Aish Cooks

Mushroom Pepper Stir Fry

This recipe was something we started putting together back in the days when every gram of carb consumed was counted – just one of the joys of gestation! So when half a plate of veggies was an absolute must with every meal, curries or over-cooked masalas would simply not cut it. Neither would a healthful (read: bland) preparation of just steam cooked veggies with basic seasoning. I think I can safely say that my tongue has most likely lost its ability to detect the taste of simple steam cooked vegetables and all it would register is “blah”. So, while we were exploring our options the easiest one that seemed to work really well was Asian-style stir fry recipes. More precisely, homemade Indo-Chinese dishes. Yum! You could easily replace the mushrooms with broccoli, baby corn, snow peas, green onions or a combination of any of these. Just add a dash of any hot sauce – Sriracha and the Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce are my favorites – and every veggie tastes great. Or, skip the sauces and just add onions and more ground pepper to take the Chinese out of the Indo-Chinese. Customize as you please!

So here’s a way to make healthy taste good, and when served with something as easy as egg fried rice you could put dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less!

Oh you’ve forgotten all about the awesome egg fried rice? Here’s a reminder 🙂

Mushroom Pepper Stir Fry

Cooking Time: 20 minutes | Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1. 16 oz mushrooms (any kind, or an assorted mix), cut into big pieces (substitute with any one or combination of carrots/snow peas/green onions/brocolli/baby corn/firm tofu/other stir-fry friendly vegetable of choice)
2. 2 bell peppers (any color), seeds and stem removed and diced into big pieces
3. 1 Tbsp minced garlic (or 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped)
4. 1 Tbsp soy sauce
5. 1 tsp hot sauce Asian-style (Sriracha or chili garlic sauce)
6. salt to taste
7. ground pepper to taste
8. 2 tbsp olive oil (substitute with sesame/peanut or other oils with a high smoke-point)

Method:

1. Heat oil in a large pan or skillet. When it’s hot, add the minced garlic and saute for a few seconds without burning it.
2. Add the chopped mushrooms, along with some salt and stir fry on med-high for about 4-5 minutes until they let out most of their water and shrink a little.
3. Add the chopped peppers as well as ground pepper and cook with lid on for a few minutes until the pepper are cooked but still crunchy.
4. Remove the lid and add the soy and hot sauce. Check seasoning and add more salt/ground pepper if desired.
5. Continue to toss and cook without the lid for a few minutes to allow flavors to combine and turn off the heat.

Serve large helpings of the vegetable with noodles or fried rice of choice!

Note: For a saucy texture, turn off the heat before all the sauce and water content boils off. For a semi-dry version, cook until desired amount of liquid has boiled off.