Wednesday 22 February 2012

Stir Fried Veggies Two Ways

Tuesday night! Time for another Tuesday Night Vego Challenge!
This week's in season veggies are a bunch of Kang Kong, or Water Spinach, Eggplant, Tomato, Basil and Chilli.
Given that I have chillies galore coming in at the moment, I feel like something spicy for dinner. So we're having two stir fried veggie dishes with some steamed brown rice.
Drying chillies in the dehydrator
Sambal Kang Kong
Kang kong is an asian green vegetable. In Indonesia it's often stir fried in a pungent paste of chillies, garlic, dried shrimp, and fermented shrimp paste called belacan. I must admit that I'm not a fan of having really stinky things in my cupboard, so I'm making a vegan version using miso paste instead of the shrimp paste to give lots of umami flavour. The sambal paste makes any stir-fried green vegetable absolutely delicious (and it's also good for tofu). Like all soft green leafed vegetables, a big bunch of kang kong will wilt to almost nothing. My bunch only just fed two.

Kang Kong
1 bunch kang kong
1 pinch sugar
1 pinch salt
1 long red chilli
1 small hot chilli
1 tsp miso paste
1 eschallots
3 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon red bullhorn chilli

You can de-seed the chillies if you are a chilli wimp, but I left them in this time. Place the chillies, eschalots, miso and garlic in a small food processor and blend until finely chopped. My paste came out like a puree.

Frying the paste
Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a wok, then gently fry the sambal paste until fragrant - you don't want the heat too high, or else you will end up with a house full of chilli fumes and bitter burnt garlic. Take your time doing this - you want to evaporate any water out of the paste to the point where it just starts to darken in colour.
Add the kang kong, sugar and salt and stir fry until tender and wilted. 

Stir Fried Eggplant with Egg and Tomato

I used this lovely recipe at noobcook.com, with the only change being to use some fresh basil leaves instead of dried ones. Very tasty, and a nice mild contrast to the strong flavours in the sambal. I'd even eat this one for breakfast.


1 comment:

Linda Woodrow said...

I use miso a lot in place of fish or oyster sauce too. It's also my go-to as a substitute for stock if I haven't made any. It lasts forever so it's a good thing to have in the fridge. Love the sound of the Kang Kong recipe. It has reminded me - I haven't got it growing at the moment and I keep meaning to start it off again.