Name: Ma Po Dou Fu
Yield: Serves 8 to 10
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon ground dried red chiles; 2 tablespoons fermented black beans; 5 tablespoons Sichuanese hot bean paste; 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon soy sauce; 2 pounds bean curd, cut into 1-inch cubes; 2 cups chicken stock; ½ cup cornstarch, dissolved in ¾ cup cold water, approximately; 4 Chinese leeks (the long, thin variety called suan miao) or 6 scallions, trimmed; 1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns; Salt; 1 cup any flavorless cooking oil; ¾ pound ground beef

Preparation info

Serves
8 to 10

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

A Canon of Vegetables

By Raymond Sokolov

Published 2007

About

This is the signature dish of Sichuan cuisine. It is hot, simple, and rustic yet a showcase of sophisticated texture contrasts and forceful, hot, typical Sichuan spices. It is named after an apparently real restaurant cook in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu who invented it some time before the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. There are now many restaurants in Sichuan and elsewhere offering ma po dou fu in widely varying versions. This minimalist recipe is based closely on the one Fuc