Ma Po Tofu ( Spicy beancurd with minced meat )

HAPPY NEW YEAR - Here's a dish for the cold January wintry evenings.

I think this is actually a Szechuan dish, but it is quite well known around the world. After having tried various ready made sauces for this dish unsatisfactorily, I have settled on this particular recipe which I personally find has the best balance of spiciness, saltiness and sweetness. I have not added chillies here, although I do think it is an essential ingredient, but this is only because my son cannot eat food that is too spicy. Hence, I used more capsicum as a substitute.

Ingredients:
Sweet Thick Soy
Hot Fermented Soya Bean Sauce
Chilli Sauce
Capsicum
Onions
Garlic
Ginger
Blackbeans
Cornstarch
Chicken Stock
Plain fresh tofu
Mince meat


Firstly, I brown all the veg and blackbeans together. Then I add the hot bean sauce - this needs to be fried till fragrant of the whole dish will taste very different.


Then I add the meat and sweet soy and chilli sauce and fry till cooked.


At this stage, I add the tofu - it is very soft, so needs only to be fried for a couple of minutes to avoid it breaking up and becoming mushy. Then add the stock and corn starch to thicken.


And here it is served!

Spicy hot bean mussels

This recipe has been adapted from my grandmother's recipe for fried lala (clams). As lala is not available in the UK, I use fresh mussels for this dish. Mussels are relatively cheap here, you can get them for about £2 per kg.



Also worth noting that we can get something like lala here too, but it looks different. Look at this picture.. on the outside, it looks like a blood clam (see hum), but once opened, it looks like lala. They cost similar to mussels but I dont use these often because the shells are dirtier and takes a lot of scrubbing before I can fry them whole.


This dish is simply:
- chillies
-onions
- garlic
- capsicum
- hot bean sauce (chilli meen see)
- cornflour to thicken sauce so that it sticks to he mussels

Method:
Fry onions, chillies, garlic, capsicum and hot bean sauce.
Then add cleaned and de-bearded mussels and cook till all shells are opened.
No need to add water as mussel will have its own juice.
Then little bit of cornflour mixture to thicken.
Soy sauce / Salt / sugar / pepper to taste.