After two weeks of hosting Vietnamese guests, and another of making macrobiotic dishes, my mother finally gave into my suggestion.
Mapo Doufu (sounds like Tofu) is a Chinese dish composes of hot bean sauce in a jar, half a pound of ground pork, and two soft tofu packages from an Asian market.
Making it is easy.
1. Drop the tiny cubed tofu and ground pork into the hot pan. Lay over the hot bean sauce. Do not stir or the tofu will break.
2. Let the heat drain the tofu of its water, making the tofu more elastic so you can stir freely. The water would also soften the pork and dilute the spicy sauce.
3. When the meat seemed cooked and everything stirred to have the orange color all over, lower the heat and add in chopped green onion.
4. Serve onto a flat plate. Let it cool a bit and eat.
It is very much like making chili for tacos, except you don’t need to add additional cups of water. Rice is the preferred side dish, as most of Chinese entrees would call for.
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The last time I ate this, I was down in Houston more than a year ago. Back then, I missed Hawaii as hell and Burger King was not good enough to keep me free. I stopped by a cheap Chinese restuarant near my rented apartment. The dish popped out before me. I ordered it, ate it and had it boxed for the next time. How fast time flew. Almost two years later, my mom delivered her own take on the dish and I got to blog it too.
Photo by Todd Fast of Wikipedia
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