In a rather comedic moment on Friday night Lolz was rummaging through the freezer when something made her turn around rather quickly, bang her head on the door and collect a rather nasty gash on her forehead. Cue a trip to A&E, stitches and Lolz declaring that she was unfit to cook dinner for me as promised. But although it was me who had to step up and save the day, driving her to the hospital and cooking dinner while she rested her poor little head, apparently it was all my fault because she was only looking in the freezer in order to satisfy my request to add prawns to the stir fry she was going to cook.
Other than being a rather amusing story, I'm not too sure what my point is, but the guilt that Lolz has been attempting to make me feel may have been a factor in me offering to make my first ever Monday night 15 minute meal. And since we never did get that stir fry on Friday (stir-Friday?) what better meal to cook than this veggie sweet and sour number.
Now I will start off by saying that I love a good sweet and sour and have been known to knock up a fairly decent one in little over 15 minutes (sweet potato is my not so secret ingredient). I would normally add some meat to my stir fries, but I was curious to see how this one would compare. I was particularly excited by the egg fried rice, but once again couldn't be bothered with the pre-cooked stuff so, with the standard brown rice taking 25 minutes to cook, the ETA was put back by 10 minutes. There's also a lot of chopping involved and lots of ingredients to measure out, so I had a sneaky suspicion that this could be messy.
I know the trick to a good stir fry is to get your wok to a really high heat and cook your ingredients quickly, stirring or tossing constantly. This can however be quite difficult when you are also tending to the rice in another pan, chopping further ingredients which need to be added to your wok in a few seconds, making a salad on the side and having to constantly consult your recipe book. That I didn't overcook the veg was quite an achievement, but my timings were slightly off and I think I added the liquid ingredients too near the end, therefore not giving it enough time to reduce and so leaving me with quite a runny sauce.
Overall though, the dish came together quite nicely. The egg fried rice wasn't quite as eggy as I'd hoped and the Szechuan pepper was a bit overpowering. I'm also not really a fan of baby sweetcorn but the flavours in the stir fry worked quite nicely, and the salad was fresh and crunchy. My biggest problem though was that, in spite of my best efforts to use the rice as a kind of flood barrier, the salad dressing and the stir fry sauce ran into each other, meaning some of my salad was dressed in warm sauce. This is a problem I am unsure how to overcome. Suggestions on a post card please.
Lolz gave the dish 7/10. Difficulty rating 8/10 - it's all about the timings!
Use a separate salad bowl? I know, more washing up....
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