guy's stir fry
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4
Ingredients
Any of the following when available:
leeks
carrots
cauliflower
broccoli
kale
pak choi
soft greens
Instructions
There is no need for air-freighted, tinned or frozen exotics. Stir frying adapts as well to cauliflower, carrots and leeks as it does to baby sweetcorn and mangetout.
The crucial elements of a good stir fry are timing (prepare all the ingredients before starting to cook) and how the vegetables are cut up. It is also important that all the ingredients are dry and that you do not cook too much in the wok at once. If I am cooking for the whole family I tend to cook for the children first, which gives me the added benefit of being able to put more chilli in the second, adult batch.
The best thing about stir frying is that you can pick and choose the ingredients that you like and can get locally. The rest is a simple culinary creation, so rather than give you a recipe, here are some ideas on how to deal with particular ingredients. The length of cooking time is shown in brackets.
Ginger: 2cm cube peels and sliced into match-thin slices ( 10 minutes)
Fresh Chilli: Sliced according to taste. If you are not sure of the strength of your chilli, remember the seeds are the hottest part and the pods get hotter from the tip to the base. Fresh chilli is much better than dried.
Garlic: 2 cloves cut into eight. Cut it too small and it will tend to burn. (10 minutes)
Leeks: Trim off the excess leaf then make one cut from the outside to the centre along the length of the leek. Wash out any mud under the tap and shake dry. Holding tightly in its original shape, slice diagonally to produce strips of no more than 5mm thick. (9 minutes)
Carrot: Peel, slice into strips then cut diagonally into large matchsticks. (7 minutes)
Cauliflower and broccoli: Cut into bite sized florets. With broccoli try to leave a length of stem with each floret and peel the remaining stem and slice it into matchsticks. (6 minutes)
Kale, cauliflower leaves, purple sprouting broccoli stalks: Strip the leaves from the stalks and slice them diagonally. The stalks of the brassica family are normally succulent and sweet in contrast to the bitterness of the leaves. (4 minutes)
Pak choi: Slice the succulent leaf ribs diagonally. (3 minutes)
Soft greens: This could include the green from the pak choi and lettuce leaves (lettuce stalks can be treated as broccoli stems). These leaves should be torn up and heated just enough to wilt. Do not give them time to release their moisture into the stir fry. (1 minutes)
