Colorful Veggie Stirfry

My friend Sarah is learning to cook – and when I say “learning to cook,” I mean we are venturing out of the territory of microwaves and hot pockets and into the possible conversion of raw ingredients into something totally new. So with that, I present one of my favorite homemade vegetable dishes – it’s quick, it’s easy, it’s pretty, and it’s really tasty with absolutely no seasoning. Also I suppose it’s good for you, but then vegetables tend towards that. I usually just eyeball this when I cook it, so it was difficult for me to try to gauge times/amounts/other precise sort of measurements for the sake of giving Sarah proper instructions. I didn’t really succeed. So here you go. Practice makes perfect.

Colorful Veggie Stirfry
(Ingredients can be increased/decreased/added/subtracted depending on your personal taste.)
8-10 cloves of garlic
1 medium yellow onion
1 head of broccoli (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 bunch of spring onions
2-3 bell peppers (red, yellow and orange)
1 medium sweet potato
1-2 cups white mushrooms (or whatever mushroom you prefer – I bought mine pre-sliced and washed this time around, so unfortunately no instructions as to how to do that will be found here)

wok (or laaaarge skillet)
oil for cooking

Cooking Lesson 1 – Veggie Stirfry

1) Peel and dice the garlic.
- To peel the garlic, take a large knife (I go right ahead with a butcher’s knife) and press the flat of the blade against the garlic clove. Press down until you hear a lil’ *crunch*. The peel should now pop right off.
- As far as dicing, my method is to group all the peeled cloves in a circle, then slice downward willy-nilly with the butcher’s knife. You should not move the blade back and forth, but up and down, in a sort of rocking motion, with the front of the knife blade resting on the cutting board and the back (ie the side you’re holding) bobbing up and down. The garlic will try to hop away, just regroup every once in a while until it is all little pieces.
2) Peel and dice the onion.
- The gallery (see above link) is handy for seeing how this is done. Ignore that I was not paying attention and cut both ends off, rather than just one. Anyway, you halve the onion, then lop one end of the onion off and peel off the crispy outer layer.
- With the flat part of the onion half on the cutting board, slice horizontally towards the uncut onion end. Don’t slice all the way to the end and through the other side, but stop so all those little sliced pieces are still stuck to one another.
- Now cut the onion vertically, with the tip of your knife pointed at the uncut end. Once again, don’t slice all the way from the cut end to the uncut end, but almost all the way, so the sliced pieces are still stuck to the Greater Onion Alpha (brother to the Spaghetti God? who knows).
- Finally, slice vertically, but with your knife parallel to the uncut onion end (ps, you can finally cut that end off). Now the onion should collapse into a bunch of diced squares.
- As for “cutting form,” I think it was best described by a Japanese woman while she was teaching me to make soup: “Like a cat! Meow.” (But it was in Japanese, 猫みたい！にゃお。Therefore 10x cuter.) Anyway, this means that as you do that rock-up-and-down slicing you were doing with the garlic, the other hand holding the onion in place should be “like a cat” – tips of your fingers curled in (not a full fist) and fingers together. Hold down the top of the onion line this, and move it back as you slice towards it.
3) Cut the broccoli into chunks.
- I like florets and dislike the stem, so I just cut the little florets off individually. There’s nothing special to this, or at least I don’t think there is until I start getting questions about it.
4) Slice the spring onion.
- I don’t do a lot of cooking with spring onions, but the good part is from the base (minus the rooty bits) up until the stalk starts getting kind of leafy and splitting off. You just have to eyeball it, and you will be throwing a lot away.
- I find it easiest to cut these guys by lining them up and just slicing down the line. Cut all the root ends off at once, and cut all the tops off at once. Hold them down with the flat of your hand (the cat hand won’t work here) and cut into thin round slices.
5) Dice the bell peppers.
- Sarah dislikes bell peppers, so Sarah can skip this part. But for the rest of you: Cut the ends off so you can see the otherwise hollow pepper and the big seedy thing in the middle. Cut down one side so you can “roll open” the pepper by sliding your knife along the inside and disconnect the seedy center.
- My peppers were pretty tall, so once I rolled them into one long, seed-free strip, I sliced down the center, then held the pieces together as I cut them width-wise.
6) Cut the sweet potato into small chunks.
- I like sweet potato skin, and I’m lazy, so I didn’t skin this.
- A long, thin sweet potato is probably best for fresh dicing, as these guys are pretty thick and hard to cut when uncooked. I have no specific strategy – I just cut it in half, then cut it into squares from there.
7) Cooking time! Put your wok/big skillet on the stove on medium-high heat. Splash with oil and add the garlic. Scoot it around with a spatula for about two minutes, then add the onions (both the yellow onion and the spring onions). Cook for another 5 minutes, until the yellow onion is starting to turn transparent.
8) Add the sweet potato pieces and splash the pan with water. Not too much, just enough that the sweet potatoes get slightly steamed and cooked through. Cook for another five minutes.
9) Remember those mushrooms I lazily bought pre-washed and sliced? Toss those in now, along with the broccoli florets. If you’re using broccoli stems, those will need to go in a smidge sooner.
10) Splash with a little more water (the water you added before should be just about cooked off – if there’s still a bit left, don’t add more) and cook until the florets are just starting to turn bright green, about 7 minutes.
11) I like my bell peppers crunchy, so throw them in while the broccoli is still firm but getting pretty bright green. Add a little more oil, now, and cook for another 3 minutes.
12) When the broccoli is at the consistency you like (I prefer mine firm but not crunchy) and the sweet potatoes are soft enough to be easily pierced by a knife, turn heat off and remove the veggies from the pan.

That’s it! This is also a nice dish to get a better feel for the stovetop cooking times of various vegetables – not everything will be perfectly cooked the first time around, but you’ll have an idea of about how long it takes to get a piece of broccoli to your liking, vs onions, vs bell peppers, and so on.