Mon An Chay - Vegetarian Stirfry

Happy Chinese NewYear !!! Gong Hey Fat Choy !! Chuc Mung Nam Moi !!

This year I took the Monday (1st day of the lunar year) off to spend with my family. We visited a few temples to offer incents, and it was really nice feeling the New Year spirit all around. On the first, we followed our Mom to eat "chay" (vegetarian). I actually like to eat "chay" every now and then, I'm not too much of a meat person to start with, so I can easily afford to go vegetarian a day or two. Healthy, easy to cook, I like to share with you this simple vegetarian stirfry.



Ingredients:
+ 1 pack of cubed fried tofu
+ 1 can whole straw mushroom, washed
+ 1 can bamboo shoot, washed and cut into thinner slices (see picture)
+ 1 cup baby carrots (or 1 medium carrot, cut into small finger-size pieces)
+ 1/2 cup soysauce
+ 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar , or to taste
+ 3 cups water
+ 3-5 cloves garlic, chopped.
+ 2 tbsp oil





Cooking Instructions:
+ Wash all ingredients, cut bamboo shoots into thinner slices, drain and put away in a container
+ Heat up the oil in a big wok, add garlic.
+ Add carrots, bamboo, and mushroom, tofu. Stir a few times to heat them evenly.
(I use baby carrots so I cook them at the same time as bamboo, mushroom, and tofu. If you use regular carrots and cut into smaller pieces, they will need to be cooked a little longer, therefore you should cook the carrots in the wok first for 2-3 minutes before adding other ingredients)
+ Add soysauce, water, salt, sugar. Mix up well and stir occasionally so that all the vegetable can soak up the sauce.
+ Let it cook for 20 minutes, stir and mix occasionally
+ Additional water, soysauce, salt, sugar to taste if needed. You do want to keep some sauce, the sauce is sooo good poured over rice :-)
+ Let it cook for another 10 minutes. Turn off heat and keep covered.


Served with hot white rice.