More and more I am growing to love recipes based on cooking methods more than on ingredients. Once the process is understood, not only can you be more creative with what you eat, but you can also make do with what you have right there in the kitchen already.
It also makes grocery shopping easier if you have had time to get to know a dinner preparation method well enough to toss in whatever looks best from the produce and butcher’s isles. If you are making a food based on, say, green peppers, there’s a specific feeling of disappointment when you arrive at the store and find them all squishy or sold out. Behind you, cauliflower is on sale and looks delicious, but you didn’t plan a meal with cauliflower.
What to do? Do what great vegetable chefs have been doing for centuries – Stir. Fry.
Coming to understand Stir Fry has been some of the most well invested time I’ve made as a cook. Knowing it’s basic steps and, having tried so many different veggies, understanding veg cooking times better now has let me off the hook so many times in the store and when I’m hungry at home.
Say you have a couple of carrots, half a pepper, onions that might soon start to sprout and a last little piece of ginger left over from some muffin batch. While that might sound a little dismal, it sounds like dinner to me. I’ve had versions of stir fry with way more than that (orange jest, exotic spices, lemon grass) but it’s delicious with just the basics.
The trick is in the method. I’m going to go ahead and say it would be a good idea to get a wok. You can do this same thing in a large frying pan, but you just don’t get the awesome ability to mix and separate ingredients the way you do with a wok. You’ll also use it for other things, I promise, so if you feel like this is something you’ll make more than twice (it is, you can put whatever into it, it takes like no time to make and the combinations are endless) you should just get one.
The method:
Before you get started, go ahead and get a pot of rice working. It can cook in the background as you cut, separate and cook.
To do that, first get the wok and a pile of random veggies and maybe a meat. Turn on some tunes and cut everything up into similarly sized pieces. In a hurry? Cut the hard veg up small and thin (carrots, for example into one or two inch segments and then half those segments).
The next part is separating – like with like here as far as cooking times. Meat always goes in first, so have that in a bowl or something off to the side. It’s a good to cut that first so you can leave it to settle into a little bath of soy sauce and chili flakes, or whatever marinade you like, while the veggies get chopped. If you have little counter space, put your hard veggies together (cauliflower, carrots, turnips, potatoes) in a big bowl and then the lighter cooking ones (onions, peppers, snap peas, broccoli, leeks, corn) together separately.
To cook, (as I said, meat first) get the wok pretty hot and then add a little oil. I usually like peanut oil for a little extra nutty flavor, but any kind will do. Meat in and then stir until it’s browned. Instead of taking it out of the pan like so many recipes ask, just push it up to the sides of the wok once the browning is achieved. In the center, get your hard veggies in and add a little flavoring – a soy or hoision sauce, ginger slivers, chili flakes – and stir some more.
Browned chicken pieces up on the edge and carrots and ginger in the center.
Cook until tender and then in go your lighter vegetables (garlic I add in this group because burnt garlic is gross. If you add it later in the cooking you don’t have to worry so much about that). If you do things in a sensible order, your meat and hard veg are now cooking through while the tender veg is heated just enough to not get mushy.
The heat of the precooked elements tossed around with the new veggies makes the cooking even faster.
The last thing is to give it one more hit of sauce and pepper after a little taste test. For this evening’s batch I added water chestnuts at the end as well. My mom always used to have these in stir fry. I got a can the other day when I happened to look up and see them. They don’t add so much in the way of taste, but the crunch is great.
Steaming deliciousness!
Serve over hot rice and feel free to experiment! Farmer’s market on? Try whatever they have this season. Zucchini on sale? That will be just fine too. Need to use up the last of those onions? Here they go. The investment in a wok and a little practice will certainly be worth all the delicious dinners you can make regardless of what ingredients you have on hand.
Jazz Kitchen 