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.

One courgette, cut into batons, and three spring onions, finely sliced. Lots of garlic and ginger, chopped finely. Some dried chilli flakes. Stir fried together, then a slosh of soy, slosh of rice wine.

Eaten with rice, out of bowls (I seem to eat less if it’s in a bowl, lord knows why).

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Still more green beans to eat …

Topped and tailed them, chopped into 2cm chunks (this is starting to sound like a repeat :). Simmered for 6/7 minutes. Drained and rinsed in cold water.

Chopped an onion and some garlic, oh and some fresh ginger. Heated groundnut oil in the wok, added about a dessertspoon of mustard seeds and waited for them to pop. Then hurled in onion, garlic and ginger and cooked until soft, splattering self in hot oil in the process.

Added the beans and some five spice powder, stirred about for a couple of minutes, added a good splash of tamari, cooked for about 2 minutes.

I used too much oil, but it worked really well. We had it with basmati rice, which had the juice of half a lemon added to it, which is really nice.

And now the green beans are all gone - hurrah! But another veg box arrives tomorrow …