April 1, 2014 Ma Po Dofu

April 1, 2014 Ma Po Dofu

Ricardo mentioned not having used eggplant to cook at our dinner last night, so I showed him my Good Food of Szechuan Cookbook and particularly the recipe for Ma Po Do Fu (“Old Pock-marked Chen’s Tofu), according to the recipe in the Cookbook.   After working all day on my docketing statement, at 4:30 I checked the fridge and found that we had ½ of an eggplant, a tray of pork rib steaks ($1.37/lb. at Pros’ Ranch Market, last week’s weekly special), lots of green chiles, ½ of a yellow onion, a bag of ginger root, and about 10 oz. of tofu that needed to be eaten before we leave on our trip.  So in honor of Ricardo’s interest in cooked eggplant dishes, I decided to make Ma Po Dofu.

I went to the garden and picked a handful of garlic greens and chopped them finely.  At 5:30 I decided I needed additional eggplant, so I went to Pro’s Ranch Market and bought another eggplant ($.99/ each), two mangos (2 for $.99) and three Mexican Squashes ($.99 for 2 lb.).

When I got home I peeled and diced the eggplant and diced about 1 ½ lb. of pork and peeled and sliced the ginger into threads and diced one Anaheim green chili and the one-half onion.

Ma Po Dofu Recipe –

I fetched my bottle of garlic-chili sauce (Talin) from the fridge and heated about 3 Tbsps. of peanut oil in a wok.

 

First, I sautéed the pork with about 1 tsp. of the Garlic-chili sauce until it began to change color from pink to white.

Second, I added the garlic greens (about ½ cup) and ginger (about three Tbsps.) and green chili (about 1/3 cup) and sautéed that for a minute or two.

Third, I added the large bowl of eggplant cubes (about 1 ½ lbs.), which fully filled the wok and stir fried the mixture for about fifteen minutes until the vegetables started to soften.   The mixture started to stick so I added about 2 Tbsps. of Chinese Cooking wine, 1 Tbsp. of Tamari soy sauce and 1 tsp. of sesame oil (Talin) to the mixture in the wok.

Suzette arrived at this time (about 7:00 p.m.) from her long day in Santa Rosa and was happy to see that I was cooking dinner because she was hungry.  I said, “I better start some rice.”

Fourth, I then fetched dried black wood ear threads and shitake mushrooms from the pantry and soaked 2 Tbsps. of wood ear and five dried shitake mushrooms (Talin) in 2 cups of hot water and in another 2 up measuring cup added about 1 tsp. of Knorr’s dehydrated chicken stock to another 2 cups of hot water to make a broth, which I immediately added to the mixture, which had cooked down a bit a loosened the bottom from the wok so it would not burn.  I then cubed the 10 oz. of tofu and added it to the wok.

After another ten minutes, I de-stemmed and sliced the soaked shitake mushrooms into threads and added the mushrooms and wood ear threads and their soaking liquid to the wok to cover the ingredients. 

Tip- The idea is to just cover the ingredients so they will stew together and exchange their flavors while reducing the liquid to thicken the sauce. 

I then filled the 2 cup measuring cup in which I had made the chicken stock, which still had about ½ tsp. of chicken stock solids and salt in it, and started it boiling in a sauce pan for the rice.  After the water came to a boil, I added 1 cup of rice and covered the pan, reduced the heat and set the timer for 30 minutes.

I did not cover the wok, so the sauce would continue to reduce.

Fifth, I then diced four scallions into ringlets (about 1/4 cup) to garnish and add a bit of onion flavor and color to the dish (the recipe also calls for garnishing with Szechuan pepper corns, but it is time-consuming to peel the pepper corn husks, which are the active ingredient, from their seeds, so I do not do this when in a hurry).

After the 30 minutes of cooking time for the rice, the Ma Po Dofu had reduced quite a bit so I made a thickening mixture with only 1 Tbsp. each of corn starch, tamari and Chinese Cooking wine and a dash of sesame oil and 2 Tbsps. of water and stirred the thickening mixture into the wok full of stew. 

The consistency of the stew was very stew-like with flecks of meat and threads of wood ear and cubes of tofu sticking out of the mixture of mostly collapsed ingredients and cooking liquid.   The thickening mixture did not do much good to make a sauce, but not much thickening was needed because keeping the top off the mixture in the wok had allowed the liquid to reduce considerably.  After about another minute or two, I called to Suzette that dinner was ready.

I had put a couple of beers into the freezer when I started the rice, so we had cold beers with our hot Ma Po Dofu.  We each laid a scoop of rice on a plate and covered it with Ma Po Dofu and some of the slightly thickened sauce (Tip – you do not need to thicken the sauce much because, as in many Chinese dishes, one uses the sauce of the dish to coat the rice so that the flavorful sauce combines the dish with the rice into a pleasant combination of textures and flavors). 

It was delicious.

Ricardo, enjoy.

Bon Appétit