Painting blank masterpieces

In revealing the art of making tofu, which a novice imagines must be comparable to painting a house multiple shades of beige, Alvin Kunishi turns ardent.

"Good tofu," he says, listing its complex range of variables and infinite virtues, "should be soft, not too hard, good texture, doesn't fall apart, holds together and has a custard consistency. People have different ideas about what is a good tofu. I try to get a good medium between silken and chewy."

This is tofu he's talking about.

Not a sumptuous, Bordeaux-style wine.

Kunishi, 62, has been making tofu since he was a boy. Today, he is a tofu master. Let everybody else snicker about tofu. He takes it seriously. He and his wife, Dorothy, own Sacramento Tofu Co., which was started by Kunishi's father. To Kunishi, tofu is a part of his cultural heritage, a proud patrimony that weighs on his shoulders like a silken block of granite.

Dorothy Kunishi, also 62, has a somewhat more irreverent take on tofu. It's funny food. Wholesome Jell-O.

"People are always put off by tofu," she says, making a comical face. "They go, 'Oh, tofu! Yuck!' "

Then she turns defense attorney, pleading, "But you've never had our tofu. It has virtually no flavor. I think it's innocuous. You can throw it into anything. We eat it raw, tossed in our salads. I put it in my waffle batter. I like it with a dash of wasabi and soy sauce. I don't think people know what to do with it. I call it the whipping boy of the food industry."

Poor tofu. Pounded silly like Swiss steak.

Then, in an inspired phrase that has the pithiness of a Zen koan, she says, "It's the perfect nothing."

Ah! What an apt description.

Tofu, a blank canvas, is amenable to any landscape or flavor palette. It has the rare ability to transcend its own splendid blandness. Tofu, with a little artful seasoning and kitchen primping, can be prime rib. Or tiger prawns. Or whatever you want it to be. It is genuinely, unapologetically ersatz.

Tofu, in a process akin to that of cheese manufacturing, is made from soybeans. It is a veritable protein bomb and from an ecological standpoint, vastly less expensive to produce than, say, cattle. If tofu were a building product, it would be the quintessence of "green."

Here's a cube of tofu history: Tofu goes back to third century China. Like an edible raft, by the 15th century, it had floated over to Japan. The first tofu manufacturer in the United States was Wo Sing & Co., which opened in San Francisco in 1878. The second tofu company, Hirata & Co., began in Sacramento in 1895. At one time, every Japantown on the West Coast had several thriving tofu companies.

Sacramento Tofu Co. celebrates its 60th anniversary next year. It was founded in 1947 by Hiroshi "Tom" Kunishi, a gregarious man, who, fresh from an internment camp, knew little about making tofu. Today, the company produces 6,000 pounds a week. Its product has shelf space at choice Nugget Markets and Raley's.

Even so, tofu is no golden goose.

"We spend all our energies struggling to survive," says Alvin Kunishi, relishing the prospect of tofu retirement.

Today, most of the small tofu shops have gone out of business or have been eaten up by corporate food giants. Azumaya, a famous family-owned tofu company in San Francisco, was purchased in the early 1990s by Vitasoy USA, which then shut down the Bay Area plant and moved the soy operation to Ayer, Mass.

Hinoichi, started in Los Angeles in 1947, was gobbled up by House Foods of Japan in 1993. House Foods is reportedly the largest producer of tofu in the United States, its Garden Grove plant capable of making 220,000 blocks of tofu a day.

Noriko Tsuiji, a House company spokeswoman, declined to divulge sales figures, but offered a report that shows overall sales of tofu in the United States had grown from $99 million in 1992 to $265 million by 2003. House Foods also sponsors the somewhat zany Tofu Festival each August in Los Angeles. Last year, the festival attracted 25,000 tofu fanatics.

Tofu, like spinach, is good for you. "Tofu contains a category of compounds (isoflavones) that help in a whole array of age-related diseases, from cancers to cardiovascular problems to osteoporosis," says Liz Applegate, an expert on food and fitness, who teaches a popular course in nutrition at UC Davis.

Applegate reports that students today, perhaps unlike their carnivorous parents, are receptive to tofu. She herself loves tofu and typically purchases fresh tofu from Sacramento Tofu Co.

"It's great grilled," she says. "I cube it up like kebabs, add peanut sauce, red pepper and green onions."

