When I first heard about the outrage over a UCLA girl’s rant against Asians, I was a bit surprised.

Soon hordes of enraged commenters wrote about all the nasty things they want to do to her. Most of them felt obliged to mention her blonde hair and boobs, as it was something critically relevant, inadvertently painting themselves as stereotyping bullies. How sickening.

Right. Onto shiny things.

Oooh!! Look at my shiny new blog! Ching-chong-long-tong! (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

Well, I’ll make something better. Korean-Chinese homemade food. There will be no greasy MSG-stained take-out boxes, but there will be very, very delicious food.

Time to break out the Asian goods:

Wait, let me first wiggle into my Asian apron. Hai-yah!

Korean-ish Mapo Tofu

The sauce:

• 2 Tbs dark miso
• 1 Tbs soy sauce
• 3 Tbs rice vinegar
• 1 Tbs rice wine
• 1 Tbs oyster sauce
• 1 Tbs gochujang
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 1/4 cup water

The stuff:

• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 inch ginger, minced
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 2 tsp 5-spice powder
• 1/2 lbs ground beef (or pork)
• 19oz package extra-firm tofu

Mix the first group of ingredients in a bowl to make the sauce.

Heat a bit of oil in a hot pan and fry the garlic and ginger until fragrant.

Add the onions and  zucchini and stir-fry until soft.

Shake in the 5-spice powder.

While the vegetables are cooking, in a separate pan, cook the ground meat and break it up with a wooden spoon. Add a splash of soy sauce.

Cut tofu into 1/2 inch cubes.

When the meat is cooked, drain off any excess oil and and add to the vegetables.

Then pour in the sauce and add the tofu; cover and let cook for a while and let the sauce thicken up. Try not to stir too much from now on.

Crack some fresh black pepper over, and serve it up! With big-ass chopsticks!! Like these!!

You could kill someone with these chopsticks. Just saying.

I think I should probably have used a bit more cornstarch in this, as the sauce was a bit more watery than I anticipated. But no matter, it was still absolutely delicious.

I’ve made this dish several more times since. That’s how much I love it. I’ve used peas instead of zucchini, and ground turkey instead of beef.

I don’t usually make the same dish over and over again, because I like to branch out and experiment, but I recently bought a huuuge box of tofu from Costco just for this dish!

It’s a tiny bit spicy. You can adjust the spice level as you like by decreasing the amount of gochujang or increasing it like me. Because I’m the stereotypical kimchi-gobbling Korean who loves her spicy garlicky foods!

By the way, just to be clear, we Koreans don’t go “ching-chong-ting-tong.” But I do fit into a few Korean stereotypes. For example, I’m a pastor’s kid. I took piano for 3 years. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. I love math. I live in Los Angeles.

Sadly, I don’t fit into the stereotypical Asian computer genius, or a competitive business person.

Pity, because I really would like understand how to fix my blog. And strike it rich in the stock market.

Question of the Day: What stereotype do you fit into? And what is a surprisingly non-stereotypical thing about you? It can be race, gender, occupation, age, anything.

Related posts:

1. Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Korean Fusion Street Food BYOB
2. Ready for Dumplings
3. The Parents Service and Fried Sauce Noodles
4. Luckiest Brat in the World
5. This is Not a Chinaman Dish

Tagged as: beef, chinese, gochujang, Korean, miso, oyster sauce, pork, tofu, zucchini