Almond Tofu with Seasonal Fruit

How to Prepare

1. Make sugar syrup: dissolve 1/2 cup sugar in 6 cups of boiling water, then let cool completely.
2. In a separate pot, bring 7 cups of water to a boil. Add agar powder and 1/2 cup sugar. Simmer for 5 minutes, stirring to dissolve the agar completely.
3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly until warm (not hot). Stir in almond powder and milk until well combined.
4. Pour the mixture into a square container. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours until fully set.
5. Cut the set almond jelly into diamond-shaped pieces. Serve with pineapple, mango, and a drizzle of the prepared sugar syrup.

Why This Combination

A dessert, which is unusual on this site and worth explaining, because the almond in it is a specific traditional food rather than a Western one. The almond here is the Chinese apricot kernel — xing ren, or sometimes sweet almond — which is a traditional food specifically for the lungs, for a dry cough, and for moistening. It is not the almond you eat as a nut, though it is closely related and often sold as such. The dish is a cold, sweet, moistening dessert rather than a warm soup, and that is the point: a dry-cough picture wants something cooling and moistening rather than a hot broth, and a chilled almond dessert delivers that in a form people will actually want to eat. The tofu is there for body and for the protein, and the fruit is for sweetness without refined sugar.

What Each Ingredient Is Doing

Dishes are combinations, not lists, and the reason for including an ingredient is often not the one you would guess from the name. Here is what each one is actually contributing.

• Chinese apricot kernels or blanched almonds

  The defining ingredient, and specifically the apricot kernel rather than a nut almond. In the Chinese material it is a lung food for a dry cough and it moistens.

• Silken tofu

  Gives the dessert its body and its protein, and it is the reason the dish is filling rather than a sweet pudding. Silken, not firm.

• Fresh fruit

  Seasonal — pear, mango, peach, loofah, or kiwi. It provides the sweetness, so there is no need for a great deal of sugar.

• Rock sugar and a little almond milk or cream

  A modest amount of rock sugar, and enough liquid to blend. Keep both light, because a dry-cough picture does not want heavy sweetness.

• A pinch of salt

  Genuinely not optional. A small amount of salt in a sweet preparation sharpens it and stops it tasting flat, and this is standard technique rather than a preference.

When and How to Eat It

Adjusting the Dish

• Use fresh pear for a classic autumn version. It is the most traditional fruit pairing with almond, and it is the most cooling.
• Use mango or papaya for a tropical version that is sweet without much sugar, and which is more appealing in hot weather.
• Add a small amount of dried longan or goji for sweetness, and to shift the dish slightly towards nourishing rather than purely cooling.
• Use coconut cream instead of dairy for a version that is dairy-free, which also makes it richer.

Practical Notes

• This is a dessert, not a soup, and it is the one recipe here that people reliably make twice.
• Almond tofu is a standard Cantonese dessert. The seasonal fruit is the traditional presentation.

Substitutions & Swaps

Cook This Alongside

FAQ

Sources for This Dish

Every claim on this page falls into one of two groups, and they are sourced differently. Statements about the traditional use of an ingredient are references to the classical and modern literature that describes it, and they are not claims that it works. Statements about research point at the published work, including the work that came back negative. Where a search link appears it goes to the current results for that query rather than to a single paper, so you can see the whole record for the ingredient instead of the most favourable part of it.