ALICE
BORn
Edinburgh
year of birth
1965
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Now you can go into any organic shop and there is tofu from Japan, China, everywhere but back then, there was nothing when my mum moved to the UK in the 60s. My mum liked making things and she thought it would be nice to make tofu from scratch using a soya bean grinder. I can really understand why she would have wanted to bring the soya bean grinder. I'm sure it wasn't just to do with the eating but it was to do with the making as well.
It travelled from all the way from Singapore by ship with my parents amongst 200 pieces of luggage, there wasn’t any restrictions on baggage or weight back then! It was covered with padlocks and chains. Then there was the journey when it travelled from Edinburgh to London. By then, mum did not use it much and my older brother wanted to throw it away. In the end, we thought it would be a museum piece one day.
I remember sitting in the kitchen on a small stool. As a child, the soya beans would have been soaked overnight and you’d pour the soya beans in with the right amount of water and start grinding. It was quite satisfying because very quickly, you would see the milk coming out. It was also very time consuming. I would do it for quite a few hours.
I remember her boiling it up in pans. You had to boil it three times, it was quite a process to make soya milk and then make the tofu, which came from the milk. You had to create the right consistency. At one point, all the tofu was sitting in wooden racks with the cloth so they could settle. She would slice it up and put it into bags and sell it in the shops. Mum was the culprit for the soya bean grinder and now a heroine.
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現在你可以去任何一家有機食品店買日本，中國，任何地方的豆腐。但是60年代我母親來英國的時候什麼都沒有。我媽媽很喜歡做食物，所以她就想用豆漿機做豆腐。我可以理解為什麼她要把豆漿機帶過來。我敢肯定不僅僅是為了吃豆腐，還為了做豆腐這個過程。
這個豆漿機是我父母從新加坡乘船帶過來的200件行李中的一件。當時對行李額度沒有限定。這個豆漿機用鐵鍊和鐵鎖捆起來。它又從愛丁堡帶來倫敦。當時我母親不經常用它，我哥哥想把它丟了。最後，我們覺得有一天它會成為博物館的一件展品。
我記得我小時候坐在廚房裡的小板凳上。大豆泡在水里隔夜，然後再把泡了的大豆倒進適量的水裡面，開始研磨。這個豆漿機很好，磨得很快。你能看到豆奶流出來。就是很耗時，我一坐就是幾小時。
我記得她用鍋煮豆奶。得煮三次。做豆奶，再用豆奶做豆腐的過程很長。你要把握好粘度，到了時候，就把所有的豆花放在鋪了紗布的木制模具上成型。我母親會把豆腐切開裝進袋子里，再拿到店裡賣。我們原來都因為這個豆漿機怪我母親，但她現在成了女英雄。