Today, with all the old tofu shops gone, there is a small but growing market in artisanal tofu makers. This is especially evident in the Los Angeles area, in the Vietnamese community. One hot spot is Vinh Loi Tofu, in Reseda, a vegan restaurant about the size of a catering truck. Its owner, Kevin Tran, 38, makes just 100 pounds of tofu a day, including such inventive varieties as lemon grass-and-chili, plus mushroom-and-noodle.

In Sacramento, Fay Wong Tofu is a tiny operation located in a storefront along Franklin Boulevard. It is owned by Long Trinh, 24, an immigrant from Vietnam, who took over the business from his aunt. He says the company mostly supplies Asian markets on Stockton Boulevard. He hopes to relocate in October to a new, 3,000-square-foot facility.

"Tofu is good, but it is not profitable," he says. "It is so labor-intensive. Right now, we can't increase our production because we make tofu the old-fashioned way. Everything is done by hand."

On a recent morning, the cogs and wheels of Sacramento Tofu Co.'s steel machinery are in clamorous dance. The company, off Power Inn Road, is housed inside a 14,900-square-foot warehouse, which is so damp and humid it could cultivate a jungle of orchids.

About a dozen employees are sloshing about in black rubber boots, knee-length yellow aprons. Almost all of the workers are Southeast Asian immigrants.

The production process goes thusly: soybeans, the color of corn, the size of pintos, are soaked overnight in a huge, stainless steel tank. Drained, they are sucked into a hopper, gravity-fed into a grinder; the mash is then transferred into three cooking pots. The fibrous material is extracted, a coagulant (sea salt or calcium sulphite) is added to the soy milk, which, now mushy like oatmeal, goes into a pneumatic press.

After a few more steps, some Kunishi abracadabra, and voila! Out come racks of warm, off-white, spongy tofu, which are sliced into bricks, with some even boiled in hot oil to make a product called "abe."

Later, in the afternoon, the tofu packaged up, the machinery quiet, the crew gone, Alvin and Dorothy sit fatigued in the lunchroom to tell their story of tofu, which has aspects of a tragicomedy, for sure.

Alvin is a roly-poly man with a graying mustache, a sometimes fretful manner. Dorothy is all blithe spirit and a shag of clipped, white hair. Where he is grave, she is uproarious. Both are internment camp babies. Alvin was born at Tule Lake; Dorothy at Jerome, Ark.

Neither ever had dreams of running a tofu company. Far from it. Dorothy grew up in Fresno, where her parents owned a small grocery. She vowed never to toil as hard as her mother. Alvin's family lived behind the tofu factory, which was then located on Sixth Street. As a boy, Alvin cleaned the tofu racks, delivered tofu to local markets, and probably had nightmares of monster soybeans. He went away to college.

The couple married in 1972. She was a schoolteacher in Berkeley; he was a nuclear engineer working on submarines at Mare Island, near Vallejo. Then, in 1979, Alvin got a fateful call from his ailing father.

"He told me to come home," says Alvin. "That I was his only son. That I was the only one could run the business."

Alvin, the dutiful son, obeyed. But no sooner did Alvin come back than his father died. Thus, Alvin, this engineer of nuclear submarines, was left at the helm of what amounted to a wooden tall ship.

"At the time, I thought it was a good deal," says Alvin. "I thought I could grow the business. So, I came back. We bought a house, had a child. We settled in."

Twenty-seven years later, the company has earned the respect of the Japanese-American community and the gratitude of plenty of loyal customers.

"It's a quality product," says Gordon Langstaff, co-owner of Sophia's Thai Kitchen in Davis. "A lot of our customers are vegetarians and vegans. So, we have it delivered fresh twice a week."

"It comes in daily," says Michael Oto, of Oto's Japan Food. "Just like a delivery of bread. We are fortunate to have such a company in town. The majority of our customers like fresh. If they know you have fresh, they will take that over packaged."

Oto's sells upwards of 150 tofu blocks a day, at $1.75 each.

Bill Satow, 76, is a faithful customer. He has been buying tofu from Sacramento Tofu Co. for 25 years. He likes it fresh. Really fresh. Just-off-the-press fresh. So Satow, a retired state worker, shows up at the company every Monday morning and picks up a half-dozen blocks of still-warm tofu for his family.

"The freshness is important to me," says Satow. "It really, really makes a difference."

But Satow has other reasons for showing up religiously in person each week. "Alvin and Dorothy are nice people," he says. "I appreciate their friendship."

In 1991, the Kunishis moved to this bigger location in an industrial park. They have made some investment in new equipment. But business is tough. Their primary market, the city's Japanese community, is but a shadow of its former self. The couple have a daughter who, smart girl, has no interest in making tofu.

