That's what he thought at the time.
So he replaced one piece of tofu after another.
Fu Yu's persistence in trying to make the loach burrow into the tofu stemmed from his understanding of the dish's presentation and name.
He speculated that if he placed live loach in a pot of clear water and then gradually heated it, the loach would slowly feel the rising temperature and thus wiggle its way into the tofu.
The loach lives in mud, so naturally, it could burrow into the tofu to escape the heat. However, as the tofu also heated up slowly, the loach would end up dying inside the tofu, resulting in the appearance of loach burrowing into the tofu as we see it.
However, this idea slowly wavered with one cooking failure after another.
Because he found that if the loach and tofu were heated simultaneously, the loach wouldn't burrow into the tofu but would struggle hard enough to break the tofu apart.
