Tag: Chow mein

Strong Women and Summer Vegetable Chow Mein

Today felt like the first day of summer here in Dublin and I came home on a high after taking part in the Irish Tatler Business Academy organised by that dynamo Norah Casey. It’s a long time since I’ve spent the day in the company of 450 women and I came away buzzing from the positive energy in the Dublin Convention Centre and the extraordinary openness and honesty with which the panellists spoke about their personal adventures on the road to leadership. Women are good at revealing their hearts and inspiring energy and positivity in those around them. Passion with purpose is what I saw today.
And I loved the time I got to spend in the “green room”,  (now doesn’t that sound posh), with such special women as Clodagh Higgins Online Marketing Specialist, Marie Chawke of Aghadoe Heights Hotel, Margaret Nelson CEO of FM104, Ros Hubbard casting director, Aubrey Tiedt, Vice President of Etihad Airways, and Emmeline Hill, Co-founder and Chair of Equinome Ltd.

Twitter pic posted by @Tamso at last session of #irishtatlerbiz

Now passion and positivity is all very well but as the in-domnitable Ros Hubbard said “what’s the point of being beautiful and fabulous if you’re broke,” to which I might add “what’s the point of being in high good humour if there’s not a thing in the house to eat.”
I arrived home to a near empty fridge and tried to figure out what I could rustle up with some vegetables left over from earlier in the week. Back last September, on one of those miserable Mondays that heralded the onset of winter (and what a long winter it has been) I had posted an impromptu recipe for winter vegetable chow mein. You can check it out here. So I searched for it on the blog, dusted it off and recycled it in a summer dress. Here goes.

Summer Vegetable Chow Mein
Summer vegetable chow mein

Ingredients (serves 3 -4)
Continue reading Strong Women and Summer Vegetable Chow Mein

Lamb and Vegetable Stir-fry

A couple of my posts recently have been about special occasion food that requires a bit of extra effort, long, slow cooking or (sometimes) expensive ingredients, such as the last post Shananigans’ Wagyu Stew.
But the joy of Chinese cooking is the ease with which you can use cheap and readily available ingredients to whip together, in minutes, a tasty stir-fry that tickles your taste buds on a miserable autumn evening. So I’m posting this recipe as an example of how you can use up left-over vegetables to produce a nourishing weekday meal requiring little or no meat.
Yesterday I had friends to dinner and, as one of my guests can’t digest spicy food at the moment, I made Shan’s Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb, using peppers instead of chilli and mange touts instead of green beans, as I couldn’t find any Irish green beans over the weekend. So tonight I had a small amount un-cooked lamb left over and odds and ends of vegetables. The recipe that follows is something of a cross between Shan’s Xinjiang Spaghetti and Irish Vegetable Chow Mein. Play around with it, using whatever you have to hand, but remember what Shan has taught me – the importance of having a variety of colour and textures on the plate to get a range of nutrients and to excite the palate.

Shananigans’ Lamb and Vegetable Stir-fry – yang rou chao shu cai – 羊肉炒蔬菜

Shananigans’ Lamb and Vegetable Stir-fry

Serves 2 – 3
Continue reading Lamb and Vegetable Stir-fry