Steamed Tofu with Minced Prawn (蝦膠蒸釀豆腐)

Tofu is one of my favourite ingredients in Chinese cooking. Although it’s cheap and common, it could be served in an elegant way to impress my family and friends, just by adding a bit of prawn/shrimp meat paste.

Every time I have this dish, I love taking a close look at the springy prawn ball sitting on top of the silky smooth tofu before taking a big bite. It’s an incredible feeling that you can feel all the flavours bursting out in your mouth at the moment you bite them.

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Tofu and Pork in Chilli Bean Sauce (Video)

Tofu is an inexpensive nutrient-rich food. You can make lots of delicious dishes with it. Here’s one of my favourite tofu dishes - tofu and pork in chilli bean sauce (魚香豆腐).

The savoury and spicy taste of the whole dish is very appetizing. This dish goes perfectly with a bowl of steamed rice.

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Salt and Pepper Tofu (Classic Chinese)

This humble tofu dish will surprise you. It's very delicious. You'll easily find it served in Chinese restaurants. Now you can make your own at home in just 15 minutes.

Salt and pepper are great partners as seasonings. I have made different Chinese dishes with salt and pepper, like prawns, chicken wings, quails, pork chops. All these dishes are simple and delicious.

These two humble condiments, salt and pepper, are very versatile, not only going so well with meats, but also tofu. You can’t imagine that a bit of salt and pepper will turn the blank tofu into amazingly tasty food.

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Seafood & Tofu Soup (Quick Chinese Soup)

Being part of a luncheon is one of my favourite activities here. Not only am I able to taste different yummy foods cooked by my friends, but also can I be inspired by many new cooking ideas.

Before going to Tokyo, I went to a luncheon. One of my best friends, Kitty cooked a big bowl of soup for us. We were so curious about what’s inside. She told us, in an as-a-matter-of-fact tone, that’s seafoods and tofu soup. For us, it sounds amazing because many of us have seldom tried this soup before. When the soup was served, it’s topped with some Japanese weeds, that made the soup look more appealing to our appetite. The seafoods were really fresh, going so well with the silky tofu. Only one word did I find to describe the soup, it’s “incredible”.

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Seaweed, Tofu & Pork Mince Soup

This seaweed, tofu & pork mince soup is very quick to make. It's simple, tasty and nourishing, suitable for serving all year round.

Seaweed is commonly used in oriental cuisine like Japanese, Korean and Chinese. I often use the seasoned seaweed to add flavours in soup, sometimes cook soups with the unflavoured ones, that normally comes in dried sheet form.

Just soak a sheet of seaweed in water until it softens. After rinsing thoroughly, it’s ready to cook with other ingredients I like.

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Steamed Tofu with Pork Mince

The juicy pork, diced mushroom and corn kernels are served on a bed of steamed silky smooth tofu. It’s so delicious and easy for the family to dig in.

My family loves this steamed tofu dish very much. We like it served on a plate of steamed rice. It’s perfect for this weather.

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Braised Tofu

Tofu is not expensive yet with many nutrients. There are heaps of ways to make a delicious tofu dish. This braised tofu dish is meatless. The taste is still so great even though no meat is added. This dish is balanced in taste and texture. It’s perfect to serve with a bowl of steamed rice.

The braised tofu is a traditional Chinese dish. Every family has its own cooking way. To make this dish, I took a quick route by buying some pre-fried tofu, available at Asian grocers. It’s very convenient and not easily broken apart. If you want to use regular tofu, get the firm one. Please check out the notes below the recipe for more details.

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Teriyaki Chicken patties

These Teriyaki chicken patties are so moist and tender. It can be served as a light meal, sided with some vegetables or snack.

I wouldn’t have known how nice the taste of tofu and chicken with teriyaki sauce going so well if I hadn’t run the experiment.

All of three components are blended nicely and tightly in this dish. The key ingredient to make these chicken patties tremendously moist and tender is the humble tofu, a healthy food that I often use in my cooking.

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Teriyaki Tofu

The taste of Teriyaki sauce is rich and addictive, making you want more of the nutritious tofu.

Whenever I go for ordering or making my own Japanese dishes, I’d think of those with Teriyaki sauce. It’s nice and sweet, easy to make. Just blend all ingredients together. There you go.

