Poor Richard’s Almanac

Silence Dogood here. Last week, our friend Ben and I had invited our friend Rob over for dinner and a movie. I found myself craving stir-fry, and also realized that I had a perfect assortment of ingredients for it: broccoli, snow peas, mushrooms, onions, garlic, yellow and orange bell peppers, slivered almonds. So I’d made a huge salad and cut up all the veggies when Rob arrived, sauntered into the kitchen, and asked what was for supper.

“Stir-fry and salad!” I said cheerfully.

“Uh, stir-fry?!” Rob said, turning green. “You don’t mean, uh, like a Chinese stir-fry, do you?!!”

Well, I had meant like a Chinese stir-fry, actually. I’d been planning to add cubed tofu, tamari, a little miso paste, minced fresh ginger, and maybe a touch of Chinese five-spice powder or even a little dash of General Tso’s or orange sauce. But needless to say, Rob’s horrified expression brought me up short. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten how much Rob hated American-style Chinese food. Brought up all over the world, but having spent his formative years in Hong Kong, Rob loves Chinese food. Or, I should say, he loves authentic Chinese food. But he hates the “Chinese” restaurant food those of us who’ve never been to China know and love here.

Yikes!!! Now what?!! I guess I could have sent OFB and Rob on an expedition for takeout pizza. But there were all those beautiful veggies staring me in the face. Drawing inspiration from one of my heroes, Julia Child, who said one should never apologize for one’s cooking no matter what, I drew myself up to my full 5′5″, smiled brightly, and said, “No, of course I don’t mean Chinese stir-fry. Don’t panic, you’ll love this!”

Good-bye, tofu, tamari, miso, ginger, five-spice blend, General Tso and company. Hello… what?!!

Hmmmm. Hello, Mediterranean stir-fry. One of the tricks of a good stir-fry is to cook everything just exactly enough. In my view, Chinese restaurant chefs have this down to a science, but having never been in a Chinese kitchen, I’ve had to come up with my own system. So here’s what I did:

First, I splashed some extra-virgin olive oil into one of my heavy LeCreuset Dutch ovens. As it was heating up, I added a mix of dried oregano, basil, thyme, marjoram, and rosemary, along with lots of salt (we like RealSalt, Herbamare, and Trocomare) and lemon pepper, and some Szechuan peppercorns (hoping Rob would enjoy their hot, lemony flavor without recognizing them as “Chinese”). Meanwhile, I brought water to boil in a smaller pot and added the broccoli.

I added the diced onions and minced garlic to the olive oil, herbs and spices. When the onions had clarified, I added the sliced mushrooms. Then I put the rice in the rice cooker and turned it on. The second the broccoli, still bright green, was fork-tender, I took it off the heat, drained it, and ran it under cold water to stop the cooking process. By now the big pot needed a bit of moisture, so I added a big splash of veggie stock to keep everything from sticking.

Now I added the bell pepper pieces to the stir-fry pot, and a couple of minutes later, tossed in the broccoli. After giving everything a good stir, I added the trimmed snow peas and covered the pot. The second the snow peas were tender, I tossed in the slivered almonds, turned off the burner, and served up the salads and big plates of rice topped with stir-fried veggies.

Watching Rob nervously (and discreetly kicking OFB to make sure he didn’t say anything), I said, “Well? How do you like the stir-fry? It doesn’t taste Chinese, does it?”

“No, it’s good!” (Gee, thanks.) But I guess he meant it, since he and OFB each had two heaping helpings and Rob even ate the remaining veggies plain once the rice ran out.

I thought it was good, too, but I’d still have liked my “Chinese” version better. But if you have a stir-fry hater in your house, you might give this version a try. Or, instead, do what all of you have doubtless been thinking of all along—and maybe I would have, too, if I hadn’t been so disconcerted—and serve it over pasta instead of rice, with some grated Parmesan or Asiago. “Stir-fry? Yuck!!!” “Pasta primavera? Yum!!!”

             ‘Til next time,

                            Silence