Sidetrack: Veggie Ham and Vegetable Stir Fry

Well I'm starting to collect some leftover ingredients pretty quickly. What can I do but use them! So I'm going to give you a sidetrack of my own impromptu cooking. It's quick and basic (were talking carrots and peas);  it's tasty and I'm lazy. Also since it's a sidetrack, I won't provide rating/verdict on this one. The prepared dish is still vegetarian if you are wondering but not exactly Buddhist kosher because I added onion and garlic. Fun fact: Buddhists do not eat onion and garlic because 1) it smells and 2) it causes lust and desire. That's a shame because I love love love onion and garlic and in my own experience, whether I abstain from it or not, my insides are just as fiery. Haha. Yes. I said fiery. Anyways, I love garlic and onion so in it goes too. Here's how to make it: 

Ingredients for stir fry:

leftover veggie ham

leftover carrots

some frozen peas

1 medium onion

1 tspn ginger

1 tspn garlic

1 tspn veggie oyster sauce

1 tspn soy sauce

1 tspn cornstarch

oil for stir frying

Ingredients for rice:

2 cups brown rice

2.5 to 3 cups of leftover vegetable soup broth

Make rice:

First, to start making the brown rice I remove some of the starch. This is a trick my Indian coworker taught me to get rid of excess starch from the rice. The end product is a lighter fluffier rice that doesn't weigh you down like a brick. Using the inner pot of a rice cooker, boil the brown rice with water over stove top for about ten minutes. Remove from heat and drain out the water. Rinse the rice with new water until the water comes out clear. Drain rice a final time and add in the vegetable soup and set it in the cooker to finish cooking. 

Quick tip, the amount of liquid to rice in volume is roughly 2 to 1 ratio for brown rice and 1 to 1 ratio for white rice. You can also go by the finger test, where you stick the forefinger in the pot of water with the rice and feel where the top of the liquid is to the top of the rice.

 

Stir Fry:

Start by chopping all the veggies and veggie ham up. 

Give the carrots a quick blanch because the carrots take the longer to cook relative to everything else. As you can see, some mischievous peas snuck their way into the blanching.

In a pan, fry chopped garlic and ginger. (YUM the garlic)

Add in onion, and cook until slightly glossy. Again, some sneaky peas made their way with onions. Peas don't like to behave. 

Add the rest of the ingredients. And continue to stir fry. The peas were not thawed, but they cook pretty quickly so you can add them in frozen and get away with it. Add in the soy sauce, veggie oyster sauce. Then mix the cornstarch with water and add that in. Kill heat and stir some more. Serve. 

Yum food heaven!