ramtops

We bought *loads* of veg at the weekend – trying to lose weight and keep carbs under control (yay! 4lbs lost last week!). We also bought some rhubarb – well, you have to when it is local, don’t you? The threat of a rhubarb crumble (albeit one made with brown flour and porage oats) meant that I wanted something very light for a main course.

Chopped garlic and fresh ginger nice and fine. Cut a courgette into thick matchsticks. Cut an onion in half, and then into thin slices. Very thinly sliced some rather weary spring greens left from last week.

Into a wok with hot groundnut oil went a heaped teaspoon of sesame seeds, the garlic and ginger, and stirred round until cooked. Heaped in the courgette and onion and did the same. Put some noodles on to cook (they only need 3 minutes).

Added the shredded greens to the wok, and stirred about until cooked, then a splash of rice wine, and a dessert spoon of oyster sauce. When the noodles were cooked, I drained them and stirred them into the veg mixtures.

The rhubarb crumble was lovely too :)

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Trying hard to do different things for lunch at the moment, and here’s today’s effort. In the fridge lurked a smallish bunch of asparagus, and about 1/4 of a small cauliflower.

Pete finely chopped a shallot, some garlic, a red chilli and some ginger, and cut the cauli into little bits, including the stalk. We simmered that for about 4 minutes in boiling water, while I fried the asparagus in some groundnut oil in the wok. Added the spicy bits and fried some more, then fished the cauli out with a slotted spoon and added it to the wok, with a tiny bit of its water, flung in some Tamari, and left it to bubble down.

Quickly cooked some rice noodles, slung them in the wok to mix up, dished into bowls, scoffed. Very nice, and took about 12 minutes start to finish. Those red chillies are damned hot, mind!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We’ve been away camping with a bunch of friends for a few days, so I bought some of those handy little jars of Stuff – garlic, ginger, lemon grass, chili – all ready to be spooned into the wok. So useful, but I always feel guilty! But I brought most of the contents back, and they’ll be used up.

After eating barbecue and so forth for a few days, we just want simple food at the moment; last night was just rice and dhal – one of my favourite Desert Island Meals :)

Tonight , I dumped a teaspoon each of garlic and ginger into the wok, together with half a teaspoon of red chilli, in some hot groundnut oil. In went a red pepper and two big mushrooms, chopped. Cooked that off, added the juice of half a lemon and some sliced pak choi, and a splash of tamari went in at the end.

Simple and fresh and just exactly what we wanted.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We had a simple roast chickie on Sunday, with roast veg. So on Tuesday we had a stir fry, with some cold roast chicken, some button mushrooms, and the remainder of the roast veg. It worked remarkably well!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We got three tubs full of goose meat into the freezer leftover from this year’s festive bird, and decided to stir fry the contents of one tonight. We had no ginger or chillis in the house, astonishingly, so trudged out in the snow to obtain some, and had a lovely walk around Pearson Park in Hull to boot. The joys of working from home!

We set the goose to marinade in some sesame oil, arrowroot, a splash of lime juice, some rice wine, and a slosh of some really nice Japanese plum vinegar – I have no idea where I got it, except that it was before we moved, so we’ll probably never see its like again here in the East Riding, but never mind.

Whizzed up garlic, ginger and lemon grass, chopped a red chilli, a big flat mushroom, three spring onions and a Romano red pepper, and wokked them until done. Added goose and its marinade, and then some coconut milk.

Handy tip: get coconut powder; a whole tin of coconut milk can be way too much for a stir fry, and then it’s hard to know what to do with the rest (although it works amazingly well in risotto). You can get the powder in an Indian/Asian grocer, and just mix up what you need.

Chopped up some of the rather tired coriander and bunged that in at the end. Worked really well.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

lunch (before), originally uploaded by ramtops.

We are overrun with green leafy stuff at the moment - there was a bag of Swiss chard left from last week, and this morning the veg box brought a pointy cabbage, a bag of spinach and some chinese leaves. Something had to be done.

So for lunch, we chopped up some garlic and fresh ginger, a couple of spring onions and the chard.

Put some noodles on to boil with a teaspoon of sesame oil in the water (gives them a nice flavour).

Then into a hot wok with some ground nut oil, went garlic, ginger, chilli flakes, sesame seeds and spring onions. Stirred around for a bit, then added the chard, and fried until it wilted. Lobbed in a goodly splash of tamari.

Put noodles in bowl, spoon green stuff over. Lovely.

End result here.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I’m always looking out for things to eat for lunch that aren’t “crackers, cheese and cold meat”, especially at this time of year when soup is off the menu.

I found 1 1/2 rather tired cucumbers in the veg drawer, which is odd, as we normally demolish them quite quickly. They’re only courgettes in another form, so I decided to cook them for lunch.

I chopped them into chunks (didn’t bother skinning them), and peels and cut an onion in half, before slicing it as thinly as I could (not very :). Minced up some garlic and fresh ginger.

Put some noodles on to cook, and heated some groundnut oil in the wok. In went a teaspoon or so of sesame seeds, followed by the garlic, ginger, cucumber and onion.

Stirfried it all for about 5 minutes or so, then added a little soy sauce, and some torn basil leaves, as we happen to have a basil plant on the kitchen window sill.

Drained the noodles and added them to the wok. Made a really nice change.