Mapo Tofu - 21 April 2012 - Page 1

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Mapo Tofu is a common dish in China, Taiwan and Korea. In China it is often called Grandma Tofu. The dish originated in szechuan, hence it has lots of chilli and szechuan pepper, two of my favourites.
Another dish is green beans with pork mince, which I dont know the pinyin for.
I decided that since they both have the same sauce, why not combine the two with noodles and turn it into a meal.

Heres most of the ingredients. The jar with the red lid is most important, hot pepper bean sauce. Its chilli flakes in oil with a few black beans thrown in. Delicious stuff I eat it on everything.
Also the Shao Hsing wine is critical. Missing from here is garlic, Chinese 5 spice.
As for the tofu, I prefer firm, but you can do it with silken also if you are a bit careful not to mash it up.

First I fried off the beans with some salt. I prefer to use peanut oil. You want this to be really hot so as to just brown the outside but not cook them right through.

Next up, fry off the pork, with the chilli bean paste, add the soy and the rice wine and all the spices. It should only take a few minutes.

Cut up the tofu and add it in, stir it through to get it properly coated. I also added some cannelini beans, you could add most types of tinned or soaked beans.

Noodles were my preference today, but you can also have rice. Not too many as they are full of carbs!

Re add the beans and stir through briefly, add some thinly sliced spring onions and youre done. Total cooking time should be no more than 10 minutes.

Plated up and ready to go. Add some more chilli bean paste if you love chilli like me.

Macro shot of my poor plating skills.
This was pretty delicious and I will be making it again.