Look Who's Visiting Hodo.... Part II

While our visitors tend to leave the Hodo Soy Beanery Tour pretty impressed, we also find our visitors to be really interesting people doing some cool things. We feel equally lucky to have met them and to have learned about a world beyond tofu.















In the above picture. Minh, our founder is giving a tour to Andrea Nguyen (an author, cooking teacher, and contributing editor to Saveur magazine. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury. She is also the author of several books. http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/about_andrea_nguyen.html), Rory O'Brien, professor of philosophy at Cabrillo College, Bryant Terry (Oakland based chef, food justice advocate, and author of several books including Vegan Soul Kitchen. Additionally he was the host on The Endless Feast, a 13 episode public TV series "that explores the connection between the earth and the food on our plates." ), and Megan Kelty from CBS News (doing a story on Hodo for a future date, stay tuned).















Everyone is engrossed in the exquisite texture of the fresh yuba, still tender and moist from being pulled from the tray just seconds ago. Yum!

Hodo's Chocolate Mousse Recipe Revealed

As many of you discovered at the farmers' markets this weekend, we have decided to discontinue our chocolate mousse.   We want our chefs to have more time to devote to developing new recipes.  

But don't worry: we would not leave you high and dry right before Valentine's Day!  You'll find this recipe easy (and your loved ones will be all the more impressed that you made it yourself!).  The hardest part is picking out your favorite dark chocolate to use...

Active prep time: 1 hour

Passive prep time: 4 hours

Ingredients:

1 Hodo silken tofu, 16 oz

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

1 T maple syrup

1/4 t salt

1. Heat all ingredients over double boiler, stirring occasionally, just until the chocolate melts.  Be careful not to overcook.

2. Pour into a large bowl.  Whip with immersion blender until evenly mixed and completely smooth.  Continue stirring along the surface to incorporate air for approximately 10 minutes.

3. Pour into single serving dishes and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving.  Garnish with whipped cream or a cookie.  

Your Wish Came True: Hodo Moves into a Store Near You

"When will I be able to buy your tofu at my grocery store?" our farmers' market customers have asked us for years.  Up until this Fall, our production capacity limited us to a handful of stores.  But no longer.  

 

Our beanery is built!  Our custom-made equipment effortlessly grinds beans and coagulates milk!  And Team Tofu has mastered the craft of wiggling fresh curds into cheese cloth-lined molds at ten times their original rate! 

 

In December we joined other local artisan foods on the specialty shelves of 4 markets.  

 

Berkeley's bustling Monterey Market on Hopkins enthusiastically cleared a section for our whole product family of fresh blocks, silk, yuba, milk, and tofu salads.  

 

San Francisco's friendly Blue Fog market-cafes (located in the Western Addition at California and Divisidero, and the Pacific Heights at Broadway and Gough) carry our ready-to-eat salads in their deli and grab-and-go cases.  

 

And in the Outer Richmond, Thom's Fresh Organics launched our soy milk, silken tofu, yuba, and tofu salads.  I recommend filling up on Chinese pastries from across the street to avoid going crazy and over-shopping at Fresh Organics!

 

Is your favorite grocery store not on this list?  Stay tuned: we are expanding into more this month (to be revealed in a future blog soon!).  In the meantime, feel free to email us the name of your neighborhood store, or your weekend destination store for exotic ingredients required by new recipes!  We'd love to make eating fresh tofu daily easier for everyone!

Look Who's Visiting Hodo.... Part I

Hodo Soy Beanery Public Tours have been available for about 2 months now and we've had a lot of visitors including authors, chefs, activists, and folks from the media.

People have been super curious about how our fresh tofu is made and we've been hosting a slew of really interesting and fun people.

Here's a partial rundown of some of some of the folks that have visited along with some pictures with Minh Tsai, the founder and Tofu Master at Hodo.















Picture above: Minh with Nicolette Hahn Niman, environmental activist, cattle rancher, and author of "Righteous Porkchop: Finding Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms" (www.righteousporkchop.com), her mom and son. Nicolette "has been published in the New York Times and is a regular speaker at national and regional environmental conferences and food events. A former attorney, she is now married to the founder of the Niman Ranch, a collective of traditional farms and ranches."















Picture above: Minh with Joel Riddell, executive producer of KGO AM "Dining Around with Gene Burns" (www.diningaround.com), and Novella Carpenter, author of "Farm City: an Education of an Urban Farmer" (www.novellacarpenter.com). Novella raises chickens, goats, bees and essentially has a full blown farm near downtown Oakland.

To listen to the Gene Burns interview with Hodo Soy Beanery's Minh Tsai and Dean Ku, click on "Listen" or "Download" below...

Dining Around Jan 2, 2010 11AM

Hour 2: Andrea Nguyen on her latest book, Asian Dumplings; "design caterer" Jennifer Spiegel of Fork & Spoon Productions; Minh Tsai and Dean Ku of Oakland's Hodo Soy Beanery.

Listen or Download