Name: Stuffed Beancurd Squares
Yield: Serves 2–4
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce; ½ teaspoon cornflour mixed with 3 tablespoons water; 1 teaspoon yellow bean sauce; 15 g (½ oz) Chinese dried mushrooms; 1 teaspoon finely chopped spring onions; ½ teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger; 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped garlic; 3 tablespoons roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped; ½ teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns, roasted and ground; 450 g (1 lb) firm beancurd; 1 tablespoon light soy sauce; 1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry; ½ teaspoon salt; 3–4 tablespoons oil, preferably groundnut

Preparation info

Serves
2–4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Ken Hom's Vegetarian Cookery

By Ken Hom

Published 1995

About

Beancurd suffers from an undeserved reputation for excessive blandness and dullness. It is indeed bland (and so is rice), but this is a virtue when properly approached. The trick is to take advantage of beancurd’s generous receptivity to other foods, spices and seasonings. In this recipe, which my cooking colleague Gordon Wing helped to create, we stuffed the beancurd with a mixture of ginger, mushrooms, onions, and other flavours and textures, then pan-fried and covered the beancurd square