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Snapshots from Asia: Yong Tau Foo

Posted by Wan Yan Ling, August 9, 2007 at 3:15 PM

Photographs by Shimin Wong

I was not a picky eater growing up and would obligingly down the chewy offal; floppy sprouts; and sea sweet, still-bloody cockles my mom, grandma, and various aunties would spoon me. So it was only a few years later, when my fussy-pants baby brother came along, that food got cute—fancy shapes and unnatural colors cute. Octopus wieners and smiley-faced hard-boiled eggs cute.

Whereas I had been perfectly content with standard-issue oblong crackers, my brother would wail and fling and let no crumb pass his lips that was not distractingly shaped. It was a completely unfair situation—especially since I was deemed a big girl by then, too old to eat "baby food"—as only he got the lucky star-shaped fish-paste cakes.

And while child-me was sore about all the alimentary frivolity I missed out on, adult-me could not be more thrilled about my early induction to the joys of pungent, garlicky, peppery soups swimming with pig innards (which the brother refuses to this day).

Like those fish-paste cakes. The kiddie ones were uniformly bland, uninspiring, and tasted not so much of fish but of MSG. The regular ones my mom would buy by the piece at the market's yong tau foo stall (right), though, were a lot more appealing. Generously stuffed into pockets of firm bean curd, deep-fried tofu puffs, and all manner of vegetables—okra, eggplant, bittergourd, chilli peppers, you name it—these would have been prepared on the day itself, with heaps more textural appeal and flavor.

For Mom, a full-time homemaker, yong tau foo days were her days "off," when she could take a break from cooking, as all that was needed was to briefly sauté them in fermented bean paste sauce (from a jar) and let the electric rice cooker do its thing—protein, carbohydrate, and roughage all accounted for. At hawker centers, yong tau foo stalls display a similar smorgasboard, together with leafy vegetables, dried seaweed, and oddments like canned sausages. Diners pick their fancy, to be served with their choice of noodle, either "dry" (tossed in a mix of Sriracha and soy sauces), in a clear soybean broth, or even curry. Tip: No need to assiduously count out 15 leaves of bok choy into your bowl before handing it over to the hawker. Simply place one symbolic leaf in!

About the author: Wan Yan Ling, Serious Eats's overseas summer intern, is an impoverished grad student and sourdough finger-crosser living in Singapore. She can usually be found in the kitchen procrastinating on "real work," or online tracking down obscure recipes. Ling thinks eating alone is no fun, and she still believes in hand-mixing.

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