Vegetarian five-spice duck egg noodle soup (Mi Vit Tiem chay)

I've been wanting to try out WanderingChopstick's recipe for Mi Vit Tiem Chay (vegetarian five-spice duck and bamboo shoot soup with egg noodles) for a while now. A few weeks ago I asked the hubby to especially take me to the San Gabriel's market to buy the mock duck :-) hehhe the cans come in smaller than I thought, so I bought two. I also picked up the dried bamboo shoots. These have been sitting in my kitchen cabinet for a couple weeks, but I just haven't had a chance to make them.
Last week with the cold raining weather and all, it just seemed like a perfect time to make noodles for slurping dinner.

I didn't follow W.C.'s recipe axactly (well, you can read my post on my cooking philosophy, you'll see that I'm quite informal when it comes to cooking measurements). Anyways, I used
+ 2 cans of mock duck meats.
+ 1 package of dried bamboo.
+ 10 fresh shitake mushrooms.
Turned out it was a bit too much bamboo and mushrooms for our pots....but we both liked lots of mock ducks the way it was. So for next time, i'll scale down my bamboo and mushroom, other than that everything else seemed perfectly good. For vegetable and garnishes, I had beansprouts, watercrest, cilantro and green onion, and a little bit of siracha chili sauce gave it that spicy touch which helped bring out the spiciness of fivespice and ginger in the broth.

The hubbie asked why didn't I use real duck ? Um....I answered, well...b/c it's a vegetarian version! But I guess the truth is I never realy care for real duck that much, a mock duck version is perfectly fine for me. Hubbie liked the Chinese crispy duck for the greasy crispy skin, but other than that I guess he doesn't care much for a simmered duck in a noodle broth that much either. So yeah, this recipe is good for us, satisfied, I say two thumbs up !! Thanks W.C. !

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.