Cold Chinese Mushrooms with Bean Thread Noodles

There is a Asian market near the corner of Ottawa Beach road and River Avenue that has a nice variety of food products not available in the mainstream markets. Like live blue crabs and all sorts of vegetables not familiar to me. So I bought a product labeled "Dried Black Fungus," the bean thread noodles and sesame oil. I was apprehensive, since I haven't been impressed with many of the recipes lately and, after reconstituting the fungus, it looked like pale rubber. I cut that up into smaller pieces, added sesame oil, rice vinegar, lemon juice, soy sauce, maple syrup, scallions and sesame seeds, along with the bean thread noodles.

I brought it to Eunice and Tom's, since my family often will try anything and are not picky eaters (well, some of them aren't). The bean threads noodles were just soaked for 15 minutes after I had cut them into smaller pieces with a scissors. They are dry, thin and silvery-translucent and come in small bundles tied with string, about 8 bundles per package. I had to look on the Internet how to prepare them, as the packaging was in Chinese, and the recipe said to boil them but not for how long.

The fungus-noodles are served on a bed of greens. They tasted light and fresh although a bit bland, but, of course, to most Americans, they would. Eunice liked it. I took some of the leftovers home and ate it for lunch the following day, and it definitely was much tastier after marinating overnight. In fact, I thought it was delicious, and even the few salad greens stayed crisp enough. Again, it is a very clean and fresh-tasting salad.

This recipe confirms why I wanted to do this cooking-my-way-through a cookbook: I learned about black fungus (mushrooms) and bean thread noodles and how to prepare them, and discovered a new salad that I would and will prepare again. The sesame oil is imperative and flavors everything, so it stands to reason that a several-hour marinade intensifies the flavor. Sesame seeds are used as a garnish. I will also use more minced scallions next time.