The other day, I went to BIO Atsumi to see if there were any new products of vegan curry. BIO Atsumi is a supermarket chain in eastern Aichi Prefecture (with one store in Hamamatsu) and has many rare and interesting foods from both Japan and abroad. There I found “Vege Mapo Sauce”, which was a pleasant surprise.
Though Mapo Doufu is a popular dish, I had hardly had a chance to eat it before because of the ingredients. Instead of minced meat, this product uses granular soy protein. The sauce is flavored with sesame oil, grated ginger, douchi or fermented black beans, doubanjiang or broad bean chili paste, soy sauce, chili oil, sugar, kelp powder, spice, etc.
Mapo Doufu is very easy to prepare with this retort sauce. You only have to pour and warm up the sauce in a pan, mix tofu cut into cubes, and cook together for a few minutes by stirring sometimes. One retort pouch is intended to be used for 300 g of tofu. As this pack of tofu was 400 g, I used one half or 200g of it.
Ten minutes later, Mapo Doufu was ready.
I think this was my second or third time to eat Mapo Doufu in my life. As soon as I started eating it, I noticed that it was more spicy than other spicy foods I had eaten before, such as Indian chickpea curry Chana Masala and Korean Shin Ramen. I suddenly remembered cold water kimchi in the refrigerator and took it out. It is seasonal animal-free kimchi sold in Seijo Ishii, which I wrote about in this blog last year. It consists of ten ingredients and is delicious and refreshing. As I expected, it mitigated the spiciness of Mapo Doufu.
One of the major reasons why Mapo Doufu is loved in Japan is that it goes well with rice and stimulate the appetite. I found it true as I could eat two bowls of rice with it. Though the sauce was unexpectedly spicy, the granular soy protein was well-made and didn’t have a distinctive flavor of soybeans at all. It may be easy to eat even for non-vegetarians.
The manufacture of this sauce is a Nagoya-based vegetarian food company KaRuNa. It has two shops (Nagoya and Komatsu in Ishikawa Prefecture), but I think it is mostly known for its online shop that provides a wide variety of vegetarian/vegan food (unfortunately the website is available only in Japanese). The name KaRuNa comes from an old Indian word that means compassion.
“Vege Mapo Sauce” is one of their “Instant Vegan” products released in April 2020. I think I’ll introduce the other one next time.
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