Hakka Yong Tau Fu 客家酿豆腐 (Home Cooked)

My mom is Hakka ngin. My grandparents are both Hakka, my grandfather only speaks Hakka. I grown up at my grandparent's, there is where I learn my Hakka  dialect and food from. 

Most of the time, I learn cooking through observations, tries & errors and of course from recipes. 

One day, I was chatting with an old friend from Penang, he told me he and his family will be in town over the weekend. I invited them over for dinner to meet up, as we have not see each other for a long time and he always says he missed my cooking. His wife is a friend from my childhood and also my housemate in uni days. Studying abroad, we always cook stuff and eat together. I was asking them what they want to eat, they can't really decide and I can't decide either. At the end, I decided to cook Yong Tau Fu. 

Here are the ingredients:- 

Minced pork 1kg

Fish paste 500g

Salted fish

Garlic

Seasoning - soy sauce, pepper

Fish paste portion is always half of minced meat. Mixed everything together and stuff the filling to the things that you want to eat. Like tofu, brinjal, bitter gourd, green chili and etc. Once ready, pan fry each of them to cook then add sauce to each of them. For the sauce, I just cook them with soy sauce and oyster sauce with a bit of pepper. The Yong To Fu soup is cooked with soy bean, first fry the tofu to golden brown then put in soup to cook with soy bean.

 

Here is what I did.

  The tofu

 

brinjal and bitter gourd 

Here's the food presentation. I also made Yong Egg with Kwong Sai influence (I am a Kwong Sai). We sometimes eat Yong To Fu wrapped with Chinese lettuce. The white stuff is actually spring roll wrap in chee cheong fun skin, leftover from the previous day's party. 

 

One for the record.. cheers!

 

I was a bit worried if we can finish all the food, wa lah.. all cleaned up!

Cooking yong to fu seems simple but it's a lot of work, as u need to stuff the meat into each of the tofu or brinjal or whatever you decides that you want to eat. For me, all this is worth it when I see my friends enjoy my cooking and finish all of them! 

I don't know when I will cook yong to fu again, definitely not this year, maybe next, maybe not...