This well-known summer dish serves up tofu swimming in a golden stew of crab roe—or is it egg yolk?
If ancient Chinese gastronomes had had social media, much of their time might have been consumed by sharing and commenting under gourmet pictures of crab. “Fresh, fat, sweet, and greasy, white as jade, and yellow as gold. Crabs have the best color, aroma, and flavor that nothing else can compete with,” scholar Li Yu (李渔) opined in the 17th century in his book Leisure Notes (《闲情偶寄》), where he described raising his own crabs in 49 vats in autumn and preserving them in yellow Shaoxing rice wine to be enjoyed for the rest of the year.
Over 1,000 years earlier, Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty (581 – 618) rated the wine-soaked and honey-flavored crabs sent as tribute from Jiangdu (present-day Yangzhou, Jiangsu province) as his “Number One Food,” and would have them served to him with their shells wiped clean and wrapped in dragon-and-phoenix patterned gold foil. Even the contemporary Chinese food writer Cai Lan (蔡澜), born in Singapore in 1941, wrote in his essay “Ode to Crabs (《蟹颂》),” “It is not known who was the first person brave enough to try eating crabs, but they would be granted a Nobel prize if they had lived in modern times.”
How to Make Salty and Delicious Crab Roe Tofu is a story from our issue, “Something Old Something New.” To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine.
Tan Yunfei is the editorial director of The World of Chinese. She reports on Chinese language, food, traditions, and society. Having grown up in a rural community and mainly lived in the cities since college, she tries to explore and better understand China's evolving rural and urban life with all readers.
