Woon Sen

My 9 year old is a huge fan of her Thai aunt's noodle dish, Woon Sen.  For some reason, I have had a terrible time making it correctly.  The ingredients are not familiar enough to me to be able to wing it, but still after several lessons & email exchanges you would think I could figure it out.  Perhaps the language barrier was holding me back!  

Sophie spent a week with her aunt at the beach and came home determined to help me make it correctly.  We worked together & finally made it up to her discerning standards.   We boiled the ground pork in a little bit of water.  Soaked the "dried fungus" in water. Wow, does that fungus expand in water!  We mixed chopped onions, chopped (now undried) fungus, chopped cilantro, sugar and "vegetable seasoning" (MSG, i think), lime juice and fish sauce in a bowl, added the pork and then had to figure out if the noodles were to be boiled in the pork water or new water, we went with a combination of both & boiled the glass noodles.  Then we added them to the mixture in the bowl, adjusted the lime & fish sauce and Sophie declared it perfect.  The mixture, however, was not authentic because Sophie prefers it without thai chilies.  I added some to mine.