A face like a bucket of Ma Po tofu.

I'm a fickle bitch. Quixotic and mercurial.

Only the other day I blogged about my latest obsession being dumplings.

No more.

My affair with dumplings was fleeting and tawdry.. based on my basest animal urges.

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh. ~Henry Fielding

Now I have discovered The One. The Real Thing.

The one, at whose first tender lip brush, I hear heavenly choirs of seraphim.

Ma Po tofu.

Seriously. This is a dish so made of awesome.. from its odd translation ("old lady pockmarked face beancurd"), to the rich and hearty soupy broth, in which resides slow cooked minced pork and cubes of silken tofu, there is nothing not to love about this dish.

Wiki says:

Ma stands for "mazi" (Pinyin: mázi Traditional Chinese 麻子,) which means a person disfigured by pockmarks. Po (Chinese 婆) translates as "old woman". Hence, Ma Po is an old woman whose face was pockmarked. It is thus sometimes translated as "Pockmarked-Face Lady's Tofu". Legend says that the pock-marked old woman (má pó) was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Chengdu. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, poor farmers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city. Another less widely accepted explanation stems from an alternate definition of 麻, meaning "numb": the Szechuan peppercorns used in the dish numb the diner's mouth.

The combination of dried birds eye chili and Szechuan peppercorns gives this dish a bite that is NOT for the faint-hearted, but you can adjust it to suit most palates. True Mapo doufu is powerfully spicy with both conventional "heat" spiciness and the characteristic "mala" (numbing spiciness) flavor of Sichuan cuisine. The feel of the particular dish is often described by cooks using seven specific Chinese adjectives: 麻 (numbing), 辣 (spicy hot), 烫 (hot temperature), 鲜 (fresh), 嫩 (tender and soft), 香 (aromatic), and 酥 (flaky). These seven characteristics are considered to be the most defining of authentic Mapo doufu.

The other benefit, if that all of that chilli increases you metabolic rate, giving you a natural chilli high, and is said by some to aid weight loss. The tofu is an awesome source of phytooestrogens.

• Marinade for Ground Pork:
• 1 1/2 Tbsp tapioca starch (can substitute cornstarch)
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• Other:
• 500g pound ground pork
• 500g pound regular tofu (medium firmness)
• 1 leek or 3 green onions
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp Chinese salted black beans (fermented black beans, also called Chinese black beans), or to taste
• 1 Tbsp chili bean paste, or to taste
• 3 Tbsp stock (chicken broth)
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 2 Tbsp water
• 2 Tbsp light soy sauce
• Freshly ground Szechuan pepper
• 2 - 3 tablespoons oil for stir-frying, as needed

Preparation:

Mix marinade ingredients. Marinate pork for about 20 minutes.
Cut the tofu (bean curd) into 1/2 inch (1 cm) square cubes, and blanch (drop into boiling water) for 2 - 3 minutes. Remove from boiling water and drain.
Chop leek or green onions into short lengths.
Heat wok and add oil. When oil is ready, add the marinated pork. Stir-fry pork until the color darkens. Add salt and stir. Add the salted black beans. Mash the beans with a cooking ladle until they blend in well with the meat. Add the chili paste, then the stock, bean curd, and leek or green onions.
Turn down the heat. Cook for 3 - 4 minutes.
While cooking, mix cornstarch, water, and soy sauce together. Add to wok and stir gently. Serve with freshly ground Szechuan pepper.

recipe from http://chinesefood.about.com

More on Furry's learning curve.

I am currently obsessed with dumplings. Gow Gees. Shui Mai. Gyoza. Wrap pretty much anything in a pastry wrapper, and I'll give it a red hot go. Coming off 5 weeks of being sick means that I have to treat my system with kid gloves. Dairy is still out, as is anything fatty. I've been living off Majick Phở and rice dishes for weeks, so I am on a major flava crava jones right now.

Furry.

Hmm. Yes.

Well.

He's back in Melbourne, longer than he expected. A few irons in the fire to get him back to PNG, but nothing set in concrete yet. We've adjusted to sharing living spaces again and I must admit, it's nice to come home and have the house all clean, and dinner cooked. In lieu of rent, I get my gutters cleaned and Furry Balls on demand.

Not such a bad arrangement, actually.

So yesterday, Furry announces he want to improve his repertoire of Furry Ball recipes. So I phaff off to work, leaving him with some $$ for ingredients and my car.

And get home to 90 dumplings, in 4 different flavours.



