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Lemongrass Green Pea Stir-Fry

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

This surprising meal is repurposed from a side dish, tweaked, and streamlined.  The result is a sweet pea-and-onion stir-fry that goes fantastic on rice.  Served with a green it’s a full meal without being heavy and is pretty easy to prepare.

The only challenge is finding the lemongrass and preparing it.  You can either chop it fine or chop it in a blender with water (used then to dry-sauté).  Lemongrass does not cook like onions to and still stays woody when they’ve long ago softened.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

  • 2 trimmed stalks of lemon grass.
  • 1 large yellow onion, chopped fine.
  • 4 Tbsp soy sauce
  • 4 Tbsp lime juice
  • 1 Tbsp maple syrup (optional)
  • 4 cups frozen or fresh green peas

Preparation:

  1. Mix the soy sauce, lime juice, and maple syrup in a separate bowl.
  2. Add shredded lemongrass and about 2 tbsp of water to a blender and use it to chop the lemongrass.  If you can get finely shredded lemongrass skip this part.
  3. Dry-sauté the onion in the lemongrass-water mixture, adding water as needed until onion softens.
  4. Add all other ingredients, sauté until the sauce reduces and the peas are coated.

– Steve

Recipe: Japanese Curry Sauce Plus

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Figured it’s time I get back to posting my cooking experiments.

This sauce came about after seeing an Indian mini-cafeteria on my job.  It had some lovely thick sauces that looked like a complete meal on rice, and there was a dish that was a bed of greens, then rice, then curry.  These came together in my head to make me ask “can I make a curry sauce that is largely a meal?”

This is the result.  This sauce’s body comes from squash and garbanzo beans and tastes very much like my Japanese Curry sauces.  Each serving has a about serving of legumes and a serving of vegetables in it.  Throw it onto rice with a side dish – or rice and a bed of greens, say shredded spinach, and you have a very complete meal.

Makes 6-8 servings

Ingredients:

  • 1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds unpeeled), peeled, seeded, cut into cubes.
  • 2 tomatoes, diced.
  • 3 cups cooked garbanzo beans (2 14.5 oz cans)
  • 2 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
  • 2/3 cup red wine (shiraz and zinfandel are good)
  • 4 tablespoons curry powder.
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tbsp maple syrup
  • 4  tablespoons soy sauce (If you use store-bought not-quite sodium free vegetable broth, use 1 Tbsp)
  • 4T bsp garlic
  • 4 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
  • 4 Tbsp peanut butter

To prepare:

  1. Place squash, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, vegetable stock, wine into a pot, bring to boil, simmer.
  2. While bringing to boil, add other ingredients one at a time, stirring.
  3. When the squash is soft, mash with potato masher to break it and the beans and tomatoes up.
  4. Either puree with immersion blender or let cool and puree in regular blender.

Notes:  This sauce is a bit thick, may need more vegetable broth – I’d say ½ to 1 cups.  it’s also hot so you might want to tone the curry powder down a bit depending on taste

– Steve

Civic Diary 7/2/2016

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Brexit:

Still watching the fallout from the Brexit.  It seems to have been a sadly obvious con, and one where opportunistic a-holes manipulated and scared people.  It’s a hideous synergy of crap news and awful people who got people to vote for destroying their economy and their country’s reputation.  Honestly, even if the UK doesn’t leave the EU (and I’m leaning to it won’t now) this makes people trust the country less.

It’s also a reminder that something may be imperfect, but may be a hell of a lot better than the alternative.  Which, politically, is what we should consider “good” to “excellent.”

So my big civic lesson from the Brexit is to keep up more on news.  I did anyway, but I sort of went back to my “news rituals” in force as I’d slipped on them.  That involves:

  • Checking my newsfeeds at least once a day in an app.
  • Reading long-form articles from reliable sources (I use the AP and Quartz) from said feeds.
  • I added Politifact to my news scan since it’s useful.
  • Doing my usual Twitter news scan.  Remember I have one list just for government, politics, and activism that helps me stay up to date.

You can’t know everything; you can work to stay informed.

Political Engagement:

Now that I’ve got some leads on political orgs fitting my interests, I’m slowly gearing up.  That takes time as people are busy, but I’ve got an actual (almost sure not to be cancelled) political meeting coming up and am in contact with other volunteering options.

As noted my interest is voter registration right now, but as also noted I’m asking what my long-term interests are in political engagement.  I’m thinking beyond that education and communication.  It’s sort of exciting to think I can apply my hobbies and my career experiences to something.

Political engagement doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be boring.  Look for what fits you.

 

– Steve