Is This a Mugging or Mapo Tofu?
I have never tried to mug someone; ergo, I have never been sprayed by pepper spray. I think the correlation there is pretty high. However, I have cooked mapo tofu | 麻婆豆腐 in my kitchen, which is what I imagine a full shot of stinging pepper to the face to feel like--watery eyes, stinging nostrils, coughing, the whole works. If you have some kind of tear gas mask on hand, now's the time to don it. White Boyfriend will start coughing from the living room while you're cooking. It's a good way to get him out of the house if you want some alone time.
If I haven't made myself clear, this dish is spicy. It is spicy in the traditional sense but also tongue-numbingly spicy--as any good Sichuanese dish will be. Mapo tofu is so easy to make though, a caveman could do it. The longest amount of time spent will be on chopping/grinding your ingredients. It is important to do this upfront instead of along the way. You don't want to be blindly chopping through your tears once your kitchen is gassed.
You will feel the full effect of the spray once you commence step 1 of making your meat sauce. Stir for about 30 seconds after each ingredient you add, but make sure that nothing gets burned. Everything happens fast here, so bring your A game. The ingredients that you would've needed to procure from the Asian grocery include: Sichuan peppercorns, dried red chilies, soybean paste | 豆瓣酱, and chili oil. This sauce will smell sooooo good at the end of step 4. I mean, you'll feel like you're dying a little at the same time, but it's worth it.
Gently fold in your tofu. I deviate from a traditional mapo tofu recipe here and also add shitake mushrooms. I think they bring lovely flavor and texture to the dish. Next, thicken your sauce with a little cornstarch and water mixture.
As if this dish wasn't spicy enough, you'll add more sichuan peppercorns on top at the end along with some green onion garnish. I kept mine light, but feel free to knock yourself out. White Boyfriend will choke this down, clearing his throat every three minutes. When I press him, he'll say he's just not used to these flavors. I know that he'd prefer a nice, easy bowl of mac and cheese. He obviously wouldn't last a day as a mugger.
For the straight-up mapo tofu recipe, click here.