I recently visited an Okiniwan diner, Nirai-Kanai @ Liang Court, Singapore, and was delightfully surprised to stumble on a side dish that I had never heard of, much less tried, before! As you might have guessed from the title, it's named as a type of "tofu", but actually has none of the ingredients that tofu is normally made of. It may as well be described as peanut pudding. In the Okinawan dialect of Japanese, it's known as "jimami" tofu. The same word in standard Japanese would have been "chimame", or literally ground bean/nut.
Apparently, it is made similarly to tofu, except that you replace the soybeans with peanuts as the ingredient and extract the milk from it, then use a slightly different ingredient to curdle the resulting milk. The traditional method is to soak the soybeans until they are soft, boil them, grind them to a powder, then repeatedly add water and press it out of the ground beans. This process is used on peanuts instead for the peanut tofu.
Also, while a few different ingredients may be used for curddling the tofu, peanut tofu uses kuzu mochi powder (which comes from a type of mugwort I believe)... I don't think any type of tofu is made with that. And it produces a vastly different texture, as I will explain later.
This peanut tofu which I had tasted like a bland and woody boiled groundnut soup. In Singapore, we have a peanut soup dessert, where peanuts are boiled (sometimes smashed I guess) until the soup turns slightly cloudy or milky in appearance. I thought that this peanut tofu tasted much like that peanut soup dessert, except that there was no sugar in the peanut tofu.
The yellow bits on top were ground ginger, and the sauce was the typical soy-based tofu sauce used in Japanese cuisine. It was an interesting combination, that woody, spicy and savoury trio, but it went really well together!
Finally, as I've hinted, the texture visually looked exactly like normal silken tofu, even when you scooped into it with your spoon. But once it hits your mouth, it seemed to collapse into a thick and creamy pudding (a la Kobe style), and was not bouncy at all, which real tofu is.
Well, the interior design of the diner was apparently very authentically decked out, as those who've been to Okinawa attest to. So I suppose the peanut tofu should be relatively authentic. Anyway, it was good, and I'm glad to have access to such interesting cuisine from the comfort of Singapore. Will look to visit them again for my next peanut tofu fix!
Also, while a few different ingredients may be used for curddling the tofu, peanut tofu uses kuzu mochi powder (which comes from a type of mugwort I believe)... I don't think any type of tofu is made with that. And it produces a vastly different texture, as I will explain later.
This peanut tofu which I had tasted like a bland and woody boiled groundnut soup. In Singapore, we have a peanut soup dessert, where peanuts are boiled (sometimes smashed I guess) until the soup turns slightly cloudy or milky in appearance. I thought that this peanut tofu tasted much like that peanut soup dessert, except that there was no sugar in the peanut tofu.
The yellow bits on top were ground ginger, and the sauce was the typical soy-based tofu sauce used in Japanese cuisine. It was an interesting combination, that woody, spicy and savoury trio, but it went really well together!
Finally, as I've hinted, the texture visually looked exactly like normal silken tofu, even when you scooped into it with your spoon. But once it hits your mouth, it seemed to collapse into a thick and creamy pudding (a la Kobe style), and was not bouncy at all, which real tofu is.
Well, the interior design of the diner was apparently very authentically decked out, as those who've been to Okinawa attest to. So I suppose the peanut tofu should be relatively authentic. Anyway, it was good, and I'm glad to have access to such interesting cuisine from the comfort of Singapore. Will look to visit them again for my next peanut tofu fix!
If you don't live in Okinawa, peanut curd might be highly unusual to you. If you found this interesting, you can explore more exceptionally unusual food and drinks here!
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