One of the new things that I have been spoiled with is what fresh tofu tastes like. There are several companies in Portland that make tofu using family made recipes, and generally I have been purchasing from Bui Natural Tofu- my first vist there and the goodies I came home with were blogged about earlier this year in April– so since then I've been a repeat customer. I am not the only one- their parking lot is always busy each time I've been there, and I know to go earlier to get the fresh hot egg rolls. Don't be put off by the busy lot- people go in and out quickly from this barebones storefront.
I hadn't tried Ota Tofu or Thanh Son Tofu, so I thought I should give them a try. There's only so much tofu we can eat, so we decided the first faceoff round would be Bui vs Thanh, simply because they are located close to each other (within 1/2 a mile).
First tofu try- Bui Tofu in a curry. I like to buy the Maesri curry paste. I heated up the one small can of curry with one can of light coconut milk (I think the instructions make it too milky and wuss out the curry), threw in some additional chopped Thai chili peppers, and once those were heated through just added in the cut up fresh tofu uncooked and turned the heat off. This is a great use of fresh tofu because if you get the prepackaged tofu in liquid, you have to drain it by putting heavy objects on it and it ends up not quite tasting like anything. By using fresh tofu and putting it at the end you get bites of a light clean flavor with the chewy texture to contrast the richer curry.
Second tofu try- Thanh Son Tofu with Bow Tie Pasta in Chipotle Pesto. Cook the pasta, slightly saute the cubed tofu in olive oil, and then throw in the al dente drained pasta and the pesto in the pan and stir with the heat off to mix.
The Chipotle pesto is from Pesto Outside the Box containers of 5oz pesto, which I got from the Portland Farmers Market. As you would expect from the name, the owner creates interesting pestos using an more unique combination of herb and nut besides the standby basil and pine nuts (hey, pine nuts are expensive! And I don't like the parsley blends), such as using pistaschios and creating roasted asparagus hazelnut or a strawberry basil or pineapple macadamia version of pesto. He also makes other kinds of dips for sale sometimes as seasonal specials, varying from the cranberry port chutney to the smoked blue cheese dressing.
Pesto sauce is a nice emergency pantry item to have in the fridge that takes it up a level from just pasta with Ragu when you want a quick dinner and without even a need for cleaning up the food processor afterwards. You can throw pesto in on pasta, with meat, or just slather on bread. His chipotle pesto has a nice smoked flavor that I added in some additional red pepper in for a bit more heat. This is a light dish that tastes pretty good cold too.
Between the two, Bui Tofu wins according to our taste buds! Although we liked the firmness of Thanh Son, and both tasted pretty similarly, Bui had a slight edge in that the fact it wasn't so dense also meant it was lighter on the tongue and the flavor just seemed a bit fresher and appealing. So next round, we'll try Bui vs Ota.
