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America doesn't know tofu

asteriskmag.com

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Re: America doesn't know tofu

#51

Post by qwertthrowway »

shafyy wrote: post #23
OJFord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [0] Process for making {cheese, tofu}: take {milk, soy milk}, add some acid to make the proteins coagulate, I wonder if anyone's tried adding lactose to soy milk and using cultures and rest of the process as if to target a particular traditional cheese. I'm not saying the result would be vegan, I don't know if there's a vegan source or way of manufacturing lactose, but just for interest.

I have had a plant-based cheese company for a while. Yes, adding casein (I think you mean casein, not lactose) to soy milk woulnd't be vegan. There are companies that try to create vegan casein with precision fermentation, but to my knowledge, none of them are doing it at scale (i.e. I wouldn't know where to buy such a vegan cheese). Most cheese is not made with acid but with enzyme called rennet, which is typically…

What about microbial enzyme based cheeses? For example I’ve seen havarti labeled with microbial rennet.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#52

Post by brnt »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #32
brnt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegans need to worry about this, because most don't want to eat piles of beans with every meal. I love beans, but I love other foods too!

Vegans don't need to worry about the protein content of vegan cheese. Protein is widely available in vegan food and you don't need to eat a pile of beans to get it.

What vegans foods are they widely available? And at what price levels?

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#53

Post by bitlax »

PoignardAzur wrote: post #4
bitlax wrote: post #2

[flagged]

That's such a weird question. You're reacting to the headline as if it was the central part of the article and not, well, a hook for the article's story about China's rich tofu culture and the author's efforts to learn how to prepare it.

Wow, such a weird headline!

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#54

Post by shafyy »

qwertthrowway wrote: post #51
shafyy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had a plant-based cheese company for a while. Yes, adding casein (I think you mean casein, not lactose) to soy milk woulnd't be vegan. There are companies that try to create vegan casein with precision fermentation, but to my knowledge, none of them are doing it at scale (i.e. I wouldn't know where to buy such a vegan cheese). Most cheese is not made with acid but with enzyme called rennet, which is typically…

What about microbial enzyme based cheeses? For example I’ve seen havarti labeled with microbial rennet.

Rennet (synthetic or not) doesn't work with plant-based milk. It reacts with casein, which is not there in plant-based milks.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#55

Post by gwern »

aragonite wrote: post #27
Snow_Falls wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I can trust a magazine that has a grammatical error in title of an article on the front page.* Now this doesn't say anything about the quality of the article itself (who doesn't make silly mistakes) but it does speak to a lack of editorial oversight. These sorts of basic mistakes do not inspire confidence. *bottom article on the front page: "Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning?" should…

It's a reference to this :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism#Education https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA

This is a good example of the difficulties with signaling and communication: anything which looks like an error is a 'thing you can't countersignal' (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ThhNvdBxcTYdzm69s/things-you...).

Snow_Falls is so contemptuous of Asterisk that he sees a blatant 'error' which 'somehow' evaded the writers and editors all this time, and assumes that this means they are that incompetent; he doesn't consider the modus tollens, that the error is deliberate and he is the one failing to understand what is a well-known GWB allusion. If he had a higher opinion of Asterisk, he might have instead checked (if he took even a second to google the title "Rarely is the Question Asked: Is Our Children Learning?", the first 5 hits all explain the allusion), or at least withheld judgment - but he didn't, so he just snarks here and gets to be embarrassed when someone politely explains the joke to him.

This happens all the time in places with 'context collapse', especially on Twitter - I don't know how many times I've seen someone retweet something 'stupid' or 'obviously wrong', where actually the original tweet was a pretty amusing reference that the retweeter didn't get. (For example, if someone tweets something along the lines of 'They spent $X, for that much money, they could have given every American $Y million dollars!', others might get angry about the arithmetic being wildly wrong by multiple orders of magnitude, thereby demonstrating utter innumeracy... Because the original tweeter is making fun of a famous instance of innumeracy.) It is a particularly infuriating kind of criticism because it often is done in bad faith, due to contempt and laziness and assuming the worst possible interpretation of something one has written with great effort, and it is especially irritating to be condescended to by someone who is so ignorant compared to you that they don't even realize their ignorance.

