd and bean curd products is higher than that of soybean, and bean curd protein is completely protein, which not only contains eight kinds of amino acids necessary for human body, but also has a ratio close to the needs of human body and high nutritional value. Tofu also contains fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals.