First Try at Stir-Fry

First of all, excuse me the horrible title. I just had to do that. Now let’s move on.

You see, I know nothing about food photography. So that’s why I started reading a book about it. I want to do it properly. I even bought a tripod for my Canon Powershot SX150 IS, which is... well, not the most professional of cameras. (Although I think it would help if I cooked in daylight, and photographed everything on a white tablecloth. Maybe next time...)

So new photography equipment equals something interesting and new on the plate. Something I’ve never done before. And that’s how I ended up cooking a vegetable stir fry.

Now you must know that I’ve never made Chinese food before. And I’ve never even eaten a stir fry up until today. So it was a bit of a blind shot at things, but it went down with a moderate success. Which is way more than I hoped for. And I was as heretical as I could be: I didn’t use a wok. Just a thick bottomed, really heavy frying pan.

The recipe was something like this. (Feel free to add anything to this, like chicken pieces, etc. Stir-fry is a really versatile dish.)

Vegetable Stir-Fry

2 carrots

4 spring onions

1 red bell pepper

1 chilli

a medium piece of ginger

3 cloves of garlic

about 100-130 grams of rice noodle

soy sauce

Chinese five-spice

1-2 lime

1 can of bean sprouts

a few tablespoons of oil

And you make a stir-fry somehow like this:

1. Cut up your vegetables any way you like. Mince the garlic and the ginger. Cook your noodles according to the instruction on the package.

2. Heat the oil in the frying pan. Get it really-really hot, until it starts to smoke a little. Then throw in the garlic and the ginger. Just before the garlic burns, throw in your carrots, spring onions, bell pepper and chilli. Season it with a dash of soy sauce. It will sizzle a lot.

3. Throw in your drained bean sprouts. Mix well.

4. About a minute later throw in your cooked and drained rice noodle. Season with soy sauce if it needs more salt.

5. Add about a teaspoon of Chinese five-spice. (Or any spice-mix you fancy, really. It can even be some curry powder.)

6. Fry for another minute or two, then take off the heat and add the juice of a lime. Or two, if you like more zing.

7. Serve immediately.

Now here’s the deal. Chinese five-spice can be overpowering. Be careful with that if you’re not familiar with it. Thanks to that, I couldn’t successfully balance the flavours. The textures were spot-on, I got the noodles, the still crunchy vegetables, but the spices... I messed that one up. So maybe next time.

Tomorrow I’ll test my new grill pan. I’m going to make tandoori chicken. Wish me luck.