Steam-fried veg - with potatoes

[mific]

This is a frequent dinner for me. It's not actually stir fried as I only have a ceramic cooktop, so I don't know what the correct term would be - a steam-fry? It's one-pan, easy, and delicious. I always have made it, but recently I started adding in potatoes and kumara (sweet potatoes). Because potatoes are the best! It's significantly upped the yum factor of these stir fries/stews. 

Ingredients:
chop or slice a panful of various vegetables, depending what you have available. e.g. this dinner had kale, red onion, garlic clove, carrot, kumara, broccoli, potato, orange capsicum. Other veg I often use when available are green beans, asparagus, cauli, brussel sprouts, frozen peas, cabbage. 

Directions:
Slice/chop smaller or more thinly the things that take a bit longer to cook, so it all cooks at once. e.g. the carrots, potato, kumara. 
Add flavourings as preferred. I used salt, black pepper, 1/2 tsp MSG, 1 tablespoon garlic olive oil, 1 tablespoon Tamari, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp hot sauce. Another time I used a Moroccan spice mix instead of the Asian flavours, and that was great too. 

Put the pan on medium to low heat, add 3/4 cup water, cover with a ventilated lid. Once it's simmering, turn heat to low. Make sure steam can evaporate, e.g. have the lid slightly off. Leave it to cook for 10 min then check and stir it. Cook about another 10 min until almost all the water has gone and there's a little sticky sauce. Easy to burn it at this stage, in fact the ideal result is when it's caramelised and has almost started burning, but achieving that is usually pure luck! The veg should be cooked now - make sure the potato and carrot chunks are done. Pile into a bowl and eat. Easy, and very tasty! Also great with 1 or 2 quartered hard boiled eggs stirred in at the end. The trick is to steam the veg so they're just cooked, not mushy, and so all the water is gone. 

before cooking	after cooking