Liu An Ya good Taoism, want to seek longevity and agelessness of the art, spared no expense to recruit a wide range of magic, which is more famous Su Fei, Li Shang, Tian Yu, Lei Bo, Wu Bo, Jin Chang, Mao was, Zuo Hao eight people, known as the "eight males". Liu An Yu, accompanied by the eight gentlemen, climbed the northern mountain and built a furnace to make elixir for longevity. They take the mountain "pearl", "big spring", "horse running" three springs of fresh and clean water grinding bean juice, and bean juice to cultivate the Dan seedlings, but the alchemy is not expected, bean juice and salt brine into a fragrant, attractive, white and tender. Attractive, white and tender things. The local bold farmers to take and eat, surprisingly delicious, so named "tofu". The North Mountain has been renamed "Bakong Mountain", and Liu An has inadvertently become the ancestor of the bean curd.
Since Liu An invented tofu, the villages and towns in the vicinity of Bakong Mountain have become a veritable "town of tofu".
With tofu, there are naturally tofu dishes. Eight Gongshan people, not to mention the average housewife, that is, fourteen or fifteen-year-old dolls can make a few kinds of different flavors of the tofu dishes, such as what the tofu mixed with tofu, tofu eggs, spicy sauce mixed with tofu, fried tofu and so on. After the reform and opening up, the streets of Bakongshan "tofu museums" abound, known far and wide. They or simmering, or boiled, or fried, or deep-fried, or slipped ...... together silk, carving each show their skills, not only attracted the local people often come to the addiction, Hefei, Bengbu and other neighboring cities and counties, people patronize the "Tofu Banquet" every now and then, and even Germany, Britain, Japan, Holland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries Even guests from Germany, Britain, Japan, Holland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries and regions often gather at the bottom of Bakong Mountain to taste the "Shou Peach Tofu", "Pipa Tofu", "Grape Tofu", "money tofu" and so on, more than 400 kinds of realistic shape, colorful, delicious and unique flavor of the tofu dishes. Tofu culture is also gradually spread throughout the whole of China. North and South Dynasty Liang Dynasty Jiankang (now Nanjing) people Zhuge Ying had written "King Huainan Food Classic)) 130 volumes, adjacent to the Huainan Jiangsu is obviously "near the water tower first get the moon", the first by the influence of the tofu culture. Until now, Jiangsu people also put the tofu, gluten, mushrooms, bamboo shoots as the four major vegetarian dishes.
After the Song and Ming Dynasties, the culture of tofu is more widely spread, many literati also into the ranks of the spreader. The Northern Song Dynasty great writer Su Dongpo good food tofu, Yuanyou two years to Wuyou four years as governor of Hangzhou during the period, had personally made Dongpo tofu. Lu You, a poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, also recorded the cooking of tofu dishes in his self-edited Weinan Wenji. More interesting is the Qing Dynasty Minister Song Eminent about the Kangxi Emperor and tofu a record. At the time of Kangxi's southern tour of Suzhou, the emperor's new gift to the minister is not gold and jade curiosities, but rather humane, rustic tofu dishes.
