A-gei (Fried Tofu Stuffed with Glass Noodles, Sealed with Fish Paste)

Variations

• Noodles only: in Tamsui it is often glass noodles and nothing else. The pork and shiitake are a common addition.
• Other sauces: some use a sweet soy reduction in place of sweet chilli. The fish-paste lid is the same either way.
• Prawn paste for the lid: finely chopped prawns worked with a pinch of salt and a little starch make the same lid. Any protein that sets with heat will do.
• With a bowl of soup: in Tamsui it is often eaten with a bowl of fish-ball soup as a meal.

Tips

• A lid, not a seam. The glue list in wrapping and sealing comes down to one sentence: "Each of those works because the glue comes out of the wrapper." Wheat dough gives starch, pastry gives protein for egg to bond to, rice paper turns tacky as it takes water back. Fried tofu gives nothing. Its surface is oil and its protein is already cooked. So agei does not join edges at all; it covers the whole opening with raw paste.
• That lid is a small fish cake. Kamaboko describes washed fish muscle protein "which salt dissolves and heat sets into a springiness no meat paste can reach". That is exactly the agei lid. Raw, the paste is sticky enough to spread onto the tofu; the steamer sets it into one springy piece. Sealing and cooking happen in the same twelve minutes.
• The blanching is so the lid will stick. One of that guide's headings is "Nothing sticks to a sealing edge with oil or filling on it", and the surface of fried tofu is that oil. Udon gives its reason for blanching aburaage: "Aburaage is fried tofu, and its film stands between the simmering liquid and a sponge that is supposed to drink". There the thirty seconds let a broth in; here they let the fish paste grip instead of sliding.
• The noodles go in after they have finished swelling. The same guide warns, of fillings made with glass noodles, "A swollen noodle is not a pressure, it is volume", and so it says to leave room before the seal. Agei settles that in the pan. Cook the noodles until they have drunk every drop and there is nothing left to swell, so the tofu can be packed full and the lid is not pushed up in the steamer.
• Which makes the steaming time the lid's time. The noodles and the fried tofu are both already cooked. The only raw thing is the lid, and 12-15 minutes is what 5-7mm of paste takes to set white. Spread it thicker and steam it longer.
• Take the paste past the rim. Laid on the opening alone it shrinks slightly as it sets and opens a gap. Carried a centimetre down the sides, the set paste grips the tofu all round and stays on.