#2 Taro and Three Mushrooms

Yum yum for the Chinese potato: taro. It's one of my favorite ingredients in a sticky rice dish. Maybe that'll come up in a future recipe. This was my first time cooking with taro so you'll have to forgive for how it turned out. More on that later. 

Original Recipe

Verdict: This dish is pretty hearty as taro is starchy so it'll fill you up and has lots of yummy savory flavor.

Easiness: 4/5

Tastiness: 4/5

Ingredients:

1 tspn ginger

1 lb taro

1/2 package of enoki mushroom

1 package beech mushroom

1 package gingko nuts

1 cucumber

1/2 tspn vegetable seasoning

1 tspn cornstarch

oil for frying

salt, pepper, and sesame oil to taste

The original recipe called for straw mushrooms but I couldn't find that so I substitute with enoki (which is long and thin like a straw.. so that works right? hah). Just in case, I decided to only put half the package as it seemed like plenty of shrooms already.

The beech mushroom packaging was super cute. Look at the little Hokto mascot. Isn't it cute? 

For cucumbers, I cut the ends off and rubbed the ends with the cut off pieces. White foam should ooze out. This is what makes cucumbers taste bitter sometimes. You can also remove the skin entirely which will also remove the bitter taste.  Proceed to cut up all the veggies and blanch it (not the taro). I don't really see the point in blanching all these veggies. According to google research blanching brightens the color and softens the texture. Well okie dokie. 

 Blanch the button mushrooms separately. I'm not sure why the recipe decides to segregate these guys. Maybe they can't play nice with each other. 

Set all the blanched stuff aside and begin the stir fry. For the ginger, I cheated a little bit and used minced ginger from a jar. The last time I bought regular ginger it dried up and was useless. I almost thought I lost my ginger, but it turned out it was the dead shriveled thing in the corner of the drawer. I thank my Indian coworkers for telling me that ginger can come in a jar.

So I could not for the life of me find what the recipe calls mushroom seasoning. Instead I found vegetable seasoning in the chicken/beef bullion section of Ranch 99 which I figured was good enough. Interestingly, this stuff doesn't have any MSG and is low in salt; I think this could be a really good product.

For the LOLs, note the "no side effect" under directions. Just in case if you wondered if this product will give you a major thirst or a throbbing headache.

 Heat up the ginger in oil. Add the veggies and stir fry. Add the veggie seasoning. Add salt, pepper and sesame oil to taste. Don't add too much sesame oil.  A little bit goes a long way.

Cook the taro in a separate pan. I had a problem with the recipe as it says to "sautee the taro in water." What? Does that mean boil? or does that mean pan fry? I opted to boil the taro as I thought that's what was intended. Unfortunately, my taro cubes got a bit on the mushy side as you can see in the pictures. Next time I'd try to fry it instead. I tried to arrange it the same way the recipe pictures do but it didn't look that great.

So I mixed it up and I think it looks better.  I also opted out of the red bell pepper because I personally don't eat bell peppers unless they are organic. Ya, I'm weird.