A quick call to friends up the hill, with an impassioned plea to come and help us eat all of the fruits of his labour, and we've got an instant Furry Ball Feast! It was so SO good, we have decided that while he's in town we'll utilize his skill and we've declared Tuesday "Dumpling Night"

This, from the man I met all those years ago, who thought serving nachos with a paint scraper was the height of his culinary possibilities. ]

Last nights offerings were chicken and ginger, pork and 5 spice, classic Furry Balls, and beef with Schezhuan pepper. The dipping sauces were siracha, red vinegar and sweet chilli, hoi sin, classic light soy and Furry's own concoction of soy, vinegar, sliced birds eye chillies and diced coriander roots.

He is now the proud owner of a mincer (for his up and coming seafood gow gee fest next Tuesday night), and is, as we speak, at home experimenting with xia long bao, or Shanghai soup dumplings.

And in true GREAT home cook style, he is realizing that a repertoire is not about how many recipes you can churn out from cookbooks, but on how you can adapt your knowledge-base to allow for seasonal ingredients, individual palates and plain old cravings.

Just incases you didn't believe me...

I told you so.

Complete with spigot for lay backs.

A cold snap...

We're nearly at the end of Winter, but an unseasonable cold snap here in Melbourne, has had me reaching for some old faves, and this Sunday past, after a jaunt to Gippsland, I felt like some old fashioned bangers and tatties.

Of course, while packing for said jaunt, I forgot the camera, but what we came home with was a Jindi brie full wheel for $21!!

The stuff they sell at Slaveway for $41,639.72 a gm, was a whole $21 a FULL ROUND!

In Rosedale, I picked up Maffra Red Cheese with Dargo walnuts, Maffra extra tasty with lemon myrtle and some local olive oil and some local white wine vinegar. Furry talked me out of the Tetsuya's truffle salt at $36 for 50g.



Into my $500 post (called so because Furry found it while we were cleaning out a friend's father's house, after he was placed in a Nursing Home, and we found $500 secreted away in it!), I put my sliced Thorpdale potatoes,some yellow capsicums from this weeks Aussie Farmer's delivery, some grated Maffra tasty, some red onions from the Yarragon Farmer's Market, mixed with sour cream, some milk and 4 eggs. I covered the top with dots of butter and some Burramine Blue, the cheese that won the DIAA Victorian Dairy Product Silver medal this year, that I picked aup at the Jells Park Farmer's market.




I like to slow cook my bangers. I got these from my local butcher.. Beef and Burgundy snags, made on the premises, from Cardinia beef. I am blessed to have a cast-iron pan, that I have used religiously for the past 23 years, and it is perfectly seasoned. A quick spray with some Canola oil, and I whack the bangers in and set the gas ring to the lowest setting. Every so often I give the pan a shake, so the bangers don't stick and voila! about 35-40 min later, perfectly browned snags! Serve with the baked tattie dish, and a good hearty red, and all is right with the world, on a cold Sunday night!

Canadian Wild Smoked Salmon

We are lucky enough to have, by virtue of the Internet, made friends around the world. So last week marked our second visit from Canadian friends, Lil and Marc. And knowing Furry and I as they do, they presented us with a HUGE box of Canadian Wild Smoked Salmon. I was verily aquiver with anticipation at eating this delux delight!! (We had previously scoffed their offering of Elk and Whiskey Pate.... le swooooooon!)

I had originally planned to go with some sourdough bread, the salmon and a perfectly poached egg, but after Agnes's wonderful offering of home-made bagels, lox and cream cheese, I had a hankering for something different.

So I asked my wise and worldly friends at Chowhound, who came up with the idea of doing ti Japanese-style. Thinly sliced at room temp, on hot steamed rice, with dipping sauces of terryaki, fresh ginger and lime juice. I also added a dipping sauce of light soy and wasabi.

There we were. Furry and I, ready to chow down.....

and then we opened the salmon....

Rather than being the light, orange, SLICE-ABLE fillet we expected, we were faced with a deep, dense meaty slab more reminiscent of a smoked mackerel. There was absolutely no way we could slice it. It was flaky and dense, redolent with the alder smoke.

It was absolutely divine, but NOT suited to the purpose of slicing and not really suited to the light Japanese flavours I had to accompany it.

Think double-smoked trout, or those lovely oily/dry meaty fish you can get in Greek deli's.

It probably went better with the ginger and lime dipping sauce than it did with the darker soy and wasabi. Eventually, I poured the dipping sauce over my rice, ate that separately and then tucked into the salmon as a finger lickin' snack of its own.

I had entertained ideas of blinis with creme fraiche and caviar, but I think this meat is even to heavy for that.

This salmon is not fit for dainty morsels and subtle flavours, this is a salmon to chow down on in the middle of the Canadian winter before you jump on your trusty steed, all Dudley Do-Right and wade thru 20ft snow drifts to save Miss Nell from Darstadly Dan!

Luckily, there is about 1/2 left, so next time, I am going to go with a more Scandinavian idea... or maybe back to the original of sourdough and poached eggs.