The other day, we had a leisure lunch with some very good friends. One item stood out from the menu and winked
at me was a “peach barbequed tofu, grilled summer squash, red onion, eggplant, sweet
peppers, lemon”. For this avid meat-eater
who regularly devoured beef steaks, veal chops, pork bellies and racks of lamb,
tofu was a nice change for a day.
When my tofu plate arrived, I took one look and gasped. The two skewers of grilled tofu were topped
with what looked like dull yellow miso (look
for them in the photograph; they are hidden on the left side of the plate). I could not believe that I was getting Japanese
dengaku
tofu (田楽豆腐) in a western restaurant. And I did not even like dengaku tofu because of
the liberally applied thick and sweet miso.
Testily I took a little bit of the deep yellow glob with my fork and
tasted it. It was sweet, it was not miso, it was peach. Then I remembered that the menu said “peach
barbequed tofu”, which I interpreted as barbequed tofu with grilled peach
halves. Now I got it, it was a clever
interpretation of dengaku tofu, western style.
Each skewer of tofu turned out to be three small
cubes packed together. The top and
bottom surfaces were charred, and the inside was cold. The texture was firm and “meaty”. The natural sweetness of the peach mush did
not clog or interfere with the cold tofu.
I liked the tofu enough to want to play Oliver, “Please, sir, I want
some more.”
Then I dug into the grilled vegetables and had
another surprise. They were cold too. Okay, I knew that grilled vegetables could be
served cold. But no one had warned me,
not the menu, and not our waiter. All I
got were words like “barbequed” and “grilled”, which led me to believe that it
was a warm dish. To be fair, the dish
tasted fine once I got over the initial disappointment. It also helped not to think about the fact
that my six small cubes of tofu cost as much as a fish course.
At home that night, I pan roasted a squab and some
green beans for dinner. The bird and a
glass of wine got me over the tofu blues.