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Pan-Fried Tofu in Teriyaki Sauce

This is a simple and homey tofu dish. Tofu is so easy to cook. All I need is to prepare some sticky and yummy teriyaki sauce to go with it.

Tofu doesn’t cost you very much, yet gives you quality nutrients. If the tofu is quality, it gives you some soy aroma too.

How satisfied I felt while watching my husband having a bite followed by another without stopping. It’s so amazing that a humble tofu could be turned into something you don’t want to miss.

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Braised Yellow Croaker Fish with Garlic and Tofu (豆腐蒜子炆黃花魚)

This braised yellow croaker fish with garlic and tofu dish taste wonderfully and goes perfectly with a bowl of steamed rice.

Ever tried yellow croaker fish (黃花魚)? The flesh is quite tender and delicate. It’s often used in Chinese and Korean cooking, highly praised by Asians. I often like to pan-fry the whole fish and dip with some soy sauce. It’s simple but delicious. Yellow croaker fish is easily found in any Asian grocers or fish markets.

In Chinese cooking, sautéd or fried garlic cloves are often used to make stew dishes. I tried braising garlic cloves with pan-fried yellow croaker fish in ground bean sauce. My family was so pleased with its results.

The sweet aroma of garlic cloves will impart into the sauce subtly, yet won’t overpower the whole dish at all. If the garlic cloves are cooked enough, you may consume them as well if you like. They taste very good.

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Mushrooms & Fried Tofu in Sesame Sauce

Only by spotting this dish name, Mushrooms & Fried Tofu in Sesame Sauce, you’d know it’s a meatless dish. Once in a while, I’d like to make a dish without any meat to balance my family’s diet, yet with an ambition of pleasing their taste buds,

The highlight of this dish is the sesame and miso sauce. It’s quite straightforward to whip up the sauce. I experimented by adding a bit of Kewpie roasted sesame dressing and see how my family liked it.

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Spicy Tofu Chicken and Wood Ear (魚香豆乾雞絲)

This dish was inspired by the classic Szechuan spicy cooking that always produce an intensive taste. You might’ve heard or tried a classic one, spicy eggplant with minced pork (aka fish fragrant eggplant, literally translated from Chinese, 魚香茄子).

To create this new recipe, I tried to hit a lighter note, with less heat. Its tangy and mildly sweet taste, mingled with a slight heat was exactly what I pursue. It tastes really good and goes perfectly with steamed rice. If you like more heat, you may add a bird-eye chilli or add more chilli bean sauce then.

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Braised Tofu with Roast Pork (火腩炆豆腐 + Video)

Chinese roast pork (Shao Rou 燒肉) is quite different in taste from the western one, although both have crackling skin on with tender meat under.

In Hong Kong, there are many siu mei shops (燒味店) to sell a variety of roast meats, including the roast pork, suckling pig and roast ducks. Whenever we buy roast pork from them,

I’d like to reserve some to cook this classic Hong Kong dish, Braised Tofu with Roast Pork that is one of our family’s favourite. Although the pork skin would be no longer crispy but the taste of it remains as yummy as it comes out fresh from oven. It goes really well with tofu. The dish is wonderful on a bed of Jasmine rice.

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Tomato Tofu Egg Drop Soup (番茄豆腐蛋花湯)

This Tomato Tofu Egg Drop Soup is an old-fashioned, simple soup that we grew up with in Hong Kong. All you need is to add only three to four ingredients into a pot of stock (or water), then bring to a boil. The highlight is the ribbon-like silky smooth eggs. 

After I posted this quick egg drop soup (蛋花湯) on my Chinese blog and fan page about two weeks ago, some of my fans responded with warm remarks that this soup reminds them of their good old days when they studied overseas.

I feel what they feel, totally with them. I know many overseas students have to cook by themselves for saving up money for their tuition. They don’t have many spare money to cook dishes with expensive ingredients.

This soup is simple, homey and downright easy to whip up especially at times you don’t have many ingredients stocked in kitchen. Not only this soup is handy, it’s not expensive. Best of all, it contains lots of nutrition we need.

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Luke Nguyen's Crisp Tofu in Tomato Pepper Sauce

It seems that I was born with an interest in having fried tofu with tomato, yet only realized this not long ago.

