Over the last few months, we've been cooking a lot of Vietnamese food. And the word, "vietnamese", in the tag/ingredient cloud (below on the right side) has grown larger, dwarfing the "chinese" tag. That's fine with me, but Hungry Bear wants to end this trend and make sure her peeps' food is more represented on SND. So yesterday, she made beef and broccoli chow fun (chao fen).

We both love chow fun, but rarely order it at restaurants because it's just too damn oily. If you have access to a good Chinese/Asian supermarket and can get your hands on fresh rice noodles (he fen or haw fun), beef chow fun is best made at home. Prepared with fresh ingredients, minimal oil and Chinese broccoli, dare I say chow fun can be a healthy, balanced meal. It's sad Chinese food prepared in most restaurants is greasy, salty and generally bad for you, whereas traditional Chinese cooking can be healthy and flavorful.

I'd been asking Hungry Bear to make her braised tofu, pork and shiitakes the last several weeks. First off, it's one of my favorite dishes and I had a hankering for it. Secondly, I wanted to take better pictures of it, because the first set of pictures doesn't convey the deliciousness of the dish. It was only our second post on SND, and we were complete newbies at food photography.

Whenever we need Asian ingredients, we walk a couple of blocks to the Richmond New May Wah Supermarket. It's one of the best Asian markets in San Francisco. The prices are super cheap, or as the bay area kids like to say... HELLA cheap! For only $10.52, we picked up the ground pork, shiitake mushrooms, tofu, cilantro and a very large bag of pea shoots at New May Wah. What a deal!

The downside of the market can be the long checkout lines and the crazy Chinese grandmothers, who will box you out while reaching for produce. Hungry Bear has no issues sticking her elbows out to protect her space, whereas, I'm afraid of these aggressive, elderly women. I try to avoid the craziness by going during non-peak times, which means weekday mornings.

Jane and Mark love braised oxtail, as do I. Every very few months, we get a major craving for oxtail, so I made it for Sunday night dinner this past week. The last time I braised oxtails, I used a Ming Tsai recipe, which had too many ingredients. Sometimes I love his East meets West fusion food, but this dish was not one of them.

I wanted a more traditional Chinese recipe and stumbled upon an aromatic Chinese oxtail stew recipe by Jennifer McLagan. The ingredient list was simple, and I really liked how the sauce is refrigerated overnight, which makes removing the fat easier. The orange zest and juice were the only things I didn't like in the recipe. I think this stems from my aversion to orange beef.

Of course, I had to screw around with the recipe and incorporate other ingredients. For ideas, I immediately thought of my favorite Vietnamese noodle soup, bún bò Hue, which uses oxtails and lemongrass. Instead of the orange in McLagan's recipe, I replaced it with lemongrass and a lime. I also increased the amount of star anise, added whole cloves, shiitake mushrooms and Thai chili peppers for some much needed heat!

I love Chinese sticky rice. It contains several of my favorite ingredients — sticky rice, Chinese sausage and mushrooms. I know I'm going to have Hungry Bear's sticky rice at least twice a year, at Thanksgiving dinner and during Lunar New Year (Vietnamese/Chinese New Year) festivities. It's become a traditional dish for us on these holidays.

I really enjoy the rich flavors from the Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, oyster sauce and soy sauce that get infused into the sweet, sticky rice. Chinese-American families often serve sticky rice in place of stuffing during Thanksgiving. It's great with turkey, roasted duck or just by itself. I didn't grow up eating this dish, but I now consider it a comfort food.

Hungry Bear started making Chinese sticky rice using a recipe from Grace Young's The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. The recipe has dried scallops and shrimp in it, which takes additional time to prepare. Over the years, Hungry Bear has altered Grace Young's recipe, excluding the dried seafood, in order to save prep time. The scallops and shrimp are a little too fishy for my tastes and I prefer my sticky rice without them.

Braised pork, tofu and mushrooms is my favorite dish prepared by Hungry Bear. I love this dish because of the ground pork and shiitake mushrooms. We usually eat it with stir fried water spinach/hollow greens and jasmine rice.

The recipe is based on one found in the cookbook, The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore. Hungry Bear followed the recipe the first time she prepared it but has since altered it to our tastes. The primary seasonings in the recipe are soy sauce and oyster sauce. We have enhanced the dish by adding Vietnamese chili garlic sauce for a spicy kick. Additionally, shiitake mushrooms with its great flavor and texture has replaced the plain button mushrooms.

I really like the flavor combinations of the pork, soy, oyster and chili sauce. The dish also has a nice complement of textures from the ground pork, pan-fried tofu and shiitake mushrooms. The dish is wonderful on a bed of rice and a side of stir-fried water spinach.

Water spinach has many names such as hollow greens (due to its hollow stem), rau muong (Vietnamese), on choy (Cantonese) and kongxincài (Mandarin), which literally translates to "hollow heart vegetable." Hollow greens is one of our favorite vegetables and we simply stir fry it in a little oil with garlic and salt.

If you click through the pictures, you'll see a bowl of rice with chili sauce mixed together. I call this "red rice." I like adding the chili sauce to flavor my rice. It's not for the heat, because I'm immune to its spiciness. For heat, I'll eat a fresh chili pepper, usually a Thai red chili, with each meal.

I love braised pork, tofu and mushrooms so much that I'm having a major craving for it as I write this post. It's a really simple home cooked dish and is considered a comfort food by Hungry Bear.

I could eat this meal once a week but I'm limited to having it once a month. Hungry Bear doesn't want me to grow accustomed to eating it so I will think of it as a special meal when she prepares it. I think I have to wait an agonizing three more weeks until I can have it again.

Update 03.04.2008: Better pictures and the recipe can be found at Braised Pork, Tofu and Shiitakes.