J. Kenji's non-traditional mapo tofu video brought this dish to my attention.

He uses Japanese flavors to make something similar to the original dish. As he was discussing the traditional ingredients and why he was replacing them, I realized that I could get somewhat close to the original dish with what I had on hand. I still had to make some substitutions, but I wasn't trying to alter the fundamental flavors that much. Luckily, Kenji also has a "real-deal" mapo tofu recipe.

I replaced:

• Xiaoxing wine with a mixture of dry Sherry and sake.
• Chicken stock with beef boullion (I didn't want to thaw a quart to use 1/4 cup).
• Black bean paste with gochujang (Korean chili and bean paste).
• Roasted chili oil with my chili crisp.

I also reduced the amount of Sichuan peppercorns by half because the chili crisp already has some in it. For that reason, I only toasted and fried the peppercorns rather than grind them and add it back to the final dish. I felt like it was a reasonable step to take out.

I ran into a few problems making this dish. First, I used too much oil, so it was hard to emulsify into a sauce. I ended up adding twice the corn starch slurry and the sauce still broke easily when it cooled down. Even though I added no extra salt, this dish was very salty. The chili crisp and gochujang are fairly salty, but I think I added too much beef boullion for the 1/4 cup stock I was supposed to use. To fix this problem, I served the mapo tofu with unsalted, buttered rice to dilute the salt. The final issue is that there was not enough heat or numbing (the málà flavor). I wish that I had included more Sichuan peppercorns.

It's still a really good dish that I want to try again. Hopefully next time it will be strong enough to really activate some endorphins.