Northern-Style Bean Curd

We tried making this bean curd/tofu dish last night. You are supposed to coat the tofu bits in cornstarch, dip them in beaten eggs, and deep fry them in the wok. Then you puncture the coating and cook them in a liquid mixture which is supposed to allow the tofu to soak up the tasty liquid. It sounded easy.

Lessons learned:
- Coating tofu may make a mess, though it is containable, especially if your flannel shirt catches most of the cornstarch
- If you use a closely woven wire basket for holding the coated tofu, it will be mightily difficult to clean
- Coatings don't stick well to tofu, so poking holes in the non-existent coating may not be necessary
- You can poke those unnecessary holes much faster when your cooking partner says, 'We have no more than 20 seconds for you to get the tofu ready before the liquid in this pan will have problems. 20.... 19.... 18.... 17....." (It was ready by 3!)
- Even if the meal does not look like the picture, it can still be pretty darn tasty