Asian Style Stirfry - The Turning Point

Simple, Savoury, FAST, & Absolutely Delicious

International flavours have never been faster, easier, & tastier...

So I've had a crazy birthday week which accounts for my lack of posting content, but during the weekend I decide the stirfry I was making was a more than worthy contestant to share with you guys.

I say "The Turning Point" because this recipe not only puts many great techniques into practise, but allows for growth in perspective. Knife skills, fresh ingredients, palate and taste, even presentation, can all be learned from this dish and be applied to every meal you make. I mean, unless you don't want to create a huge improvement in your cooking...

 Before we start I must give credit to Jaime Oliver and the video of his that inspired me. In his "Dream School" series, Jaime switches up the standard curriculum in a way that gets students more involved and excited about learning. In the "Cooking Class", he teaches a variety of techniques (namely knife skills and 'seasoning to taste' in the video I'm referring) and a dish that allows students to apply the techniques.

When I first watched his video showing how to make stirfrys I was blown away by the impact he was able to make, firstly with solid technique, and secondly being applied to possibly the fastest, easiest, tastiest, and most healthy dish ever. I was certainly spurred on to continue refining my knife skills (because we can never stop improving), and also to make some stirfrys :)

Check out the video here, my version of the recipe is essentially the same but with a few twists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z_d0soK1cI

This was probably my 11th time making this stirfry in particular, it's really just that good. I'd also like to think that I've pretty much nailed the dish since this one was by far the best one my kitchen has produced. The savoury, spicy & ultimately fresh flavours is really a breath of fresh air after being stuck in a routine of meals with predictable tastes.

An Asian Style Stirfry like this can easily be tailored to any particular diet, the only real difference is if you want to leave out the meat, if you're restricted from garlic, or are a cilantro hater (if so we can't be friends, sorry) ;)

Pre-Method
In the video Jaime uses (from start to finish) cilantro, garlic, ginger, green onion, hot pepper (all to flavour the dish), beef strips, red and yellow pepper, mushrooms, zucchini. Then worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, honey, & fresh lime juice (if it's not fresh it won't work) to create the distinctive sauce. Then noodles, and cilantro to finish. 
Here's what I used:

All the same ingredients with the addition of a carrot, 3 chicken breasts instead of beef strips, and probably 3x the vegetable volume of what Jaime used in his video. After all I was making this for 3 people, and I still ended up with leftovers... never a bad thing :)
Again, this is all about you, your likes and dislikes, and what's in your fridge. Go ahead and use up the broccoli, throw in some spinach at the end, even try baby bok choy or bean sprouts for a more ethnic touch, it's all good!
*I suggest making one or two portions when you first try this, it's easier to get a better result

A Guideline for 2 servings,
You'll need:
- Oil (usually I'd say olive but any high temp. oil will do)
- Your preferred meat (or not), preferably cut to equal sized strips to ensure equal cooking. Again, I used chicken breasts. One breast is sufficient for 1 or 2 servings. Once you've made this a couple times you can experiment with seasoning your meat. This time I used salt, smoked paprika, cumin, and thyme 
- Noodles. I used rice noodles, depending on the style one section will do
- 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 inch stick of ginger, minced
- 1-2 tbsp cilantro stems, minced
- 3 green onions/scallions, lightly minced
- 2-3 tsp hot pepper, minced. My small red one there was either a cayenne or a hot red finger pepper
- A selection of vegetables. I used: 1 small carrot or half a large one, 1 small zucchini, 1 whole coloured pepper or two halves, 4 mushrooms and 1/2 cup cilantro
- The sauce includes: worcestershire sauce (which I didn't use because it contains anchovies), soy sauce, honey, and fresh lime juice

Method
*You know how this goes, prep your ingredients first! Then you can focus 100% on cooking. 

