Roasted Rockfish with Mapo Dofu

Ann asked me to make Rockfish with Mapo Dofu sauce on Monday and so I obliged her, stopping by the store on the way home and getting some tofu and a rockfish.

Roasted Rockfish with Mapo Dofu

My kitchen Spanish was not good enough to keep my fish unmolested when I turned it over to the fish guy to scale with the instructions, "limpio y entero, con cabeza, por favor" and so it came home without fins or tail. Oh well, it would have been worse had I ordered it in English.

The Guest of Honor

I decided to do a vegetarian mapo dofu substituting shiitake mushrooms for ground pork, sautéing them in a bit of sesame oil with lots of garlic and ginger. Then I added pickled mustard stems, spicy bean paste, a sprinkle of freshly ground Sichuan peppercorns (in the spice mill cup), and a splash of soy sauce. After this cooked for a minute, I added a little water and the tofu, thickened the sauce lightly with a touch of corn starch slurry, and adjusted the seasoning, adding a bit more spicy bean sauce because I thought it wasn't spicy enough in the la sense, chile spice. It was plenty spicy in the ma sense, numbing and tingling, from the Sichuan peppercorns.

Mapo Dofu Mise en Place