Mabodofu: one of the meals I cook in Japan

It's been ages since I wrote about the sort of food we eat here regularly (2011, before we had any teens, I did two posts—1 and 2—about a whole week of meals). Our meals aren't vastly different from what I'd cook in Australia. Generally, the biggest difference is that we have fewer cuts of meat to choose from and a few limitations on the ingredients that we can find or afford. I don't cook many Japanese dishes, mostly because I find they're often a bit fiddly and I struggle with the ingredient lists (poor excuse, I know). If you want to eat good Japanese food, my feeling is that you should go out and get the experts to do it. However, the upside of making Japanese food at home is that it's often very cheap, because, of course, you're using readily available ingredients that are cheaper.

But here is a meal I cooked recently—mabodofu—that is a fairly new addition to my repertoire. I call it a Japanese dish because it's common here, but it actually is Chinese.

Apparently, there are packet mixes readily available in the shops, but we are not fans of packet mixes, primarily because they are often too salty for us, but also, it's often cheaper and healthier to do it from scratch. And the below recipe is so fast, you might almost be making a packet mix! It took me about 20 minutes.

Someone gave me this recipe when I shared about finding one on my Facebook page a year or so ago:

Mabodofu

4 tablespoons of oil
4 tablespoons of chopped shallots (green onions)—I use much more than this
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon hot bean paste (pictured, for those in Japan looking for it, it's called トウバンジャンtoubanjan）
4 tablespoons low-salt soy sauce
dash sugar, pepper
2 tablespoons of wine or mirin
220g or more of tofu
300g or more of mince (US=ground meat)
1 tablespoon cornstarch, water

1. Heat four tablespoons of oil. 
2. Stir fry shallots, garlic, and hot bean paste until fragrant. 
3. Add meat and stir fry until cooked. 
4. Add soy sauce, sugar, pepper, wine, and tofu then bring to boil. 
5. Reduce heat to low and cook for three minutes.
6. If desired, add cornstarch to thicken. 
7. Remove and sprinkle with more green onions if desired.
8. Eat over rice.

Mine cooked for a little too long when I made it last week, I think. It was a little dry, but tasted just fine (except it was too hot for our tastes, but then I used double the amount of hot bean paste mentioned above). Because tofu is so cheap here, it is a good meal for the budget too!