Easy Vegetarian Fried Rice

This month is the one-year anniversary of Wok Wednesdays.  I can’t remember how I initially found Grace Young, Matt Lardie (co-founder of the group ), and the Wok Wednesdays crowd, but however it happened, it surely was a stroke of luck for me.  From the moment that I ditched my non-stick wok in favor of a carbon steel one, I knew this was going to be fun.  After learning how to season and care for my wok, I began to stir fry with gusto.

I’ve made vegetables, shrimp (to die for), several chicken dishes and I’m contemplating tofu.  Although I’ve looked at stir-fry recipes by other chefs and cookbook authors, my mentor is Grace and my bible is her book, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge. 

Now that I've made many of Grace's recipes, I am ready to spread my stir-frying wings (so to speak) with my own stir-fry recipes.   For my first one, I decided to stay with a simple, family favorite.  When our kids were young and we "ate Chinese," my daughter Eleanor would always order fried rice.  Although she usually didn't eat a lot, if dinner included fried rice, she ate like a champ.  Remembering how she concentrated on finishing a huge bowl while the rest of us grazed off of many other dishes brings a smile to my face even now.  I decided that re-creating "Eleanor's fried rice" was the right way to celebrate Wok Wednesday's anniversary. 

Fried rice is simple to cook yourself and you can make it in a large pan if you don’t own a wok.  (Though I hope you’ll consider getting a wok – it’s infinitely better and not expensive.)   In this recipe, the garlic and ginger shine through, but the overall taste is not spicy.  This is really more of a template than a true recipe.  You could substitute vegetables; just keep in mind, that all vegetables should be chopped into small pieces of similar size and that “hard” vegetables (such as carrots, celery and onion) that take longer to cook should go in before those “softer” vegetables (such as mushrooms) that take less time.  If you've never made fried rice before, check out my 5 Tips for Great Stir-Fried Rice.

Easy Vegetarian Fried Rice

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How to Make Vegetable Stew

How often do you get to enjoy a poem while making dinner?  

Recently I was at a family wake, saying goodbye to our beloved Uncle Bill.  Family and friends gathered and chatted quietly – a somber scene, but also one with lots of hugs and promises to keep in touch in good times as well as sad or difficult moments.  As the winter afternoon turned into dusk and the crowd thinned, we said our goodbyes and made plans for dinner. 

Cousin Pat mentioned that she was going home to make vegetable stew.  Pat is one of my favorite people in the world, not to mention the source of my favorite soda bread recipe, so my ears perked up.  At that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than a steaming bowl of comfort.  

I asked her for the vegetable stew recipe and Pat obliged, but warned me that it wasn’t an ordinary listing of ingredients and directions; rather, it’s a poem she wrote.  Last week, I printed the poem (off the email she sent me), took a look into my refrigerator, and made my own version.  It was indeed a wonderful experience – rather liberating to set aside the measuring cups and scales – and a tasty result.  This vegetable stew can be either the main course or a side dish and it's great reheated as leftovers.

Your ingredients may differ and so may your timing, but that’s the joy of this dish.  Enjoy your creation, especially if you share it with folks you love. 

How to Make Vegetable Stew

by Pat Brisson

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Stir-Fried Ginger Broccoli

At Christmas and Hanukkah time, my food-related thoughts go straight to starch and sugar.   I can spend hours planning which cookies I’ll make, or devising latke variations.  Ogling my storehouse of cookie decorations, grating potatoes and using up more butter, sugar and flour than I care to inventory is pretty much my modus operandi at this time of the year.

So it was refreshing to stir-fry broccoli with the Grace Young and the Wok Wednesdays crowd this week.  The dish was simple to prepare, especially with my tip for peeling ginger.

The recipe does have an extra step (before stir-frying) – quickly cooking the broccoli for just about 1 minute in rapidly boiling water – a technique called blanching that will turn the broccoli a bright green and tenderize it before the stir-fry.  But if you set out all the ingredients near the wok (mise en place) before you start stir-frying and use a cheat sheet to remind you of the steps if you're like me and need help remembering the steps as you cook, you can make frangrant and crunchy stir-fried ginger broccoli in less than 5 minutes.

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