[Continuation from last post: 'From Above'.]
Same photo, different questions. Take a look at my tray. Looks like some white rice, some greens, some kind of vegetable stir-fry, and what the heck is that in the top right corner?
I’d noticed it on other occasions in one of the hot trays in my college canteen, and I wrote it off as animal innards of the intestinal variety. Trust me, I ate my share of guts when I lived in Taiwan. There are some foods that take getting used to – you might not like them at first, but they grow on you, and you wonder how you avoided it for so long. Goat cheese was like that for me. But not guts. Nope. My brain tells my mouth that guts are not food, were never meant to be food, and that are mostly designed to process and/or flush waste products from bodies.
A few days ago, I met up with one of the students I’ve become friends with for dinner, and I asked him, “So, what do you recommend?” And he pointed out the very thing I’d been avoiding for months. And as if reading my mind said, “It looks like meat, but it’s not.” And then it dawned on me that it must be some kind of tofu-related dish.
Bingo. My young friend called it dòupí (豆皮 pronounced ‘doe-pee’), which roughly translates to ‘tofu or bean curd skin’. I have tried looking it up online, and the doupi I see doesn’t look quite the same – perhaps this was a regional variety. Basically, the skin is the film that is produced on the top of boiled soy milk. In this dish, the thin skin is rolled and there is a beautiful sauce that it is cooked in. It is absolutely delicious and decadent. Soft and juicy, your teeth are cushioned as they sink through the multiple layers. There is a slightly sweet taste and upon chewing, a spicy tang. It is quite difficult to describe, but it must be tried. It is also really filling. Take a look at some close-ups below.
