Mock Fish (Buddhist)

Here’s one for mock fish, using potatoes to replace the finny critter, that sounds like a pretty tasty vegetarian dish regardless of how much the potato resembles a fish. Sprinkle potatoes with flour and deep-fry until golden. Drain and set aside. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the oil, reheat an add onion. Stir-fry for 10 seconds and add snow peas and wood ears. Stir- fry for another 10 seconds and add salt, sugar and water. Bring to rapid boil, stirring constantly, and cook until peas are just tender crisp. Add reserved fried potato slices, heat through and serve. Wood ears are a type of mushroom or shelf fungus. When soaked it has a crunchy, gelatinous texture with little taste. If you can’t find them, I imagine that you could use the dried mushrooms although they wouldn’t give exactly the same effect. A closer substitute would be dried jellyfish, but if you’re somewhere that sells dried jellyfish, I’m sure that they have wood ears as well.

From ‘The Regional Cooking of China’ by Margaret Gin and Alfred E.

Castle.

Productions, San Francisco, 1975.

Posted by Stephen Ceideburg; December 20 1990.