Recipe Wednesday: Goal #58, Jamie Oliver’s Hardly-Any-Prep Shrimp Stir-Fry

Recipe Wednesday was inspired by the Youngrens, California photographers who cook, photograph, and post recipes on periodic Sundays.  Cooking good wholesome food is something that is very important to my wife and I so I’ve decided to start documenting our kitchen adventures.  You’ll see pictures and recipes from books that are quickly becoming our go-to guides.  Hopefully it can give you some ideas for your own kitchen.

Despite the long name, this recipe is really easy to make.  We love Asian inspired food in our house and we sometimes throw them together with some stir-fry sauce and a bag of frozen veggies.  However, as evidenced by this recipe it really isn’t much more difficult to make your own sauce.  It requires a little bit more of an investment to get the appropriate ingredients (such as sesame seed oil or five-spice powder), but these items simply make a pantry more robust and can be used over and over again in other recipes.  We love rice sticks as a base and bean sprouts are the perfect topper to almost any Asian recipe.

Hardly-Any-Prep Shrimp Stir-Fry (serves 2)

a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
2 cloves of garlic
1 fresh red or green chile
a small bunch of fresh cilantro
peanut or vegetable oil
1/2 pound large shrimp, raw, peeled (if you use already cooked shrimp, just add them at the very end so they warm up but don’t over cook)
1 heaped teaspoon five-spice powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
6 fresh baby corn or 1/2 cup fresh corn kernels (we use the baby corn out of a can that you can find in the Asian section of the grocery store)
a small handful of snowpeas
2 tablespoons soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
1/2 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon sesame oil
a handful of frozen peas
7 ounces rice sticks or vermicelli
a small handful of beansprouts

To prepare your stir-fry:
Put a large pan of water on to boil.  Peel and finely slice the ginger and garlic.  Finely slice the chile.  Pick the cilantro leaves from the stalks and put to one side, then roughly chop the stalks.

To cook your stir-fry:
Pre-heat a wok or large frying pan on high heat and once its very hot add a good lug of peanut oil and swirl it around.  Stir in the cilantro stalks, ginger, garlic, chile, shrimp, and five-spice powder, and fry for a minute.  Add the cornstarch, baby corn, and snow peas and give them a good toss or stir for another minute.  Stir in the soy sauce, lime juice, honey, sesame oil, and frozen peas.  Add the rice sticks (or vermicelli) to the pan of boiling water and use a wooden spoon to break them up a bit.  Cook for just 2 minutes, no longer.  Drain the rice sticks (or vermicelli) in a colander over a bowl, reserving the cooking water.  Add a large spoonful or ladle-ful of the cooking water to the wok and cook for a further minute or two.

To serve your stir-fry:
Use tongs to divide the rice sticks (or vermicelli) between your serving bowls, or to lift them on to one large serving platter.  Spoon the shrimp, veggies, and any juices over the top and sprinkle with the bean sprouts and cilantro leaves.