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nourishing the body

Archives for March 2009

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.

Salmon with red miso

On the island of Hokkaido, in Japan, they make a simple and tasty salmon dish by flavoring it with miso paste and mirin and cooking it in foil with cabbage and onions. At least I knew a student from Hokkaido who prepared it that way, and it was delicious! My dish is nothing like the tasty original I had before but it does bring back my memories of that succulent fish.

I didn’t have any cabbage on hand but I did have plenty of onions. I sliced one up into good sized rings and layed it out on a sheet of heavy foil. I seasoned them with salt and pepper.

I took a whole salmon filet and marinated it with a mixture of red miso paste, mirin (a sweet Japanese cooking wine), a tiny bit of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil. More onions were placed on top.

The salmon and onions were wrapped up tight in foil and cooked simply on a hot griddle. I cooked it from start to finish in about 20 minutes – until I saw steam coming out of the foil at a good rate and it felt hot all the way around.

Here’s what it looked like when I opened it up. I wish it had the same dark color that it had before I cooked it but it was tasty never the less.

Braised Carrot and Daikon with Chicken

Brimming with Asian fusion flavors, this braised vegetable and chicken dish certainly warms things up on a cold winter’s day. I was looking for a hearty stew-like dish to accompany some cooked barley and bulgar wheat. While foraging around in my fridge I found some boneless skinless chicken breast, carrots and a big fresh daikon radish. Sweet vegetables require a savory, sweet and flavorful sauce. I knew I wanted to do a braise and let the root vegetables get nice and tender sweet. The only question that remained was how to season the dish.

I opened up my cupboard of Asian goods and found some of this fish flavored dashi powder. This is like Korean bullion but made with fish, not beef or chicken. That provided a nice undercurrent of flavor.

I also spied my bag of dried Chinese goji berries. These would make a nice addition to the dish as they would provide a bit of fruity sweetness to go along with the carrots. And I love the color.

I started with the dashi powder and goji berries in a large pan.

I cut some carrots and daikon into large cubes.

These were added to the pan with some water, mirin and soy sauce. This was cooked, covered, for about 20 minutes until the liquid reduced down and the vegetables were beginning to brown and caramelize.

I added some water back ot the pan to make a sauce and threw in some cubed chicken. This was covered and cooked for about 10 minutes until the chicken was cooked through and all the flavors were married together.


Daikon Kimchee

Kimchee is a Korean staple and I really love the crunch of the vegetables and the sweet spice of the Korean red chili. Quite some time ago I posted a kimchee tutorial for making the classic fermented napa cabbage. There are many kinds of kimchee in Korea and daikon is another favorite vegetable for pickling in this way. I really enjoy the Korean daikon, which is more round and shorter than the typical daikon you find in most grocery stores. But you can use either for this dish. I actually used one large regular long daikon to make a batch. Two Korean bulbs would be about the same amount.

The process I used to make this is similar to the cabbage variant. I diced the radish, salted it and let it sit for about an hour. After a good rinsing the diakon was tossed with one bunch of green onions, sliced; 5 cloves of garlic, chopped, 1 inch of fresh ginger, minced; about half a cup of Korean red chili flakes, and about a tablespoon of nuöc mam fish sauce. I prefer the Three Crabs brand. You don’t want to know how this is made! But it isn’t kimchee without some fermented fish. Traditionally, kimchee is prepared with chopped fish or fermented shrimp. This sauce makes it much easier to add that hint of fish. I also added a pinch of sugar. Mix everything well and let it sit out for at least a day then store it in the fridge. Unlike the napa cabbage kimchee, which I like well fermented and sour, I prefer my diakon kimchee fresh and sweet.

Friday Pizza

Friday’s are Pizza Night in our house. My son has been a just cheese please pizza guy until just recently. He’s now branched out to eating pepperoni. Small steps. Some day I hope he will eat my more robust pies. I’ve been making a lot lately due to having my 5 minute bread dough constantly in the fridge. Like last night’s pizza shown above. This one has a tomato sauce topped with leftover ground beef from tacos, chopped green olives, fresh mushrooms, roasted red peppers and finally sliced cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes were SO sweet when cooked on top of the cheese.

Let me share some of my other recent pizza creations. I have a bit of summer stored in my freezer in the form of delicious homemade pesto. Perfect for pizza! No tomato sauce on this one.


A bit of ham, kalamata lives and roasted red peppers make for toppings that are nice and flavorful.

Look at how nice it cooks up on my oven tiles!

The pizza that follows had a combination of pesto and tomato sauce. A bit of roasted red peppers and topped with pepperoni, this Friday night feast really pleased.