Tomato and Tofu

Hetty Lui McKinnon

PUBLISHED February 7, 2025

My love affair with the Chinese home-style dish tomato and egg began not as a voracious Chinese girl at my mother’s dining table, but in 2015, the year our family moved to the United States. Moving countries and leaving my home, my family, but particularly my mother, was the catalyst for a seismic shift in how I regarded my life and my heritage. I began to reach for the small details, the fleeting moments that tethered me, this feisty Chinese-Australian adult living in Brooklyn, to that small timid girl, “tiny number 3” as my dad called me, growing up in the quiet suburbs of southwest Sydney. And as I dug deep, sweeping away the cobwebs of time, I arrived back home, perched at my mother’s kitchen table, with a bowl of rice in one hand, chopsticks in the other, piling gee yook biang (Cantonese steamed “pork cake”), shiu dan (steamed water-egg custard) and tomato and egg into my bowl. There are many dishes that stir my culinary nostalgia, but there is something deeply comforting about tomato and egg, a taste of home for the Chinese kids all over the world. This is my latest take on this dish, with all the same flavors, but the egg has been replaced with silky soft tofu. It’s only a slight deviation from the original, but the tofu offers a delicate texture and creamy flavor. Same, but different. – Hetty Lui McKinnon

 

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Tomato and Tofu

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Makes 4 servings 1x

Units Scale

Ingredients

  • 3 large tomatoes (about 2 lb/900 g), such as beefsteak
  • Neutral oil
  • 1 small red onion, cut into thin wedges
  • 1-inch (2.5 cm) piece of ginger ( 3/4 oz/20 g), peeled and finely chopped
  • 1/4 cup (40 g) brown sugar
  • Sea salt and white pepper
  • 14 ounces (400 g) silken tofu, drained
  • White rice, to serve
  • 2 green onions, finely sliced
  • Chili oil, for topping (optional)

Instructions

Set up a large bowl with ice and cold water—this is your ice bath for peeling the tomatoes. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Using a small, sharp knife, score a small “x” at the bottom of each tomato, then add the tomatoes to the boiling water. The skin will wrinkle and split—this should take 1–1 1/2 minutes. Remove the tomatoes from the water and drop them straight into the ice bath. Once the tomatoes are cool, lift them out of the water and peel away their skin. Chop the tomato flesh.

Heat a skillet or saucepan over medium-high heat. Add a drizzle of oil, along with the onion and ginger, stir well and cook for 2 minutes, until softened. Add the tomato, then cover, reduce

the heat to medium low and cook for 5 minutes. Add the brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of water, then squash the tomato a little to break it up. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes. Season with 1–2 teaspoons of sea salt and a dash of white pepper. Using a large spoon, scoop out large chunks of silken tofu and add it to the tomato. Cook for 2–3 minutes, just until the tofu is warmed through.

Serve with rice, topped with the green onion and chili oil, if you like.

– Recipe from Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds. © 2023 by Hetty Lui McKinnon. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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