Yudofu — blocks of tofu warmed through in a kombu broth — drawn as a coloring page. The picture shows an earthenware donabe pot set on a portable tabletop burner, steam curling up from the open rim, with slices of spring onion and a small garnish among the cubes of tofu. It is a winter dish and a familiar one to older Japanese adults, which makes the sheet useful as a reminiscence prompt as well as a coloring exercise; the cubes, the ridged burner and the curls of steam give three quite different surfaces to work on. The PDF has two pages: a color sample and the plain line art. Free to download and print, with no registration.
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Do you have memories of eating yudofu on a cold evening?
Which condiments do you like with it — spring onion, ginger, ponzu, soy sauce?
Have you ever eaten yudofu at one of the restaurants near Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto?
What is your favourite dish made with tofu?
How old is yudofu as a dish?
Tofu itself came from China, and it is usually said to have arrived by the Nara or Heian period — though the earliest Japanese record that can be pointed to directly is a shrine diary entry from 1183, so the earlier dating is inference rather than documentation. Temples are where it developed, as a protein source for shōjin ryōri, the vegetarian cooking of Buddhist monasteries. Yudofu as a named dish belongs to the Edo period; it appears in the 1782 recipe collection Tōfu Hyakuchin, ‘a hundred delicacies of tofu’, which ran through several printings and gives some idea of how popular tofu had become by then. The restaurants around Nanzen-ji temple in Kyoto have long been the dish’s best-known home.
Which kind of tofu should be used for yudofu?
Silken tofu (kinugoshi) is the usual choice. Yudofu asks nothing of the tofu except that it be warmed through, so the soft, smooth texture is the whole point rather than a liability. Firm tofu (momen) holds its shape under handling and is the one to reach for when frying, or when making agedashi-dōfu. The liquid in the pot is normally little more than water with a strip of kombu kelp in it: it is there to heat the tofu gently, not to flavour it. The seasoning happens at the table, with ponzu or soy sauce and whatever condiments are set out alongside.
What is tofu’s nutritional profile?
Tofu is a good source of plant protein and supplies all the essential amino acids. It also carries calcium, magnesium and iron, in amounts that depend a great deal on how the tofu was set — calcium-set tofu has considerably more calcium than the nigari-set kind, which is worth knowing if that is why you are eating it. It contains isoflavones as well, plant compounds with a weak structural resemblance to oestrogen. Those isoflavones have been studied at length in connection with bone density and menopausal symptoms, and the findings are mixed rather than conclusive; it is fair to say they are an active research question, and not fair to say they treat anything. What can be said plainly is that tofu is soft, easy to chew and easy to digest, which is the practical reason it appears so often on menus for older adults. This is everyday kitchen and nutrition talk rather than medical advice.
