Stir-fry
A dish that you can eat every single day. By changing vegetables and proteins, this is a great way to provide the body with a high nutritional value in a convenient, fast and repeatable way.
Exposing vegetables to a higher temperature for a shorter period of time opens up fibre strands, making nutrient extraction easier. At the same time, it is still rich in fibre to feed your gut microbes, and is easier to digest than raw vegetables.
Digestibility of food is the most important concept in my approach to nutritional therapy.
Ingredients:
Protein of choice: beef, chicken, clams, prawns, tofu, turkey, etc.
Vegetable(s) of choice: broccoli, carrot, cabbage, red pepper, shiitake or button mushrooms; you can also use ready made stir fry veggie mixes from a supermarket
2-3 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 table spoon of oil of choice
Splash of water
Soy sauce, tamari is my favourite as it´s wheat free but if you are sensitive to soy, you can use coconut aminos
Optional ingredients: a thumb size piece of ginger - finely chopped or grated, peanuts, cashews, chilli, fresh coriander
Optional sauce ingredients: 1 table spoon of unsweetened peanut butter, 1 tea spoon of Chinese 5 spice, honey or coconut sugar, lime juice
Method:
Start by coating your protein in a little soy sauce.
Heat up a wok or large frying pan well, add oil.
Cook your protein on high heat for 2 minutes while stirring and set aside.
Add a little bit more oil to the empty work or pan, add the vegetables and a splash of water to create steam.
Cook for 5 minutes while shaking the work or pan every now and then to let the collected water out and prevent vegetables from sogging.
Add sauce ingredients of choice, mix well and serve.
Serving suggestions: with 100% buckwheat soba noodles, rice, rice noodles, cauliflower ´rice´ or courgette ´noodles´
Stir-fried sides
A stir-fry brings Asian food to mind straight away but it can belong to any cuisine. Depending on the flavours you wish to achieve and your creativity, mix any vegetables that you have at home and add relevant spices or herbs. After all, stir-frying is just a cooking technique that doesn´t call for specific products. Stir frying is fantastic as you can maintain the crunch while opening the fibre strands, making veggies easier to digest. You can either add your protein to the mix or do it separately (like a steak, for example).
Ingredients:
Assorted vegetables of choice - you can get packaged vegetable mixes in supermarkets
1 heaped table spoon of coconut or olive oil
For an Asian style stir fry: tamari soy sauce or coconut aminos, freshly chopped ginger, chopped garlic, honey
For Mediterranean style stir-fry: salt, pepper, lemon juice, garlic and basil or green or red pesto (can be vegan)
No style, just any veg: salt, pepper, optional herbs of choice
Method:
Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan, add vegetables
Immediately, add a splash of water to create steam.
Every now and then, move the wok or pan to dispearse the heat evenly and prevent fthe veg from burning. Add more water if needed.
When almost ready, add flavourings, toss and cook for an additional minute.
