The best translation for mapo tofu, as most of your Chinese-speaking friends would have put forth to you, should be pocked-face lady's bean curd. Until now, this is the most widely-believed version for the origin of mapo tofu, a simple dish made of tofu, spicy sauce and minced pork. Finely-minced pork hashed with some good use of cleaver, as evident at below.
However, I want to make a strong case today to put an end to this mistranslation, which was sordidly crafted by no one but husbands married with ugly pocked-face women out there on the street.
Oh no, contrary to popular believe, mapo tofu wasn't began that way. There just isn't any Ugly-Betty DNA in mapo tofu.
Rather, truth be told, it was created by chef married with a beautiful model wife whose face is well enough for facial cream. Mapo tofu was yield once upon a time when one day he was asked by his boss all of a sudden to cook up a pork dish together with tofu on the street. He was worry sick at the very beginning because he couldn't manage to find any cut board for him to chop up the pork meat with. But very soon he realized his worry was totally unnecessary when he saw his wife next to him. It was because his wife's back was, as the idiom goes, flat as board and, totally senseless due to strange and incurable sickness.
"Darling listen, we'd really need to "bend" the rules here to keep my job. Can I use your back as cut board? It can't feel a thing whatsoever anyway, not even if it's under a knife, right?"
Mapo tofu, better known as lady numbness bean curd. Don't even try arguing.
