Another one of my favourite dishes, and one that we used to have quite often on the dinner table at home. However, in recent years we haven’t enjoyed this dish, and looking back I guess it coincides with the time that my grandmother stopped going to the wet market (and visited only supermarkets) because it was too slippery and dangerous for her as her walking became more unsteady. At the supermarket, fresh bamboo shoot is not easily available, so not being able to procure it meant that we didn’t cook this dish anymore.
If you’re not familiar with this dish, what the instructions below don’t tell you is that the tauhu+pork+prawns+egg mixture is to be shaped into giant meatballs (bigger than a squash ball, bit smaller than a tennis ball). The tauhu meatballs and shredded bamboo shoots (two-inch long sticks) are then put into a soup made from taucheow, garlic and prawn stock.
what is taucheow? is this the same as Miso (Fermented Bean Paste) in Japanese Cuisine? Thank you.
It’s similar but not exactly the same. You can get a pretty good taste by using miso in place of taucheo 豆酱, but purists would recommend looking for genuine Chinese-style fermented bean paste in a Chinese grocery store. You can see the whole beans, unlike miso where it is a smooth paste.
Personally, because I prefer to use organic products, I often use macrobiotic grade Japanese miso in place of taucheo and my family can’t tell the difference.