Honeycomb Tofu Soup

For special show-off dinners, the elderly but always playful head of our Chinese household, Po-fu, would make this soup. It was the traditional ploy of the Chinese gourmet, starring something thoroughly unpretentious and inexpensive as a contrast to an otherwise lavish meal. Other cooks might have bought shark’s fins or busied themselves carving a winter melon. Po-fu cooked tofu.

• Underneath its apparent simplicity, this is a very special soup. The tofu is simme