Rainy
Hiding with slippers of grass jelly, rice noodle rolls and steamed buns, is this black beauty that is not to be mistaken as any cooling dessert.
It is actually one of our cultural foods, black tau kwa or black beancurd! Firm beancurd that can be added to almost every dish, beans, noodles, spring rolls or meat. Black that is the stunt double of carbohydrate starches, like when we've always had the antagonistic black and white fried turnip cakes.
Nothing of the sinister, this is not smelly fermented beancurd, deep-fried beancurd or severely braised beancurd. It is non-GMO beans eschewing the MSG, wholly vegetarian and tipped with a little caramel.
Unicurd Black Taukwa (SGD 1.25)
Burn it a little till it gets toasty at the sides, and this will manifest the caramel out of them. Caramel, the same moving liquid found at the bottom of your pudding. Give it a whiff and it is like sweet popcorns throwing their pretty heads at you.
Put it in bread for a protein punch! Alongside its fluffy buddies, it feels like eating a scrambled egg sandwich with ketchup, the colourful food granted by this genie beancurd, very old-school yet always working.
The beancurd itself is very plain, despite the harsh colour and appearance. On its own, it is very beany, save for a crunchy crust that tastes like chocolate. Where we have the asian carrot cake, now we have the eastern oreo cheesecake!
P.S. The sparkle of cocoa brown. The delights of this chocolate pizza on its own, now I can conjure why there is cocoa pasta, and spaghetti broken with chocolate sauce.
