Yesterday, I wanted something Asian for dinner... Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, whatever. I just needed something comforting over rice. Hungry Bear suggested making a stir-fry with flank steak and I reminded her about the asparagus in the fridge. So, she whipped up garlic beef with asparagus and shiitake mushrooms.

The key to any stir-fry with thin slices of beef is not to over cook the meat. Hungry Bear made it perfectly as it remained tender and moist. The stir-fry was really flavorful from the oyster sauce, soy, garlic and shiitakes.

Although I wanted rice, Hungry Bear made me eat it over noodles... something about my birthday and long life. I don't believe in that type of stuff, but I obliged. Sadly, the fresh Asian egg noodles we had in the fridge weren't so fresh anymore and had grown a little "hairy." We searched the pantry for a suitable substitute and could only muster up spaghetti noodles. Maybe I should have told you that we wanted to make an East meats West dish!?!

The garlic beef stir-fry was so delicious, it didn't matter if it was served on spaghetti, egg noodles or rice. But maybe I added a few extra years to my life by eating noodles on my birthday!

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After making fried eggs and shrimp, I needed to do something with the extra tomatoes and red onion. I looked in the fridge and saw some tofu and fresh egg noodles that we often pick up at the local Asian supermarket. With a few other ingredients, I whipped up this super easy curry tofu noodle stir-fry.

We enjoyed the dish so much, I made it again a few days later. The first time, I added a little too much hot curry powder for Hungry Bear's taste. My heat tolerance is off the charts, so it was mild for me. The next time I made it, I threw in a little coconut cream to soothe the heat and sweet petite peas for some color.

The main flavors of the dish came from the curry powder and a little sweetness from the tomatoes and coconut cream. If you like a sweet heat, add the coconut cream. We actually preferred it without the cream. At the store down the street, we can find a plethora of fresh egg noodles. I've made the dish with thick, round noodles and thin, flat noodles (pictures 3 and 4 in the slideshow). We liked the thin, flat noodles better.

It's a simple but flavorful dish that can be prepared in less than 20 minutes. And it was a great way for us to clean out the fridge.

Natural Light versus Lowel Ego Light

Another thing I want to point out in the slideshow is the last three pictures. I picked up a set of Lowel Ego lights after Jaden of Steamy Kitchen recommended them. The third to last picture is a shot of the noodle dish with natural lighting (kitchen window). I use the Lowel Ego lights in the last two pictures in the slideshow.

The pictures with the Ego lights are decent, particularly the close-up shot (last picture). The Ego lights are a little harsh compared with natural light, which is softer and more pleasant. This was my first time using the lights, so I'm sure I can improve the picture quality with better light placement. Overall, I'm pleased with the Ego lights, but I need to play with them a little more.

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If you had to choose one dish to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? As someone who enjoys a good smorgasbord and wants it all, I have a difficult time answering this question. Without hesitation, Hungry Bear's choice is fried rice, because it's a flavorful, balanced meal. And she can't survive without rice.

The beauty of fried rice is the endless variations that can be made from leftovers or random ingredients in the fridge. In my head, I have a basic shrimp fried rice recipe my mom taught me, but I can't recall the last time I made it. Instead, each time we make fried rice, it's a unique, never to be made again creation, because the combination of leftovers/ingredients is never the same.

Leftover sauces are my favorite things to add to fried rice, for example, Thai green curry. Every time we make green curry, we end up with a cup or two of sauce in the bottom of the pot. If you take the curry sauce, add some rice, any leftover meat, sweet petite peas and bamboo shoots, all of sudden you'll have an amazing green curry fried rice. Other times, we make fried rice by just dumping leftover Asian takeout into a wok.

The recipe below is a fried rice Hungry Bear whipped together with some Chinese broccoli, Chinese sausage and Shiitake mushrooms we had in the fridge. The broccoli was leftover from making beef chow fun. Hungry Bear used minimal oil and sodium in the recipe, since there's plenty of it in the Chinese sausage. It was simple and delicious. Could you eat fried rice for the rest of your life?

Other Fried Rice Recipes

• Fried Rice Yang Chow-Style by Wandering Chopsticks
• Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and Vegetables by Nook & Pantry
• Curry Chicken Fried Rice by CanaryGirl

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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.

To prepare the chow fun, Hungry Bear referenced two Grace Young cookbooks. We love Grace Young's recipes, but our biggest pet peeve is that her recipes are always proportioned to serve 4 to 6 as part of a multi-course meal. Hey, that's great if you have time to cook multi-course meals, but it's no good for people like us who cook in mass quantities. So, we always end up doubling or quadrupling her recipes, hoping it's enough as the main entrée.

