Stir-Fry

Here is a very quick way to stir-fry shrimp so they are encrusted with spices. They are hot, sour, and utterly delicious. The dish may be served as a first course, as a light lunch with a salad, or as part of a larger Indian meal. Sri Lankan Rice with Cilantro and Lemon Grass goes well with this, as well as the Mushroom and Pea Curry.

Here is a dish that, as far as I know, was only served in India by my own family. My mother made it; my grandmother made it. It was made only when peas were young and fresh. Even Indians (from other families and from other parts of India) who have dined with us in the pea season are surprised by it. It requires whole, fresh peas in their pods. I grow my own peas, and this is the first dish I make with them when they are ready for picking. You have to eat the peas rather like artichoke leaves: you put the whole pea pod in your mouth, holding on to it by its stem end, clench your teeth, and pull. What you get to eat are not just the peas themselves but also the softened outsides of the shells. You discard the fibrous bits after getting all the goodness out of them. We ate this as a snack or at teatime, but I have taken to serving it as a first course.

I often offer these as an appetizer. I serve them just the way they are, but you could also serve them on toasted slices of Italian bread or just buttered toast.

You can buy tamarind paste (page 46) from Middle Eastern stores. Serve the scallops as an appetizer accompanied with a leaf salad.

A Moroccan way with shrimp that is quick to do and really delicious. If you buy the shrimp frozen, let them thaw in the refrigerator before peeling.

Napa cabbage is a leafier relative of bok choy. This is compatible with Asian rice, noodle, and tofu dishes.

Here’s a colorful side dish to serve with Asian-style rice, noodle, or tofu dishes.

Bok choy combines crunch and leafiness in one neat package and cooks up quickly in stir-fries.

As you can see, I really like what barbecue sauce does for tofu. This is excellent over rice.

Look for some of the interesting Asian-style vegetable mélanges in the frozen vegetables section. They’re great to have on hand when you crave a quick stir-fry but don’t feel like chopping. Serve with hot cooked rice or noodles and raw carrot and celery sticks, or try the accompanying menu.

A great choice for hearty appetites, this convincingly dispels the notion that vegetarian cuisine is “rabbit food.”

This nearly-instant dish is fun to eat with chopsticks. In China and Japan, long noodles in broth are “slurped” (yes, this is considered proper table manners); then, the broth is eaten with a spoon. Look for Japanese-style frozen vegetables where other frozen vegetable medleys are shelved in well-stocked supermarkets.

Slicing the beef paper-thin when stir-frying will get the meat nice and crispy, so make sure your knife is sharp. If tangerines are not in season, oranges make a fine substitute and no one will be the wiser. The only weird ingredient is the black Chinese vinegar. It has a sweet, malted flavor that is very traditional in Chinese cooking. If you’re a purist about Chinese food, the black vinegar will be worth the trip to an Asian market. If you can’t find it, I’m not going to tell anyone if you substitute balsamic vinegar.

This basic, versatile recipe can be adapted to just about any vegetable depending on what you have on hand. While the oven preheats, prepare the vegetables. Serve with oven-grilled chicken breasts and steamed rice.

The simplest of all Thai dishes, stir-fries are a great way to showcase fresh green vegetables. You can increase the spiciness of your stir-fry by adding more chiles. The key to this dish's success? Controlling the heat on the pan from beginning to end.

There are two categories of entrée in Thailand: dishes served with rice, and noodle dishes, which are presented as one-pot meals and often eaten on the go. Rice noodles cook more quickly than wheat pasta and are the perfect neutral vehicle for intense Thai flavors. This Pad Thai is not the dish from the neighborhood take-out joint. "It ain't made with chicken," says Ricker, whose traditional take—pleasantly funky with fish sauce and preserved radish and a touch sour from tamarind—is meant to be eaten in the evening as a stand-alone dish.

Chinese cooks don't use a lot of raw vegetables, but instead prefer to stir-fry or braise them. There are a few exceptions, however, and in Hong Kong cooks fill crisp iceberg lettuce leaves with savory minced pigeon meat. Since we have no intention of domesticating the pigeons outside my New York City apartment window (pigeon meat is hard to find in the United States), we've substituted chicken in this recipe, which tastes equally as delicious. Chuck all the filling ingredients in a food processor if you're in a hurry, but larger chunks of mushrooms and water chestnuts add texture. Don't forget the fresh cilantro leaves heaped on top.

I stepped up on a cinder block to enter the open kitchen and realized then just how short the cook was; he flicked on the burner and the flame shot up as high as his chin. His broom closet-size kitchen swelled with heat and even with my average height, I towered over him awkwardly as he wielded the wok with beef and soy sauce. "You must play basketball!" he suggested. On his kitchen wall and out of reach of the blazing flame, plastic bags of spices hung from low-set rusty hooks, and his windowsill nearby lay scattered with tangerine peels set out to dry in the sun. Cooks in China are in the habit of keeping the peels of the tangerines they eat and spreading them out to dry in the sun for later use. Then they just rehydrate a few pieces whenever they want to add a nutty, slightly bitter note to a stir-fry or stew. Tangerine Beef is a Sichuan specialty and tall on flavor.

This streamlined version of a favorite Malaysian street food noodle dish, char kway teow, substitutes Spanish chorizo for the Chinese sausage sometimes used. The smoked paprika that flavors the chorizo may be far from traditional, but it adds another layer of depth to this seductive stir-fry of rice noodles with shrimp, egg, and jicama. There's just enough chile paste for a mild buzz of heat, but not so much that your mouth is on fire. If the jicama seems like a weird Mexican-Malaysian fusion idea, then you probably don't know that jicama is used in Asia, where it's known as Chinese turnip or potato. Its sweet crunch is reminiscent of fresh water chestnuts. Don't expect a supersaucy dish, but rest assured there's enough sauce to coat everything.

Top sirloin, flank steak, or skirt steak work just as well as eye round in this Thai-inspired dish.