Shan Tofu from Chickpea Flour

Shan tofu is one of the great sleights of hand in Southeast Asian cooking: a tofu with no soybeans, no curdling, no pressing. The Shan people of Burma's eastern hills make it from chickpeas alone — soaked, ground, and cooked, or in the modern kitchen simply whisked from besan — because the starch in the chickpea will gel all by itself, the same trick that sets polenta. What comes out of the pot is a trembling golden slab, nutty and faintly grassy with turmeric, sturdier in flavor and silkier in texture than the soy tofu it is named for.

The Shan plateau has cooked from the chickpea and its cousins for centuries — hill trade in pulses between the Shan states and the Ava heartland is as old as the routes themselves, and tohu long ago crossed the hills to become an all-Burma staple. In Shan towns like Hsipaw and Nyaungshwe it is a morning industry; in Yangon, tohu thoke — the salad — is standard teashop fare.

Everything hangs on one stretch of stirring. The slurry must cook past merely thick to glossy and translucent, stirred constantly so the bottom never catches — ten to fifteen minutes of honest work, and the reason this recipe is the chapter's only intermediate one. The ribbon test tells you when. From there it is patience: pour, cool, slice, and you hold the foundation of a dozen dishes — a bag of besan turned into something a market would sell you with pride.