Sunday, January 22, 2012

Project Vegetable: Stir-Fried Rapini, Pepper and Radicchio

This year is shaping up to be the year of the stir fry for me. It started with my decision to find a way to cook more vegetables, so I have been buying them like there is no tomorrow. And then the challenge is to find ways to cook them that are delicious, satisfying, and more healthy than cooking them in butter.

And what could be healthier than a stir fry? Now that I am learning how to be the master of the wok, I can't seem to get enough of it. It is fun, easy, and - most importantly - fast. In the past, I could never get the vegetables cooked properly. They would be either too near raw crunchy or overcooked and mushy. But, like everything else, if you do it often enough you start to get the hang of it and it just gets better and better. I've even successfully stir-fried eggplant, but more on that later.

Treasure Island had radicchio on sale for a ridiculous price so I grabbed one. They also had ancient sweets - long thin red peppers that were also on sale and of which I had never heard, so of course I had to get those as well. The broccoli rabe also looked good so I threw a bunch of that in my cart.

I decided that a stir-fry would be the perfect way to highlight these vegetables. As you will soon see, this is a thought that I have had many times this year. I am loving the stir fries. They are fast, easy, and delicious. They can have a lot of ingredients and a complicated sauce, or they can highlight one or two ingredients with simpler sauce.

The ingredient list always looks long in a stir-fry recipe. Most of those ingredients are for the sauce. Once you have put that together, it's just a matter of chopping some vegetables.

You do want to have everything ready before you start, but there is some leeway so if want to get started before you have everything prepped.

The sweetness of the pepper and the orange juice in the sauce help to counter the bitterness of the radicchio and the rapini. It is a wonderfully complex layering of flavors that offers the perfect balance to the tongue.

Home Cookin Chapter: My Recipes

STIR-FRIED RAPINI, PEPPERS AND RADICCHIO
makes 4 servings

1/4 cup orange juice
1 Tbsp sherry
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp garlic chili sauce (or to taste)
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp water, plus more as needed
2 Tbsp peanut oil
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced ginger
1 bunch rapini, chopped, stems and tops separated
2 ancient sweets peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 head radicchio, coarsely chopped
Toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup chopped toasted walnuts, plus some for garnish
Toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Combine the orange juice, sherry, vinegar, soy and chili sauces in a small bowl and set aside. In a smaller bowl, combine the cornstarch and tablespoon of water, stir, and set aside.

Heat wok until it just starts to smoke. Add the garlic and ginger and let it sit for a few seconds before stirring it around. Cook it for about 30 seconds, then add the rapini stems. Cook for a few seconds, then pour water around the edges of the wok to create steam. Cook for about 2 minutes and then add the peppers. Cook for a minute, then add the rapini tops. Cook for another minute.

Add the walnuts and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the orange juice mixture. As soon as it starts to boil, add the radicchio, stir once or twice, and then add the cornstarch and water mixture. Stir until the mixture thickens and remove from the heat. Add about a teaspoon of the sesame oil and stir everything together.

Serve over brown rice garnished with walnuts and sesame seeds.

01/07/12

Exported from Home Cookin 6.46 (www.mountain-software.com)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great blog! I'm going to try this later for my lunch because I think this recipe is very tasty and delicious. I wish I could got more interesting recipe like this.

Beef Stir Fry

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