Eggy tofu skin with garlic scapes
It’s Saturday in Dali and I’m drinking a strong, bracing cup of Puerh-grown coffee and watching the cafe owner’s large white dog yawn a large Samoyed yawn from where he’s sprawled on the floor. A bird chitters by the window. It's a soft sound, like brushing the tines of a comb with your fingers.
I feel solid and steadied after solitude. There’s something about travel that knocks you loose like a fun whirling top— at some point you’re going to lose momentum, the crash is inevitable. But it’s nice to lay low and quiet for a while. That was me this week.
On the plane I realized Yunnan looks a bit like the Pacific northwest. The blues and greens, the sponge cake mountains. The roads resembling blood vessels, rivers curving around islands and meeting like the necks of a strange, graceful creature. Outside the window, the sun was so bright it acted like a filter, muting the colors of the landscape as we descended. A fast-moving jet passed beneath us, threading through the clouds in the opposite direction. I didn’t know China had so many wind farms in Yunnan, turbines sticking out of the hills like cactus prickles.
The thumping house music in this coffee shop has collapsed into something resembling Respighi, with orchestration. The Samoyed is asleep. I’m hungry. It’s time to go home for lunch.
When it’s raining too hard to go to the market, I remember I have nonperishables in my pantry I should use up. Dried tofu skin is a gift if you remember to soak it in advance. The U-shaped sticks are shelf-stable for months, growing more brittle over time.
I’ve written in The Vegan Chinese Kitchen about tofu skin’s resemblance to egg. Tofu skin is the tangle of protein and fat that develops on the surface of heated soy milk. When lifted off the milk it wrinkles into creamy, pale-yellow folds. In the book I include a recipe for stir-fried tomato and tofu skin, inspired by my favorite tomato and egg dish from childhood - 番茄炒腐竹 on p. 177. (Andrea Nguyen recently wrote a terrific post about tofu skin and a guide to buying it in the US— anyone see it at Trader Joes’ lately?)
I like dried tofu skin because it has a chewier bite. I was intrigued by a cooking hack on Xiaohongshu where someone whisked a couple eggs and dunked the rehydrated tofu skin in the beaten liquid before stir-frying it with chives. Genius. Egg and tofu skin are closely related in both texture and flavor, so why not cook them together?
After playing around I realized you can substitute chickpea flour, which is often used for vegan scrambled eggs. The chickpea batter acts as a binder, sinking into the folds of tofu skin, adding starchy heft and crisping up in the pan. The tofu skin soaks up even more of the sauce with this savory coating. It’s not exactly like egg, but it’s delicious.
My favorite vegetable pairing for this dish is garlic scapes, which add aroma and a juicy sweetness. Garlic scapes are in season right now, but feel free to sub flat garlic chives, scallions, chrysanthemum greens (tonghao), or Chinese celery— anything vegetal and assertive in flavor.
Braised tofu skin with garlic scapes 腐竹炒蒜苔
Serves 2-3
5 ounces (140 g) dried tofu skin sticks / fu-zhu 腐竹