Quick vegetable stir fry

Hang on to your hats because I'm going to be posting some stir fries over the next couple of days. The are so easy to prepare and with just a few simple ingredients you have a quick and delicious meal. Let's start off with a simple vegetarian stir fry.

I used bok choy, carrots, celery, onions and bean sprouts for this dish. Many times I flavor my stir fries with some red chili flakes in oil from the Asian market. I like the brands from Szechuan. I start with a hot pan and add some oil. I drop in a bit of the chili in oil or sometimes a garlic chili paste along with some chopped garlic and chopped ginger. These vegetables all cook pretty much the same so I tossed them all in together.

I can even toss them! When the vegetables were just starting to wilt I splashed in some soy sauce and rice vinegar for seasoning and that's all! Simple and tasty.

Pappardelle with mushroom and eggplant ragu

I know ragu is traditionally a meat-based sauce but I think these mushrooms are 'meaty' enough to consider this sauce a ragu. Combined with homemade semolina pappardelle, this was a home run hit for dinner. My sauce started with a combination of baby portobello and button mushrooms.

They were halved and sliced.

I also cubed up a whole eggplant for this dish.

Of course you can't have a pasta sauce without garlic and onions!

First the onions and the mushrooms were cooked down until softened and tender. Then the garlic was added to the pan.

The eggplant was combined with the cooked onions and mushrooms.

Everything was sautéed until the eggplant began to soften.

A bit of red wine was added to the pan.

And a can of tomato paste was stirred into the sauce.

The ragu was covered and cooked down until the eggplant dissolved and the sauce was rich and delicious. A little water was added during the cooking to keep the sauce from getting to dry.

Meanwhile, a pasta dough made from all purpose flour, semolina flour and eggs was prepared and rolled out into sheets using my pasta roller.

The pappardelle was cut by hand into wide noodles.

The noodles were boiled until al dente and tossed with the ragu. Finally I topped it off with some parmigiano reggiano. 

Soba stir fry

Can you stand more soba noodles? I can. This time I put them into a stir fry dish. I cooked up some carrots, cauliflower and red, yellow and orange peppers with some garlic and ginger. I quickly boiled the noodles and added it to the stir fry pan. The whole dish was seasoned with soy sauce, a bit of garlic chili sauce and sesame oil.

New Year's Stir Fry

On New Year's Day I wanted to use black-eyed peas. There is a tradition in the South that black-eyed peas should be eaten on New Year's Day for good luck. Instead of the typical peas cooked in a soup or with ham or something, I decided to make a mixed grain and legume base for a vegetarian stir fry. I first just tossed together some Thai brown rice, kamut, spelt, wheat berries, mung beans and black-eyed peas in a bowl and soaked them in water for a couple of hours. I then put everything into my rice cooker and put it on the brown rice setting. An hour and a half later I had this wonderfully healthy grain/legume mixture.

For the stir fry I used baby bok choi and cauliflower. I first steamed them for a few minutes just to start getting them tender and make the stir fry easier. I fried these up with garlic, ginger and red chilis in oil. Near the end it was seasoned with soy, sesame oil and thickened with just a bit of corn starch. It was oh so tasty.

Aloo Gobi

After eating Japanese food for so many days I was in the mood for something with a bit more flavor tonight. I really love Indian food - especially the food from Southern India. This dish, although seasoned with spices from the South has its origins in Northern India. This is Aloo Gobi or potato and cauliflower.

The ingredients are:

3 cups of cut up cauliflower
3 small potatoes, cut into small wedges
1 tsp brown mustard seed
1 tbsp urid dal
1 tsp cumin seed, whole
a dash of hing (asafoetida)
2 tbsp coriander powder
about 1 inch of ginger, minced
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chili powder
2 tsp Madras curry powder
1/4 cup water
2 tsp oil
Chopped fresh cilantro (I was out of cilantro tonight)

To start the process, the coriander, ginger, turmeric, chili and curry powder were made into a paste with about 1/4 cup of water and set aside.

