Ok, you asked for it. This is what we had for dinner tonight. Both are from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Sichuan cookbook.
The top picture is my own modification of Homestyle Tofu. The tofu was boiled, not fried. I also, I didn’t remember to take a final picture after I added the scallions and corn starch, so imagine it has green specks and a thicker sauce. Even though I followed the directions for the sauce, I didn’t really dig this dish tonight. I have made it before with better results. I can’t figure out what I did wrong. (The answer is probably that I would have preferred to be eating Mapo Tofu, but since that isn’t what I chose to cook, this is what I had to eat.)
These are vegetarian Dry Fried Green Beans. They could have used some bacon and I probably should have cooked them longer.
Mr. A snarfed his share up. M ate massive quantities of rice and took only one bite of beans and one of tofu (under duress). L ate two bites of tofu, a few bites of rice and drank a big glass of soy milk. That is par for the course for her these days.
How funny! I made dry fried green beans tonight, too!
Tell us how you make the beans!
A little oil in the pan, cook the greenbeans until they are soft. Take them out of the pan. Saute 3 chopped cloves garlic, about the same amount of chopped ginger and a couple scallions. Once they are cooked, add the beans back in the pan. Then I added a little soy sauce because they needed salt.
Thank you for the bean info! A Thai restaurant back in Berkeley had great green beans, cooked similarly, and I couldn’t get them to work out well when we tried them at home. (I think I tried your method, but had everything in the pan before the beans. Things got burned, and/or the beans were underdone.)
Liking this project so far …
BTW, it’s very hard to get these beans fully cooked if you cook them in a pan. A good workaround is to put the beans in a microwavable plastic container and microwave them for 4 minutes on high heat. Then do the rest of what you normally do. That way, beans will be fully cooked and still retain its fresh taste. My American-born Chinese kids don’t really like Chinese food. They never crave for them. Good to know that Mr. A still likes them.
Have you tried using the ready made mabo tofu sauce? I’m not sure if you have a Chinese market near you, but I always just buy the sauce and then cook it with tofu and ground pork (I’m lazy). It’s really good.
Hah. Totally had the poor man’s version of General Tso’s Chicken tonight, which is as sweet and Americanized as it gets but which I loooove. Trader Joes’ Mandarin Chicken. *sigh* I was too tired for real cooking, but your dinner looks great!
I made Fuschia Dunlop’s Hunan version of General Tso’s Chicken last week for my family and I nearly blew everyone’s heads off with the chilli heat! Think we’re used to the sweeter version. (It was really good though.)
This looks great. I love seeing what people make for dinner. For the green beans, you may also want to try the following:
1. Heat up the pan until it’s hot.
2. Add just enough oil to coat the pan and let that heat up. You’ll know it’s hot enough when you stick the tip of a dry chopstick in the oil and it sizzles.
3. Add the white part of the green onion, chopped, then the chopped ginger, and then chopped garlic, with each turning translucent before adding the next.
4. Add the green beans as you’ve chopped them (quickly blanched just until they turn bright green), or raw but sliced on the diagonal so that they are able to cook evenly, and cook until just after they turn bright green.
5. A sprinkle of salt or soy sauce, and a tiny sprinkle of sugar.
6. The green part of the green onion, thinly sliced, just before turning off the fire.