But they endure. Dorothy, whose sense of humor is sustaining, jokes that she has turned out just like her mother -- a friendly woman who learned to speak Spanish just so she could better serve her Mexican customers in Fresno. Dorothy, a tofu counselor, finds herself happily engrossed in her customers' lives.

Alvin strives to make the perfect tofu. There is a Japanese word to describe such a delectable state. It's "A-sari" (pronounced "ah-sorry"), which means "simple and refreshing."

"That's what we say about our tofu," says Alvin. "It's very refreshing."

A-sari.

The perfect nothing.

"That's why we stay in business," says Kunishi, the obedient son of a tofu maker. "People want us to stay on. They tell us to continue. Not to quit. To hang in there. They tell us ours is the best tofu."

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Baked tofu

Prep time: 25 minutes | Cook time: 35 minutes | Serves 4 to 6

From "Kitchen Sense: More Than 600 Recipes To Make You a Great Home Cook" by Mitchell Davis (ClarksonPotter, $35, 544 pages).

The chewy texture and delicate flavor of baked tofu is a nice accompaniment to salad, a good filling for a sandwich, or a great snack. The secrets are to let the tofu marinate long enough to pick up some flavor and to bake it long enough so that it is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Note: The prep time does not include the marinate time.

Ingredients

6 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey or sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 to 2 teaspoons Asian garlic chili sauce or other hot sauce
1 pound firm or extra-firm tofu, approximately, drained and cut into  1/2-inch-thick slices
Vegetable oil

Instructions

In a small bowl, blend the soy sauce, honey, vinegar, garlic, ginger and chili sauce. Arrange the tofu slices in a shallow dish and pour the marinade over the top. Let the tofu marinate for at least 2 hours at room temperature or up to two days in the refrigerator, turning it once or twice.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Lightly grease a baking sheet with vegetable oil. Brush off any garlic or ginger from the tofu slices and arrange the slices in a single layer on the sheet without touching. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until the tofu has browned on the edges and crisped. The time will depend on the moisture content of your tofu. If you don't turn the tofu over, one side becomes well done and crispy, but feel free to flip it if you prefer a more even texture.

Per serving: 99 cal.; 9g pro.; 7g carb.; 4g fat (1 sat., 1 monounsat., 2 polyunsat.); 0 mg chol.; 1081 mg sod.; 0 g fiber; 5 g sugar; 38 percent calories from fat.

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Vegetarian Kung Pao with broccoli and peanuts

Prep time: 40 minutes | Cook time: 25 minutes | Serves 6

Note: The prep time does not include the 30 minute stand time for tofu in paper towels. From "A Spoonful of Ginger."

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds firm tofu, cut into   1/2-inch slabs
1 pound broccoli, ends trimmed and stalks peeled
5 1/2 tablespoons canola or corn oil
Seasonings:
3 tablespoons minced scallions, white part only
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon hot chili paste
1 cup 1-inch lengths scallion greens (about 3 scallions)
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced water chestnuts, blanched 10 seconds in boiling water, refreshed in cold water and drained
Sauce (mixed together):
1 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon soy sauce
3 1/2 tablespoons rice wine or sake
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
1 1/4 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/4 cups dry-roasted peanuts

Instructions

Wrap the tofu slabs in paper towels or a cotton towel, and place a heavy weight, such as a cast-iron skillet, on top. Let stand for 30 minutes to press out the excess water. Cut the tofu into slices about  1/2 inch thick and 2 1/2 inches long. Place them in a bowl.

Cut away the broccoli florets and separate into bite-size pieces. Cut the stalks on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces. Heat a large pot of water until boiling. Add the broccoli and boil for 3 minutes. Drain, refresh under cold water and drain again.

Heat a large, heavy skillet and add 2 1/2 talbespoons of the oil. Arrange some of the tofu slices in the pan and sear over high heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Remove with a spatula and drain in a colander. Reheat the pan and add 2 more tablespoons of oil. Continue frying the rest of the slices. Remove and drain

Reheat the skillet or a wok, add the remaining tablespoon of oil, heat until hot and add the seasonings. Stir-fry briefly, about 15 seconds, then add the scallion greens and water chestnuts, and stir-fry over high heat about 1 1/2 minutes. Add the premixed sauce, and cook, stirring continuously to prevent lumps, until it thickens. Add the broccoli, fried tofu and peanuts. Toss lightly to coat and heat through. Scoop the dish onto a serving platter. Serve with steamed rice.