With the spread of tofu culture, people around the world in accordance with their own tastes, continue to develop and enrich the production methods of tofu dishes. To this day, there are the "pocket tofu" in eastern Sichuan, featuring milky soup, olive-like, tender texture and delicious flavor; "Mapo tofu" in Chengdu, which is renowned both at home and abroad, is characterized by numbness, spiciness, freshness, tenderness, and hotness}. Tofu in Lotus Bread", Hangzhou's famous dish "Simmered Frozen Tofu", Wuxi's "Mirror Tofu", Yangzhou's "Dried Shredded Pork Boiled in Chicken Sauce", Tunxi's "Dried Shredded Pork Boiled in Chicken Sauce Wuxi "mirror tofu", Yangzhou "chicken sauce boiled dry silk", Tunxi "moldy tofu", and tofu clothes as raw material "rotten intestines with curd milk" and so on. When tofu dishes to the more distant frontier, the unique flavor is also more rich. For example, Jilin prevalent "vegetarian chicken tofu", color and lustre beautiful, five flavors; and "clams and almonds tofu", almonds to relieve coughs and intestines, clams to clear the head and eyesight, tofu is soft and delicate, pure milky white color, the dish tastes sweet and short-term refreshing. In addition, the Korean people with beef, vermicelli, eggs, tofu made of "plum cloud soup", Guangxi Zhuang famous dish "steamed tofu round", Yunnan Dali Bai people have "preserved screw tofu", tender and spicy, wax fragrance. Tender and spicy, wax fragrance. And "ice sugar screw tofu", is to nourish yin and fire, Yee treatment of neurasthenia folk flavor tonic ...... In this way, in the long-term social development, asked the Shouxian Bakongshan tofu, finally spread throughout the land of the gods, and gradually formed the eight series of China's tofu: One is water tofu, including the coarse texture of the northern tofu and tender southern tofu; two for the semi-dehydrated products, mainly 100 leaves, such as sheet; three for the deep-fried products, mainly deep-fried tofu bubbles and deep-fried Jinshi; four for the brine products, including five-spice tofu jerky and five-spice tofu silk; five for the smoked products, such as smoked vegetarian intestines, smoked vegetarian tripe; six for the frozen products, that is, frozen tofu; seven for the dried products, such as bean curd skin, oil skin; eight for the Fermented products, including the familiar tofu milk, stinky tofu and so on. These eight types of products, Anhui Huainan's Bakongshan tender tofu, Guangxi's Guilin white curd, Zhejiang Shaoxing curd, Heilongjiang's Kedong curd, Guangdong's three sides of the bamboo, Beijing's Wang Zhihe stinky tofu, Wuhan's stinky dry seeds, etc., have become famous in China and abroad, tofu boutique.
Over the past 2000 years, with the exchange of Chinese and foreign cultures, tofu not only throughout the country, but also to the world.
Speaking of this history, we have to mention the Tang Dynasty monk Jianzhen. Tianbao 12 years (757 AD), Jianzhen east to Japan, brought tofu production methods. To this day, the Japanese tofu bags still have the words "Tang dynasty dried tofu Berber Mountain Imperial Huainan Hall system", and many tofu recipes directly using the Chinese name. For example, "Couple's tofu in January", "Ribo tofu in February", "Deep-fried ball tofu in March", "Yakitori tofu in April "April," "May fish tofu" and so on.
After Japan, neighboring countries such as Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines also learned the art of tofu making from China. Later, with a large number of Chinese expatriates footprints, Chinese tofu went to Western Europe, North America, almost all countries in the world have the production and sale of soybean food.
At the same time, people around the world have enriched the culture of tofu with their own wisdom and customs. For example, Japan's eastern neighbor to natural pigments as raw materials, the production of red, blue, green colorful tofu; North Korean people according to local resources, the production of different flavors of the tofu soup: soybean paste tofu soup, Hargow tofu soup, Mentai fish tofu soup, and so on; Indonesians generally love to eat "sauce mixed with fried tofu"; Burmese people Vietnamese people have created a quite Southeast Asian style of "sauce mixed with eggdrops tofu". The Burmese and Vietnamese have created a Southeast Asian style of "soy sauce with eggs and tofu", "assorted dishes". It is worth mentioning that Singapore and Malaysia popular "meat bone tea", in fact, is also a kind of tofu dishes. In the United States, businessmen are processing tofu into colorful and delicious fast food, such as tofu salad, tofu hamburgers, tofu ice cream, tofu duck, tofu wedding cake, etc., in the market is very popular. 1980s, the world of diet and nutritional sciences, the emergence of an attention-getting "tofu fever", high protein, Low-fat tofu food more and more by the world's people's favorite, become the scientific community unanimously respected by the delicious health care of the nutritional benefits. Tofu is soybeans, green soybeans, black soybeans as raw materials, soaked, grinded, filtered, boiled, fine, coagulation and molding and other processes from the most extensive, one of the most popular cooking materials. Tofu and tofu products have a higher protein content than soybeans, and tofu protein is a complete protein, not only contains eight essential amino acids, and its ratio is close to the human body needs, nutritional efficiency is higher. Tofu also contains fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. Chinese medicine theory, tofu taste sweet and cool, into the spleen, stomach, large intestine, with the benefit of qi and in the middle, the body fluid moist dryness, heat detoxification effect, can be used to treat the red eye, thirst, sulfur, alcohol, such as poison. Although tofu is good, eat more also have disadvantages, too much can be harmful to health.