When I was younger,I broke my foot playing sports. My Mom was convinced that eating Oxtail Soup would help the bones heal. So every weekend,while I was in my cast,she would make a huge batch of Oxtail Soup. She’d cook the oxtails in a slow cooker overnight and the next morning she’d add in tomatoes and carrots. Needless to say,I got sick of oxtail soup pretty fast. But every now and then,especially in the winter,I get a huge craving for my Mom’s oxtail soup. This however is not my Mother’s Oxtail soup.
At the last dinner party I threw,I welcomed my first guests with towels. I then pointed them at various places around my apartment and yelled at them to wave their towels vigorously,until all the smoke from the pork chops I had just burned had been blown out of the apartment and the alarm had stopped screeching. Luckily,they were very abiding and the rest of the party was relatively uneventful after that. However,spontaneous bonding experiences aside,most people try to avoid starting dinner parties off with smoke and frantic fanning. (This is the first post by Kevin,a new contributing author on our blog. -Rob) Pigs smell really bad. Their feet smell considerably worse. When I opened up my vacuum sealed packaged from Wegman’s,I was convinced that the trotters I’d picked had somehow rotted right in their bag. They stilled like a combination of vinegar,sulfur,and sweaty gym socks left overnight in a badly insulated locker. Gross. I rinsed the things,but the smell lingered. Things were off to a bad start. Mapo Tofu has always been one of my favorite dishes. We actually did a recipe for it a while back that can be found here. We’ve cooked it enough times (and seen my mom cook it) that we feel the need to revisit this recipe for some adjustments. Firstly,when preparing the tofu,it’s important to cube the tofu before submerging it in hot water. The point of this step is to soften the tofu so that it’s nice and tender in the final dish. Dunking the whole brick in hot water does nothing to the parts of the tofu in the center. The second thing that we’ve changed is that we add the cornstarch mixture after the spicy sauce and the peppercorn oil. Doing it this way ensures that the spices will be thoroughly integrated with the tofu and the meat instead of sludging around with the cornstarch. Hope this helps improve your mapo tofu like it helped with our’s.  |  | |
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