Xiaoyu did a simplified version that's Szechuan style and easier on the budget ;-)
Ingredients:
500 gr dofu (from the north)
100 gr pork (in cubes of about 1 cm)
100 gr sugar snaps
spring onion (in thin rings)
100 gr shiitaki (sliced)
3 cm ginger (sliced)
1 pak choi (in pieces of about 5 cm)
2 tbs secret sauce (see picture)
30 gr corn starch (or tapioca starch)
1/2 tbs shaohsing rice wine
20 gr salt
2 tbs light soy sauce
2 tbs water
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| Our secret ingredient is the bottom right package |
- Mix the pork cubes with 30 gr cornstarch (or tapioca starch) & 1/2 tbs rice wine.
- Steam the dofu for about 10 minutes to make it firmer. Cut it in slices of about 5 x 3.5 x 1.5cm. Fry the slices of dofu until they are nice and gold. Take the dofu out of the wok and pour out most of the oil. Absorb some water out of the dofu with kitchen tissue.
- Stir fry the pork for a minute or two. Add the shiitaki, and stir fry some more. Add the dofu, the secret sauce and the water. Add the other ingredients except for the pak choi, and let everything cook for about 5 minutes. Finally add the pak choi and let everything cook for about another minute. The pak choi should keep it's lovely green color
- We didn't have it, but ideally add some slices of carrot to enrich the color palet
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| Burning hands on steamed dofu | Frying the dofu |
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| Our dish is in the right top | The finished dish in the right bottom |
I asked Xiaoyu for this dish after we ate it at Tai Wu, and it was super delicious! However, it didn't taste much like the dish at Tai Wu, as Xiaoyu cooks Szechuan style, and Tai Wu is more Kantonese style. (meaning that the dish at Tai Wu is more sweet, and the one at Xiaoyu's is more spicy).
The dofu should be the soft version, aka north dofu. The texture of chinese dofu is different than the Japanese tofu, and the soft version has a more sour taste to it. The best is to get it fresh from the Chinese store (I actually like the one from the toko in my street best. That one I like to eat even raw). Getting the right dofu is really key to cooking with dofu. Sounds kinda obvious now, but before I started my dofu mission abou a year ago (I was determined to find out why a quarter of the world population likes something that nasty ;-) ) I didn't even know there were different kinds, let alone how to deal with them.
2 comments:
Wow! it is a very well documented Chinese cooking workshop. Glad you like this experience.
About this Doufu dish, I would rather call it "Home Doufu - 家常豆腐", since as you mentioned in the end, this is a typical Sichuan cuisine and the "Ba Zhen Dou Fu Bao - 八珍豆腐煲" (The one we had in Tai Wu) with sweet taste is Cantonese.
Some comments about the recipe:
a) the pork cubic slices should be preprocessed with 30 gr cornstarch(or tapioca starch) & 1/2 tbs rice wine.
b) sugar snaps? i don't think it is there.
c) the mushroom is called shiitake in wikipedia, i don't know which one is correct. In Chinese, it is called "Xiang Gu" or "Dong Gu".
d) 20 gr salt and 30 gr light soy sauce.
e) the secret sause is a popular bean sauce named "Pi Xian Dou Ban - 郫县豆瓣"，right bottom of the secret package photo. :)
Before frying the Doufu,it is better to absorb some water out from it by using the kitchen tissue.
2 or more tbs of water are needed while stir frying.
A final remark, the Pak Choi(Bai Cai) is added the last, the appearance of dishes is crucial in Chinese cooking, that's why we have Pak Choi, carrot slice will be a plus, but not much, just for coloring.
Again, so cool to have it documented, Thnx evo!
Hi Xiaoyu! Thank you so much for your hospitality, teaching me, patiently answering all my questions, and guiding me in the Chinese supermarket!
I processed your comment in the recipe.
About the sugar snaps.. I saw them in your kitchen, and figured they must have gone in this dish (I was trying to reach 8 ingredients ;-))
They are in this picture on the left..
Maybe they aren't sugar snaps, but green beans? Did they go in some other dish.
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