Stir-frying is quick and easy, and it suits winter vegetables. Hugo Arnold goes for the chop
Stir-fries are an ideal route to a quick meal. You need a reasonable amount of skill, though. Food that is being stir-fried has to move about: the searing heat ensures cooking, but any lingering and you are likely to end up with black marks. A flick of the wrist is the professional way to keep things on the go: a downward thrust followed by a quick flick and the contents of your wok should, with any luck, be evenly done. And with all the goodness intact.
A sharp knife is essential. How you cut your ingredients is even more important. Slice vegetables thinly, so they cook and pick up flavour, and are mouth-sized. Proteins need to be treated in a similar way. Cut thin slices, so that when they hit the hot metal the meat or fish cooks through - nothing less. Nobody likes their chicken rare.
Noodles or rice? Somehow noodles are more in keeping with this method of cooking, lending themselves more easily to the one-pot route. As with so much in cooking, a little washing-up is one thing, a lot is no fun at all.
This is a good time to use all those little bowls: one for the soy, another for garlic and ginger, yet another for sliced vegetables, grouped according to cookability. And if stir-fries make you think of summer ingredients such as peppers and courgettes, consider that a great deal of China - a home of stir-frying - spends a great deal of its time bathed in weather that is colder than ours. Try turnip, sweet potato or pumpkin - all seasonal treats in their own right.
If you are new to stir-frying, a wok is hardly essential. A frying pan will do, at the start. Soon, however, the contents are likely to spill over its sides, which gets frustrating. Woks are cheap - not quite as chips, but not far from it. You can get all fancy-pants with woks, but there seems little point. The essence is contained in the thin metal, which transfers the heat almost instantly. A wooden handle facilitates that flicking motion, but, after that, there is not a great deal to it - although a scoop is handy, particularly when you are cooking for more than two.
Take care with the soy and other condiments. You can always add more, but you can never take away. Which is a reason to taste - or slurp - often.
USE THE STALKS A lot of the flavour of coriander is contained in the stem, which is far more tolerant of heat than the leaves. And as supermarket coriander can be very mild, you need all the flavour you can get. Finely slice the stems and add them to the hot oil at the start of the cooking, along with the garlic and ginger.