rss feedOn the tofu beat: Family Style bean curd
I have long been a fan of Family Style tofu – known in Mandarin as “jia chang doufu.”
During one of my China swings – I think when I studied there - I would frequent a down-home restaurant, spot the waitress and say: “jia chang doufu.”
I’d order the dish repeatedly: Tasty. Inexpensive. Filling.
When prepared just right, the dish offers the proper amount of meat with fried, tender soybean cake and enough hearty sauce to mix with the rice in your bowl.
So naturally, when I spotted a recipe from Fu Pei-Mei, I thought I’d give it a try.
I wanted to keep the oil as little as possible. So, I substituted ground turkey for the pork. And I used store-bought, pre-fried tofu.
Overall, the dish was good. It calls for a chili and bean sauce, which is fried with ginger, garlic and ground pork or turkey and later mixed with chicken broth.
So the chili sauce has a nice, more subtle spicy flavor than if you added it directly to the tofu.
But before I call this dish one that is truly ”worth trying,” I need to cook it a few more times. Though it would add oil and time to the dish, I think I’d try it with the way Fu prepared the bean curd in her tofu sandwich recipe.
The store-bought tofu saved me the effort of frying the bean curd. And I pan fried it to give it a crispier texture.
But the inside needs to be more tender. Fu’s original recipe calls for taking tender bean curd and frying it in a pan. My only concern is that it would stick to the pan.
I just noticed that her recipe calls for 4 cups of oil for the frying. Her cookbook was published in the 1970s.
I’d also add more chicken broth to get more of that hearty sauce.
That said, give it a try. Add and subtract what you’d like.
Finding the right balance with ingredients is one of the objectives involved with cooking.
I estimate this dish cost about $3 or so, presuming you have corn starch, chicken broth and other smaller ingredients. It took me about 30 minutes to make.
Keep in mind that different Chinese restaurants, especially ones in the United States, offer some type of Family Style tofu. But the cooks might prepare it differently.
It’s easy to do that because, given the name, the cook or owner can always say: “This is how my family has always cooked this.”
The recipe below is adapted from Pei-Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume II, copyright Chiu-Yu Printing Co. Ltd.
If you like her recipes, her cookbooks can be bought online.
I like her Volume II cookbook because she only included photographs and instructions in English and Chinese. There’s no narrative.
Also, for the dish I cooked, I added to the amount of green onions, ginger and chili sauce to boost these flavors. And I added cilantro.
The ingredients I used – which are listed below – differed slightly from Pei-Mei’s recipe.
Ingredients:
- Fried tofu (8 ounces)
- Her recipe calls for tender tofu cut in triangles
- Chopped or ground pork, chicken or turkey (3 ounces)
- Chopped ginger (1 teaspoon)
- Smashed garlic (1 tablespoon)
- Hot bean paste (1 tablespoon)
- For this, I used Guiyang Nanming Laoganma
- Salt (1 1/2 teaspoons)
- Sugar (1 teaspoon)
- Sesame oil (1 teaspoon)
- Soup stock (1/2 cup)
- Cornstarch paste (1 tablespoon)
- Green onions (1 tablespoon)
- Cilantro as a garnish
Steps:
- Coat pan with oil.
- Pan fry tofu for crispier texture.
- Keep an eye on the heat. Turn pieces.
- Skip above steps if you like.
- Fry the meat. I used turkey.
- So, I added a dash of chicken bouillon powder and cooking wine.
- Add ginger, garlic and chili and bean sauce.
- Add the fried tofu.
- Pour 1/2 cup of soup stock in pan.
- Cover the pan.
- Turn heat to low.
- Let sit for a few minutes.
- Add salt, sugar and cornstarch paste.
- Add the green onions and cilantro.
- Serve.
Her directions never say when to add the sesame oil.
I added it at the end, right before I tossed the green onions and cilantro on top.
