Fast to cook : Chinese style potatoes

An absolute favorite of H. Mine too. I generally boil some extra potatoes and keep. H comes home in the evening ravenously hungry. And if there isn’t something to munch, he goes food hunting in every shelf he can find. I make it a point to make some appetizer or some salad or starter ready for him.

Barely takes 10 min if you have the potatoes ready. It’s a Tarla Dalal recipe.


Ingredients


Boiled potatoes -4
Finely chopped garlic-1 tsp(abt 3-4 cloves)
Chopped ginger-1/2 tsp
Green chillies-1 chopped finely
1 tsp tomato ketchup
2 Tbsp soya sauce
½ tsp chilli sauce
2 tsp cornflour
4 tbsp oil
Salt to taste

Peel and cut the cooked potatoes into medium fingers

Heat oil in a pan, on a high flame, add the potatoes and cook on the high flame for few minutes, till they turn slightly brown. Remove from the pan and keep aside.

In the same oil, add ginger, garlic, green chillies and stir fry for couple of seconds

Add the potato fingers, tomato ketchup, soya sauce, chili sauce and salt.

Meanwhile mix cornflour in ½ cup of water, and add to the mix. Cook for 2-4 minutes.

Garnish with spring onions or coriander. (whatever you have. I never seem to have spring onions when needed)

This dish also fulfills my cravings for Chinese food. Simple easy and no MSG. The rest of the Chinese is a pain. All that tiny chopping kills my fingers. I’m hoping to get my hands on a great kitchen tool that will slice, grate and chop things finely without hassle. Anyone invented one of these?

Stir Fried Veggies With Rice.

I am an ardent fan of Tarla dalal and Nita Mehta's recipes. I have a lot of their mini books to help me decide what to try today. And whenever H takes me to a bookstore, he has no fear of me getting lost. He always ends up finding me at the cookery section. I do admit, I've never ventured beyond Indian authors when it comes to cooking. I mean, Indian authors will know the best Indian food, right?
But I've read a lot of other food-blog writers refer to a lot of foreign authors and I'm willing to give it a try. So if you've got any awesome cook books that you think I should delve into, please leave a comment for me. I'd love to try.

This is my H's fav. He loves Chinese, not the authentic Chinese but the Indian-Chinese, where most of the recipe is indianised to suit our palate.

This recipe calls for a lot of veggies, but i only had babycorn, onions, and capsicums, and spring onion. So that's what i used. Feel free to try out other veggies.
This is a recipe from Nita Mehta's book.




Stir Fried Veggies on Rice.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 1/4 cups rice
1 small carrot- cubed
1/4 cup cauliflower or broccoli - small florets
1 small onion - cut into 4 pieces and separated
4-5 mushrooms
4-8 baby corn -cut into half lengthwise.
1 capsicum- cubed
2 dried red chillies- broken into small pieces
8-10 flakes garlic - crushed

1 Tbsp soya sauce(dark is better)
2 1/2 Tbsp tomato sauce
1/2 tsp Tbsp vinegar
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 tsp salt or to taste
a pinch ajinomoto (optional, I generally don't use it)
3 Tbsp cornflour mixed with 1/2 cup water
2-3 Tbsp oil


Method

Boil the washed rice in 4-5 cups of salted water. Drain after it gets cooked. Cover and keep aside.

Heat oil in a wok, when the oil gets hot, take it off the flame and add broken red chillies and garlic (add it off the fire, since these two tend to burn quickly)

Stir for a few seconds, till the garlic gives out its aroma, and add babycorns, carrots, broccoli, onions and mushrooms. Stir for 2-3 minutes and then add capsicum.

Add salt and pepper. ( at this stage, add less salt, since the sauces will have salt of their own. Later on taste and add more salt if necessary. Experience speaks, I've over-salted it twice before learning this)

Add tomato sauce, soya sauce, and vinegar. Pour 2 cups of water and bring to a boil. Lower heat and add cornflour slurry and cook till veggies get done, and the sauce becomes thick.

To serve

Spread the rice on a serving plate and pour hot veggies over the rice and serve hot.