January 2023 Part 2: Introducing Sichuan Furu, Fermented Tofu

Furu is a product and flavor that Fongchong introduced me to not long after she became my daughter, pulling it off the grocery shelf on one of her first shopping trips in the U.S. While many Chinese eat it spread on steamed bread, she mostly eats furu as an accompaniment to rice or congee—or as a topping for Italian red-sauce pasta! 

Others put that umami to use in marinades, sauces or hotpot dip. My favorite traditional use is as a tangy sauce for Chinese greens. Taiwan and Guangdong bestow this treatment on ong choy/kong xin cai, or hollow-stemmed water spinach (The Woks of Life recipe). But I cannot always get my hands on that green, so here I am using the furu sauce on yu choy/you cai, the most common green in Sichuan. It also works with bok choy—and even romaine lettuce (Made With Lau recipe).

But don’t stop with greens! Furu makes a tasty sauce for all manner of vegetable, such as stir-fried cauliflower (Serious Eats recipe), deep-fried potatoes (see below) and steamed eggplant.
 

Besides the traditional uses, fermented tofu is one of those ingredients that cooks love to employ in untraditional ways. Chinese tofu cheese can indeed stand in for dairy cheese, as Kathy found when she used it in place of Pecorino Romano in a pasta carbonara. 

"Whereas some dishes have no business being called a 'Chinese version' (see: zhájiàngmiàn as 'Chinese bolognese,' dumplings as 'Chinese pierogi'), this dish is literally carbonara with Chinese ingredients. From the noodles (dried alkaline wheat noodles with great springy heft) to the guanciale sub (classic Chinese pork sausage) to the ground pepper (white instead of black) and, finally, the fermented tofu that makes this dairy-free carbonara so special, you could serve this dish to a Chinese person and not be questioned... until they found out about the just-set egg, maybe."
 

No ketchup or mayonnaise needed when you've got furu in the house! These fried potatoes go straight from the wok into a bowl of furu sauce, where they are tossed with aromatics to create a potato like no other you've ever had. The photo above doesn't really do it justice, as you can't see the furu clinging to the crispy spuds or taste the tang. Everyone in this house found it irresistible. 

This recipe comes from Chinese Cooking Demystified, who modeled it after a popular street snack in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. Steph says that the aromatics can change according to whim, but the furu is what makes these special. 

You need to be a Patreon subscriber of CCD to read their entire book chapter on furu, its making and uses, but they have generously allowed us to share this recipe here. 

Make sauce by combining ingredients until smooth in a large bowl:
1 piece white fermented tofu, smashed
1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp black vinegar
1 tsp roasted chili flakes
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp MSG

Prep the aromatics of your choice:
1 clove garlic, minced
2 fresh red Thai chilies, minced
1 scallion, minced
cilantro (or mint), minced
1/4 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1/8 tsp ground Sichuan pepper

Cut 400g (apx. 1 pound) of potatoes into 1 1/2 inch pieces, using a roll cut or bias cut to make angled sides. Soak potatoes in water for half an hour, strain, and pat them dry. Deep-fry the potatoes at a medium temp until they are golden. (Preferably in a wok, as it requires less oil.) Remove potatoes from the oil, strain well, and add them to the bowl of furu sauce. Mix well, then add the aromatics and mix again. 
 

 

Tradition doesn't call for eating rabbit to celebrate a rabbit year, but what can we say, we have rabbit on the brain. So here is a great recipe for a cold rabbit dish that explains why Sichuan loves rabbit so much. 

Chengdu’s famous Erjie Tuding is based off a Sichuan 凉拌 (liángbàn)/cold-dressed dish traditionally eaten in the fall. It belongs to our reader-favorite Cooking with Pixian Doubanjiang recipe series. There are several variations of Sichuan’s cold-dressed rabbit, but the most famous is Chengdu’s 二姐兔丁 (èrjiě tùdīng), “Second Sister Rabbit Cubes.”

Colorful, crunchy, chewy and chilled, it features—in addition to little nuggets of bone-in rabbit—ground huajiao, ground chilies, sugar, sesame seeds, douchi (fermented black soybeans), roasted peanuts, scallions, sesame oil, 3-year Pixian doubanjiang, lajiaoyou (Sichuan chili oil) and Zhongba 360 light soy sauce. In other words, Sichuan in a sauce! 
 

 

This is Fongchong and her cousin Will eating spicy rabbit heads in Chengdu a few years back. This super popular snack is another reason Sichuan consumes the majority of the world's rabbit meat. 

If you want to eat rabbit heads (or any other snack) on the streets of Chengdu yourself, contact our friends at Chengdu Food Tours. As China opens its doors again, it may just be possible in 2023!