Recipe Fridays: Mapo Tofu

Growl, I started writing this post with a lovely story about how making-Asian-food averse I am, but it got eaten and now I’m just staring at this page blankly.  I even linked to mise en place and talked about how much prep work goes into Asian recipes… well, I guess you get the gist now, so not much more of my rambling.

You may (or may not) be surprised that most of my friends don’t really cook.  Actually, I shouldn’t say that.  The friends who do cook usually – really, I should shut my mouth right now before I stick my foot in there and I get an indignant email from one of my darling friends saying, “What do you mean, your friends don’t cook?!  *I* cook!” 

So… ummm… a month or so ago, I was hanging out with HB, easily one of my closest friends, at her apartment.  I forget how it came up, maybe I asked her what she’s eating now, maybe a book fell open on the table – I think that might have been it – but I noticed she had a book full of recipes taped or handwritten into it.  We got to talking about cooking, and in the end, I sent her boyfriend an email that night that said “Hey, HB said you have a recipe for mapo tofu you could send me?  Thanks!” 

Did I mention I’ve never actually eaten mapo tofu?  After grilling FeistyMom on this oddity, it turns out – not just because as a kid, I didn’t eat anything remotely spicy – my mom doesn’t like the dish.  So she never made it, and we never order it when we go out to eat.  I rarely order take out Chinese, so I just never ate it. 

Oh, and I’ve never actually purchased tofu to cook with before, because, yeah, I grew up hating tofu, too.  Now, I tolerate it and will eat it in certain forms, but buying it seems… a bit… intimidating.  There’s so many brands, styles, kinds, what the heck am I looking at here?! 

BUT.  The recipe itself seems simple enough, quick and easy, and I’m always aiming to try new things, right?  That’s two right here: cooking with tofu for the first time, and eating mapo tofu for the first time.  (Seriously, I should stop making things I’ve never eaten before.  How will I know if it came out right or not?!)  So yay to trying new things!

Here is the recipe they gave me:

4 oz. ground pork (~1/2 rice bowl)
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. rice wine
1/4 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 tsp. corn starch
1 pack of soft tofu cut into cubes
2 scallions (diced)
1 tsp. hot bean sauce
1/2 tsp. additional soy sauce
1/4 tsp. additional sugar
salt
sesame oil (optional)
additional ground pepper (optional)

This is a photograph of the hot bean sauce, because I will need it for future reference when I go replenish.  HB was kind enough to pick me up a jar on her last grocery shopping trip, because there is no way I’d have found this.  I show you this in case you want to use the same exact thing, or so you can have an idea of what you could possibly substitute for it…

Directions:
Marinate pork in soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, and ground pepper for 10 minutes.
Add corn starch to marinade.
Heat oil (not too much) on high heat.
Add pork and cook on medium heat.
Cook until pork is no longer pink.
Add tofu cubes, hot bean sauce, diced scallions, additional soy sauce, additional sugar, and pinch of salt (add water if necessary to prevent pan from drying up).
Cook until ready.
Add sesame oil and ground pepper if desired.

This is the tofu I wound up buying, everyone & their momma will be mocking me, because I bought the AMERICAN brand.  I’m the girl who once walked into a random store to pick up a drink, wanting green tea, and managed to blindly reach for a bottle and come away with Snapple Green Tea, despite an entire shelf of various Ito En products right below it.  My friends, I am that girl.

(Thanks HB + BF for this recipe!)

I’m sure there is absolutely nothing wrong with following their directions straight.  But being me, I can never follow directions straight (even those on the side of a jar.  Really.  You’ll see what I did with a jar of … well, you’ll see).  So, here we go, with my changes:

As you can see in the very first picture, that’s mirin.  I don’t really know what rice wine is – did I get it right?  I don’t stock Chinese rice wine, but I have mirin, which is labeled sweet cooking rice seasoning.  I don’t know?  So I used mirin instead of rice wine. 

Showcasing my OCD tendencies to chop/dice as evenly as possible…

Plus, because I’d just bought a bottle to try out, I heated the pan with a bit of toasted sesame oil (purchased at Trader Joe’s) in the bottom. 

Last and certainly not least, I added some frozen peas to the mixture at the last minute and just stirred it around, knowing it would heat through to perfection.  Oh, I tasted a little bit at this point, and decided to add a little extra hot bean sauce since I didn’t think it was that spicy (and I’m a spicy-wimp!). 

Served over some freshly made rice… whoa!!!  Can I tell you how yummy this was?  The tofu, slightly creamy against the meaty chunks of pork, along with the peas, which just popped in my mouth… and that burn, the slight burn that numbed my mouth and had me reaching for water to cool my face down – though I stress it was not overwhelming in the least – wow.  I love this recipe, which has found its way to my heart and into my repertoire, I’m sure. 

It even found its way into my bento this week…

I highly recommend making this, using your own tweaks, but think about those textures and how you could make that work for your own palate.

HAPPY EATING~!!!