rss feedMark Bittman’s vegan take on mapo tofu is innovative – but confounds just a bit
I’ve always liked Mark Bittman’s recipes and outlook on making great-tasting food.
A few years ago, my sister or mom gave me his book, How to Cook Everything. It’s been handy and my wife and I have enjoyed numerous recipes, including one for pumpkin soup, another for grilled chicken with lime and cilantro and steps on making a fresh tomato sauce with herbs.
But I think he missed the mark, just a bit, with his Bitten blog post on Faux Ma Po Tofu. It ran in The New York Times.
His first sentence tripped me up, especially since I’ve long enjoyed mapo tofu:
Last week, everything came together for a weird, accidental, successful vegan take on ma-po tofu.
I realize he embraces innovation and that’s probably why he talked about using cauliflower and grains in his blog post.
But mapo tofu has long been a vegetarian dish.
I’m sure if you ask many Chinese chefs about vegetarian mapo tofu, the answer likely would be: Leave the pork or beef out.
My wife likes meatless mapo tofu because she says it brings out the truer flavors of the peppercorns because, clearly, there is no interference from the pork or beef.
I also know that Bittman can cook me under a table. So, I don’t mean this post to be snarky in any way.
Also, in the big scheme of things, say the number of months a state economy needs to regain all the jobs lost during this recession, it’s a minor point.
But hey, editors at news companies – and not just top-flight ones such as The New York Times – can be an exacting bunch.
I also didn’t see exactly what type of dry, pressed tofu that he bought.
But I suspect it might be what people in Mandarin call “dofu gan.”
It’s used in this delicious, easy-to-make, high-protein and healthy recipe that my wife showed me – and readers of TofuWatch – how to make.
If Bittman did buy what I think he did, keep in mind that people in China’s Sichuan province last year set a record by making the world’s biggest of dry tofu.
It weighed 4,092 pounds and I estimated its retail price to be $16,368.
As we all know: You gotta love tofu - especially when chefs in Asia have made an art out of cooking spicy bean curd and shown their skills in demonstrations and competitions.
Fu Pei-Mei, a chef from Taiwan, gained fame for her cooking, especially with her tofu sandwiches and use of yuba, or tofu skin.
And of course, in Las Vegas, we saw the rise of badass tofu.
