![]() ![]() For those not familiar with Asian greens, the names look similar even though the appearance and flavor vary greatly. It also works with bok choy-and even romaine lettuce.īut don’t stop with greens! Furu makes a tasty sauce for all manner of food, such as stir-fried cauliflower, deep-fried potatoes or steamed eggplant.To shop like a pro, keep an eye out for Purvey'd Asian veggies guide for making the best choy-ce. But I cannot always get my hands on that green, so here I am using the furu sauce on yu choy/you cai, the most common green in Sichuan, and my personal favorite. Taiwan and Guangdong bestow this treatment on ong choy/kong xin cai, or hollow-stemmed water spinach, which is Fongchong’s favorite green. My favorite traditional use is as a mildly salty, slightly boozy sauce for Chinese greens. Others put that umami to use in a marinade, sauce or hotpot dip. A little plate of it often accompanies congee or rice. It’s similarly good as a spread for toast. Probably the most common way to eat furu in China is smeared on a steamed bun for breakfast. We chose the company’s “fresh-fragrant” flavor, a white furu in a mild chili oil, with just a hint of heat from the chilies and Sichuan pepper, and a touch of boozy rice wine, none of which detracts from the salty, creamy, tangy funk of the furu itself. That led me to Jiajiang Furu, made since 1861 in Jiajiang County, which is part of greater Leshan (of Giant Buddha fame) in central Sichuan. I looked to Sichuan, of course, determined to find the province’s “Famous Brand,” which usually denotes the originator or the oldest and longest-loved maker of a particular product. Case in point: Eastern China’s red fermented tofu, which comes in a deep-red sauce spiked with red yeast rice, tastes quite distinct from the kind of white fermented tofu found in western China, which is usually packed in a light chili oil-type sauce. It can be inoculated with varying microbes or ferment from airborne wild mold it can be fermented once or twice it can be aged a short time or long and it can be fermented and packed in brines with greatly differing flavor profiles. Fermented tofu is made all over China, and as with most things, it can taste quite different depending on its provenance. The Mala Market’s furuĪs I said, I now love furu-so much so that I wanted to make sure we got a stellar example of it when we launched it at The Mala Market. ![]() Jiajiang Furu is a Sichuan Famous Brand, made in Jiajiang County since 1861. But to each his own cheese, and it is perfectly fine with us that while we top our pasta marinara with parmesan cheese, Fongchong tops her with furu. Just like many of you will not believe me that furu is no stronger or weirder than feta. ![]() No matter how many times I tell her that feta cheese is not any stronger or weirder tasting than furu, she won’t believe me. But although I have come to love furu, a dozen years later and FC still won’t touch anything with cheese in it. As we all know, delicious and disgusting are not objective descriptors but have more to do with what we ate at an early age. In fact, fermented bean curd is often called Chinese cheese, so similar is it in look, texture and taste to aged cheese.įongchong is not lactose-intolerant (she could eat whipped cream by the bucket) she just plain doesn’t like cheese, having not grown up with it in any form. This child, who abhorred the very thought of cheese and refused to even try it, nevertheless loved this creamy white fermented substance with a funk and tang that’s a match for blue cheese. When we tasted it, this amused her dad and me to no end. And furu was something she liked, mostly eaten as a side dish with rice or congee. ![]() But we’d make our weekly outing to the Asian supermarket on the west side of Nashville, and she’d cruise the aisles, adding all kinds of stuff to the cart-stuff I had often never tried, even though I had traveled to China many times.įongchong was 11 years old then, and knew what she liked. In the first few months of her life in America communication was rough, with my very basic Mandarin and her non-existent English. But those who have tried it know that furu is yet another in the vast Chinese cupboard of ultra-umami condiments.įuru is a product and flavor that Fongchong introduced me to not long after she became my daughter in 2011. Little cubes of noticeably fermented, yellowy beige or gray tofu come packed in shelf-stable jars with a flavorful brine. Furu, or fermented tofu, is at first mysterious. ![]()
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