David’s Long Bean Tofu Dish

Here comes the long awaited recipe — David’s Long Bean Tofu Dish! It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is David’s signature Chinese dish (although I’ve never seen it in any Chinese restaurants), because we have it at least once a week. Today I’ll reveal David’s secret, so you can reproduce it at home and modify it as you see fit.

As the name suggests, you’ll need some Chinese long beans and five spice tofu to start with. If you live around the SF Bay Area, you can get all the ingredients from your local 99 Ranch Market. You might even find them at Safeway, but we’ve found that they tend to charge more.

David parboils the beans (四季豆) and then cools them under running water. You don’t want to complete cook them, because they’ll be cooked again with other ingredients later.

Now we’ll focus on the non-liquid ingredients first: