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Posts Tagged ‘stir fry’

Asian style vegetable cooking is notable for its colours and flavour. While roast vegetables or steamed vegetables can be tasty with a meal, stir-fried vegetables are much more interesting in the tastes and textures.  They are also very healthy as they are cooked for a very short period and thus retain more of the nutrients. As with most recipes here, you can use whatever vegetables you have to hand.

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Ingredients:

3 sticks celery
250 g Chinese Cabbage (wong buk)
250 g broccoli
100 g green beans or snow peas
2 small white onions
3 Tbsp oil for cooking
1/2 cup rich chicken stock
1 chicken stock cube (optional)
1 Tbsp Oyster sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce
s tsp finely chopped ginger

Method:

1. Prepare vegetables and cust into even sized pieces. Keep each type separate.
2. Heat wok, add oil and heat. Lightly fry ginger for 6 – 7 seconds.
3. Add vegetables to cook according to hardness. Stir fry constantly to keep from burning. If the wok is too dry you can add a little stock.
4. Crumble stock cube into remaining stock and add to wok together with oyster sauce. Season with soya sauce.
5. Sauce can be thickened if desired with a little cornflour blended with cold water. Bring to boil and serve immediately.

Variations

I usually include some carrot and baby corn in this just to have a variety of colours. Water chestnuts can be used to give more interest to the texture.  Red capsicum makes a bright splash of colour when it is in season as well as providing a dose of vitamin C.

Tips

If you want to prepare this ahead of time, you can blanche the vegetables instead of cooking them in the wok. Then when you want to serve them, just cook the ginger, reheat the vegetables with the sauce and serve.

This makes a great accompaniment to just about anything.

This is a simple stir-fry recipe. When I do stir-fries, I tend to mix in lots of vegetables so that the dish is pretty much a meal in itself.

Five Spice Pork With Lettuce

Ingredients:

1  large carrot or 2 small carrots
1 tin water chestnuts
1/2 red capsicum (or red pepper if you are in the northern hemisphere)
6 – 12 snowpeas
3 or 4 shallots
1 tsp sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2.5cm piece ginger, peeled and grated
500g pork mince
1/3 cup dry sherry (or rice wine)
1 tblsp soy sauce
1 tsp sweet soy sauce
1/2 – 1 tsp Five Spice powder
1 tsp sugar
2  cups cooked brown rice
6  lettuce cups (the innre leaves of iceberg lettuce is best for this)
oil for frying

Method:

1. Finely chop carrots, water chestnuts, capsicum, snow peas and shallots.
2. Heat 1 – 2 tblsp oil in wok then add crushed garlic, grated ginger and chopped shallots.
3. Stir fry for about 1 minute
4. Add minced pork and stir fry for about 3 – 4 minutes.
5. Add chopped carrots and fry for 2 minutes.
6. Add water chestnuts and capsicum and fry for 2 minutes.
7. Mix together dry sherry (or rice wine), soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, 5 spice powder, sesame oil and sugar.
8. Add cooked rice to wok and pour in combined sherry soy mixture.
9. Add snowpeas and mix thoroughly. Heat through, stirring frequently.
10. Wash lettuce and separate into cups.
11. Place lettuce cups on plates,  spoon in a quantity of the pork mix and serve.

Variations

If you prefer, you can use finely chopped chicken instead of pork.

The ingredients and quantities can be varied. You may like to add baby corn or bamboo shoots to this recipe. You can also use shitake mushrooms (if dried, you will need to soak and chop them first).

Tips

Have everything chopped and ready to go before you start cooking.

This recipe can be easily adapted to whatever you happen to have on hand. Try and have different colours in it to make it look interesting and appetising.

Don’t cook the vegetables too long or they will start to lose their colour and become soft.

You can prepare the rice the day before hand and keep in the refrigerator. This helps prevent it sticking and becoming gluggy when you fry it with the pork.