East Meets West, Sort Of

I used to have a Chinese cookbook translated from Mandarin with shiny images of banquet dishes and a little boy eating a mung bean popsicle. Though the book did not cover many dishes that interested me, I kept it for a long time because of the first line in one recipe: “First, kill the turtle.”

I thought of that line while putting together Ming Tsai’s black bean and garlic sauce from his beautiful cookbook “Simply Ming” — a book that cooks would love for a holiday gift.

This celebrity chef/restaurateur — with a degree in engineering, another degree in hotel management and a practiced charm on television — specializes in merging East and West with dishes such as soy-dijon chicken wings or scallop and mango ceviche. So I was surprised to see a page in “Simply Ming” given over to a black bean pork and tofu stir fry, otherwise known as Mapo Dofu, which translates, I’ve been told, as old lady with a pock-marked face. 

This is a fabulous Sichuanese dish: spicy, chewy and thoroughly satisfying. My colleague, Lynn, who worked with me at China Daily in Beijing, and I loved it so much we would eat the remains off others’ dishes left on our restaurant table (we figured chopsticks protected us from anything dicey).

But here’s where the East-West thing comes in. The dish starts with a sauce.

That’s also where the turtle comes in, too, because the sauce depends on mountains of chopped scallions, ginger, garlic and fermented black beans, and whereas one task is arduous and disturbing, the other is just arduous — but it has to be done to get on with this great dish.

But what about the East-West motif? Well, Ming Tsai tells us this sauce also goes with spaghetti, with steamed clams, with vegetables or poured over diced cold chicken on a bed of lettuce leaves. And that’s good to know, because though this single sauce takes an hour (for me) to put together, this recipe is big, it keeps well and it’s good enough to eat with lots of things or with just a spoon all by itself.

Black Bean Pork and Tofu Stir Fry

First, the sauce: sauté 1/3 cup of chopped fermented black beans in 1/4 cup of peanut oil in a wok, if you have one. (The chef uses canola, but peanut oil is much better — if you are not allergic to peanuts).

Add 1/2 cup of minced garlic, 1/2 cup of minced fresh ginger and 2 bunches of scallions chopped in 1/8-inch lengths. Stir fry for a couple of minutes to wilt the vegetables a bit.

Then add 1 tablespoon sambal oelek (an Indonesian hot sauce readily found on grocers’ shelves around here) and 1/2 cup of dry sherry. Add salt and pepper, and allow the sauce to reduce for a couple of minutes. Spoon it into a bowl to cool. At this point, I added a teaspoon of ketchup for balance. The Chinese say if you want something sweet, add salt. But I say if something savory doesn’t taste quite right, add a touch of Hunt’s. 

Also, because it’s traditional, I added some ground, toasted Sichuan peppercorns, but certainly the dish is OK without them.

When the sauce ingredients are cooled, spoon half into a blender to purée with 3/4 cup of peanut oil. Return the puréed sauce to the other half of unchurned vegetables and stir together. That’s it. When cool, refrigerate or go ahead with this recipe.

The rest is easy and explains why Ming Tsai says in the book you can put this meal together in minutes (if you have the sauce stored away already).

Sauté a pound of ground pork (not too lean) for 2-3 minutes in 1 tablespoon of peanut oil. Add another bunch of scallions, chopped in 1/8-inch pieces, and 1/2 cup or so of the finished black bean and garlic sauce. When all is mixed, add 14 to16 ounces of firm tofu cut into 1/2-inch dice and fold in gently. Cook another minute or so to make sure everything is hot. Serve with rice.

And there you are. Lunch in 15 minutes. Not including the turtle part. 

And don’t worry. I’m not giving you the mung bean popsicle recipe.