Yong tau fu

Lockdown - finally time to make my own fish paste and yong tau fu (釀豆腐).  Lucky I had a sous chef who deep fried everything for me.

Managed to buy spanish mackerel from the fish market.  I always try to pick a piece which is not too close to the tail, but not close to the belly where the guts may have been burst when removed.  That way, I am sure not to have any tainted fish meat.  I also always get the fish monger to cut the piece into cutlets for me, so it is easy for me to remove from the bone/skin.

On to the fish paste - I blend my fish paste by filling my blender with fish pieces, then pouring salted water up until half way.  I then pulse blend the fish meat until it is smooth.  For 1.6kg if meat, after removing from bone/skin, I did 3 batches.

To make the fish paste "bouncy", you need to "throw" the fish paste into the bowl until it becomes smooth / can be shaped to be smooth.  I can tell you I threw the fish paste more than 30 times.

Once the fish paste is ready, it's time to prep your vegetables or other materials for filling. Common vegetables to fill include capsicums, long chillies, okra, eggplant, zucchini, tofu puffs and bean curd skin.  My favourite, and I think the easiest to fill is bean curd skin (aka yuba or "tow kee" in Hokkien).  It is easiest to work with an "oiled" skin - my go to brand is "Plum Blossom" and it's even available from Woolies.

Okay time to get stuffing.  For vegetables, its easy- just shape and stuff into the available space.  For bean curd skin, peel the skin into a single layer.  Apply a thin layer of fish paste across half of the bean curd skin and then fold the other half over.  Use kitchen scissors to cut into bite size pieces.

When everything is filled, it is time to deep fry in oil.  Once cooked, remove as much oil as possible by placing on some kitchen paper.

At this point, you can freeze any yong tau fu you are not immediately eating.  I like to batch mine up in snap lock and seal bags with a variety of sorts suitable for dinner, or for the bean curd skins into their own bags which I can just grab a handful from for my next instant noodles.  Enjoy!