Hello everyone! Today I'm going to share a cooking recipe of sizzling tofu. There are different types of tofu and for this recipe I'm using egg tofu which are soy based like regular tofu but they also have egg in them. They are yellowish and that's how we know they have eggs in them.
If you are vegetarian then switch them up for eggless tofu but it won't have the same texture as this dish is usually made with egg tofu, though I've seen a few keeping the recipe vegetarian. This is actually a famous dish in restaurants and my family and I often order it when we eat out. So we thought of trying to make it at home as a fun experiment.
Ingredients:
- Egg tofu - 2 tubes (sliced)
- Onion - 2 large (sliced)
- Garlic - 6 cloves (minced)
- Ginger - 10g (minced)
- Green chillies - 2 (sliced)
- Fish cakes - 10 pieces (sliced into halves)
- Dark soy sauce - 2 tablespoons or more if you like
- Corn starch - 1 tablespoon
- Eggs - 4
- Salt - to taste
- Water
- Oil
Method:
First of all, we need to prepare the tofu for the cooking later. These come in tubes like long cylinders and we need to cut them into smaller pieces. Then, pour some oil into the pan and deep fry them. Let them turn brownish and then put them in a bowl and set them aside to cool while we prepare the other ingredients.
In another pan, pour about two tablespoons of oil. Then, saute some minced ginger and garlic. Prepare them beforehand using a sharp knife and slice them up lengthwise and adjacent too so they're minced.
Add in the chopped onion as well and cook them until they turn a little golden and a fragrant aroma fills the space.
Then, add in the sliced green chillies. Feel free to add more if you would like it to be more spicy or to reduce it if you see fit. They need to be cooked until the raw smell of the chillies is gone.
After that, add in some dark soy sauce. It's ok to be generous with it as we do need more gravy because later we need to add some eggs into the dish.
Add some water to increase the portion of the gravy further and let the ingredients to be half submerged. The gravy will gradually become thicker and and less as the dish is being cooked.
Add salt to taste. Give everything a good mix so the salt is distributed evenly.
This is how it looks at this point.
Now, add in the tofu that were fried earlier. Mix them all well but try to be gentle to avoid breaking the soft tofu pieces. Also they have already been fried anyway so there's no need to mix them too much. It will suffice to just get it in the midst of all the other ingredients so it gets to absorb the mixture with condiment.
As the tofu is combining with the mixture, pour 2 tablespoons of water into a small bowl and add 1 tablespoon of corn starch. Mix them up with a spoon so they are combined into cornstarch liquid. This mixture will help to thicken the gravy of the dish even more and give it a nice texture as well.
Then, pour it into the pan and mix it with the dish. It is better if you pour it from all around the pan instead of one region so it's easier to mix them all.
Well now the second part of the dish is over but it is still not complete yet. Just set it aside in a bowl in the meantime of preparing the third part of the dish.
You can use a different pan or just wash the same pan and reuse it for this. Turn the stove on and pour some oil into it. Keep it at min so you can prepare the eggs while it's heating slowly.
Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk them up. Add in some salt too and whisk it in as well. You can just use two eggs actually because it's better if the layer is thinner but there are four of us in my family so we needed four eggs so everyone gets their portion.
Then turn the fire to medium and pour the egg mixture in. The eggs need to be half cooked before the next step.
When the eggs are halfway done, mix in the bowl of tofu mixture that was cooked earlier. Try to place them evenly over the half cooked omelette. Then let the rest of the eggs cook.
You can put the lid on for a minute so it cooks faster and you absolutely do not like any runny bits on the eggs. The last picture above is how it looks when the dish is done. While it doesn't look exactly like the one we order in restaurants due to the shape of pan used, it is close enough.
This is how we had it. We ate it as a side dish, with rice being the main dish and some fried lady's finger vegetables with anchovies as another side dish. It was a simple but hearty meal.
I know it may look funny as it is homemade but it was yummy. Thank you for dropping by and I hope that you have a wonderful day ahead.