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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Stir fry, with a little bit of zing

Don't wait to dig in!
No guys, the zing is not coming from garam masala. Just kidding. This was not meant to be a blog post, it was just supposed to be dinner. But when I saw how delicious it looked, I couldn't resist clicking a picture and putting it up here. Stir fry is one of my all time favourites, little surprise, since I am such a big fan of vegetables. I was, however, tired of the limp and dull stir fries that I have been served, some with just a runny soy sauce thrown into the veggies and some just too dry to get me through my portion of rice. 
I like my stir fry to be hearty with taste, and like a little bit of extra sauce. Both Swati and I know it is due to a hangover of our good old dal-chawal, we just cannot do with just dry veggies over our rice. In addition, I am a fan of the sweet sour Asian sauces, so when I found a simple recipe needing a few ingredients that were readily available in my fridge, I was sold. Doesn't matter that the sauce was part of a recipe for meat or sea food mains. I know how to adapt my food :) And then I decided to end the dish with a corn starch mixture to thicken the sauce and add a glossy sheen to the whole dish. Well, I figure since I was eating so many veggies (which is quite healthy) a spoon of corn starch would not do that much harm! The recipe of the sauce mentioned chilli flakes as an ingredient, but it did not sound interesting enough. Being Indian (all Indians will understand this comment), I decided to add a tablespoon of the schezuan sauce that I had left over from the Chinese vada pav. That's what added the zing and just lifted the taste of the boring stir fry!
I draw satisfaction from the fact that I have not used any oil at all in my stir fry, I just used a dash of Pam Cooking Spray to start frying the garlic. After that, most veggies lost water and so no other medium was required. Using a teflon-coated pan helped. You could easily use one teaspoon of oil (whichever you prefer, I am not picky about this, since I tend to use what I have at home at the time). Want to get started?

Veg stir fry with a sweet sour sauce

Ingredients - for two
Mushrooms, sliced - 3-4 medium
Capsicums (bell peppers) - all colours, diced - 1/2 cup
Baby bokchoy, roughly torn - 1 head
Water chestnuts, peeled and sliced - 7-8
Baby corn, sliced - 5-6
Garlic, peeled and sliced - 2-3 cloves
Salt - 1/4 teaspoon
Oil - 1 teaspoon

For the sauce

Soy sauce - 1/4 cup
Vinegar - 3 tablespoons
Brown sugar - 2-3 tablespoons
Schezuan sauce - 1 tablespoon (You can replace it with 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes)
Salt - 1/4 teaspoon

For the corn starch mixture

Corn starch - 1 tablespoon
Soy sauce - 1 tablespoon
Water - 1 tablespoon

Brown or white rice to serve

Method

1. Before you start chopping the vegetables, make sure you have washed them well, especially the mushrooms. The ones available in Indian markets are full of dirt. With the bokchoy make sure you have separated each leaf/ stem and cleaned it  through.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, and add the garlic when it sizzles. Alternatively, you can heat the pan and then spray Pam. 
3. When the garlic slices start turning brown in a couple of minutes, add the baby corn and let it fry for 2-3 minutes. Give it a good stir in between. The heat should be on medium or low. Add in the capsicums, and continue stirring. After another two minutes, add the mushrooms, and let it cook another 2 minutes. Finally add the water chestnuts and bokchoy, and let it cook on low heat. Add the salt.
4. In the meanwhile, assemble all the ingredients of the sauce in a bowl. Once the bokchoy starts going limp, add the sauce mixture to the pan and let it cook.
5. Immediately make the corn starch mixture by dissolving the corn starch in the soy sauce and water so that there are no lumps. Add it to the pan when the sauce in the pan starts to bubble. Let the corn starch cook for 2 minutes and turn off the heat.
6. Let the veg stir fry rest in the pan for 7-10 minutes before serving.
8. Serve with white or brown rice. 

Notes:

  • You could add or subtract any vegetables of your choice. Additional vegetables that can be used are spring onions, cabbage, squash and egg plant.
  •  Tofu can be added too, but you will need to shallow/ deep fry it. Add it to the dish at the end, after the sauce is cooked.
  • It can be served with plain cooked noodles as well. 
  • Sorry I do not have pictures of the process, as I said, I had not intended it as a blog post!

6 comments:

  1. I.WANT!!!! Looks delicious. Priti Botadkar

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  2. Yum! It looks so good and simple to make! I must try it now that I have begun to cook! Thanks!
    - Beverly

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    1. YOu've begun to cook? Awesome! I am so proud. I do hope I get to taste some of it soon. :)

      ... and not to forget, the next stop is White Russian... have to lay my hands on the Kaluha first. he he he

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  3. It is mouth watering,healthy and delicious dish.we hope to enjoy it ,in our next trip to India.
    Fua & Fi.

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    1. Thank you Fi and Fua! I will surely make it for you when you are here. Come soon!

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