Pork celery and shiitake mushroom

I had left over celery from making an other dish so I decided to make a stir fry with it.

It's super easy. The most time consuming thing in a stir fry is to cut everything up to the right size. Other then that, heat up your wok and off you go.

Pork celery and shiitake mushroom

Ingredients

• 300g pork, sliced
• Half a stalk of celery
• 4 shiitake mushroom
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup of cashew (optional)
• 1 tbsp splash of rice wine
• 1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp corn starch
• 1/4 cup water

Directions

1. Soak the shiitake mushrooms for at least an hour to re-hydrate. Squeeze the water out once it's re-hydrated. 
2. Slide the pork into thin slices.
3. Cut the celery into 1 inch pieces. 
4. Mince the garlic.
5. Heat up the wok to medium heat.
6. Add in a bit of oil and the garlic. Stir it around so it doesn't burn.
7. Add the pork and the shiitake mushrooms and stir it.
8. When the pork is about 80% cooked, added the celery and quickly stir..
9. In a bowl mix oyster sauce, sugar, corn starch and water. 
10. Deglaze the wok with the rice wine.
11. Make a whole in the middle of the wok and add the sauce mixture.
12. Once it starts to thicken up and bubble mix turn off the heat and mix everything together. 
13. Plate and top with cashews.

Tip: during cooking, if more liquid appears in the pan, you might need a little more corn starch. If you do, just add a bit more corn starch to more water and mix it in to thicken the sauce some more.

How to keep Celery Longer

I don't use celery very often in Chinese cooking and when I do, it's usually just 2-3 stalks at most per dish I make.

So you can imagine if I buy celery, it'll stay in my fridge for a very long time.

However if you just keep it in the fridge, it'll wilt rather fast and become limp. Definitely not ideal if you want to use it in stir fry or even just eat it as is.

To keep celery over a long period of time, put it into water as if you meant to grow it!

If you keep it out of the fridge, over time you will find it sprouting leaves even if it doesn't grow taller.

If you don't want more leaves, then put the celery in the cup of water in the fridge and it will slow down it's growth.

You can revive limp celery this way too!

My husband left half a stalk of celery in the fridge for a week after he cooked with it and it was quite limp by the time I found it in the fridge.

I cut off a bit of the bottom and put it in a cup of water on my counter top.

The first day the celery was all bent over the cup and I had to stand it up against the paper towels.

The second day it had more strength and only the top was curled over.

By the third day it's fully standing up straight on it's own and all ready for me to use whenever I want.

Happy cooking.