Creamy, smooth tofu meets the soft, almost rubbery preserved egg — all served chilled in a salty, sour sauce that makes the perfect fresh summer dish. And summer lingered in Beijing this year, long past usual departure. Even in October, the air was still heavy with heat, and I found myself craving dishes like this — cool, clean, and quietly restorative.

Calling this dish ‘Northern’ might cause confusion. Silken tofu paired with preserved egg is found all over China, however, the Northern style is, not surprisingly, big, bold and assertive: black vinegar, raw garlic, perhaps a sprinkle of cai pu (pickled radish), or a few crushed peanuts for texture. Southern versions, by contrast, often skip the vinegar, leaning instead on chilli oil, fresh ginger, even the fragrance of fried dried shrimp or a touch of Sichuan peppercorn.

Preserved eggs tend to unsettle Western diners. Jet black where the white once was, with a green yolk -  they look more like something from Halloween than the dinner table. But the flavour is surprisingly gentle: savoury, faintly earthy and not at all eggy.

The Chinese love a poetic name, and these are no exception. Known as thousand-year eggs or century eggs, the titles refer not to their age, but their how long they last. Legend has it they were discovered by a homeowner renovating his house, who found duck eggs that had fallen into a pool of slaked lime (or calcium hydroxide) he was using for mortar. Weeks later, he unearthed something extraordinary: the whites had turned to dark translucent jelly, the yolks a creamy grey-green.

The process isn’t fermentation, but chemistry. The eggs are “cooked” without heat, transformed by alkaline conditions. Traditionally, they were coated in a mixture of clay, salt, and sometimes tea, then left to cure for weeks or months. These days, most are made in factories, soaking the eggs in an alkaline brine for several days, then rolling them in clay to preserve the rustic look of the old ways.

Serves 3-4