Chinese recipe: Mapo Tofu

Mapo Tofu is a dish from Sichuan province. "Mapo" is supposed to be the lady who invented the dish (Ma: could be a uncommon surname or pock-marked; Po: old lady. We don't know whether the lady had an unural surname or unually high-density pock-marks).

Sichuan food is famous for being spicy. Not only the normal hot spicy though. They also like to use Sichuan peppers which has an unique flavor. I don't think any Western spices have that flavor. As a result many Western Sichuan restaurants gave up using Sichuan pepper to suit their customers appetite.

Another special ingredient in this dish is formented bean paste. It is made of beans and hot peppers and also have a rather unique flavor. You can find it in Asian supermarkets. If not, any hot pepper will do.

In China this dish is usually non-vegetarian. They often use grounded beef to cook alone with Tofu. We don't eat beef at MM house so I skipped the meaty part and made it a vegetarian dish. Another of my creation is to add celary for its fibre. If you don't like celary use green beans or skip it.

Ingredients:

Celary: 400 g
Tofu: 700 g
Tomato: 280g
SiChuan Pepper: 1 tea spoon
Bean paste: 1 table spoon
Sugar: 1 table spoon
Cooking oil: 1 table spoon
Salt and seasame oil: to taste

To prepare:

1. Cut Celary and tomato into slices, tofu into cubes
2. Microwave celary a bit to shorten its cooking time, you don't have to.

To cook:

1. Simmer Sichuan pepper in the oil until it gets dark (the proper way is to fish them out > ground them into powder> add to the cooked dish in the end, but I didn't bother).

2. Add tomato, bean taste and sugar into the oil. Stir. Turn the heat up.

3. Add celary into the oil. Stir until it gets almost transparent.

4. Add Tofu. Boil for about a minute.

5. Add salt and seasame oil to taste.

Tips:

1. Make sure the Sichuan pepper is well-cooked/burned if you are as lazy as I am/left them in. Otherwise it will give you a rather unpleasant surprise. Raw peppers have a unique flavor that not everybody can appreciate. It makes your tongue "numb"--my grandma used to biting onto these peppers to treat her toothache, imagine!

2. Throw anything watery into heated oil is dangerous. That is why you want to add tomato etc when the heat is still on low gear in step 2.

3. Celary is well-cooked when it becomes transparent. You don't want to cook it much longer than that. Mushy tofu is OK but mushy celary is not accepatable. So add tofu sooner than later if you are not sure what you're doing.

4. Chinese, at least my family, like to add several drops of sesame oil after a dish is done. I don't think it is nessesary for all dishes but I do add it to my fish dishes to cover the fishy taste a bit.