Ma Po in the Microwave

I admit, I even like the americanized versions of this dish that you get at chinese restaurants. You usually see it as bigish cubes of tofu in an orange colored, garlicky sauce with red pepper flecks in it. There's no secret ingredients here, but I did manage to make it in the microwave. Less cleanup, and slightly less garlic fumes in my house.

You will need a microwavable casserole dish with a good lid.

1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1/2 an onion, sliced thin
between 1/2 and 1 teaspoon of hot chili sauce
a generous tablespoon fermented black bean sauce
about a tablespoon of light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 lb firm tofu
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Cube the tofu and put the chili sauce, bean sauce, soy and sugar on it. Stir it well and set it aside.

Put the onion, garlic, ginger & oil in the casserole and microwave, covered, on high for about 5 or 6 minutes. Periodically stir the onions to keep them from burning. When the onions are translucent and are developing little brown places, add the tofu and stir it up. Microwave until it starts bubbling. Stir from time to time so it heats evenly. When it's bubbly, mix the cornstarch in half a cup of water and add to the tofu. Stir, and continue to cook for a minute or so until the starch thickens and goes transparent.

There is very little that could go wrong with this recipe, but here are a couple things anyway-

1. As with all microwave cooking, times here are highly approximate. A lot depends on the wattage of your appliance, the temperature of your ingredients, dishes, and house, etc etc. Don't worry about time.
2. Really the only thing that you need to be sure of is that the cornstarch is cooked. It has to be brought to a boil or it won't thicken. Don't worry, it happens quite effortlessly.
3. Feel free to improvise. Lots of recipes for this have a green thing in it, usually peppers. Some of them call for ground beef. (Why?) I bet it would be great with broccoli and water chestnuts, or baby bok choi. I usually just cook some greens to go as a side dish, so I don't bother putting them actually in the tofu.
4. If for some reason you do want to make this on the stove you can, of course. Use a heavy pan, brown the onions garlic & ginger in oil first, then add the tofu & seasonings, then the starch & water. Pretty simple.

Dad told me something about this dish. I don't remember if he claimed to have met and dined at the house of the original Ma Po, but he did say that "real, authentic" ma po tofu is a very different thing than this. For one thing, it should be volcanically hot. Pepper hot, that is. For another, tofu in cubes is not the correct format.

Tofu is made a lot like cheese, initially. You soak dried soybeans for a day or two, you grind them into a slurry with water, drain out and discard the solids, then curdle the proteins in the liquid. The curds are pressed together to make the bricks of tofu you get at the store. To make authentic ma po tofu, you should take the loose curds and use those in the dish rather than the pressed blocks. I imagine that it would have a very delicate texture.

Spicy Chicken and Basil (with Spinach)

My fella took me to this Thai restaurant on Alberta and now I can't remember what its name was. I got a beef noodle soup which was pretty good, he got a fried catfish which was A. Mazing. It had this dark red chili sauce on it, and some bell peppers, and sauteed basil as a vegetable. I reminded me of some of the few positive experiences I had when I was living in Taiwan. I don't think I had any Thai food there, but some of the stuff I ate there was similar in retrospect. Basil used as a vegetable rather than a seasoning is one of those things.

This makes 2 dinner- sized servings for me.

Prep about 1/2 lb of chicken tenders with salt, pepper & oil. Leave them to sit in the fridge a few days. The day of, you need:

1 T oyster sauce
1 T fish sauce
1 T sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced lemongrass- I use a chunk of pre-minced lemongrass that came in a little vacuum sealed packet out of the frozen section at Fubonn.
3 or 4 green onions, tops & bottoms minced. This is optional because the 2nd time I made this dish, I forgot to put them in and it didn't really matter. Up to you.
1 large bunch of basil, leaves only
a double handful of fresh spinach leaves

If you want to eat it with noodles like the picture, put on a pot of salted water. The chicken takes maybe about as long to cook as the noodles do. Start the chicken at the same time the noodles go in the pot. That's if you like your noodles pretty firm.

Chop up the chicken and stir in the sesame oil, oyster sauce & fish sauce.  Heat 2 T cooking oil in a frying pan, and when it's hot enough to almost smoke, put in the pepper flakes, garlic, ginger and lemongrass, plus the onions if you've got 'em. Stir a bit until the seasonings brown and get just a tad crispy then dump in the chicken and stir really fast for about 2 more minutes. When the chicken is looking maybe half done, put the greens in the pan and keep stirring until everything is cooked through and the liquid that comes out of the greens has pretty much evaporated.

On a totally unrelated note, the hummingbirds like my sage plant.

Trotter Chili

I made this because I had a pig's foot lying around. I guess you don't have to use a pigs foot, the shank-end of a hock would probably do just as well. The thing is, a fresh pig foot costs about 75 cents at Fubonn, and unless you're somebody's crazy chinese dad, you don't actually eat it anyway. (Bleah.) It's just to add gelatin and fat to the chili. It would probably be better to use fresh garlic, onions and bell peppers, but I was pretty sleepy when I made this, so I went the lazypants route and used dry ingredients.

1 pig foot

2 cans toms- I used the ones at fred meyer that say 'chili ready'
1 can black beans
1 T red mole- I used Dona Maria brand, it's ok for this, but it's kinda sweet.
1 T cocoa mix, the best quality you can find, or a heaping teaspoon of baking cocoa
1/2 t each, more or less, oregano, marjoram, paprika, cumin, coarsely ground coriander
dash of onion powder
a bay leaf

Put the pig foot in a 3 qt pot with a half gallon or so of water and bring it to a boil. Pour off the water & put in a fresh batch. This step is probably unnecessary, but I admit to a little squeamishness. Add 1/2 tsp salt to the pot and set it on a medium boil for an hour or two, or until the foot starts to fall apart. The salt is important, it reacts with the proteins in the pig's foot and makes them softer, faster. My piggy toes were frozen to start with, they took a long time.

Once the pig's foot is falling apart, throw all the other ingredients into the pot and simmer until it cooks down enough that you like the texture. Stir it from time to time or it will burn, it may take as much as another hour.

You could serve it with the cornbread from the last recipe, but I actually prefer corn chips with my chili, the crunch is nice. Pick out the bone and skin fragments, there isn't anything really worth eating on a trotter.