Tofu for You: Meet the Cult Leader, the Spy, and the Pioneering Woman Chinese Doctor Who Brought Tofu to the West

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Arts, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For a lot of Americans, tofu conjures up images of bland, squishy cubes: a sorry alternative to meat. Even in Asia, where tofu was born, the soybean was initially seen as unappetizing, not to mention flatulence inducing. This episode, we tell the story of how people in what's now northeastern China figured out how to turn this legume of last resort into an array of nutritious, delicious foods, from slippery beancurd skins to silken puddings, and chewy soy crumbles to funky, fermented hairy tofu. Then we introduce the parade of unlikely figures—including Ben Franklin and a 1970s acid casualty who believed he could communicate telepathically with animals—who finally brought this "soybean cheese" to the Western masses. And, finally, we meet the twenty-first century immigrant entrepreneur trying to rebrand tofu from virtuous but boring into something much more delicious and desirable. Listen in now for all that plus Camembert tofu, anarchist zines, and the curious origins of that Thanksgiving favorite, Tofurkey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I would say that it is a white-ish square block that can range in firmness.
0:10.1	So anything from fairly soft and sort of, not quite melting in the mouth, but certainly
0:15.1	requires very little effort to go down your throat to something that is a little bit more
0:18.9	textured and can be sort of broken up and crumbly and cooked in various ways.
0:22.9	It's like a white delicious cake.
0:26.9	So a white cake that comes in a range of textures, it's sometimes melty and sometimes crumbly,
0:33.0	any guesses to what this might be?
0:34.6	Give yourselves a round of applause if you just said tofu, because I wouldn't.
0:39.6	Delicious cakes certainly didn't give it away.
0:41.8	But tofu is kind of a mysterious substance.
0:45.2	At least it was to me.
0:46.2	I never even tried it till I was an adult.
0:48.9	And I still find it sort of hard to pin down.
0:52.2	I think most people would say that tofu doesn't have much of a taste, that it's fairly
0:58.2	bland.
0:59.2	But maybe more positive way to put it is that it has a welcoming, like it's open to
1:05.5	absorbing any number of other kinds of flavors.
1:08.2	I love this image of tofu as something soft, mysterious and welcoming.
1:12.1	Honestly, it sounds like a very attractive dating profile.
1:15.6	Tofu, are you free this weekend?
1:18.1	I'm Nicola Twilly and I'm looking for love in all the wrong places.
1:22.0	And I'm Cynthia Graver.
	...

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