Quick Asian “Stir Fry”

Sorry for the lack of recipe posts this week. I have been cooking but nothing new or particularly inspiring. Sometimes even I don’t feel like writing recipes.

Every day this week we have had a mixed berry and banana smoothie with flax seeds. For lunch this week we have been having the same thing, baby spinach with cucumber, grape tomatoes, fat free hummus and salsa. Again, nothing particularly exciting cooking in my kitchen. Last night my husband finally got his spinach and tofu lasagna again. First question he asked, “you didn’t change it, right?” Can you tell he liked it? This has become my husbands new favorite dinner. Hopefully after he has had it a few more time he will be okay with me playing around the recipe.

Tonight I finally got back into the kitchen. Since we had both fresh shitakes and snow peas I thought a quick stir-fry (no oil) was in order. I used the shitakes, onions, garlic and napa cabbage for the their cancer fighting properties. Bell pepper was added for carotenoids. Snow peas provided a nice crunchy texture. Be certain to cook the vegetables as lightly as possible to retain the maximum amount of nutrition. Here is what we had for dinner tonight.

Quick Asian “Stir Fry”
Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon liquid aminos (or low sodium soy sauce)
2 tablespoons mirin (sweetened Japanese rice wine)
2 tablespoons water
1 red onion, thinly sliced (top to bottom)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
¼ pound fresh shitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps thinly sliced
½ pound snow peas
1 cup red bell pepper, thinly sliced
2 cups napa cabbage, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons cashews
3 cups brown rice, cooked

Directions:

Sauté the onion and garlic in the liquid aminos, mirin and water until tender crisp. Add the mushrooms, snow peas and bell pepper and cook (stirring often) until hot. Add the cabbage and cook quickly.

Serve the vegetables on top of hot brown rice and top with cashews.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 330.58
Calories From Fat (15%) - 48.57

Total Fat - 5.99g
Saturated Fat - 1.15g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 254.77mg
Potassium - 532.49mg
Total Carbohydrates - 63.74g
Fiber - 7.03g
Sugar - 4.27g
Protein - 9.26g

Comments:

This was a tasty and very fast dinner. Just the sort of thing I tend to make when I don’t have much time. If you make extra brown rice and keep it in the refrigerator it reheats well in the microwave making this dinner even quicker.

Each serving of this recipe contains approximately 1,480IU of vitamin A, 65mg of vitamin C, 78mg of calcium, 3.7mg of iron, 80mcg of folate, 263mg of phosphorus, and 132mg of magnesium.

Unrelated Note:

Tomorrow I hope to be more in a mood to cook. One of the things I need to work on is seitan bacon. Sue and I have decided which recipes we are veganizing from “Ad Hoc at Home” and one of things I need to perfect is bacon, both in slice and cube form.

I also need to figure out how to duplicate the texture of confit without fat. Both these things may take a few attempts so I want to get started experimenting with them this week.

Additionally I have fresh cardoons in the refrigerator and I want to do a long post on how to prepare them since this is an Italian vegetable I imagine many of you haven’t worked with before.

I hope to get to at least one of those things tomorrow. Wish me luck. I haven’t been as focused this week as normal.

Have a great night and I will talk to you all tomorrow.