Cheating My Way to a Quicker Stir Fry

The bike gave me monsoon grief and I ended up pushing my Enfield through the traffic throng of Saki Naka and Kurla. I missed gym and reached home and felt like just going off to sleep. My tummy had other plans and protested growling in hunger. I felt like a hot bowl of stir fry but balked at the time I would need to stir... I was feeling that tired...

I hauled myself to the kitchen and pulled out bell peppers, remains of a little tofu and spinach, and half a zucchini and chopped them into a bowl from my attempts at pottery and nuked everything for a couple of minutes.

I think Minminay and Digdigay catties associate the microwave with foody goodies, so they meowled around expecting grub. I got them some milk and got Yellow Bean paste from the fridge.


By now the veggies were par cooked and tofu too had softened, so I let the mix cool for while while I put a teaspoon of oil  in the non-stick pan and threw in some ground garlic.


While the garlic started browning I turned the veggies around in the bowl.

By now the garlic was just about to get about burnt so I put in the veggies, added roughly cut tomato to add colour and some more succulence and just enrobed all of these in the aroma.

A couple of teaspoons of yellow bean paste added a little more flavour, saltyness and just the right agglutination. 


Bingo! I was gobbling my 'stir-fry' having cheated my way through it in 10 minutes flat.

Pan Crisped Egg Noodles

On a lazy morning you just want to make something quick and yummy and then go back to snooze mode. This prompted me to make this nice and quick noodle from some left over noodles in the fridge.


I quickly smashed and chopped some garlic and kept the noodles ready...

Then I quickly fried an egg, well beaten till fluffy with a fork...

I kept the eggs aside and drizzled a little oil in the non-stick pan and gently fried the garlic on high heat till I saw the stirrings of brown at the garlic edges...

The noodles and eggs went in and got tossed around to absorb the garlicky flavour from the noodles

I turned on the high and left it on high (without stirring or tossing for the bottom layer to turn nice and crispy...


And then I dug in to my Sunday breakfast... :)

Stir Fry with Sprouts and Corn

I'd left three varieties of sprouts in my fridge when I'd defrosted it last week. I realized that the sprouts had frozen in the renewed vigour of my freshly defrosted fridge.


I realized that I'd have to cook them quickly once thawed or eat them at a single go in a salad. I'd feel like a goat on overdrive if I'd to munch through that much sprouts at one go, so I opted for cooking them for lunch.

I wanted to wander around and enjoy the last fading nip in the morning of Mumbai's fast retreating winter. So, I just gathered whatever I had within an arm's reach to start and quickly end cooking.

I'd a few sachets of ketchup saved from my office canteen orders and my last trip to Nirula's (many months ago). I also got out a few cloves of garlic and a little stub of ginger to add some flavour.

I put in some oil in the non-stick pan and threw in the sliced and quashed garlic and ginger and let it fry on low heat while I woke up the cat and look around from the balcony.

Once I got a whiff of the garlic caramelizing and threw in the sprout and stirred them around a bit.

I would have preferred to use the wok and retain the crunchyness of the sprouts, but opted for the pan since I'd use less oil and in any case a trip in the tiffin box would make the sprouts soggy by lunch.

I mixed a little dark soya sauce with the ketchup and kept it ready.

As an afterthought, I thawed some corn.

With the sprouts ready, I put in the corn and then added  the soya-ketchup mix and then packed things up and got ready for office.