"Who Said Cannot?" - Recipe: Vegetarian Mapo Tofu

Perhaps the most common mistake that people make when attempting to adopt a vegetarian or vegan-based diet is to try to recreate vegetarian versions of all their favourite meat dishes. Unfortunately, the results are often disappointing, because to my mind, you can't substitute meat for vegetables and attempting to do so is often an exercise in futility. I've learnt over the years that certain dishes were created specifically to enhance the taste of meat, and you can try till the cows come home, but you'll never find a vegetarian substitute. Take for example, coq au vin, siew yoke or ikan bakar. Likewise, food connoisseurs have told me that attempts  to "halalise" Bak Kut Teh (which literally translates from Hokkien as "meat bone tea") by turning it into Chick-Kut-Teh or Mut-Kut-Teh (chicken or mutton based) have failed miserably.

I feel a bit churlish now, thinking of how, when I first came back from the US, I subjected my poor mother to about 6 months or so of torture when I declared I was no longer eating meat. She truly tried her best, and for that I will always be grateful, to accommodate my new diet, yet she had to oblige the majority. One of the mainstays of our meals at home is lai tong or soup of the day. While many of the home-style Chinese soups include vegetables, the stock is inevitably made from meat, whether it is pork, fish or chicken. I remember the number of hours of research that my mother put into it to come up with a vegan stock. No matter how hard she tried, I remember my brothers showing up for dinner and going, "What is this?" For Muscles and Brawn, as I like to call them, anything vegetarian was immediately suspect, and as a result, they refused to touch it. 

Pigs dressed up like...tofu?

Source: Dan Piraro

However, with a little creativity, you can whip up many wonderful dishes that are completely vegetarian. The trick is to try to find something which is flexible enough to accommodate a complete overhaul (in the sense that changing the main ingredient doesn't destroy the taste of the dish) in the main ingredient. For example, the assertiveness of the tangy Chinese sweet and sour sauce provides you enough cover to substitute the meat in the dish with a vegetable, such as mushroom, that is amenable to being coated with flour or breadcrumbs and deep-fried. For my take on this, see my previous entry.

An alternative approach is zooming in on dishes in which the main ingredient is substantial and plant-based, such as tofu, eggplant or mushroom, and where meat plays a complimentary role. Take Mapo Tofu, or pock-marked lady's tofu, which is arguably the most famous tofu recipe from China. I've been to numerous restaurants where the wait staff have told me bluntly that the dish simply cannot be made vegetarian, because of the minced pork. However, I have discovered, after a few trials and errors, that you can quite easily create a vegetarian mince with superb results. So to all those waiters that have snubbed me, here's saying (insert obnoxious "Aunty" voice here), "Who said cannot?"

Serves 2-3 as part of a multi-course meal

Ingredients:

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 large block of silken tofu,  drained of excess water and cut into large cubes

1/2 tsp (just a scant pinch) Sichuan peppercorns (pictured right, omit if desired)

1/2 inch old ginger, peeled and minced finely

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 large spring onion, minced, reserving about 1/2 tbsp for garnishing

4 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked until soft and then chopped finely

100 g vegetarian ham, chopped finely

Sauce:

1 1/2 tbsps Sichuan chilli bean paste
1 tbsp preserved black beans, washed and chopped
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
150ml vegetable stock
1-2 tsps sugar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine
2 tsp sesame oil
salt to taste

1 tbsp corn flour, mixed with 2 tbsps water to form a slurry
Chopped spring onion to garnish

Toast Sichuan peppercorns in skillet over low heat until fragrant. Crush coarsely in mortar and pestle. Heat the oil in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add ginger, garlic and chopped spring onion and fry briskly for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Add mushrooms and vegetarian ham and stir-fry until lightly browned. Lower heat, add the Sichuan peppercorns, hot bean paste, black beans and ground chillies; stir-fry until the oil turns a rich red colour. Pour in stock, stir, and add the tofu. Mix in gently; do not stir or the tofu will break and your dish will look like mush.

Add sugar, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil and salt to taste. Cover and simmer gently for 5-10 minutes. Remove cover and thicken with cornstarch slurry. Remove from heat and serve hot, garnished with chopped spring onion.