Buddha's Delight

A braise built almost entirely from dried things, where the water they soaked in is the only stock there is.

Tofu. Vegan.

Ingredients

To soak, the night before

• 10 dried shiitake mushrooms
• 20 g wood ear mushrooms
• 60 g dried bean curd sticks
• 30 g dried lily buds
• 20 g glass noodles
• 10 g dried black moss, optional

The rest

• 200 g napa cabbage, in wide strips
• 100 g carrot, sliced on the diagonal
• 100 g bamboo shoots, sliced
• 100 g mangetout
• 2 cubes fermented red bean curd
• 3 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons flavourless oil
• 20 g ginger, sliced
• 1 tablespoon cornflour in 3 tablespoons water
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method

1. THE SOAKING WATER IS THE STOCK. There is no meat here and nothing else is going to carry the dish: the shiitake water strained of its grit is worth more than anything you could pour in instead, and throwing it away is why most versions of this taste of nothing but soy sauce.
2. AND EACH DRIED THING SOAKS SEPARATELY, because they take wildly different times and only one of them has water worth keeping. Bean curd sticks need 6 hours and go slimy if pushed; lily buds need 30 minutes; glass noodles need 15 and will turn to paste in an hour.
3. Shiitake in hot water overnight. Strain that water through a cloth and keep it -- about 400 ml. Stems off, caps halved.
4. Wood ears soaked 1 hour, rinsed hard, hard knots cut out, torn into pieces. Their water is gritty and goes down the sink.
5. Bean curd sticks in cold water 6 hours or overnight, weighted down with a plate, then cut into 5 cm lengths.
6. Lily buds 30 minutes, hard ends trimmed, each tied in a loose knot so they do not shred.
7. Glass noodles 15 minutes only, drained, cut roughly.
8. Red bean curd mashed to a paste with a little of the shiitake water, the soy and the sugar.
9. Oil in a wide pan, ginger 30 seconds, then the shiitake, wood ears, bean curd sticks, carrot and bamboo. Stirred 3 minutes.
10. The bean curd paste in, then the shiitake water. Brought to a simmer and cooked 12 minutes with the lid on.
11. Cabbage and lily buds in, 5 minutes. Mangetout and glass noodles in, 2 minutes -- THE LAST TWO GO IN LAST and the noodles will take up whatever liquid is left, so check there is some.
12. Cornflour slurry stirred in, 1 minute to thicken, sesame oil off the heat.
13. It is better the next day, which is unusual for a dish with mangetout in it and is down to the bean curd sticks continuing to take up the sauce.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes