Szechuan MaPo Tofu

  Chinese Recipe - My Version 

While we travel to any country in east Asia, we usually opt to eat only vegetarian and occasionally seafood, because you never know what meat you may gulp down.. I have learnt from experience, that even with ordering seafood, you may sometimes end up with being served crocodile meat or sea snakes.. 😉 It has happened to us!! 😁 So, we are very careful while placing an order at restaurants and quite often have translators with us to help. But, I do collect recipes of non-veg dishes, so that I can try them out on getting back home. Since, I like tofu, this was a recipe our Chinese friends recommended as a popular Chinese tofu dish and they also know that Indians love spicy food, thus a spicy hot tofu. 

Ingredients :
Organic Fresh Soft Tofu	-		250 gms
Chicken mince	-		1 cup
Szechuan pepper (ground)	-		3/4 teaspoon
Dried red chilli	-		1 tablespoon
Freshly ground black pepper	-		As preferred
Crushed Garlic	-		3 cloves
Red chilli	-		1 no.
Scallion (white cut diagonally and green cut into 1" long pieces)	-		2 stems
Black bean Stir fry sauce	-		2 tablespoons
Extra virgin Olive oil	-		2 tablespoon
Light Soya sauce	-		1 tablespoon
White rice vinegar	-		1 teaspoon
Water	-		1 cup
Corn flour	-		1 tablespoon
Salt	-		To taste

In the actual recipe, you do not need dried red chilli and you need chilli bean sauce and not black bean sauce. I didn't get chilli bean sauce this time from my grocery store. Anyway, chilli bean sauce also has black bean and in addition it has chilli, that's all. so no worries. Also, traditionally sesame seed oil or peanut oil is used, but, I personally don't like the smell of both. So, I used olive oil. This recipe requires Soft Tofu.

Preparation Method :

Drain the tofu and dice them into 1 cm cubes. In a wok, heat 2 tablespoons of oil. I like Olive oil infused with garlic. It smells great. Add the ground chicken and sauté. Add pepper. Add the black bean sauce, mix well and sauté for 4-5 minutes. Throw in the scallions, red chilli, garlic and sauté. Drizzle in the white rice vinegar. Add the water and cook for 5 minutes on high. Blend chilli in some water and add the mix to the gravy. Add soya sauce.  Gently add the tofu. Remember that it is soft tofu. If you do not handle it gently, it will crumble.  Blend corn flour in some lukewarm water, and pour into gravy and stir very gently until gravy thickens.  Throw in the spring onions. Sprinkle the crushed Szechuan pepper and turn off flame. Serve with steamed rice.

Serves two