This Thursday, instead of our usual Cakes & Bakes offering, we’re sharing a cookbook review.
It’s Stir Crazy by Emmy-nominated TV chef, Ching-He Huang. Born in Taiwan and raised in South Africa and the U.K., Ching shares 100 healthy stir fry recipes in her recently-published book.
In addition to the recipes, Ching sheds light on helpful wok-cooking methods. She reveals some of her ‘stir-fry hacks’ and explains the order in which ingredients should be cooked off and why. And, if you’re on a special diet – she’s got you covered – each recipe helpfully sets out the nutritional information of the dish.
As a veggie, I was thrilled to see that there are 80 pages of purely vegetarian and vegan recipes. Furthermore, in the meat and fish sections, she give lots of helpful tips as to how to convert them to veggie dishes, if so desired.
Not only is this a book review, it’s also a food review; along with Stir Crazy, we’ve been sent a selection of dried and ready-to-eat noodles from Yutaka to try.
The only way to properly review a cookbook AND noodles is to try out one of the recipes using some of the ingredients sent. I chose Ching’s simple spicy spring onion salsa verde with kale and noodles. However, instead of using egg noodles as her recipe called for, I used the pack of the gluten free and organic konjac noodles (called shirataki in Japan).
In addition to being gluten free, the root vegetable Konjac is vegan, low in calories, low in fat and high in fibre. It’s extremely low in carbs, so if you’re following a ketogenic diet this is a fantastic product to include in your meals.
My usual trinity of flavours for wok cooking are chilli, garlic and ginger. However, This recipe didn’t use garlic but a couple of spring onions. The smell of the flavours combining when they were being fried off together were divine.
If I hadn’t been stopping after each stage to take photos, this recipe could have been rustled up in under half an hour. Quick, healthy – and most important of all – tasty!
There are so many other recipes in the book that I want to give a go – Kung Po tofu, vegetable chop suey, egg foo yung, aubergines in a spicy peanut sauce, spicy coriander chickpea fried rice… are you drooling yet?!
All this talk of stir fries is making me hungry – here’s the recipe…
- 200g pack Yutaka konjac noodles
- 2tsp toasted sesame oil
- 120g curly kale, sliced
- 2tbsp rapeseed oil
- pinch of sea salt flakes
- knob of fresh root ginger, peeled an grated
- 1 red chilli, de-seeded and finely sliced at an angle
- pinch of dried chilli flakes
- 2 spring onions, finely chopped
- 50ml cold vegetable stock
- 1tbsp low-sodium light soy sauce
- Drain the liquid from the konjac noodles using a sieve and rinse under a cold tap
- Put the noodles into a bowl, drizzle over the 2tsp toasted sesame oil and toss. Set aside
- Pour 1 litre of water into a pan and bring to the boil. Add the kale and blanch for 3-5 seconds, then drain and set aside
- Heat a wok over a high heat until smoking and add the rapeseed oil
- Add the salt and let it dissolve in the hot oil
- Add the ginger, fresh chilli, dried chilli and spring onions in quick succession to explode their flavours in the wok
- Add the vegetable stock and stir-fry on a medium heat for 30 seconds
- Add the kale and noodles and toss all the ingredients together to warm through
- Season with the light soy sauce and give it one final toss, then transfer to serving plates and eat immediately
