湖南香干 Special Hunan Tofu

Pinyin： hú nán xiāng gān

Chances are you'll only find this at a Hunan food restaurant obviously enough, though it is very similar to 家常豆腐 Homestyle Tofu, which I previously talked about. In the Hunan style though this dish is focused more on being spicy and less on variety of ingredients.

You can see that it is quite simply pieces of tofu, peppers, scallions and you can't see that they've also added pieces of pork fat for flavor. The tofu used as the primary ingredient is quite unique in flavor. It really reminds me of fermented tofu. It has some earthy undertones about it that lead me to believe it isn't fresh. It also has a slightly tough and chewy skin that appears as though it was fried. It adds nicely to the texture but at the same time the tofu isn't oily.

The spiciness from the peppers isn't overpowering, they provide just enough strength to tingle your sense but not enough to have you reaching for a cold drink. Together with the peppers and the fat from the pork this tofu comes alive and I've been regularly ordering it for the past several weeks.