I tried to make another dish from "Moosewood Restaurants" cookbook. It was something about mushrooms and tofu, awesome, can't be all that bad right?

The recipe called for dried shiitake mushrooms and Chinese black beans among other more normal ingredients (tofu, button mushrooms). I didn't find these dried shiitake mushrooms nor Chinese black beans in publix, and I was too lazy (and hungry I think) to try and find them elsewhere, I decided to come home and cook with what I had. I found dried poruchini (?) mushrooms and regular black beans.

Well..... not the same. Apparently the Chinese black beans are very flavorful and can't really be substituted with regular canned black beans. The substitute dried mushrooms were extremely pungent but in a not so pleasant kind of way. I cooked this, threw in some spinach, topped with chopped peanuts and tried flavoring the heck out of it but this dish was kind of a fail. Unfortunately too I cooked up 5-6 servings of it so I've been eating failed cooking all week (and some in the freezer for future failed cooking meals). Oh well. The second shot is of my destroyed kitchen. Some days I can't get my act together.

Tagged: food