Cooking Cycles 1 - Asian - Oriental style

Being economical is not just a matter of buying cheaper, but also being smart about using ingredients and establishing a cooking cycle over several days. This includes an understanding of what you can refrigerate or freeze.

Here is one example:

I make a bowl of soba noodles with collard greens according to this recipe:

Basic Soba Noodles, but I add a roll of collard greens (leaves without the stem), which I slice thin, like about 1/4" width.

Now I simply cut up the stems in 1/4" chunks and I freeze them in a quart bag. I keep adding to this from kale or collard greens until the bag is fairly full.

Then one day, I may be making some kind of Dal. This weekend I made Kala Chana Dal, but I added in a bag of cut-up stems from the kale and collard greens. It cooks long enough to get soft, and it adds a delicious aroma.

I also still had some cooked bitter melon ( just sliced lengthwise, pitted and then cut up in 1/4" slices), I cook them in some water with finely cutup garlic, and maybe a splash of Yondu.

The end result is a very healthy meal, and I usually end up freezing part of the dal, as I cook a large pot of it.

Of course, brown rice you can cook for a few days at a time. I prefer brown basmati, and I always buy rice from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, as it has lower arsenic content.

I parboil the rice for 5 minutes and drain the cooking water, that minimizes the arsenic levels even more. There's a great video on this from Dr. Michael Greger. 

So in this case I had the rice pre-cooked, and I had already cooked the dal, so all I had to do was to thaw the dal, pour it over the rice. I cooked the bitter melon and put it on the side to warm it up together. The reason for putting the bitter melon in with the rice and dal is because some of the liquid will prevent the rice from sticking.

The upshot is, this is just one example of sharing ingredients between very different dishes, and creating a cycle of cooking that works.

Spicy Karela (Bitter Melon) Side Dish

 

Chinese Bitter Melon Recipe

Side Dish, probably, but who am I to quibble if you want to make it a main dish and if you want to make it #WFPB style, just leave out the oil and instead stir-fry some finely cut-up onion in 1/2 cup of water  water, and at the end, if you want to serve this over rice, I would add a 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 tsp arrowroot dissolved, and you would have some kind of a spicy karela sauce. You can serve that over rice. I even did this for breakfast once - that'll wake you up.

In general, I am finding that when oil seems essential, you can always caramelize some onions in water first. In this case, you would actually first stirfry the Sichuan peppercorns, then discard them, as shown on the video and add the finely cut-up onions into the peppery water, 

PRINTABLE RECIPE - https://soupeduprecipes.com/garlic-st... INGREDIENTS 500 grams of bitter melon 1 tsp of salt to reduce the bitter taste 6-8 pieces of dried red chilies 3-4 pieces of fresh red chilies 1 tsp of salt to rub the bitter melon 3-5 cloves of garlic 1 small onion cut-up fine

1 cup of water with Yondu 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorn optional: 1/4 cup of water with 1/2 tsp arrowroot (or other starch)

Salt to taste, but not needed if using Yondu.

Directions

* Cut the bitter melon in half, then quarter it. Remove the white spongy inside part. You can use a rounded teaspoon (or a grapefruit spoon with serrated edges) to scrape the last bits of the white part.

* Cut it with a 45-degree angle into 1/3 of an inch thick slices. Season it with 1 tsp of salt. Rub for a few minutes. Let it sit for 15 minutes.

* Cut some red, dried chilies open and remove the seeds.

* Roughly dice some fresh red chilies

* Press 5 cloves of garlic through a garlic presser.

* Optionally, prepare 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns.

* Now go back and check out the bitter melon. Squeeze out as much moisture as you can.

* Rinse the bitter melon with cold running water several times. Drain it but doesn’t need to be thorough, for you need some water anyway.

* Stir-fry the Sichuan peppercorns in 1/4 cup of the water with Yondu.

* Once you see the color of the peppercorns is getting dark, you can take them out and discard them.

* Next, stir-fry the onions with 1/2 cup of water with Yondu.

*Turn the heat to medium. Add in the bitter melon, dried chili, fresh chili, and garlic. Stir for a couple of minutes.

* Turn the heat to low. As the temperature climbs up slowly, the water will be seasoned with the peppercorn flavor and the onions.

* Give it a taste. The Yondu makes the taste, you can adjust with more Yondu or a small amount of Bragg's Liquid Aminos. Add the 1/4 cup of water with starch. The salt in the Yondu or the Liquid Aminos will suppress a little bit of the bitter taste, the starch will make the sauce. 

* Give it a final stir and you are done.