It's a pity because it makes it hard to write publicly in any way but the most boring way for the lowest common denominator, given that inevitably someone is going to come along and take your Socratic ignorance for genuine ignorance, or your playful misspelling as proof you can't even run a spellchecker, etc, and you can hardly explain every joke without vitiating them.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#56

Post by MilStdJunkie »

ecshafer wrote: post #36

This is a nice article, but it does have some parts that seem off base. First you can walk into any chinese grocery store (in america) and get 20 kinds of tofu, thats really not an issue, and chinese restaurants (in chinatown) will sell many kinds of tofu. The other is that the author makes the mistake of over emphasizing the vegetarianism aspect (which i think some comments here also are). Many chinese dishes with t…

Yeah, saying you're making tofu for dinner is interpreted ideologically in the rural US. Along with your choice of beer and snack chips. I'm not surprised that ideology (and anger!) has been commoditized in the states; after all, if there's a single founding principle in our nation, it's staying out of my way unless your way involves me making a buck. But it's more than a little depressing how easily people get schnookered.

Anyway, dinner is meat, and dessert is this: take one part 65% chocolate chips, melt in microwave[1], add to equal weight silk tofu in bowl of 12 c food processor, whir until combined, spoon into oreo cookie crust, refrigerate 6 hours or overnight. You might never make mousse again. I mean, mousse is better, but it's also 20x fussier. Want some deeper flavor? Add 1 tsp coffee powder, 1 tsp vanilla to the choc/tofu before whir, or lighten[2] with a few tbsp heavy cream.

I've got friends who can't boil water, and I taught 'em this recipe, and to this day it's their best dessert they know how to make. I'm a little proud of the simple recipes like that.

[1] Do you know how to melt chocolate in the nuker without scorching it? Look that up first.

[2] Yes, lighten! The cream catches more air, lifts up the "tofousse" a bit. If you like it even more puffy, add a tub of dairy whip topping, but this makes for a floppy pie when sliced unless you add gelatin.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#57

Post by jibbit »

i commented this before and it got reddit-style piled on, so i deleted it.. but on reflection- i'm not sure why i cared, so putting it back: i was looking forward to some good tofu in tokyo (in restaurants, not shops - i was on holiday), but was surprised it was much harder to find than in america (i'm not from the USA, but have also been on holiday there).

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#58

Post by ecshafer »

downut wrote: post #48
ecshafer wrote: post #36

This is a nice article, but it does have some parts that seem off base. First you can walk into any chinese grocery store (in america) and get 20 kinds of tofu, thats really not an issue, and chinese restaurants (in chinatown) will sell many kinds of tofu. The other is that the author makes the mistake of over emphasizing the vegetarianism aspect (which i think some comments here also are). Many chinese dishes with t…

Right. I've been eating tofu in the US all my adult life, since about 1983 or so. Everywhere I've lived (FL, GA, NC, AZ, CA) it's been available in standard grocery stores, generally with several varieties. Asian markets, as you note, have many varieties. I have a number of vegetarian tofu recipes I like but... my favorite Ma Po tofu recipes (there are innumerable versions) have meat in them. I really dislike how com…

My wife (who is from china) has been doing a lot of pickling in the chinese tradition. Theres a lot of pickled chinese dishes with very interesting taste profiles, especially some of the peppers. In the us we mostly dint pickle much, outside of cucumbers and cabbage, with some things like pickled sausage or eggs having a certain low class / poor canotation. But china pickles a huge variety of foods.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#59

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #35
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #31

The best meat replacer really isn't tofu, it's Seitan. It has the umami quality certain meats & cheeses have, you just need to have another bite, that I've not have had with other meat replacements. I've eaten the most delicious vegetarian chicken made of Seitan over a decade ago in a monastery in Xiamen. Still not sure why it hasn't made it's way to the West. Maybe because of the fact its basically pure gluten.

I can buy it in my local grocery stores and numerous restaurants serve it. I feel like it has gotten to the west, but just isn’t too popular.

Yeah you can buy it, but soya is by far the most popular base for commercial replacement. In China you can buy all sorts of meat replica's based on seitan that are much tastier then current meat replacements way before beyond burger.

Re: America doesn't know tofu

#60

Post by philwelch »

Snow_Falls wrote: post #20
m0llusk wrote: post #14

There are some great Tofu suppliers in America, but also a labor saving device that allows people to easily experiment with variations themselves: https://www.soymilkmaker.com/ One of the problems is that, like so many things in America, tofu has taken on some silly political baggage. Among a significant share of the population, both conservative and health oriented, there is a common belief that soy is full of extro…

Don't forget the anti-asian racism implicit to the belief that soy, a food eaten widely in asia, makes you weak and feminine (whatever that means). The backlash to soy is inextricably tied to old stereotypes of asians as weak and docile.

No, it isn’t. The stereotypical “soy boy” is a white vegan polyamorous hipster from a West Coast city, and most of the backlash to soy is targeted at processed foods than Asian cuisine. It’s more adjacent to the sort of right-wing hippie natural food scene that likes to slonk raw eggs than to any sort of anti-Asian racism.
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