Yong Taufu / Yentafo : That moment when you realize you may have been wrong all along

For most of us in Malaysia, "yong tau fu / 釀豆腐" is typically defined by an assortment of chunky ingredients (typically beancurd, chili, brinjals etc) stuffed with meat filling. We assume that the traditional version of the dish started out with just beancurd stuffed with meat and as time passed, we started stuffing other ingredients as well to add variety.

The Malaysian interpretation of Yong Taufu. Note that it's not even about the beancurd anymore nowadays (image credit AhTeeKitchen)

Over here in Thailand, there's a dish that's very popular called "Yentafo". Most fahrangs would refer to it as "pink noodles", and yes, it's served in a pink broth that makes it look pretty funky alright.

Typical yentafo dish, from a local chain called "Maliga"

By chance, I once walked into a yentafo shop owned by a Thai Chinese, and he had proudly displayed the words "釀豆腐" in his shop. That's how I knew that "yentafo" is actually a Thai-localized name of "yong taufu".

Initially though, I refused to acknowledged that this was yong taufu. Note that there's an absolute absence of beancurd in the dish pictured. Yong taufu in Thailand is served with absolutely no big chunks of beancurd. Heresy, I know right? For the longest time, I just accepted this as an example of a Chinese dish lost in translation into Thai culture.

Recently though, I was explaining to my fiancee and her mother our version of yongtaufu. I showed them a picture of the dish and their immediate reaction was "where're the noodles???". I explained that in Malaysia, yong taufu is defined by the chunks of ingredients and it doesn't matter whether we eat it with rice or noodles. Predictably, they rejected this outright and said that we got it wrong. Heh. The mother further explained that yentafo in Thailand points to the noodles and the pink broth it's served in and not so much the ingredients.

Now, I've been thinking about this for about a week and something just clicked: the word "yong / 釀" in yong taufu. 

Now, if you open up a Chinese dictionary and look up the definition of the word "釀", you will find that it literally means "wine" or "fermented". Has it occurred to any of the Chinese-reading foodies in Malaysia that this definition seems rather incongruous with our definition of the dish, which is "stuffed beancurd"?

Now, looking back at the Thailand version of the dish, would anyone want to take a stab at guessing what the pink broth is made of? It's actually using a primary ingredient called in Chinese "腐乳", which is red fermented beancurd. So, the word "yentafo" is actually defined by a dish of noodles served with red fermented beancurd. And it sure as heck makes a lot more sense than our Malaysian version of it.

Red fermented beancurd (Image credit Christine's Recipes)

Kinda mind-blowing if it's true, ain't it? Turns out it may have been us Malaysians who had gotten things lost in translation. How could a couple of generations of Malaysian foodies have gotten it wrong for so long?