If You Like Tufo,

and the art of finely cutting food,

this is the post for you, photograph Sophie Steiner/That’s Magazine, hydrangea tofu soup is a testament to the impressive knife-cutting skills of chefs specializing in this type of Chinese cuisine, it looks like a white hydrangea, hence the name of the dish, but it could also be some sort of edible sea anemone. In reality, it’s a block of soft tofu carefully cut 60 times in one direction, then turned around and cut another 60 times in order to create 3,600 delicate tendrils, Chen Xiaohe, the executive chef of 10 Shanghai, a popular Huaiyang cuisine restaurant in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay says that mastering the cutting skills required to create perfect tofu hydrangeas requires between 3 and 6 years of practice. Chen himself claims he needed five years to master the several cutting techniques of Huaiyang, and practiced with rolled newspapers to hone his skill, 

and looking at the video, what a skill indeed! dating back 1,500 years to the Sun and Yuan dynasties (581-1368), Huaiyang cuisine originated from the indigenous cooking style of the area around the lower Huai and Yangtze rivers, centered in cities such as Huai’an, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang of Jiangsu province. Unlike other more popular Chinese cuisines, Huaiyang is known less for its dishes and more for the cutting skills of its chefs, “Why do we make 3,600 cuts into the tofu? It satisfies the different textures,” Chen Xiaohe said. “You’ll think ‘Is this really tofu? How can it be so smooth and thin?’ Secondly, when you eat it, it doesn’t feel like tofu in your mouth, the tofu threads taste smooth, tender and they are full of flavor from the broth.” I have to say it, skillful as it is I do not really fancy tofu!