Fusion Dish - Mapo Tofu/curry noodles/lionshead soup

How I would love to travel to China, and find myself walking the streets sampling all of the delicious street foods it has to offer. All I can do is bring Chinese cuisine to my kitchen, for now. I want to make a fusion dish that I learned from my favorite gourmand show, Shokugeki no soma. I'm going to be making a fusion of mapo tofu and lionshead soup, sorta. Lets check out how the recipe goes!

One of the main parts to this dish is the mapo tofu, If you need the recipe to make the mapo tofu, you'll find it here.
This was actually a pretty easy but time consuming dish, the time is mostly having the curry broth jelly set, the rest is pretty easy.
Now time fused mapo curry noodle, is a dish that combines Taiwanese pepper buns and szechuan mapo tofu, I recommend trying each on their own as they are both superb dishes as stand alone.

Time Fused Mapo Curry Noodle Recipe
This recipe serves two people

​Ingredients for meatball:
1/2 lb ground beef
2 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon of freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoons of sugar
2 table spoons of rice wine vinegar

Curry Jelly Bone Broth:
2 cups of bone beef broth
2.5 cm of ginger, cut into slices
3 cloves of Garlic, smashed
1 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon of sweet curry powder
1 teaspoon of garam masala
1/2 teaspoon of mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon of coriander seed
1 packet of gelatin/gel
2 tablespoons of water

Additional ingredients:
Already made mapo tofu
chopped green onion, for garnish at the end
​Fresh cooked ramen noodles
​
Directions:
We are going to start with the part that will take the longest, the jel bone broth.

1. Turn up the heat to medium high, and using a small pot, put the crushed garlic, sliced ginger, bone broth, curry powder, garam masala, mustard seed, and coriander seed, boil for 5 minutes.
2. After you have boiled the bone broth, strain the broth with a stainless steel colander mesh, separating the aromatic spices from the broth liquid.
3. Add the 1 packet of gelatin/jel to the curry broth and mix well until you can't see any clumps.
4. Pour the jel broth in a large container.
5. Put the broth in the fridge as it will need to set for 4 hours.
6. ​Mix all of you're ingredients together, I like to use a glove and mix it with my hand, it feels like the ingredient are more evenly distributed, you can also use a large spoon to mix it all up.

1. Once the 4 hours have passed, take out the jelly broth from the fridge and cut it into small squares.
2. Use a spatula to loosen them up from the pan.
3. Get a small scope of the ground beef mix, and flatten it out in your hand to about the size of your palm, don't worry if it doesn't look pretty :)
4. add around 1 teaspoon to 1/2 tablespoon of the curry broth gel in the center of the ground beef, and start folding the beef, making a nice circle surrounding the gel broth, this will make a nice large 2" meatball.
5. Bring a large deep pot of water to boil, once it has started to boil carefully add the meatballs in one by one.
6. Cook the meatballs for around 6 minutes.
7. Remove the meatballs from the pot and put them on a baking tray, turn on your broiler to medium/low and broil them for 1 minute.
8. Heat the mapo tofu if you haven't yet, till it comes to a boil, once it has, add two scoops of the mapo tofu to a bowl.
9. Then add a handful of fresh cooked ramen noodles.
10. Center the meatball on top of the noodles and mapo tofu, and garnish with chopped green onions, and it's done!
    Notes: I am going to try adding breadcrumbs to the ground beef to see if it will make it more easier to hold it's form

In my original recipe I actually used 1 lb of the ground beef with the same amount of spices and found that this made a total of 4 servings, I save the other two meatballs for the next day lunch and sort of revamped the dish I made by adding a scrambled egg to some rice, and another plate I scrambled an egg with the ramen noodles, it turned out pretty delicious the egg added a creamy flavor to the dish.