Homemade Vegetarian Egg Noodle Soup, With Tau Hu Ky (Fried Bean Curd Skin)

 

 

This is one of my most favorite vegetarian things to eat when I’m staying off meat for various reasons – vegetarian egg noodle soup with tofu, cabbage, and fried ba ro (shallot-like onions mainly used for veggie dishes.) Top it all off with fried bean curd skin. You can’t eat this without it. It adds some crunchiness to the meal. The soup base is made by boiling various vegetables so it’s light and healthy, versus pork based broth you’d normally use to make noodle soups.

Like I mentioned, fried bean curd skin is excellent for vegetarian noodle soups. These are also used to wrap pork and shrimp paste then deep fried. They are usually served with com tam, or Vietnamese broken rice. But I can munch of these by themselves all day long. 🙂

 

Happy Family Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant, Costa Mesa, CA

I’ve been to Happy Family Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant in Rowland Heights before, but didn’t know they had another location in Costa Mesa, thanks to my dad who found it online. So we took my vegetarian mom here for Mother’s Day dinner. 🙂

You’d think vegetarian food is boring – tofu this, tofu that. But that’s not the case here at Happy Family. You get the authentic Chinese food taste just as you would at a normal restaurant, minus the meat. 😛 They have all your favorite stir fried dishes, noodle and wonton soup, “chicken” and “beef” and “seafood” dishes made of mainly soy. Sure, a lot of those dishes have tofu, but each has a different name and flavor so you won’t think that you’re just eating plain tofu or soy.
We had a Mongolian beef dish, which was pieces of soy stir fried with various spicy herbs. Super yummy.
You can’t go to a Chinese restaurant and not order something kung pao, so we opted for this delicious kung pao chicken with mushroom. It was battered soy deep fried and stirred with mushroom in kung pao flavor. Seriously, it tastes just like chicken.

The restaurant has a rather quiet atmosphere which is great. Friendly service.