Hakka Stuffed Tofu 客家酿豆腐

How it is made

The Yongding recipe uses firm tofu and a filling of pork (about three parts fat to seven lean), fish, dried shrimp and salted fish, with Chinese cabbage, spring onion, ginger, sesame oil and pepper. The pork and fish are pounded separately to a paste, the shrimp soaked and chopped, and the filling stirred with seasoning until it binds. Each tofu block is cut in four, a slit is opened with chopsticks and the filling pressed in, and the pieces are fried until lightly golden. They are then brought to the boil in stock with blanched cabbage and ginger, thickened, and served in the pot they were cooked in.

In Hakka, niang (酿) is a verb meaning to stuff or insert a filling, so the name means 'tofu with a meat filling'. Wikipedia notes that the filling was traditionally fresh mutton, with pork more common from the Qing dynasty onward.

How it is eaten

At festivals Hakka families traditionally make a batch of tofu, stuff and fry it and keep it in a clay pot, taking out a few pieces for each meal and bringing the rest back to the boil every so often until it is all eaten. In Changting, the ministry feature names the Tingjiang National Wetland Park (汀江国家湿地公园) at Sanzhou village (三洲村) as a place where visitors can taste it, calling it one of the most representative dishes of Hakka food culture.

Where it comes from

A note on the Yongding news site links the dish to the Hakka migration south from the Central Plains: with no wheat to make dumplings in their new homeland, the settlers are imagined to have stuffed tofu instead. The site presents this as a supposition, not a documented history.