Per serving: 464 cal.; 19 g pro.; 27 g carb.; 31 g fat (4 sat., 16 monounsat., 11 polyunsat.); 1 mg chol.; 519 mg sod.; 6 g fiber; 10 g sugar; 60 percent calories from fat.

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Cantonese-style tofu in black bean sauce

Prep time: 40 minutes | Cook time: 30 minutes | Serves 6

From "A Spoonful of Ginger: Irresistible, Health-Giving Recipes From Asian Kitchens" by Nina Simonds (Alfred A. Knopf, $30, 336 pages).

Note: Prep time does not include the 30-minute stand time for tofu in paper towels or the 30-minute marinate time.

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds tofu, cut into  1/2-inch slabs
Garlic marinade:
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
3 1/2 tablespoons canola or corn oil
Minced seasonings:
3 tablespoons fermented black beans, drained and minced
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced ginger
1 teaspoon hot chili paste
2 red onions, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, cored, and cut into thin julienne strips
1 yellow bell pepper, cored seeded and cut into thin strips
1/2 pound snow peas, ends snapped
Sauce (mixed together):
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons rice wine or sake
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Instructions

Wrap the tofu slabs in paper towels or a cotton towel, and set a heavy weight, such as a cast-iron skillet, on top. Let them stand for 30 minutes to press out excess water. Then cut them into slices about  1/2 inch thick and 2 1/2 inches long. Put them in a bowl.

Mix the garlic marinade and pour it over the tofu slices. Toss lightly to coat, cover with plastic wrap, and let the tofu sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Heat a heavy skillet and add 2 1/2 tablespoons of the oil. When hot, arrange some of the tofu slices in the pan and sear over very high heat for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, or until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain. Reheat the pan and continue frying the remaining slices. Remove and drain.

Heat the pan again, add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil and heat until hot, about 30 seconds; then add the minced seasonings. Stir-fry about 15 seconds, until fragrant, then add the onions and bell peppers. Toss lightly with a slotted spoon or spatula over high heat and cook about 2 minutes, until the onions and peppers are slightly tender. Add the snow peas and the sauce, and toss lightly until the sauce has thickened. Add the fried tofu slices and stir the vegetables and sauce with a spatula to coat them. Scoop the tofu and vegetables onto a platter and serve with steamed rice.

Per serving: 219 cal.; 13 g pro.; 19 g carb.; 10 g fat (1 sat., 3 monounsat., 3 polyunsat., other 3); 1 mg chol.; 1317 mg sod.; 3 g fiber; 10 g sugar; 40 percent calories from fat.

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Stir-fried tofu with almonds

Prep time: 30 minutes | Cook time: 25 minutes | Serves 4

Stop and take a look before tossing tofu into your shopping cart -- there are several varieties. Firm or extra-firm tofu is best for stir-fries because it keeps its shape.

Adapted from "Betty Crocker Easy Everyday Vegetarian" (Wiley, $24.95, 271 pages).

Ingredients

4 ounces uncooked spinach fettuccine, broken into 3-inch pieces
1/2 cup vegetable broth
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 package (14 ounces) firm tofu packed in water, drained
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups fresh cauliflower florets
1 large red or green bell pepper, cut into bite-size strips
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/3 cup sliced almonds, toasted

Instructions

Cook and drain fettuccine as directed on package.

Meanwhile, in small bowl, mix broth, wine, cornstarch, hoisin sauce and pepper; set aside. Place drained tofu between 2 layers of paper towels; press gently to remove as much water as possible. Cut into  3/4-inch cubes; set aside.

Heat wok or 12-inch skillet over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil; rotate wok to coat side. Add cauliflower and bell pepper; cook and stir about 4 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Remove vegetables from wok.

Add remaining tablespoon oil to wok, rotate wok to coat side. Add tofu and garlic; cook and stir gently over high heat 5 minutes. Stir in broth mixture. Cook and stir about 1 minute or until thickened. Stir in vegetables and fettuccine; heat through. Sprinkle with almonds.

Per serving: 344 cal.; 14 g pro.; 38 g carb.; 14 g fat (2 sat., 5 monounsat., 7 polyunsat.); 0 mg chol.; 369 mg sod.; 4 g fiber; 5 g sugar; 37 percent calories from fat.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Bob Sylva can be reached at (916)321-1135 or bsylva@sacbee.com.