Mapo Tofu with Ground Pork [Attempt 2]

I recently discovered that Whole Foods carries Sichuan peppercorns. The last time I tried to make mapo tofu, this was the key ingredient that I was missing, so I decided it's time to revisit this dish. This time around, I searched for a recipe more authentic than the one in my big book o' Chinese food, which a friend told me was relatively legit. Something about the first recipe's use of chicken broth made me somewhat skeptical, though.

Sichuan pepper doesn't give heat like red chili pepper does. It's more of a cooling, tingling sensation on the tongue, and increased salivation. This kid agrees with me (watch his other videos, I really hope my future kids will be as adventurous and curious about weird foods at such an early age!).

About Sichuan Pepper
Doing a little research, I learned that Sichuan peppercorns are actually the outer husk of the dried berries of several kinds of Asian trees of the genus Zanthoxylum. In cooking, its flavor is often described as slightly citrusy, and it creates a buzzing numbness on the tongue. That numbness is due to the berry's bioactive component Hydroxy-alpha sanshool, which excites the sensory neurons that are responsible for our response to capsaicin (spicy heat, like in a chili pepper).

Did you know that Sichuan peppercorns were banned in the USA from 1968 to 2005? Not for health reasons, like with the ban on unpasteurized milk products, but because the peppercorns were capable of carrying the citrus canker bacteria that could have wrecked our citrus crops. Enforcement stopped in 2002, then the ban was lifted in 2005 when they were proven safe as long as the peppercorns were heated to 160˚F to kill the bacteria before import.

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台灣 (Taiwan), Part 3: Braised Pork Belly

Recipe Source: http://www.nibbledish.com/people/anjelikuh/recipes/gua-bao-taiwanese-braised-pork-in-sliced-buns

One of the first things I realized about Taiwanese cuisine is that the pig is king. There's an abundance of good fish and seafood, and they do some pretty outstanding things with tofu. But pork seems to be the dominant protein over there, especially pork belly (滷肉, Lǔ ròu).

America's love affair with pork belly has been picking up steam. Just think of how many restaurants or trailers in the past year or 2 that have started serving main dishes out of big hunks of pork belly. It is the brand new hotness. Here's just sample of the porky goodness I had

Northern Taiwanese-style breakfast: a rice ball filled with braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and crunchy fried pastry bits

Braised pork belly and cucumber on rice, topped with dried shredded pork (肉鬆, Ròu sōng)

Gua bao: braised pork belly, pickled mustard greens, tea egg, and sweetened crushed peanuts in a steamed bun.

When I got back home, I was seriously craving some gua bao, so I looked up a recipe. Whole Foods sells pork belly pretty cheaply by the pound, and the Asian market sells frozen buns and pickled mustard greens. Oh, it is on!

I had to make a few adjustments for ingredients, but in the end the pork belly was delicious. I realized that the recipe was a lot like one I tried from a Chinese cookbook, for "red-cooked pork." That recipe was a failure because I tried using lean pork loin. Cholesterol be damned, the fat is essential.

Before and After

I didn't look up how to make a tea egg, so I let some boiled eggs stew in the braising liquid with the pork, still delicious. I'd never used pickled mustard before, so I didn't know if anything special was done to it before it was served in Taiwan, so I just left it raw and chopped it. I told my friend at work, who's no stranger to Taiwanese pickled veggies, and shook his head in shame. Apparently, I'm supposed to sweeten it and cook it first. Whatever. It all came together pretty nicely with the buns and some chopped cilantro (Taiwan loves cilantro, and so do I).

Like the Detroit Grand Pubahs said, "we can make sandwiches."

Do you have any particular favorite pork belly (or bacon) dish? I wouldn't mind some inspiration for a future post.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 lb raw belly pork, cut to 1/2-inch thick slices

- 2 cloves garlic, smashed

- thinly sliced ginger, 3 or 4 slices, 1-inch long

- 4 green onions, chopped into 3-inch pieces

- 1/4 tsp Chinese Five Spice powder

- 2 Tbsp brown sugar

- 1/4 cup shao xing (rice wine)

- 1/2 cup dark soy sauce

- 1.5 to 2 cups of water (or enough to cover the meat)

- 2 soft boiled eggs, shells removed but edible parts still intact

- pickled mustard greens

- cilantro

- crushed peanuts, sweetened with some sugar

- steamed Chinese sandwich buns

Procedure:

1. Bring a Dutch oven to medium high heat and sear the pork belly to a good brown on all sides. No oil is necessary, the belly fat renders out nicely. But if you really want to, you can use a teaspoon of veg oil.

2. Once the meat is browned, add all of the following ingredients to the pot: garlic, ginger, green onions, 5 Spice powder, brown sugar, shao xing, soy sauce, and water. Bring the pot to a boil.

3. Once the liquid is boiling, lower the heat to medium and simmer for 1 or 1.5 hours. The braising liquid will reduce and thicken.

4. When the meat is done and the eggs are stewed, remove them from the braising liquid. Dice the eggs and the pork belly. Chop some cilantro and some mustard greens. Combine them into a bun, sprinkle the peanuts, and enjoy the sh-t out of your gua bao.

Mapo Tofu with Ground Pork

Recipe Source: The Food of China and some experimentation

Recipe Result: Great taste and texture

As much as I like meat, I do enjoy some tofu every now and then, and I don't think that tofu necessarily has to be a meat-substitute. That's why I love mapo tofu; the soft tofu complements the minced pork, and the chili-bean paste makes it really spicy and hearty. Back in college, there was a Pan-Asian restaurant near campus, Lulu's Noodles, and one of their best dishes was the mapo tofu. Instead of ground pork, they used sliced barbecue pork... outstanding. I especially liked how my friend Mona, a native Mandarin speaker, translated the name to "Old Bitch Tofu," and referred to Girish as such for ordering it every time.

The cookbook I got the recipe from didn't do a very good job of giving this recipe a lot of flavor. Every time I followed the recipe exactly, the sauce was really bland and watery and the tofu lacked flavor (surprise, surprise). But I tried messing around with the amount of soy sauce used, when to add the tofu to the pan, and the amount of broth to add at the end for the final sauce. I think the recipe I've got now is definitely a step up from the book's. You can find my version after the jump.

Yangshuo Eggplant with Pork

Recipe Source: Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth on Create

Recipe Result: Pretty good, you can really taste the eggplant itself... but needs more sauce

Growing up, my mom would often make Haitian braised beef with eggplant. The beef would be cooked in a way very similar to my Haitian chicken recipe, but the eggplant was essentially mush, and that made me dislike eggplant as a kid.

Fast forward to my undergrad years. We had some food trucks on campus, a couple of them serving Thai food, and that's where I rediscovered eggplant. Granted that the chopped chicken and eggplant from the Thai trucks was probably loaded with fish sauce and MSG, I realized that eggplant doesn't have to be a beige, flavorless mush.

For a while, I tried to recreate that flavor and texture, but I just didn't understand how to work with eggplant. I'd try to saute and braise it, but it just seemed to absorb all the oil I'd put into the pan, or never really cook all the way through unless I let it over cook and become mush. But lately I've been having some good luck getting that nice texture with stir-frying really quickly over high heat. And there's something about Asian flavors that really makes the eggplant stand out.

So I stumbled upon this recipe while watching a food/travel show on PBS. I've tried it a few times, and I think I've almost nailed it. You can find my recipe after the jump. Give it a try, let me know how you like it, or let me know how you made it even better.