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  After much fanfare and buildup it's finally time to get stir frying. Before we do though, let's have a little recap. Though you might have the impression that stir fries are only found in Chinese cuisine, the truth is that it's a really useful technique with many applications in loads of cooking situations. This one will be kind of Asian-ish.

  The first step is to be prepared, which means doing all the cutting and chopping first. Then, when all the prep is done, the frying begins. It's done quickly over as high a heat as possible and often will produce a hot dish of crunchy vegetables instead of soft, soggy ones. Hopefully you've done yesterday's homework and have already mixed up a sauce ready to garnish everything. If not, you'll just have to add it to the other bits of prep you're about to do. See yesterday's for clues.

Time travel was so next year.

  To get the ball rolling, go and round up a pile of vegetables and as slice them up into little bits of as similar a size as possible. Actually, as long as all the mushroom slices are the same and the onion slices are the same that's fine but I think you worked that's what I meant. For the oil, pretty much anything except olive oil or butter will do cos they burn at high temperatures. Finally go and get a pan and a stirring implement and just like that, you're ready to rock.

  At this stage you're almost done, it's just a case of heating everything up. Put your pan over the hottest flame possible and get it hot. Pour in a couple of tablespoons of oil, add the veg and stir. It's worth pointing out that if you add a heap of room temperature vegetable slices to a hot pan, they will cool it down rapidly. This is why the pro wok-jockeys with huge woks cook over flames with the same heat output as a volcanic crater.

  As it only takes a couple of minutes, if you're cooking for a few people, put just enough veg in for one or two portions at a time. Towards the end of a couple of minutes stirring, pour over the sauce you made, stir it to distribute it and let it heat up then turn the veg out. A garnish is always a nice touch so consider things like chopped nuts like almond or cashew, toasted sesame seeds, finely sliced spring onions, coriander leaves or whatever else you've got lying around. It's as easy as that!

Kirk out

RevoltingFood.com