Saturday, April 15, 2006

Stop, Easter Time!

Today being part of the Easter holidays Bree and I did what is traditional, and worked on the garden. The plan is to reshape the lawn. Apparently this plan has been in gestation since we moved in, but as my gardening role is to provide manual labour, brute force, and ignorance, I was, of course, largely ignorant of this plan. Anyway, I dug up lawn, dug up garden beds, shifted lawn into garden beds etc. I am told It Is Good.

Earlier in the day we kicked out Matt who'd broken his nightmare Glasgow to Canterbury train journey with a couple of nights in Brum. Much geeking was done, and at one stage we had 42 inches of Powerbook in the house! A side-effect of kicking out Matt was I went in to town and shopped at the markets for the first time since, well, before going to Australia. And the result of that is:

Basil and Black Pepper Stir Fry

This is inspired by a meal I had at Han's Cafe in Perth

Ingredients for the stir-fry

  • Some beefy protein (e.g. beef, seitan)
  • A carrot
  • A red capsicum
  • An onion
  • 2 cloves of garlic

Ingredients for the sauce

  • About 12 leaves Thai (sweet) basil
  • 1 tbsp cornflour
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • Dried mushrooms
  • Cracked black pepper

Method

Get your rice on! Works best with rice, but noodles would work as well.
Cut up everything.
Mix the cornflour to a paste with some water
Rehydrate the mushrooms in boiling water. When the water has cooled, add the cornflour, soy and basil. If using seitan, add some of the juice from the can.
Get your wok on!
Cook in the usual way: meat (if using) first, then set aside. Then onion, garlic, carrot, capsicum.
Add your protein.
Add the sauce, boil till thickened.
Get your snack on!

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