question about recipe calling for boiling tofu in water

[Jayne Spielman <jayne@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I know about

- freezing tofu for texture changes
- pressing tofu to remove excess liquid

but I recently made a recipe (from Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancy
McDermott) that called for cutting tofu into cubes and putting it in a
large quantity of boiling water for a minute then draining it before
adding it to the rest of the dish I was preparing. Does anybody know
what this boiling step did?

jayne