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Stir-Fry Vegetables in a Bread Bowl
My favorite way to have vegetables is to quickly stir-fry them, so they are still crisp. A restaurant I used to go to a lot, served them in a beautiful woven lattice bread bowl and it was the perfect lunch. These veggies can be served over rice, rice noodles or as a side with stir-fried meat, poultry or tofu.
If you’re feeling creative I found a recipe for a lattice bread basket here.
Stir-Fry Vegetables
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 cup water or broth (vegetable or chicken)
Photo by ddpiesslice.blogspot.com
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp honey
- 6-8 mushrooms, washed and sliced
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp ground ginger or 2 tsp fresh minced
- ¼ tsp crushed garlic
- 8 oz broccoli crowns
- 8 oz sliced carrots, or baby carrots
- 8 oz snow peas
- 6 oz can sliced water chestnuts or bamboo shoots, drained
- salt & pepper to taste
wok or deep skillet
Mix cornstarch, soy, water, lemon and honey together. Set aside. Heat wok, add oil add all the remaining ingredients. Stir-fry quickly, about 2 minutes, until vegetables are tender-crisp. Add sauce, bring to boil for 1 minute or more until thickened. Let simmer 2 minutes.
Stir fried shrimp with snow peas and mushrooms
We haven’t had shrimp for a while. This dish used much the same sauce as did the chicken with peppers yesterday, though I did chance the Wrath of Mrs J by adding some heat via dried red peppers and a little sesame chili oil. The shrimp marinated for a bit in rice wine and black vinegar with corn starch and flour. I deep fried the battered shrimp for a minute to set the crust and then drained them on a paper towel. I stir fried the veggies for a little while then added the semi-cooked shrimp and a sauce of rice wine, black vinegar, oyster sauce, soy sauce, chicken stock, sesame chili oil, and corn starch. I’m really liking this sauce. The key flavors are found with the rice wine and the black vinegar:
Also in the flavor mix are the usual suspects – garlic, and ginger. I’m using those giant garlic cloves in these dishes but they don’t add giant garlic flavor, it’s pretty subtle so you can use a lot of it. There is more of the garlic in the fried rice:
I took this opportunity to massage the heat in my dish with some extra chili garlic paste. There was a scant teaspoon of it in the main shrimp dish as well, any more would have been suicide by angry stare. I’ve seen Mrs J look birds from the sky so I go light with communal seasonings.
Mmm… spicy shrimp noodles
I watched Alton Brown make some broth for miso soup the other day, he used kelp and shaved bonito for it, then he added miso paste and tofu. Probably some other stuff I’m forgetting. Anyway, I found myself by the Asian grocery store today while we were out playing with the GPS so I went in and looked for the stuff he used to make the soup. I found some miso, the shaved bonito, the seaweed and the tofu and brought it home intending to make the soup Alton made. I got as far as finishing the broth but I just didn’t want to go any farther. Tofu. Yeah, I know, healthy and all. But.
I used the broth to simmer some dried mushrooms and red chilies, and made a sauce with it along with oyster sauce and soy sauce. The snow peas were past their prime and I needed to use them but the miso soup didn’t strike me as being the proper vehicle. A shrimp and noodle stir fry was the result of my puttering this afternoon. I’m sure the cats will love the bonito I strained out of the broth.
Mmm…Frittata
I thought it time to scratch my frittata itch this morning. I had some odds and ends of veggies I needed to use and a frittata is the perfect vehicle for that. I did open a package of fresh goat cheese to crumble over the top.
I took a few pictures in the available light just for fun, the ones of the skillet on the stove were taken with just the under cabinet florescent fixture for direct illumination along with what light there was from a cloudy morning outside the windows. The camera did all the work and did a pretty good job of figuring it all out for me. I’m liking the f/1.8 35mm lens quite a bit, too. The plated meal was shot using the usual twin strobe bounce illumination. With a white ceiling in the kitchen I can treat the whole table as a “light box”.
Enjoy!
Pork Lo Mein
Well, pooh. I had a long post with a nice aside on Szechuan peppercorns but Word Press ate it. I’ll just link to a nice recipe and post some pictures.
