Vegan Mapo Tofu

I don’t know about you, but my partner and I are obsessed with Asian food. I’m from Southeast Asia, and am always looking for ways to veganise dishes from my childhood. This one is for a vegan mapo tofu; sans the meat, but keeping all of that flavour! Do keep in mind that this is my take on this amazing dish; I’m by no means and expert in Sichuan cuisine!! I’ve given ranges for some of the ingredients as I’m a big believer in the good ol’ ‘agak-agak’ (ie. guesstimation) method of measuring out ingredients…

A few tips: use a wok if you can, and the water is good to keep on hand to use in small amounts whilst using the wok, to make sure things don’t get too hot and out of control! If you don’t have a wok, you can always use whatever else you have on hand, you’ll still end up with some delicious vegan mapo tofu.

Ingredients

• 1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp ground sichuan peppercorns (plus about 1 tsp to add at the end)
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, chopped (we love garlic in this household!! Reduce if you’re not as much of a fan)
• 1-2 tbsp fermented chilli black bean sauce (or any fermented black bean sauce)
• roughly 1 inch piece of ginger, chopped
• 5 chestnut mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1 block of silken tofu
• 6 long dried chillies (we got the super spicy kind as we’re spice fiends)
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• roughly 1 cup of water to have hand to make up the ‘stew’ and for wok-frying – you may not end up needing this much
• cornstarch slurry – 1 tbsp cornstarch and 2-3 tbsp of water
• one handful of chopped spring onion

Method

1. Once the wok is nice and hot, fry 1 tbsp of the sichuan peppercorns in vegetable oil for about 10 seconds.
2. Add ginger, garlic and dried chillies to the wok and fry till fragrant. This won’t take very long, be careful not to burn them!
3. Next fry off the chilli black bean sauce, followed by the mushrooms.
4. Once mushrooms are cooked, add about half a cup of water to the wok and simmer for a few minutes.
5. Add cornstarch slurry and cook till the sauce thickens, and then add silken tofu and gently break the tofu up into chunks. Cook for a further 5 minutes.
6. Turn off heat and drizzle in sesame oil and remaining sichuan peppercorns, and gently stir. Don’t stir too much or it’ll become scrambled tofu!
7. Serve the vegan mapo tofu with rice, and garnish with spring onion. We like to add freshly cracked black pepper as well here, but it’s not something that’s commonly done.

And there you have it, vegan mapo tofu! You don’t have to be too rigid with the ingredient amounts, just have some fun with it! (not too much though!)

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