Whenever I travel, one of my joys is discovering dishes I’ve never tasted before. This is one. I find it by literally stumbling across a cart that’s parked on the road, under a cute red umbrella. The sign mentions ‘tahu’ or ‘tofu’ and that’s enough to hook me in; I love tofu. The lovely man cooking is using little mortars and pestles to make fresh batches of paste for his sauce, grinding a bit of palm sugar with some garlic, chilli, shallots and shrimp paste until smooth. He’s got a batch of sauce simmering and I need to know what’s in it, the aroma is so incredible. He shows me his tamarind, vinegar, kecap manis and palm sugar supplies and I work out that these are the flavours bubbling away and smelling so good. When he gets a customer he asks how many chillies they want (he gives me five!) then he grinds these up with the other paste ingredients. On go some tofu puffs and spoonfuls of the delicious sauce and that’s it. I eat, standing on the street with locals, and the experience is so simple but so amazing. This, to me, is what travel is all about – meeting people and eating their favourite food with them.