Stir-fried Pork and Miscellaneous Vegetables

Tuesday 4 January

We're trying to eat a bit light after the holidays. We were going to make stirfried pork and zucchini, but the zucchini did not survive a week in the fridge. So this was made with whatever vedge did survive, and shows the extreme adaptability of Chinese cooking. If you cut and cook everything according to Chinese principles, you will end up with a dish that tastes like you cooked from a recipe.

3/4 pound pork (we use the scrappy bits from other cuts)

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (or sherry, or sake)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

white pepper

1 large onion

2 stalks celery

1 big carrot (Holt was fancy and pared it down the sides so its slices looked like flowers)

1 red bell pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

oil

1 big chunk of fresh ginger, minced

salt

chicken broth (usually a frozen block, with a little bit melted off in the wok itself)

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

sesame oil

Cut pork into quarter-inch thin strips. Mix it in a bowl with 1 tablespoon Shaoxing, the soy sauce, and a grind of white pepper. While it marinates, cut vegetables on the bias and across the grain (celery, carrot) or into large slices (onion, pepper). Get your ginger and garlic ready, mix the garlic into the pork, and open the bottle of oyster sauce; in Chinese frying, you've got to have your mise en place before you start.

Add a tablespoon of oil to a medium-hot wok and stir-fry onions, then ginger, with a pinch of salt, until crisp-tender; then add celery and carrot and stir-fry for a few minutes more. Lower heat, add chicken broth block, melt off a few tablespoons, and steam under cover until crisp-tender. Remove cover, raise heat, and boil off liquid. Add more oil and the red peppers, stir-fry a couple of minutes until peppers are crisp-tender. Empty into a bowl. Then do the same to the marinated pork but on a higher heat, stir-frying until all pink is gone. Dump the vegetables back in the wok, give a couple of brisk stirs to rewarm, and make a space in the center of the wok. In the juices, muddle a tablespoon of oyster sauce and stir briskly into mixture. Sprinkle with sesame oil and serve.