Global Fusion Taste Team: Garlic, chilli and ginger

There's been a little bit of excitement in the Pantry of late, which should hopefully produce some interesting posts going forwards. Today is the first in a series of posts in my role as a member of the Global Fusion Taste Team. I answered a callout on Twitter for team members (I'm always a bit reticent to do that as I'm never sure I'm 'good' enough - well that's not true, I know I am, I just know that this blog and it's little following *waves* aren't up there with the big hitters) Anyway, this week a big box arrived, which had he been here would have led Mark to roll his eyes and ask if I've been online shopping at Lush again. In it was, a pinny, a recipe notebook (stationery and a pinny - can Worldfoods read my mind?) as well as a huge range of sauces and dips for me to try, work with and feed Mark with over the coming weeks. Excited? I am.

So Wednesday night loomed and courtesy of a meeting at work being cancelled we had a night in together. Off to Sainsos we went with the first challenge looming in my mind. It involved a garlic, chilli and ginger, dipping, or stir fry sauce. Having spent much of the recent weeks in hotels a stir fry really appealed, with lots of veg and some brown basmati rice.

Ginger, garlic and trinity are often hailed as the 'holy trinity' (apologies for the blasphemy) of Chinese cooking, and if I'm just doing a bog standard stir fry I will press or chop a couple of cloves of garlic, grate variable amounts of ginger and chop up a chilli as my base. Initially I thought the jar would work as a sub for these, but on sniff test and finger taste I felt it needed a bit more oomph for my tastebuds. On investigation, the recipe suggestion was to add more, so lesson learned - READ things in advance Penelope. I should also say that the last time I did a stir fry out of a jar it was about 10 years ago and I intially worried that it was going to be that incredibly cloying sweet synthetic taste I remembered, however this was light, fresh and not at all syrupy.

I should point out here that Mark likes things significantly milder than I do so I actually made two generous dishes from one jar of sauce, and both those dishes did two solid meals. Mark had his leftovers for lunch the next day, and mine went in the freezer for a later date.

Pantry Prawns; courtesy of Worldfoods

1 clove of garlic, pressed
Large peice of ginger grated
(to my shame) teaspoonful of lazy chilli
250g prawns (Mark had 2 chicken thighs finely sliced, and cooked until brown)
Red pepper chopped
Courgette chopped
Onion finely chopped
Spinach
Sweetcorn
(I forgot I had edamame beans and green beans in the freezer, but had I remembered I would have added those too)
Half a jar of Worldfoods Chinese ginger, garlic & chilli sauce

In a large pan or wok, heat up some flavourless oil and add your garlic, chilli, ginger and onion. Sweat the onion off, stirring constantly
Add prawns, and cook until they turn pink,
Add vegetables and cook until they just start to soften
Add sauce and reduce down

It took, less than 10 minutes to cook this, bearing in mind I also did a chicken one that was missing the extra spices, and rice as well. Perfect for a quick, easy supper when you've been at work all day and done battle with Mr Sainsburys to boot. You'll see from the pic, that I had got out soy sauce to use as a condiment as I hadn't added salt at any point, but really didn't feel that the dish needed it - I'm terrible for underseasoning things though so do a taste test yourself, and add soy or salt to taste.

The only thing I think I would do different again, would be to add some coriander at the end to freshen it up.

So, there you have it, my first challenge as a member of the Global Fusion Taste Team... watch this space for more installments, including my favourite - Pad Thai!