Stir-Fried Vegetables

Page 138

The egg rolls in the freezer were the inspiration for this meal. We decided to make a stir-fry and had most of the ingredients for one.

Stir-Fried Vegetables & Egg Rolls

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Broccoli
Onion
Mushrooms
Red pepper
Cashews
Sesame seeds
Stir-fry sauce (recipe below)
2 tbsp peanut oil

Chop them chunky and fry on medium-high for 7 or 8 minutes in the peanut oil, stirring very frequently. Mix in the seeds and sauce.

Vegetables being stir-fried

Stir-Fry Sauce

Well...I wish I could share the stir-fry sauce recipe with you, but I didn't write it down, and didn't pay a lot of attention to the amounts I was using. Sorry! The vegetables had to be tended to so they wouldn't burn so I was just throwing stuff in the bowl willynilly. I can tell you that it was super good and I wish I had paid more attention.

My Best Guess Recipe

Brown sugar (about 1/3 cup)
Rice vinegar (about 1/4 cup)
Soy Sauce (between 1/8 - 1/4 cup)
Sesame oil (probably 1 tbsp)
Sesame seeds (maybe 3 tbsps?)
Corn starch (I'm thinking about 2 tbsp)

Mix it all up with a fork until smooth and pour it in with the vegetables. It will thicken within a minute or two.

Stir-Fried Vegetables

Homemade Plum Sauce

Original recipe here
While I ran out for broccoli and a red pecker, Laura cracked open a new jar of plum jam and made  a batch of plum sauce to have with the egg rolls.

Recipe

3/4 (16 ounce) jar plum jam
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp dried minced onion
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Combine everything, bring to a boil, turn off heat.

Homemade plum sauce

Using Plum Jam

Last fall I had an opportunity to pick some plums from my aunt's neighbor's tree and came home with 21 lbs of them.

Plums

I intended to make a few jars of plum jam and a lot of plum sauce. So, I started looking up recipes for plum sauce...you know, the kind you process like jam, that have a 2 year shelf life. Nearly every recipe I found was like the one above. They call for a bottle of plum jam. So, I made 3 batches of plum jam, and mannnnnn, what a pain in the arse it was. Took me a Sunday afternoon and three evenings, because the pits of 21 lbs of plums had to be removed. Such a mess too. But so worth it! The jam tastes amazing and is really good on a buttered roll or soft homemade bread. And the homemade plum sauce is not even comparable to store-bought stuff; they're like 2 completely different sauces. Might be because of using damsoms instead of red plums? Anyway, if you have plum jam, I recommend you try making this sauce to have on egg rolls or rangoons, or whatever other fried delight you have on the go.

Homemade plum jam

Stir-fried vegetables & egg rolls

Reviews/Comments

Most of the vegetables were perfectly cooked although the bigger pieces of broccoli could have been cooked a bit more. The sauce was really good. Separately I rate the stir-fry a 10, the egg rolls a 4 and the plum sauce a 10. Overall, it's a 9.

Laura gave me her compliments; she really liked the stir-fry a lot.