The boyfriend is, as I’ve mentioned before, an amazing cook – both for the simple and the gourmet meals. I don’t operate quite in the same way.

Some background to this story:

About a month ago I was at my friend Briars’s house, and we decided to make dinner. He’s just starting to learn about cooking and eating healthy, and he choose stir fry for our meal: a nice basic option to begin. Briars asked me what I usually cook in my stir fry and I had to admit that I didn’t really know how to cook stir fry.

I can whip up really elaborate menus for dinner parties, make crackers from scratch and create a gourmet vegan meal. I’ve become quite good at playing with recipes and coming up with really delicious concoctions. But somewhere along the way I missed out on very basic items – even my capabilities at boiling pasta, of all things, leave something to be desired – and stir fry is one of those things that I just never cook by myself.

At this particular occasion, Briars and I made a lot of mistakes. We were way off on timing when the couscous would be ready and we tossed all of the vegetables into the pan at the same time (don’t do that with stir fry). In the end, after we’d made mistakes and then fixed them and made more mistakes and attempted to fix them too, it somehow turned out really yummy, even though we had no idea what we were doing!

Afterward, I kept thinking about how tasty stir fry was and what a great meal it would be to start eating regularly. The only thing was that I didn’t know what I should incorporate into the mix in terms of spices and a sauce. Enter the boyfriend.

He has such a knack for throwing ingredients together and having them turn out exceptional. This recipe uses basic ingredients, but we both agreed that it was the best stir fry we’d ever had… swoon-worthy, in fact. The next day I made it all by myself and I didn’t even mess it up! It tasted almost as good as the boyfriend’s cooking 🙂

Here’s the recipe for the boyfriend’s swoon-worthy stir fry – you’ll love it.

Swoon-worthy Stir fry

1) Start cooking your rice.

2) Chop all vegetables (see below for suggestions).

3) In a pan over medium heat, mix together EVOO* (or other oil – this was all I had), minced garlic, soy sauce, wholegrain mustard, curry powder, oregano, pepper and a touch of salt. Use a nice big spoonful of garlic and mustard. For the rest, add any ratio you like – it’s better to start off with a little less than you think you’ll want, because you can always add a bit more after.

4) Turn up the heat on high after you’ve mixed the above ingredients for a couple minutes.

5) Saute each of the following for about a minute before adding the next vegetable (the order of the vegetables is very important! But you can add any vegetable you like to your stir fry):

– Celery

– Onion

– Red bell pepper and frozen vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, peas, carrots, corn)

– At this point, add a little water if necessary (if the sauce has dried up)

– Mushrooms

6) Enjoy your vegetables over wild rice (again, it was the only kind of rice I had – and it tasted really good with the veggies!)

What’s your favourite basic recipe? Do you lack any fundamental kitchen knowledge? What’s your cooking style? Do you add different ingredients to your stir fry?

*I know, I know – you’re not supposed to ever cook EVOO on high heat. My bad.