[Photographs: Elizabeth Barbone] I think of tarts the same way I think of sandwiches: you can fill them with almost anything and they taste great. And just as a good sandwich requires good bread, a tart needs a good crust....
Chinese Wide Noodles with Barbecue Pork and Dried Mushrooms is a Chinese comfort-food favorite. This quick version of char siu pork amps up pork tenderloin with a marinade of sweet-salty hoisin sauce and aromatic five-spice powder. Then slivers of this meat meld with meaty wood ear mushrooms among chewy noodles bathed in a salty-sweet sauce.
You can think of this recipe as a template, and you can alter it according to your tastes. For my most recent batch of cherries, I used fresh cherry juice in place of water in the syrup. To juice cherries,...
Notes: For deeper mushroom flavor, stir hot mushroom slices sautéed in butter (see Note below) into the pasta, or spoon them over the top as a garnish. PREP AND COOK TIME: About 30 minutes.