It’s not like me to post two recipes in one day and I wasn’t planning on sharing my dinner but it was just so amazingly better-than-expected that I couldn’t keep it to myself!
I bought purple broccoli the other day because, uhh, it was purple! Broccoli is my all-time favourite vegetable and being purple only made this bunch even more awesome. One of my favourite ways to cook broccoli is in a stir fry, so I raided my fridge for some more stir-fryable goodies.
Now, British asparagus has just come in to season and I can finally justify paying the extortionate asparagus prices for the big, fat, crisp stalks that are locally grown. No more flimsy, floppy, lasts-one-day stuff.
Add some tofu, garlic, chilli and sesame to the mix and well, I thought I’d died and gone to stir-fry heaven.
If you get as excited about broccoli as I do, try this one out. I promise your taste buds will love you for it.
Asparagus & Purple Broccoli Stir-Fry with Tofu
Serves 1
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
1 small red chilli, de-seeded and diced
200g tofu, pressed and cubed
4-6 asparagus stalks, trimmed*
100g purple sprouting broccoli spears, trimmed
1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
Sesame seeds
Pepper to season
Method
1. Heat olive oil in large pan or wok. Add garlic and chilli and fry for 1-2 minutes, until starting to brown. Add tofu and fry for further 2-3 minutes, turning regularly.
2. Add broccoli and asparagus, then drizzle with sesame oil and soy sauce. Fry, stirring frequently, for 3-4 minutes until browning. (NB: if asparagus stalks are thin, add about 2 minutes after broccoli.) Stir in sesame seeds and season with pepper as desired.
Serve over rice.
*I once saw on a cooking show (I think maybe it was a Jamie Oliver show) the best way to ‘trim’ asparagus. Rather than just cutting off the dry end, simply bend each stalk gently until it snaps and discard anything below the break as this is not fresh. Once snapped, cut to size. My asparagus was so fresh that only about an inch snapped off each stalk. The stalks were still so long and thick (heh) that I cut them in half again for better bite-sized pieces.
Enjoy!
Looks so yummy! I do that with my asparagus too! We must have seen the same show 🙂
Haha, I’ve used that tip ever since I heard it. Just a pity I don’t actually remember where it came from… :p
Deli!
Thanks! 🙂
Didn’t your mother tell you that about asparagus? Polly told me. It was very impressed. Took me years to work out how to cook asparagus so your way ahead. Maybe because my mother never cooked it, only used tinned which is disgusting. Now I love asparagus.
Mum
Haha, sorry Mum – pretty sure it was Jamie Oliver or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall that taught me (but apparently it’s more well-known than I thought)! I don’t remember really eating (let alone cooking) much asparagus at home, probably because I thought I didn’t like it. Silly me!
I did give you credit in a recent post for the freezer-bag oil technique. 😉
Thanks for the recipe! It looks great! I’m about to head to the market and now I’ll be sure to pick up some asparagus! Here’s a link to my blog, i’m sure I’ll have some asparagus filled posts up soon! http://voyagingvegetarian.wordpress.com/
Thanks – I’m so addicted to asparagus right now! I’ll check out your site. =)