Chinese Peas
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the peas
Soak the peas in water for about 24 hours.
Strain the soaked peas and grind them into a thin paste, adding some of the soaking water.
Make the curd
Filter the ground mixture and concentrate the filtrate by heating.
Skim the surface once or twice, then cool the mixture.
Add plaster to coagulate the casein and mix in the chloride of magnesium.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Peas
- Provide the soy protein that forms the curd and most of the body of the paste.
- Plaster
- Acts as a coagulant that makes the casein protein set into a curd.
- Chloride of magnesium
- Helps the soy protein coagulate and separate into a firm curd.
The step that matters
Adding the coagulant. Adding the coagulant is the step most likely to go wrong, since soy protein sets into a curd only when the mixture is warm enough and the coagulant is evenly dispersed. Stir it in thoroughly so the curd forms uniformly rather than in clumps.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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