[ed. A favorite of one of my uncles, here are three different takes on a classic: Han Dynasty’s Mapo Tofu. Mission Chinese Food’s Mapo Tofu. Momofuku Ssam Bar’s Spicy Pork Sausage & Rice Cakes.]
Defining mapo tofu is like playing a maddening game of twenty questions: Is it plant-based? Yes. Is it vegetarian? Sometimes. Does it have pork? Probably. Is it spicy? Usually. Easy to make? It can be! The mapo tofu galaxy is one of infinite possibilities, spiraling outward from an originally spicy, oily, numbing, meaty sauce/stew of Sichuan origin. (...)
There are a couple versions of the origin story of mapo tofu, but I’m going to tell you the one I like best. Let me take you back to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, in the late 1800s. There’s this old lady, a tofu maker. She makes tofu every morning and also cooks some tofu dishes for local people or other cooks. She has smallpox scars all over her face, so people call her Ma Po—ma means pockmarks, and po means grandmother.
So there’s a gentleman who comes in to get some food. He’s just come from the market, and he has a bag of minced beef with him. He’s sitting there in Ma Po’s restaurant, and he looks out across the street and sees a very nice restaurant with a very pretty girl. Ma Po, as you know, is not the prettiest lady, and the pretty girl calls out to him to come to her restaurant. He leaves Ma Po’s place and heads across the street.
A few minutes later a table of customers comes in, and they say that they want a tofu dish with beef. Ma Po doesn’t have any beef but the gentleman who left forgot his bag of minced beef, so she’s like, I’m gonna use this motherfuckin’ beef. She makes this dish and she brings it out and the group of men love it. They go crazy over it.
A lot of people think the ma in this dish’s name refers to the numbing sensation you get from a Sichuan peppercorn, which is also called ma in Chinese. But to me it’s all about a person who creates a dish that people loved so much they named it after her. It became the most famous tofu dish that ever came out of China. There’s no tofu dish that is as famous as this. When you talk about Sichuan cuisine, you talk about this dish.
Defining mapo tofu is like playing a maddening game of twenty questions: Is it plant-based? Yes. Is it vegetarian? Sometimes. Does it have pork? Probably. Is it spicy? Usually. Easy to make? It can be! The mapo tofu galaxy is one of infinite possibilities, spiraling outward from an originally spicy, oily, numbing, meaty sauce/stew of Sichuan origin. (...)
There are a couple versions of the origin story of mapo tofu, but I’m going to tell you the one I like best. Let me take you back to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, in the late 1800s. There’s this old lady, a tofu maker. She makes tofu every morning and also cooks some tofu dishes for local people or other cooks. She has smallpox scars all over her face, so people call her Ma Po—ma means pockmarks, and po means grandmother.So there’s a gentleman who comes in to get some food. He’s just come from the market, and he has a bag of minced beef with him. He’s sitting there in Ma Po’s restaurant, and he looks out across the street and sees a very nice restaurant with a very pretty girl. Ma Po, as you know, is not the prettiest lady, and the pretty girl calls out to him to come to her restaurant. He leaves Ma Po’s place and heads across the street.
A few minutes later a table of customers comes in, and they say that they want a tofu dish with beef. Ma Po doesn’t have any beef but the gentleman who left forgot his bag of minced beef, so she’s like, I’m gonna use this motherfuckin’ beef. She makes this dish and she brings it out and the group of men love it. They go crazy over it.
A lot of people think the ma in this dish’s name refers to the numbing sensation you get from a Sichuan peppercorn, which is also called ma in Chinese. But to me it’s all about a person who creates a dish that people loved so much they named it after her. It became the most famous tofu dish that ever came out of China. There’s no tofu dish that is as famous as this. When you talk about Sichuan cuisine, you talk about this dish.
by Brette Warshaw, Lucky Peach | Read more:
Image: Gabriele Stabile
