Prep 15 min
Cook 25 min
Serves 2
Difficulty Easy
Cuisine Fusion

Mapo tofu is already halfway to a pasta sauce — it's a rich, spicy, numbing meat sauce with a silky body. The leap to bolognese is shorter than it sounds. The move that makes it work is blending half a block of silken tofu with garlic until completely smooth and stirring it into the sauce. It melts in, adds body, and gives you that creamy, coating texture without any cream. The other half goes in diced, giving you soft pockets of tofu throughout.

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Ingredients Serves 2

  • Pasta of choice
  • ½ lb ground pork (or beef or chicken)
  • 1 block silken tofu — half small-diced, half blended with garlic
  • 3–4 cloves garlic (blended with tofu)
  • 1–2 tbsp doubanjiang (chili bean paste), to taste
  • 1 tbsp Chinese soy sauce
  • Splash of Shaoxing wine
  • 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns, toasted and ground
  • 1-inch knob fresh ginger, minced
  • Chilli oil, to taste
  • Scallions, sliced, for garnish
  • Neutral oil

Instructions

  1. Mise en place. Mince the ginger. Blend half the silken tofu with the garlic cloves until completely smooth — no chunks. Small-dice the other half of the tofu and set it aside carefully; silken tofu is fragile. Slice the scallions. Toast the Sichuan peppercorns in a dry pan until fragrant and grind them. Have everything ready before heat goes on.

  2. Brown the pork. Heat a splash of neutral oil in a wide pan or wok over medium-high heat. Add the minced ginger and fry for about 30 seconds until fragrant — no colour on it. Add the ground pork and break it up, cooking until no pink remains and it starts to develop some browning. Deglaze with a splash of Shaoxing wine and let it cook off for a minute.

  3. Build the sauce. Push the meat to one side and add the doubanjiang directly to the oil in the pan. Fry the paste for 1–2 minutes, stirring it into the hot fat, until it darkens slightly and the red oil starts to separate — this is the step that makes the sauce taste deep rather than just spicy. Work it back through the meat. Add the soy sauce and about half a cup of water, stir everything together, and let it simmer for 5 minutes to develop and concentrate. Add the ground Sichuan peppercorns.

  4. Cream the sauce with blended tofu. Stir the blended tofu-garlic mixture into the sauce. It will loosen things and turn the sauce a pale, creamy colour — that's what you want. Simmer for another 3–4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it comes back together and coats a spoon. Taste and adjust: more doubanjiang for heat and depth, more soy for salt and umami, more ground peppercorn for the numbing hit.

  5. Add the diced tofu. Gently fold in the small-diced silken tofu. Don't stir aggressively — it'll break into mush. You want soft, intact cubes throughout the sauce. Let it heat through for a minute or two without much disturbance.

  6. Cook the pasta and combine. Cook your pasta in well-salted water until just shy of done, then transfer to the sauce with a splash of pasta water. Toss gently to combine and finish cooking in the sauce. Add chilli oil to taste and toss once more. Plate, top with sliced scallions, and serve immediately.