Vegetarian Hotplate Tofu 斋铁板豆腐 – Eat What Tonight
Commonly found in Singapore’s heartlands and neighborhoods are various coffee shops where you can find many individual food stalls selling various kinds of local delicacies under one roof. And a so-called Zhi Char stall is one of such stall commonly found. The name so called is translated from Hokkien which meant 煮炒. And Hotplate Tofu is a widely popular dish you can find from most zhi char stalls locally. Because I enjoyed this dish so much, I even went as far as to get myself a hotplate and attempted the same from home too. Other than the splattering of oil when the hotplate gets heated up of which is not so pleasant, the dish isn’t too difficult to whip up. You can find the original non-vegetarian hotplate tofu from here.
Whilst most hotplate tofu contains minced meat, I attempted with a Vegetarian version over the weekend by having the meat replaced by mashed tofu instead ! The striking resemblance is actually so real that you probably can’t tell much difference till you have tasted it or if you are being told about it.
And no, no flour was being used in the process and it was purely a good old vegetarian Hotplate Tofu, served by a good bout of egg, tofu, carrots and seasoning. And I thought it was really good as it is by this version already ! But if you are attempting for a bigger serving than this, you can always add in some shiitake mushrooms and baby corns to complete the dish further.
So dedicating this dish to all Vegetarians out there, I hope this dish can whet up your appetite and appeal to your taste buds well. Gonna pen down this recipe for my own records purposes too because I am sure I will cook this dish up again.