1. Let's talk Noodle Science first. Here's the best way to prepare them avoid turning them to mush.
Put dry noodles in a large bowl/container, add cold water to cover. This begins to soften the noodles so they will cook very quickly once added to boiling water. They take a minimum of 10 minutes to soften but this can be done hours or a day in advance, just cover the bowl. Also, to make them easier to work with I like to cut them where they bend, this makes it much less hassle to incorporate in the stirfry than a knot of foot long noodles. 
Add water to a pot and set on max heat, add a little salt, cover. Once boiling vigorously, add noodles. Cook about 1 minute then test for doneness. If needed cook 30 seconds more, 2 minutes is likely too long. 
Immediately drain and rinse under cold water, this stops them from overcooking in their own heat. But now your noodles are cold! Warm them back up by rinsing under warm/hot water.
Now you're a pro noodle cook! You'll never mess these up again :)
To make things easier on your first stirfry, cook your noodles first. Again, so you can focus on the other important stuff.

2. Prep meat (or not). Cut into strips, add to bowl, and season if dezired (not necessary). Set aside.

3. Mince garlic, ginger, cilantro stems, green onions, hot pepper. Set aside.

4. Thinly slice vegetables. This is where good knife technique will come in handy and not only speed up the process but give you great control of dezired size of whatever you cut (not fingers right?). Think about what will cook faster vs. slower, what you want to stand out or fade back, etc. This will determine how you cut your veggies. Doing it all on one large cutting board means less plates or bowls, overall much more convenient.

5. This is where things get really interesting. I could just say, "skillet, med-high heat, 3-5 minutes, then add 2-3 tbsp oil", but this conflicts with me morally a little. For best results you should be cooking at med-high heat. However most people use teflon pans. Upon purchase their packages clearly state they should be used on no higher than medium heat. Most times we need higher heat than that so we crank it up. This leads to leeching of teflon chemicals into our food. This issue with pans is a whole other huge can of worms that I definitely will be discussing in my next post and how to avoid it. In the meantime I suggest using whatever you have that will take the heat and is at least somewhat non-stick.
So, skillet, med-high heat, 3-5 minutes, then add 2-3 tbsp oil.

6. Add minced seasonings, then meat strips. Toss and coat the meat with seasonings, spread out strips, and allow browning to begin. Chicken is more forgiving and can handle being cooked/browned a little longer. Beef is not. There is a fine line with beef strips between soft & delicious, and hard & dry. 2 minutes for beef strips absolute max.

7. As soon as any pink or rawness is gone from the meat or it has browned slightly, add all the vegetables except the cilantro leaves. Toss and sauté 2-6 minutes, depending on size and amount. If a touch more oil is needed add some. You're looking for softening of the veggies but still retaining some bite.

8. Add worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, honey, fresh lime, and toss. Use your instincts here. You can always add more. You're looking for a glaze, not a runny sauce. If runny, cook for another minute. If not, add cooked noodles now along with cilantro, but keep a few leaves for garnish. Toss into stiryfry, coat evenly with sauce. Give the noodles a taste. Check for salt (soy sauce, worcestershire sauce), sweet (honey), tang/acid (lime), add any deficient flavours according to your taste. This is the key to a bright, savoury stirfry.

9. Turn off the heat, ensure ingredients are well combined, take off heat source. To finish, add stirfry to middle of plate, garish with cilantro leaves, squeeze in a little more lime.

Done! Serve Hot**

*Bonus Marks

- Bias cut green onion and/or sesame seeds also makes an excellent garnish
- Drizzle sesame seed oil over stirfry just before removing from heat

- Go traditional. Eat using chopsticks.. it's fun if anything :)

**Final Note

At 2:30 in Jaime's video you'll notice he still has some vegetables left on his cutting board. Welcome to balance and ratios. He left these extra veggies out to retain a balance of ingredients. The "right" amount of meat, noodles, and veggies can really be the deciding factor on this and other dishes. A sea of noodles with sparse elements is not very pleasing. Same goes for if every bite you take there's not a strip of meat to be found. I've totally started to mix in my noodles, only to grab a handful and remove them to retain the "right" ratio. 

Feel free to share your stirfry adventures below, Happy Cooking!