Mapo Tofu

This dish resembles nothing like the real thing. That is the point.

Real mapo tofu is originally from Sichuan (random factoid: my first name 川 is the same character as the second one in Sichuan). Sichuan peppercorn, the numbing spice, is the key ingredient.

We don’t use Sichuan peppercorns. My kids don’t like the numbing spice. So I took the ingredient the dish depends on and left it out. Whenever they eat mapo somewhere else, they’re surprised, because ours isn’t really mapo anymore. It’s ours.

I’ve made this for 20 years. It has been rewritten so many times I can’t tell you when it stopped being the original recipe. Here’s the drift.

**Firm tofu became silken tofu.** I used to make this with firm tofu because that’s what all the standard recipes tell you to use. Over the years I’ve gone from firm, to firm plus soft, to two soft, to two packs of silken. Firm tofu is what I see in Chinese recipes written for Western audiences. Soft or silken is what we use because it melds into the sauce.

**I doubled the doubanjiang.** Doubanjiang is fermented broad bean and chili paste, the backbone of the sauce. My original recipe calls for 1 tablespoon, but my son kept asking for more flavor, so I kept increasing it. This is coming from the kid who didn’t eat spicy until he was 9.

**I added fresh chilies.** At some point you can’t just keep increasing the doubanjiang, so I looked for another way to bring heat. I grow chilies in my garden every year, so I’ve got a huge stash in the freezer.

**I doubled the batch.** This one has an obvious cause. I went from feeding a toddler to feeding a full grown teenage boy who eats me out of house and home.

Half this if you’re not feeding growing children. The proportions hold.

I always make sautéed cauliflower with this. No idea why. It’s just something my parents did, so on my whiteboard menu the two always show up together.

I’ve tried a lot of doubanjiang brands over the years. This is the one I keep buying.

The recipe you make the most is rarely the authentic one. It’s the one that bent around your family, year after year, until it fit them and nobody else. Mine has. I suspect the kids will keep adapting it after they leave the nest.