Perilla and Tofu Dip

Dip is usually made with cream or yoghurt, but my Perilla and Tofu Dip is dairy-free and made with 100% vegetables. The slightly minty flavour of perilla is so refreshing. It is a low-calorie dip even if you eat it all yourself!

I made today’s dish recently to share with my friends for a BYO drinks & nibbles after playing golf. On such occasions, I sometimes bring a new dish that I am experimenting with and ask my friends to give me feedback.

One of my friends has dietary restrictions and cannot eat dairy products, wheat etc. So, I decided to make a tofu-based dip with vegetable sticks to go with it. It was well received not only by this friend, but also other friends.

Tofu can be bland but Perilla and Tofu Dip is a simple tofu recipe with full of flavour.

About Perilla

There are different species of perilla leaves sold in Japanese/Asian grocery stores and Asian vegetables shops. They all have a minty and basil-like flavour but are quite different in size and each has a distinct flavour.

• Japanese perilla (photo above) is called ‘shiso’ (しそ or 紫蘇) in Japanese. There are green shiso and red shiso. In my post Chicken Patties Wrapped in Perilla, you can find out more about shiso.
• Korean perilla has larger leaves than the Japanese perilla and the colour of the leaf is not as deep green as the Japanese shiso. The back of the leaf can be slightly purplish. I find that the flavour of Korean perilla is stronger than Japanese perilla.
• Vietnamese perilla has smaller leaves than even the Japanese perilla. The back of the leaf is purple. It has much stronger aromatic flavour.

Just like any other leafy herbs, you need to keep the perilla leaves moist, and store them in fridge. You should place the leaves in a container to avoid direct contact with the cold air in the fridge. I rinse the leaves, wrap them together in a wet kitchen paper, and place them in an air-tight container.

My Home-grown Green Shiso

I used to buy green Japanese perilla leaves from a Japanese grocery store. They are so popular and I often went to this shop only to find that they were sold out. So last year, I bought a small perilla plant in a pot from the same grocery store and planted it in the herb garden in my backyard.

During this summer, it grew a lot with many branches and produced so many green shiso leaves. The summer has gone, and we are into autumn now, but my shiso plant is still growing new leaves. It will probably finish soon as the tip of each branch started flowering.

Shiso flowers are often served with sashimi. They are not only used as decorations but also as a condiment, along with wasabi, particularly those with only a few flowers. You are meant to scrape off the flower buds (flowers are OK too) into the soy sauce. They give a refreshing flavour to the soy sauce and removes a fishy smell from the sashimi.

When the flowers die, they will form seeds and become dry and brown. The seeds will drop on the ground and regrow in the next season.

I wanted to consume many shiso leaves at once and that’s how I decided to make Perilla and Tofu Dip.

What’s in my Perilla and Tofu Dip

The key ingredients are just shiso and tofu. The dip has a slightly sour taste from the lemon with a touch of garlic.

Main ingredients

• Green shiso (Japanese perilla) leaves – roughly chopped
• 1 pack of silken tofu

Flavouring

• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Light soy sauce
• Grated garlic
• Salt

In Australia, many of the tofu packs contain 300g / 0.7lb of tofu. For the whole 300g pack of tofu, you will need 15-20 shiso leaves, which is about 15g / 0.5oz. The size of shiso leaves can vary, particularly those grown at home.

My home-grown shiso leaves are anywhere between 5-8cm / 2-3⅛” wide. I left some leaves too long on the stem and they overgrew. If you buy shiso at a Japanese grocery store, they are about 5cm /2″ wide.

I used light soy sauce to preserve the white colour of the dip. But if you only have normal soy sauce, that’s ok to use.

How to make Perilla and Tofu Dip

You need to remove the water from the tofu until the tofu weighs about ⅔-¾ of its original weight, otherwise the dip will be watery. Once this is done, all you need to do is blitz it in a food processor.

1. Place the tofu in a saucepan filled with water and bring it to a boil. Boil for 1 minute.
2. Transfer the tofu to a sieve lined with a couple of sheets of kitchen paper.
3. Crumble the tofu, wrap it with the kitchen paper, and squeeze the water out. The tofu should weigh about 200-225g / 0.4-0.5lb.
4. Add all the ingredients including the tofu in a food processor and blitz until the tofu becomes smooth without lumps and no perilla leaf specks.

As an alternative method for reducing the weight of the tofu, you can use a microwave. Place the tofu on a microwave-safe plate with a couple of sheets of kitchen paper. Cover with a kitchen paper and heat at 600W for 5 minutes. Drain and adjust the weight by squeezing more water out.

I found that the tofu heated in the microwave had a more intense soybean smell, compared to the boiled tofu.

If you prefer, you can leave tiny lumps of tofu and perilla pieces instead of making the dip really smooth like the photos above. Below is the dip that I made with tiny specks of tofu & perilla left in the dip.

Perilla and Tofu Dip is a quick dip to make. It is a healthy dip and very low calorie, unlike most of the dips out there. I hope you like it.

Yumiko