No hassle dinner: Cabbage steam-fry and chunky vegetable soup

There were days when I totally do not embrace the idea of making dinner over a wok with fantastic "wok hei", which I know will have me engulfed in oily smoke, but I know is a necessary evil to produce dishes jumping with life.  It was one of such days that I came up with these two dishes, thanks to my unwillingness to sweat over some overly heated wok.

You must be wondering why is it called cabbage steam-fry and not stir-fry.  Well, read on and you'll see why.
For the chunky vegetable soup, I simply dump all my ingredients, in different timing of course, into the slow cooker and let the pot simmer on high for the next 3 hours. 


Chunky vegetables soup

 

For the stock

2 chicken breast bones

handful of dried scallops

1L water

100g mince pork

300g wild yam [淮山(huai shan) or 山药(shan yao)]

300g carrot

300g pumpkin

Marinate for mince pork

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp corn starch or tapioca starch

dash of pepper

Method

1. Blanch chicken breast bones in hot water, this will produce a clear soup.  Throw away blanching water.

2. Place the blanched bones, scallops and water in a slow cooker and cook on HIGH for 1 hour.  This will be the stock.

3. Cut the wild yam, carrot and pumpkin into roughly 3 cm chunks.

4. Marinate the mince pork and set aside for use later.

5. After 1.5 hours, remove the chicken breast bones and add carrots and wild yams.  As pumpkin softens faster than carrots and yam, add this in at about 30 minutes before the full 3 hours is up.  Scoop the mince pork with a teaspoon into mouthful size and add into the soup at the same time with the pumpkin.  

6. Before switching off the cooker at 3 hours (or slightly longer if you prefer really mushy soft vegetables), add salt to taste.

Cabbage Steam-fry

  
What's steam-fry?  Well, it is literally as the term goes, steam and then fry ("toss about" is perhaps a more appropriate description) until the cabbage is softened and cooked.  That's just how I call this cooking method after I saw how it was done on one of my favorite program, "Morning Market" on NHK.

To me, this method is such a savior when I feel really impatient about being in a hot and oily-smokey kitchen.  I was pretty impressed and honestly awed at the prospect of escaping the smell when I saw how it was done!  See how lazy I can get!  This is what I did.

Ingredients

Half a head of cabbage, shredded into bite size by hand

2 sticks of eryngi mushrooms, sliced about 5mm thick

1½ tbsp shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)

1 tbsp mirin (or 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine + 1 tsp sugar)

pinch of pepper

1 tbsp oil + ½ tsp sesame oil

Method

1. In a non-stick fry pan, place oil mixture and eryngi mushrooms at the bottom of pan. 

2. Next, layer up the cabbage.  Cover and place the whole pan on the stove and heat up.  Let the pan heat and steam for about 3 minutes.

Looks something like this while steaming away...

3. Check that the cabbage has softened and mushrooms lightly browned.

4. Add seasoning,  toss about to coat evenly, dish out and serve.


It's that simple!