![]() ![]() Set wok on high heat for 1 minute until hot.While tofu is cooking, make cornstarch paste by mixing 1 T cornstarch and 1 T water.Precooking tofu in water prevents tofu from breaking apart easily later. Bring to boil and cook tofu on medium high heat for 8 to 10 minutes and remove from heat. Heat enough water in a large saucepan, add 1/2 teaspoon salt and tofu pieces. I plan to post another of Chef Chen's milder Mapo Tofu recipe using Hoisin sauce in the future." However, this dish goes so well with plain steamed white rice that you can eat and eat while your nose is running. This is a very, very spicy version of Mapo Tofu and if you like, cut down on chili pepper and chili oil if you like this recipe milder. Another item that he uses is Japanese chili pepper known as ichimi tougarashi ie crushed or minced red pepper and if you cannot buy this item easily, I would substitute by mincing Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or Korean dry red pepper. You want the taste of garlic as well as color of green onion for this dish. If you cannot find green garlic chives also known as nira in Japanese, I would use combination green onion and garlic. Chef Chen uses regular tofu (not firm or silken) for his recipe. ![]() Szechuwan pepeprcorn is optional though Chef Chen does use it. The other two Chinese ingredients you will need for this recipe are fermented black beans (you can usually find these bagged and are ready to use or in bottles) and Szechuwan peppercorn. Don't use regular hot red chili sauce since it lacks the complexity of soy beans found in hot bean red chili sauce. The next sauce is Chinese chili bean sauce aka toubanjan or doubanjiang - it has soy beans along with hot chilies and is red color. It is dark brown in color and has a wonderful dark miso type flavor. The first one is Chinese brown bean sauce/paste aka tenmienjan, tenmenjan, or tenmenjiang - it's made from soy beans and sometimes is called Chinese miso type sauce or sweet noodle sauce. For this dish, you need two Chinese sauces/pastes. I wish Chinese and Japanese sauces and other culinary ingredients are known in the West for their proper Chinese and Japanese names like most Indonesian or Malasian sauces ie sambal olek etc instead of using generic names such as bean sauce, etc because it can get very confusing using those generic names. It is now very famous in Japan and Iron Chef Chen Kenichi continues with that tradition at his restaurants in Japan. His dad was a pioneer in introducing Szechuwan cooking to Japanese and he is known as a father of Mapo Doufu in Japan because he was apparently the first Chinese man to cook something so spicy as this dish in Japan. I love all his recipes, especially his famous Mapo Tofu or Mapo Doufu. Since then, I've looked for his cookbooks and found 4 in Japanese language. I learned a lot just by watching and copied many of his ideas from the show that I now incorporate into my cooking repertoire. He caught my attention as a Iron Chef Chinese on Iron Chef TV program and really enjoyed watching him improvise many recipes. He seems to be a wonderful mentor to many young chefs working under him. ![]() "I really respect Iron Chef Chen as a chef. ![]()
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