腐皮青菜 (Tofu Skin with Greens)

Okay, so before I get into the actual recipe, a brief musing about text and names. When possible, I really like giving the names of dishes in the original language. For languages that don't use the Roman alphabet I tend to use a Romanized transliteration of the name and then give an English name in brackets afterward. I do this because I can't read or write the original language and often all I have is the Romanized name anyway. However, this breaks down a bit when it comes to Chinese dishes.

I've been learning Mandarin since last summer. Or well... I've been doing the Mandarin lessons on Duolingo since last summer anyway. I know that, while Duolingo is a great for practice, the consensus is that isn't not really the best for actually learning a new language from scratch. But, the point is that I can actually read and write a little Chinese now. And I often do have the name of the dish easily to hand. Great, so I can write it in Hanzi (汉字) and give a parenthetical translation. Except that leaves out the Pinyin (拼音). So now I need three versions of the name. And I've been struggling with a good way to format that. I think for some recipes I've just left out the Pinyin. For others I've worked it into the recipe description. There are probably even a few older posts where I've given Pinyin (or some other Romanized spelling) and English without any Hanzi. But I'd like for all three to be present and prominent. So, I think from now on I'll just put a little name section somewhere in the post to make it easy to see the Hanzi, Pinyin, and English separate from the rest of the text.

Hanzi/汉字：腐皮青菜
Pinyin/拼音：fǔ pí qīng cài
English/英语：Tofu Skin with Greens

腐皮青菜

Slightly adapted from Woks of Life

Ingredients

• 1 tsp. fresh ginger¹, minced
• 5-6 cloves garlic, minced
• 3/4 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 2 tsp. sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. white pepper, ground
• 1/4 c. water, divided
• 1 tsp. cornstarch
• 3 Tbsp. oil
• 350g bok choy, cut into bite-sized pieces
• ~2 c. chopped fresh tofu skins² (cut into bite-sized pieces)

Directions

1. Prep the garlic and ginger and set them aside. If using fresh ginger, keep it separate from the garlic. If using garlic paste, they can be mixed together.
2. In a small bowl, combine the salt, sesame oil, sugar, and white pepper.
3. Get 2 Tbsp. of the water ready in a separate bowl.
4. In a final bowl, combine the remaining 2 Tbsp. of water with the cornstarch.
5. Preheat the wok over medium-high heat.
6. Drizzle in the oil.
7. Once the oil is good and hot add the ginger. Stir-fry the ginger for ~30 seconds, then add the garlic. If using ginger paste, add it and the garlic at the same time.
8. Stir-fry the garlic for ~10 seconds, then turn the wok up to high and add the bok choy.
9. Stir-fry the bok choy for ~1 minute, then add the sesame oil mixture.
10. Stir-fry for another few seconds, then add the 2 Tbsp. of water.
11. Add the chopped tofu skins on top of the bok choy. DO NOT STIR!
12. Cover and steam for 1 minute.
13. Stir the cornstarch mixture and pour it over the stir-fry.
14. Mix well and serve.

---

¹ I swapped in a generous teaspoon of ginger paste here. ^Back
2 Or dried tofu skins that have been soaked until softened and briefly boiled/blanched. ^Back