I'm sure a lot of you have heard of tofu. Tofu is generally vanilla colored and it mainly consists of soy beans. It is actually a really healthy food and it also contains a lot of proteins. Some types of tofu may include the regular soft tofu, deep-fried tofu, tofu skin, and many more! With so many types of tofu, of course there are a lot of different ways to cook it! Today, we are going to make two tofu dishes: home-styled tofu and stir-fry tofu. Let's get started! :)
Home-styled Tofu 家常豆腐
Ingredients:
- tofu slices
- peppers
- hot chilli peppers
- black fungus 黑木耳 (not shown)
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| Courtesy of http://www.100tiao1.net/ |
- chilli bean sauce 豆瓣酱
Step 1: Slice & cook the tofu
In this procedure, you first want to cut the tofu into triangular shapes with about a centimenter (half an inch) in width. Then heat up the stove and add just enough oil to to have a piece of tofu completely submerged in it. Now you want to deep-fry the tofu until it's golden in color as shown below.
Gather up the vegetables and slice them up! You can choose to put more or less hot chilli peppers depending on your liking!
Step 2: Preparing the meat
Now the meat!! For this dish we are going to be working with pork. So first we want to marinate the pork with soy sauce, corn starch, salt, cooking wine, and sugar. Mix in the pork and let it sit for about 10 minutes to let the meat soak in the flavour!
Step 3: Cooking everything
Now that everything is ready to be cooked altogether, let the fun begin :). So this is actually really important, and you must follow this step by step. First, cook the pork by itself. This is because the pork takes longer to fully cook than the vegetables do. And we definitely do not want to overcook the vegetables. Also, add in the bean paste. Once the outer layer of the pork is cooked, now you can add in everything else. And when you're done, your dish should look something like this.
Today, we succeeded in the fact that we didn't burn anything and nothing caught on fire. :D. However, we were kind of disappointed in the flavouring of the dish. It was rather....salty. In fact, it was extremely salty. I think it is safe to say that it's may fault haha. I may have put too much soy sauce when marinating the pork. If I were to may this dish again, I'll definitely be more careful with the soy sauce. And I actually may also add a little bit of water because I think the over saltiness didn't only come from the soy sauce, but the bean paste as well.
My great grandparents from my dad's side are what is known as 客家人(ke jia people). And we have our own style of tofu cooking called 客家豆腐煲 (ke jia tofu pot). I don't actually remember our family making them, but I know that we would always order it if it appears on a restaurant's menu. It is lightly fried blocks of tofu, and it is served in a pot with a viscous, salty broth. Sometimes it is also served with meat. This is one of my favourite Chinese dishes! :P
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| Courtesy of http://www.nipic.com/ |
Can't believe a week of cooking and eating good food went by so quickly! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Stay tuned for next week :).
Evann
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