This time Hungry Bear only doubled the recipe, reduced the oil and added Chinese broccoli to the beef chow fun recipe found in The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. With fresh ingredients and perfectly cooked flank steak, this was no doubt the best chow fun I've ever had. After adding a dash of chili garlic sauce, I was one happy, chow-fun-eating camper. Now I'm looking forward to the next Chinese dish, as Hungry Bear attempts to restore the Chinese/Vietnamese balance on SND.

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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.

Back to the braised pork and tofu, I made Hungry Bear measure out all the ingredients while she was cooking, so we could document the recipe. I threw off her timing a bit, because she's used to just dumping in the ingredients by taste and feel. Still, the dish turned out fantastic as usual.

It's a simple dish with great flavors from the shiitakes, pork, soy and oyster sauce. We always have it over rice with a side of stir-fried vegetables. This time around, we had pea shoots with garlic.

Over time, the amount of pork has increased from 1 pound to 1.5 pounds. What can I say, I'm a meat eater. I love my veggies too, but I won't skimp out on the meat. No matter how much pork is used, it's a great dish and has become comfort food for me!

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Dungeness crab season started late this year in San Francisco because of the terrible oil spill in the bay. We were lucky that the spill wasn't worse, and Dungeness crab season was only delayed for a few weeks. Still, I was worried that we wouldn't have crab for Sunday night dinner before all of us left for the holidays.

My parents came to the rescue by sending Jane and Mark a Christmas gift, crab crackers and forks. I had no idea they were sending them a gift, and Jane was especially surprised and happy. Jane wanted to christen the crab tools with a dinner of Dungeness crabs. Way to go Mom and Dad!

On Sunday, Jane picked up crabs at Sun Fat Seafood Company, where they quartered and removed the gills for her. The crabs were a reasonable $3.99 a pound. With the dismantled crab, Garry made stir-fried garlic crab. It's a really simple recipe with a lot of garlic... think garlic fries. We used three heads of garlic for four Dungeness crabs.

The crabs were served with a side of brussels sprouts with Chinese sausage and jasmine rice. The olive oil and garlic from the crabs were great mixed in with the plain white rice. To enhance the sweet crab meat, we dipped the chunks in a salt, black pepper and lime juice mix.

Dinner was delicious and was literally finger licking good. It's definitely a meal you eat with close friends who don't care about table etiquette. We really enjoyed eating with our hands and making a mess. I was particularly elated each time I was able to pull out a big hunk of crab meat from a claw.

Thanks again, Má and Ba, for sending the gift and motivating us to make garlic Dungeness crabs!

SNDsters: Karen, Garry, Mark, Jane, Hungry Bear, Chuck

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I love cabbage! Stuffed cabbage, cole slaw, corned beef and cabbage, kimchi, cabbage soup... I love all things made with cabbage. If I'm at a restaurant and I see a dish made with cabbage on the menu, it's usually the one I order. I'm not sure how or when my admiration of cabbage developed, but it runs strong and deep.

Several years ago, I was enjoying some Thai larb and it suddenly occurred to me that I wanted to create a dish with similar flavors. But, I wanted to add a vegetable to balance it out and also make it healthier. Naturally, I immediately thought of using cabbage.

So I turned it into a stir fry dish served on rice. I wanted something simple, healthy and easy to prepare. The outcome was stir fried cabbage, ground beef and mushrooms. The flavors that I borrowed from Thai larb are the saltiness from the fish sauce and the tanginess from the lime.

I added some kick with Vietnamese chili garlic sauce. And over time, I added sweet petite peas and mushrooms. The end result is a really good dish that goes nicely with jasmine rice. The highlight is the crunchy, salty shredded cabbage that is complimented by spicy, tangy ground beef and sweet peas.

There's nothing fancy about this dish, but it has turned into comfort food for Hungry Bear and me. When I make this dish, I usually stir fry a very large quantity of it so we can have leftovers for the next few days. It's a common practice for us to make mass quantities so we don't have to cook every day.

I love this dish because it has healthy cabbage in it, takes less than 45 minutes to prep and cook, and is prepared in "one pot"... ok, wok. If you want to make it more posh, use flank steak or ground Kobe beef. Better yet, just call it Deconstructed Stuffed Cabbage. 

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