This is another Pu Ti Island recipe. When the chef worked out that I wasn't eating his food because I was vegetarian, he kindly got his mate to send over a huge chunk of tofu from the mainland. Unfortunately it was pretty awful tofu - maybe the worst I've tasted in my life. The whole region surrounding Pu Ti Island is low-lying muddy reclaimed land. Everywhere there is the smell of stagnant brackish water and even the tap water on the island has a sulphurous smell to it. We had supplies of distilled water for drinking, but the chef (and I assume his friend on the mainland) used the local bog-water for cooking and so everything more or less tasted and smelled of sulphur. The rice porridge at breakfast was possibly the worst, maybe because it was first thing in the morning when our guard was down, but the tofu was not far behind.
None of my comrades except the intrepid Franco would eat the tofu so I felt obliged to shovel it up with enthusiasm, both to save the other guys having to eat it and to avoid hurting the chef's feelings. Seeing that I was obviously enjoying his cooking, he began to produce ever larger portions of various tofu based-dishes on a daily basis. This dish with spinach was one of the better ones and when I left Pu Ti Island and had a chance to try cooking it with tofu of a better quality, I realised that it was a very good recipe indeed.
There's even a hot sulphur spring on Pu TI Island which fills the air all around with a rancid smell. I took some pictures of it which you can see by clicking here.
Ingredients
4-500g of tofu
A large bunch of spinach
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
A small piece of root ginger
A pinch or two of crushed dry red chilli
A teaspoon of sesame seeds
Salt
Oil
Chop the tofu into cubes or rectangles about 3 or 4 cm thick. Peel and finely chop the garlic and ginger and wash and roughly chop over the spinach. Fry the tofu in oil for 5 -7 minutes, adding the garlic, ginger, sesame seeds and pepper 2 or 3 minutes into the frying process. Spread the chopped spinach over the tofu, sprinkle on a little salt and cover the pan tightly. After three or four minutes, mix all the ingredients together and cover the pan again. Cook for another three or four minutes then serve.
This dish goes well with rice or noodles (try nutty noodles). For other dishes which compliment tofu with spinach, try Chinese chilli potatoes or Happy Island eggplants.