Today (January 27) is the twenty-fifth day of the lunar month. "Twenty-five, grind tofu", "tofu" is the harmonic sound of "Dufu", but also express people's prayers for the New Year.
Hirayama Kozuki tofu making technique. Photo by Li Sanbo
For thousands of years, tofu has been loved by people as a nutritious and salty ingredient for all ages. The Ming Dynasty poet Su Ping's "Yong Tofu Poem" describes the beauty of tofu as "spinning and grinding the flowing qiong liquid, boiling snowflakes in the boiling moon bell", while the Northern Song Dynasty writer Su Shi's "Another Answer to the Second Yuzi and Wang Lang See he" describes the rosin flavor of tofu as "boiled beans as milk fat as crisp".
Guyue tofu has a long history and is a classic food in Pingshan County, Hebei Province. Guyue Town, Pingshan County, has the custom of making tofu since ancient times, and the tofu making technology in Pingshan has a history of about 2,000 years, with full grains of soybeans and high-quality water sources, coupled with the tofu making skills passed down by generations, which has achieved the characteristics of Guyue tofu being smooth, delicate and fragrant. In 2018, "Pingshan Guyue Tofu Making Technique" was selected into the seventh batch of municipal intangible cultural heritage list in Shijiazhuang.
Since the 1980s, a farmer named Li Wenwen in Guyue Village, Pingshan, has absorbed the local traditional production methods, improved the tools (tofu cloth bag changed to Luo, stone grinding beans into water mill), reduced labor intensity, through the accumulation of long-term experience and formed a set of fine traditional production processes, with its process to make tofu unique soft, tender, tendon, smooth, pure taste, not rotten, pure color, high quality of the remarkable characteristics, can be called "the best of tofu".
Guyue tofu production is generally: in the first afternoon to select soybeans - soak soybeans in water (according to the season, temperature to determine the length of time, summer soaking time is short, winter soaking time is long) - fishing beans (remove impurities) - bumping beans (broken), grinding beans (ground bean foam is a slag slurry) - splashing foam (with the right amount of boiling water to spread the bean foam) - artificial pressing and filtering on the pot table - boiling pulp (master the heat, the soybean milk is fully cooked) - scoop into the original spitting pot - wait for the soybean milk to cool down to a certain temperature, Start brine, let the soy milk solidify into a tofu brain shape - put the tofu package into the tofu box, and then put the tofu brain into the tofu bag, wrap it up - use a heavy object on the tofu package to suppress - form - the finished tofu product is basically made (the finished product is placed overnight and then sold). The whole production process takes about 30+ hours.
The production technology of Pingshan Guyue tofu is full of the history of the evolution of folk life in the Pingshan Guyue area and even in Pingshan County, which is of high value for the study of the history of Pingshan folklore; it involves scientific methods and methods such as squeezing and separation, pointing and brine, etc., which has scientific value; the whole technique embodies the "people and food for the sky", advocating the green food concept of natural and natural and human unity, and has national cultural characteristics. (Editing by Manan)