Last week, as usual I watched Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam Season 2 on SBS. A side note, Luke Nguyen’s latest released cookbook "The Songs of Sapa" was crowned amongst one of the winners of 2010 Australian Food Media Awards. In the minute I finished watching the show, that he cooked the Crisp tofu in tomato-pepper sauce on a hill top in Vietnam, my urge inside to try his dish was immediately confirmed by my daughter’s suggestion, “Would you cook this, mum? It looks tasty.” This plain, simple question uttered from a meat lover said it all. Without a second thought, I jumped on the bandwagon. The two main ingredients, tofu and tomato are always sitting in my fridge, even when the nearby supermarkets were running short of food supplies during the floods hit our state. Everything is ready and this dish is simple and easy to prepare. The end result was satisfied, fresh with lots of flavour. The crisp tofu was so good in the balanced savoury, sour and sweet sauce.

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Stewed Beancurd Puffs with Daikon & Carrot

Sometimes I feel really good to have a vegan dish especially when I have had enough meat. This Stewed Beancurd Puffs with Daikon and Carrot that I created last night was a bit like Japanese dish. Daikon has a natural sweetness which is often used in Japanese cuisine. However, I do like to incorporate it in my Chinese cooking as well. The dish I cooked last night was very simple. I just used a red carrot and some beancurd puffs to cook with daikon in stock. The daikon was very tender and absorbed all the flavours in it, very delicious!

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Steamed Tofu with Pork Mince

My mother used to cook the traditional Chinese dish, Steamed Pork with Tianjin Preserved Vegetable (冬菜蒸肉餅) for us. I like it, going with a big bow of rice.

Well, sometimes I like to turn a traditional dish into a new and unique one. What about turning the steamed pork dish into this new variation by adding silken tofu?

The tofu becomes more attractive and delicious with a hot touch, going really fantastic with the juicy pork mince. The dish is finished up with a dash of hot oil, drizzled with a bit of light soy sauce.

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My Sweet and Sour Tofu Recipe on Rasa Malaysia

This is my first guest post since I have been blogging for food and cooking nearly two years on my Chinese food blog, a few months later on this English one. Yet I didn’t post any recipes here at first, just focused on reading my favourite food blogs.

Bee from Rasa Malaysia is one of my favourite blogs that I’ve subscribed for a long time. When I first found her blog, I was impressed by her gorgeous pictures and attracted by her passion for Malaysian foods. I’ve tried many recipes from her blog that turned out to be hits in my family. As Chinese New Year is coming around the corner, Bee will be sharing a series of Chinese Recipes on Rasa Malaysia. She can be classified as an all-round Asian food blogger.

You might have heard or tried the Peking Pork Chops, or Sweet and Sour Beef, that are also my Aussie friends’ favourites. In Chinese cooking, we do use tofu a lot. Especially fried tofu is a very popular dish in South Asia. An idea just came up in my mind, why not combine those popular dishes into one? So here comes the Sweet and Sour Fried Tofu. I tried to use as many veggies as I could, including onion, green, red and yellow capsicum, going with Jasmine rice, sprinkle black sesame seeds on top, creating a colourful dish looked like a rainbow. I also name this dish as 彩虹炸豆腐 in Chinese, literally translated as “Rainbow Fried Tofu”. 

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Mapo Tofu (麻婆豆腐)

This popular Szechuan (Sichuan) Chinese dish, Mapo Tofu, is my family’s favourite. Actually, I love every dish that cooked with tofu (beancurd). The dish is a combination of tofu, simmered in spicy chili- and bean-based sauce, together with pork mince or beef mince.

That said, it was named for the old woman who invented the dish. As she got a pockmarked face, her popular dish was named as 麻婆豆腐, literally translated as "pockmarked grandmother’s beancurd".

Generally, Szechuan cuisine is very hot indeed. I have to adjust and cook the tofu in mild-hot sauce. The authentic taste of Mapo tufu has to include the powdered Szechuan peppercorns that would give a unique spiciness, as a result of creating a very special effect of numbing and spicy (麻辣).

The amount of powdered Szechuan peppercorns used in this recipe was very mild and suits to the taste of the majority. Yet you might like to roast or dry fry (fry on hot wok without any oil) the Szechuan peppercorns in order to bring up more flavour, and add more of it if you desire a stronger taste.

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