Chinese Sausage and Lotus Root Stir-Fry

This will probably be my last stir-fry for a while as I received a tagine for Christmas and am extremely excited to try it out. Tagine would've been on the menu for tonight had I not already purchased the lotus roots and mushrooms for this stir-fry last week. Seeing as they needed to be cooked anyway, I figured I stick with my original plan and pull out the wok again before moving on to the wonderful world of tagines.

This particular stir-fry is based on some advice given in the Goons with Spoons Chinese food thread, but includes some of my own improvisations as well. There was a question of what to do with Chinese sausages and someone mentioned that they were excellent stir-fried with black fungus and lotus root with a mix of hoisin sauce and oyster sauce and a bit of black vinegar (and maybe some tofu). This gave me a pretty good starting point and I just went from there with it.

Sausage and Lotus Root Stir-Fry
400g firm tofu, cubed
227g cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1-2 Tbsp. black bean lao gan ma
1-2 Tbsp. garlic paste
*1 Tbsp. ginger paste or minced ginger
*3 small carrots, peeled and sliced
1-2 small lotus roots, cubed
a handful of dried black fungus, rehydrated
1 pkg. Chinese sausage, sliced
1/4 c. hoisin sauce
1/4 c. oyster sauce
1/4 c. black vinegar
*1-2 tsp. sugar
*1 Tbsp. light soy sauce
*4 green onions, chopped
chili crisp lao gan ma, to taste

I know I should type out all the instructions properly, but I'm feeling tired and low-effort tonight, so I'm just going to do a high-level overview:

• fry the tofu, reserve
• fry the cremini mushrooms, reserve
• fry the onion, add the aromatics
• add carrots, then lotus root, then sausage
• add black fungus, cremini, and tofu
• add sauce, thicken with cornstarch slurry as necessary
• add green onions
• serve over rice with more lao gan ma as desired

The ingredients with asterisks didn't actually make it into this edition of the stir-fry. Next time I think I'd replace one of the two small lotus root segments with some carrots and add a bit of sugar and soy sauce to the sauce mix since I felt it needed a little something. I was unsure about whether or not to put ginger in, but after tasting it, I think the ginger would've gone nicely. I'll toss a little bit in the next time I'm making this. Other than that, I think it came out pretty well and I'm happy with the results.