Mapo Tofu

Mapo Tofu is a popular dish from Szechuan, China. Szechuan is a province well known for its spicy and fragrant dishes, and mapo tofu certainly reflects these two celebrated attributes.

This dish normally calls for silken tofu, but as my husband doesn't really like silken tofu - he thinks it's too slippery to eat, I used a block of firm tofu instead. It still tasted great! I used duck fat collected from my previous duck roasting session to stir fry the garlic and ginger - this gave an extra aromatic kick. If if you don't have duck fat, pork fat or normal cooking oil is fine.

Ingredients

• 200 gr tofu
• 200 gr ground pork/beef
• 2 tbs duck fat or cooking oil
• 2 tbs chilli oil
• 1 tbs chilli powder (or more if you like it extra fiery)
  
• 1 tbs minced garlic
• 1 tbs minced ginger
• 2 tbs chilli-bean paste
• 2 tbs cooking wine
• 2 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tbs fish sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
  
• 1 tsp Szechuan peppercorn powder
• 1 tbs corn flour (mixed with 1 tbs water)
• chopped green onions

What to do

• Heat 2 tbs of duck fat. Add the minced garlic, ginger and ground pork. Stir fry until fragrant. Add cooking wine, soy sauce and fish sauce.
  
• Then add tofu, chilli oil, chilli bean paste, chilli powder and sugar.
• When it boils, add in the corn flour mixture to thicken to sauce.
• Garnish with chopped green onions and Szechuan peppercorn powder.

You cannot really see the sauce, because it all goes down to the bottom of the pot ;-).

Update - Spaghetti with Mapo Tofu

My husband suggested to use the mapo tofu from yesterday as a topping for spaghetti. I thought it could be a change from the oh-so-normal spaghetti bolognese, so I decided to try his idea... It was fantastic - I never thought that such an unusual combination could taste so good! After I boiled the spaghetti, I oiled it slightly with duck fat and then added some chopped spring onions before I topped the noodles with the mapo tofu.