Tuesday, January 18, 2005

veggie stir-fry

This hardly even deserves writing down, it's so barely a recipe. Nevertheless:

1 bell pepper
a handful of green beans
2 shanghai bok choy (those are the small, uniformly green ones)
1 large carrot
2 cloves garlic
1 inch of ginger
2 tbps or so President's Choice Memories of Szechwan Peanut Sauce
1/4 cup or less chicken stock (or any flavourful liquid)
2-3 oz lean bbq pork (optional)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
splash of sesame oil
1 cup cooked brown rice (on our rice cooker, the minimum you can cook)

You will want to put the rice on well in advance of doing the rest of this, because brown rice takes about 40-50 minutes to cook. Throw it on, do some chores or watch some tv, then get to the rest of it.

1) julienne vegetables (ie turn them into sticks - beans are easy because they're already sticks, just chop them into lengths), except the bok choy, for which you pull off the leaves until you get to the bite-sized centre. (or, you could have just bought pre-chopped mixed veggies)
2) mince ginger & garlic (sure, you can cheat and use a garlic press, but it has to have really big holes to work on the ginger)
3) slice pork if it isn't already done.
4) get yer wok out. put the oil in it.
5) turn the burner under your wok up to nearly high
6) let the oil heat up for a bit and when it starts to smoke (watch it carefully) toss in the ginger & garlic.
7) stir the ginger and garlic and when they're about 50% browned (and definitely before it burns) throw in all the veggies.
8) stir stir stir for about 2 minutes
9) add peanut sauce and liquid (the liquid's optional, it just thins out the sauce so some goes into your rice)
10) add pork
11) stir until pork is warm
12) serve on rice. If you have any, put some chopped cilantro or thai basil on top.

1 cup cooked rice will serve 2 people nicely. If you think you need more than that, you've either run a marathon that day or you're just deluded. 1/2 cup is a "serving". I generally eat only about 1/3 cup, so Stirling gets a little more.

Oh, and I know I rant about preparing your own food, blah blah blah, but I don't eat a lot of peanut butter so it doesn't make sense to keep it around to make my own peanut sauce, and the president's choice stuff is not only extremely tasty but has nothing nasty in it (I'm assuming xanthan gum is relatively innocuous.)

Ok, that's what I ate last night. Going by the food guide, that's probably 2 servings veg, 1 meat & 1 grains. Good times.

2 Comments:

Blogger spughy said...

Yeah, the bbq pork you get a Loi Sing in chinatown (little butcher beside (just before) the largish grocery store, on the right as you go down Fisgard from Government to Store St.) It's already cooked, you can eat it cold or heat it up. 1/2 lb is about $4, and it's really really good.

9:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, the President's Choice peanut sauce is really good for a bottled sauce. Alternately, I found a really easy peanut sauce to make at home: 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons honey and enough hot water to blend the sauce. A few drops sesame oil, some crushed garlic and Vietnamese hot sauce (Clamb knows this stuff from bagel & cream cheese days!) are optional.
Of course, this is assuming you HAVE peanut butter around...like a normal person ;)
- A

3:04 PM  

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