Super-Duper Dubu Cubes

By Julian Warmington

Prelude

This style of cooking dubu (두부, tofu) was first presented to me on a platter-style salad dish at a nice restaurant in Busan about ten years ago. Since then, the recipe has spread around the peninsula, even to a part of a large hansik-style meal mixed with similarly lightly battered and fried mushrooms in a restaurant in the south of Cheonan.

The secret is, I think, to make the batter more of a light coating, rather than how we seem to like fish presented at some fish and chip shops in Aotearoa New Zealand: a heavy, overcooked shell almost strong enough to break teeth and deflect bullets. A lighter coating of just a little flour is quite enough to trap the heat and then the moisture within the dubu, making it fresh, crisp, but still also succulent and juicy, yet also hot and wonderfully tasty when served straight off the frying pan.

Dr. Neal Barnard’s Cookbook for Reversing Diabetes has another variation: simply baking blocks of tofu in an oven tray while soaking in a little low-salt soy sauce. Dr. Michael Greger’s book How Not to Die has a sequel called How Not to Diet, and that book has a companion cookbook; this includes a similar recipe using a lightly battered tempeh instead of tofu. Tempeh is increasingly widely available throughout South Korea. It has a firm texture and a strong flavor, whereas the almost jelly-like dubu tends to absorb tastes from the sauces in which it soaks before and while cooking.

The magic of dubu is its versatility: It goes well with any other food. However you prepare your dubu treat, you can also serve it alone or with your favorite dish: stir-fried rice, noodles, and even with baked or fried potato wedges. It is cheap, easy to find, tasty when cooked creatively, has no cholesterol nor saturated fats, and, best of all, like all my favorite recipes, it is also wonderfully easy to prepare.

Ingredients

• A block or two of dubu = 450-600 grams

• Half a glass of soy milk

• Black pepper; red chilli powder

• Two-thirds cup of plain flour or corn meal

• Grapeseed or sunflower seed oil

• Optional: a cup of breadcrumbs

Preparation

1. Turn on your oven to 170 °C or put a centimeter or less height of oil in a frying pan or wok.

2. Chop dubu into cubes large enough to hold between your chopsticks.

3. Place cubes on paper towels or a grill to dry a little.

4. Pour soy milk and powdered peppers into one bowl; put flour into a second bowl; put breadcrumbs into a third bowl.

5. Dip each cube of dubu and piece of mushroom in each bowl in that order, then place the cubes in an oven tray or frying pan.

6. Cook while turning every minute or two (or five to ten minutes in the oven), so they only start to go a very gentle golden brown.

7. Drain them on a wire grill or paper towel while serving the rest of the meal, then serve while still hot.

The Author Julian Warmington taught for twenty years at the university level in South Korea, half of which he spent in Gwangju. He established and ran the Busan Climate Action Film Festival, has given presentations internationally on teaching about environmental issues within ESL lessons and curricula, and misses visiting downtown Gwangju’s vegan buffet restaurant.

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