Ingredients:
I dropped by my local Trader Joe's because there were a few other things I needed to make my Mabo Tofu (maybe I should've made mine in a stone pot too, looks nice). But anyways, I needed some ground pork or beef and some green onions. I was planning to try out peas in it, since some people like it, but I forgot to buy it since I normally make it without it haha =P I ended up with some ground turkey, which worked very well when I made a Korean BBQ flavored dish with it. It was cheaper and healthier than their ground beef, they didn't have any ground pork, so why not?
I've got about half a pound of ground turkey, maybe an ounce or so of Michiu cooking wine, about the same amount of soy sauce, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, ground powdered black pepper, ground powdered white pepper (for different types of heat), one chopped green onion, and some chili paste soy bean sauce mixed together for the meat.
This is the chili paste I like to use for Mabo Tofu. My mom used to use it to make the dish, so that's what I use now. You could always go with those House Mabo Tofu sauce packets, but I don't see a need to spend a couple bucks just on the sauce. Their sauce is pretty tasty though.
After the meat's sat for a couple minutes I sliced a couple more cloves of garlic and start to have them saute in a pan. Looks like it's about ready for the meat. The garlic's started to brown a bit, and I need something to take the heat away from the garlic unless I want it to burn, which leaves a pretty potent flavor.
Mmm... meat =D I dropped it in and spread it around to absorb the heat from the pan.
After a couple of minutes I started to mix it around a bit and added more of the chili paste to bring the flavors together. The black soy beans are tasty too~ You can see that the meat's starting to cook now and hopefully releasing it's juices. I also added a big of Sriracha, yes the cock sauce ;)
I had the heat on high the whole time, but it's time to lower it down and let it simmer a bit while I deal with the Tofu. I ONLY use silken style Tofu for Mabo Tofu. I think it might be a bit odd with firm tofu, but probably possible. If you wanted to make this vegetarian then you could probably mix silken tofu and firm tofu. I'd use the firm tofu to act as the meat. I could see that working pretty well.
Hahaha if you look at the bottom right and left of the Tofu block you can see the recycle logo and some other text, imprinted from the Tofu package. =Þ
After cubing it I added it directly into pan.
All that was left was to carefully mix these two together and cap it to simmer. By letting it simmer the Tofu would be able to absorb the other flavors and soften a bit more.
By this time the water that I had boiling was at a roaring boil. I used Somen noodles because it was the only Asian noodle I had, besides Soba. It's very thin and is very similar to Angel Hair pasta. I'd bet you could pretty much use the two interchangeably without any major problems. Making it made me crave Chinese cold noodles a bit... but maybe another time. I salted the water to flavor the noodles, but besides that I just followed the package directions. After it was done I drained the noodles and also went ahead and used cold water to rinse and drain the noodles to stop the cooking process.
By this time the Mabo Tofu was pretty much done. Everything looks good.
A handful of noodles in the bowl, some chopped green onions on top, and I'm ready to eat =) You could put some cilantro or whatever you'd like too, I just stuck with one of my fav things: green onions.
P.S. Verdict is in.. TASTY! I think I prefer eating Mabo Tofu like this instead of with rice, which is how most people typically eat it. The noodles don't get too soggy and the sauce clings onto it just a bit. Next time I might use a little bit of cornstarch to thicken things up and bring it together, but it's pretty good as is~ Just as in the other dish I made, turkey did a pretty good job of replacing pork. It's just as soft as the pork is, if you use ground beef it becomes pretty tough. It absorb the Mabo flavor quite well too.
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