Stir-Fry

A pleasing composition using a minimum of exotic ingredients, this traditional Asian dish becomes somewhat offbeat through the use of fresh tomatoes and basil.

This is a nice change of pace from more common soy sauce–flavored stir-fries, but it’s just as quick and every bit as delectable. Don’t be alarmed by the ingredient list, which is relatively long compared with those in most recipes in this book. It really is a quick dish, and with such an array of healthy components, you’ll need little else to make a satisfying meal.

When I was in Trinidad, Winnie Lee Lum showed me how to make this superb dish, which beautifully demonstrates the convergence of Chinese and Trinidadian cooking traditions. Of course, the taste was extraordinary because Lee Lum only cooks with fresh local shrimp that her husband, Tony, purchases for her. Before cooking, she rinses the shrimp in lime juice, a Trinidadian cooking practice said to remove the "fishy" taste. She prefers the Chinese custom of cooking the shrimp in the shell to protect the shrimp's succulence and flavor. Rather than rice wine, Lee Lum insists on using dark Jamaican-style rum; according to her, white rum is too harsh for cooking. This is one of the easiest dishes to stir-fry, and it is guaranteed to satisfy.

This Chicken Lo Mein recipe is extremely simple to make and has a nice peppery flavor from the red pepper flakes, white pepper, and ginger.

Iceburg and watercress get stir-fried with just a little bit of flavorful sausage in this lightning-fast weeknight dinner.

Crisp scallions provide the vegetable base for this tasty stir-fry. If the scallions are particularly thick, cut the white parts in half lengthwise; they will cook through more quickly.

Coating the chicken slices in cornstarch before cooking them encourages browning. Add the basil after the stir-fry is off the heat, so its flavor stays bright.

Thick, flat udon noodles have a sumptuous, chewy texture. Look for them in the Asian-food section of the supermarket. If you can’t find udon, use linguine—just break the noodles in half before boiling them.

WHY IT’S LIGHT Cut strips of sliced cabbage to resemble long, thin noodles and you can reduce the amount of real noodles by half. Cooked briefly, the cabbage wilts slightly but retains some of its characteristic crunch. Linguine stands in for the usual wheat-flour noodles (called lo mein) in this version of the Chinese take-out favorite, but you can use Asian noodles if you have them.

WHY IT’S LIGHT In this recipe, the steak and vegetables are cooked on the stove, with just one tablespoon of oil for the whole dish. Because flank steak is one of the leanest cuts of beef, be careful not to overcook it, and slice the meat thinly against the grain for the most tender results.

WHY IT’S LIGHT Each serving of this stir-fry has only one teaspoon oil and a tablespoon of roasted peanuts. Lime juice and fresh basil added at the end perk up the dish, so it tastes just as good as (or even better than) more traditional versions.

GOOD TO KNOW Fiber-rich beans and leafy greens offset the richness of sausages in this Italian-inspired dinner. Broiling makes quick work of cooking the sausages. For an even lighter preparation, substitute chicken or turkey sausages for the pork.

GOOD TO KNOW A stir-fry is an ideal way to cook vegetables: With just a little oil and a short cooking time, the technique helps ensure that vegetables such as broccoli retain their nutrients. Broccoli stalks are as delicious as the florets—use a vegetable peeler to remove the tough skin.

Salty sautéed peppers, especially those that are mildly hot, are delicious summer treats—irresistible bites with a glass of chilled wine.

For Bryant, shucking and eating freshly picked ears of corn reminds him how for generations his family was intimately connected with their food sources—they ate what they grew. When you eat juicy corn on the cob, served straight from the pot and slathered with butter, it’s easy to imagine such a connection. Freshness really matters with corn—as soon as it is picked, the sugars in the corn start converting to starch. Choose ears that feel plump and fat with tightly closed, bright green husks and golden brown silks. Look for stems that are moist and pale green, and check for tight, small, plump kernels. Kernels cut from the cob offer other possibilities: sautéed, with sweet peppers, chiles, tomatoes, squash, or beans; or used in cornbread and griddle cakes, and in numerous soups and salsas. To prepare kernels for cooking, pull off the husks and cornsilk from the ears of corn. Rub the ears with a clean dish towel to remove any clinging cornsilk, and snap off the stems. Cut the kernels from the cobs: Hold an ear by the tip, stand it up vertically with the stem end down, and use a sharp knife to cut down the length of the cob, cutting just deep enough to slice off the kernels. This is messy; to contain the kernels, it helps to work in a large bowl, or on a small cutting board set inside a roasting pan.

You can substitute italian linguine or spaghetti for the rice noodles in this dish. Although the texture will not be the same, the dish will still be good. Boil the noodles nearly to doneness in the normal fashion, then rinse before proceeding

A big deal is often made of washing leeks—they can be very sandy but since you’re going to be chopping these, it’s easy.

Stir-frying—the fastest cooking method there is—can change your life. You can use it for almost anything, and it can be so fast that the first thing you need to do is start a batch of white rice. In the fifteen or twenty minutes it takes for that to cook, you can not only prepare the stir-fry but set the table and have a drink. For many stir-fries made at home, it’s necessary to parboil—essentially precook—“hard” vegetables like broccoli or asparagus. So in this fastest possible stir-fry, I use red bell peppers, onions, or both; they need no parboiling and become tender and sweet in three or four minutes. If you cut the meat into small cubes or thin slices, the cooking time is even shorter. I include nuts here for three reasons: I love their flavor, their chunkiness adds great texture (I don’t chop them at all), and the preparation time is zero.