Sticky rice cake with mustard greens (雪菜炒年糕, 薺菜炒年糕)

Today is the new year's eve (2/2).  When I was a child, we would have a family reunion and a big feast.  After dinner, we would pay respect to our ancestors, gamble with dices, and get red envelops from our parents.  Since it is a workday and it is in US, my husband and I just had a quiet dinner with take out food in front of TV.  This weekend, I will have a Chinese New Year feast with friends.  年糕 (rice cake) sounds like "getting higher every year" is the dish I cook every Chinese New Year.  This recipe is from my mom.  Last weekend, Christina called me and asked me how to make this dish because she has a pot luck tomorrow (new year's day) and she wants to make this dish.  So, I wrote down the recipe and found a picture from last year.   I will post some more New Year dishes after this weekend's dinner :).  See note at the end for another traditional Shanghai-style rice cake dish, 薺菜炒年糕.

 Ingredients:

1.  雪菜 1 box (pickled mustard greens, see product image to the right)

2.  lean pork 1/2 lb
3.  dry black mushrooms 8 pieces
4.  bamboo shoots (canned, frozen, or fresh) few pieces
5.  Chinese Bock Choy (小白菜）1 bundle
6.  rice cake (1.5lb, pre-sliced, vacuumed package, any Korean brand, see product image below)
7.  chicken broth 1 can

Preparation:

1. First, if you can't find pickled mustard green, you can make it yourself.  Buy a bundle of fresh mustard green (小芥菜), wash them thoroughly.  Slice them first along the same direction of the leaves into strips, then chop  orthogonally into small pieces.  Put them in a big bowl, sprinkle salt generously and mix the salt in.  After you are done with all the leaves，use both your palms, hold a handful of green leaves and shuffle them (用手搓) until the leave turn darker (the salt got into the leave and liquid start to come out). Do the same to all the leaves.  Then put the leaves in a big glass jar, seal it and put it in the refrigerator for a day or two and it is ready to use.
2. Put the dry rice cake in a big bowl (or sink) and submerge them in water.  Separate the pieces if they are stuck together
3. slice lean pork into thin stripes and marinate them with corn starch, soy sauce and salt
4. soften the dry mushrooms in water for one hour, remove the stems and slice them into thin slices
5. cut the bamboo shoots into thin stripes
6. Wash Chinese Bock Choy and cut them into inch-long pieces

Steps:

1. Stir fry pork until cooked, take them out.
2. Add 3TB vegetable oil, stir fry mushroom and bamboo shoots, add salt and soy sauce (if you have light soy sauce 生抽, use that), then squeeze  the water from mustard greens (taste it first, if it is too salty, you can use water to rinse it first.  Also, if it is salty, don't add salt to mushroom), add mustard greens in the wok and mix it with mushroom and bamboo.  Add 1 tb sugar.  At last, put the pork back in and turn off the heat.  Don't stir fry mustard greens too long, it will turn yellow.  Also, add soy sauce before you put mustard greens in, you want it look green, not brown.  Take out everything.
3. Add more vegetable oil, probably another 2TB, add 1 tb salt, then add Chinese Bock Choy and stir fry it until it start to get soft.  Now, drain the water from the rice cake and pour in the rice cakes.  Stir it frequently and don't let them stick to the wok.  Add chicken broth (probably half can) gradually and keep stir fry it.  I used to put one can of chicken soup and cover it up.  I found out the rice cakes would be too sticky.  So, don't put too much at the beginning, if they are too hard and chewy, add a little more at a time.  Add salt and pepper to the taste.  When the rice cake turn soft, add #2 in and mix well.  (#2 could be too much for one bag of rice cake.  You can put 2/3 in and make 雪菜肉絲麵 with the remaining :-)

Add some sesame oil before you remove them from the wok.
Happy Chinese New Year!

Note-  If we substitute Chinese Spinach (薺菜, see product picture to the right) for mustard greens and Chinese Bok Choy, we get another traditional Shanghai-style rice cake dish, 薺菜炒年糕.  Chinese Spinach came in a frozen package.  Immerse the frozen vegetable in water for an hour or two. Defrost, cut off stem roots, rinse thoroughly, mince, and then stir-fry as we stir-fried the mustard greens.