A pan was heated with a couple of tsp of oil until hot but not smoking. The mustard seed, urid dal and cumin seeds were added to the oil and fried until the mustard popped and the urid started to turn brown. Once that point was reached, a dash of asafoetida powder (hing) was added.

The water and spice paste was then added to the hot pan and fried for about 30 seconds. The water in the paste helps to keep the spices from burning during this process and is a good trick to making a nicely flavored base for many types of dishes like this.

The cauliflower and potato were added to the pot along with some salt and pepper to taste. This was stirred together well and the pan was covered. The mixture was cooked for about 15 minutes until the vegetables were tender. During this time the mixture was carefully stirred three or four times. If it is a little dry you can add a bit of water to it (I did).

Once it is cooked, just plate it and you're good to go. If you have fresh cilantro that should be sprinkled on top.

This aloo gobi was served along with some fresh baked bread (some naan or other Indian bread would have been great with it!). I also made a yellow split pea and onion soup which was made in the pressure cooker with a similar spice mixture base that I used for the aloo gobi.

Soup and Aloo Gobi.

See those wonderful yellow split peas?

This was a French style bread that was perfect for mopping up the spicy soup.

Subcontinent Inspiration

I just love Indian food and especially love the cuisine from South India. I don't make Indian food that often but I am often inspired by the wonderful spices and flavors of the Indian subcontinent to flavor every day food. I toss curry powder into my tuna salad. I add asafoetida to my chili. I mix hot spicy Indian lime pickle to my mashed potatoes. The flavors just make your mouth sing. Anyway, I was rummaging through my cupboards looking for something to make for dinner with dal on my mind and I found my container of yellow split peas that I picked up at our local Indian market. I guess I am all out of dal. But these were just the thing I needed to create a vegetarian dish that was fulfilling and tasty. Also on the major ingredient list was cabbage and some coarse bulgar wheat. Yes, I know - not really traditional Indian, but the flavors and textures were good. I didn't measure anything exactly but I'll try to describe how I made this dish and what went into it.

I started by heating a large heavy bottomed pot and added some olive oil. Ghee would have been better but olive oil is healthier. The first thing to do was to fry a bit of urid dal and mustard seeds in the hot oil. The mustard seeds pop like popcorn, so you need to put a lid on it. Careful not to let it burn. The urid dal gives small little crunchy bites in the dish. I would guess I added about a tbsp of urid dal and not quite a tsp of mustard seeds. As soon as the mustard popped I added a chopped onion along with lots of chopped garlic and ginger. This was cooked for a few minutes until the onions began to soften. I then added about 1.5 cups or so (a couple handfuls?) of yellow split peas to the pot along with a spice mixture. Again, I didn't measure but I'll tell you what I added. I had ground up some whole spices in the coffee grinder that I keep just for spices. Into that went a couple of cinnamon sticks, about 4 pods of cardamon, a couple tsp of corriander seeds, a couple tsp of cumin seeds, a tsp of black peppercorns. I also added some Madras curry powder to the pot along with a few dashes of asafoetida powder, some tumeric and some red chili powder. Oh, I also season with salt along the way. Basically add as much of any ingredient as you like to taste. In a dish that cooks for a long time it is important to add a lot of spice to flavor everything well.

After cooking for just a minute the spices started emitting a wonderful aroma. I added about 6 cups of water and a few dashes of rice vinegar. Lemon juice would have been nice but I didn't have any on hand. The split peas were cooked for about 20-30 minutes until they started to soften. I added a cup of coarse bulgar wheat to the pot along with a whole head of cabbage that had been chopped up. This was covered and cooked for another 20 minutes or so, stirring every now and then, until the cabbage was all wilted down and the split peas had a nice cooked but not mushy texture. The bulgar absorbed nearly all of the liquid so this was not a soupy dish.

Along with the meal I served some poppadom - an Indian style thin crispy cracker like bread. You can by them in dried uncooked rounds in your local Indian grocery. I used to fire them quickly on the grill or even on my stove top but on the advice of a good Indian friend, these can be done to perfection in the microwave. Just nuke them for about 1 minute and they crisp up nicely.