It was a dark rainy day and that called for a bowl of warm congee/ rice porridge, soupy comfort yet able to fill us up.
This bowl of congee/ rice porridge is flavorful with salmon, complemented by soft-tender mountain yam and crisp-tender celery. It is not just a mass of sticky soft gruel but one which offers textures and layered flavors. The mixture and blend of grains also helps in that perfect congee consistency.
If you enjoy the crunch of Chinese water chestnuts (Eleocharis dulcis), then you may also like the crisp texture of Naga-imo (mountain yam) in this vegetarian stir-fry. Nagaimo is a good source of minerals, Vitamin B1, Vitamin C and dietary fiber, in addition to micro-nutrients e.g. choline and saponin.
Some of these nutritive elements are said to help relieve fatigue. In addition, the viscous substance peculiar to the nagaimo is known to help the body make better use of proteins, aid digestion and fight fatigue.
Once the nagaimo hits the hot pan or wok, the sliminess is reduced - just like when boiled in soups, this gluey, almost-mucilaginous consistency is almost gone at the end of cooking. To reduce loss of essential nutrients, nagaimo does not take a long time to cook.
The key to this stir-fry is to add the celery, bell pepper, nagaimo towards the end of cooking (as these three ingredients can be taken raw, so does not need much time to fully cook them), then do a quick high-heat stir-fry to combine all the ingredients and flavors.
This is a nourishing one-pot dish packed with proteins (mushrooms and tofu) and fiber (mountain yam - Nagaimo， 山药 and celery) adapted from a TV programme. The show particularly highlighted the benefits of mountain yam - Nagaimo and the host-cum-cook used soy milk (in replacement of water) for the added nourishment, as the cooking broth.
With this substantial one-pot dish that is able to stand as a meal, it can substitute carbs-of-the-day.
I deleted more than 10 draft posts (with only titles but no contents) that have been sitting in my drafts folder for the longest time. I have forgotten what I wanted to write about these subject titles. And the longer they stay there, the more lost I get, on what to write about them. D-E-L-E-T-E.
This is a simple stir-fry that I will cut short about the benefits and nutrition of Mountain Yam or Nagaimo) since I have said that before in my other yam recipes.
It is not often that I see edible tuber-llike plants with digestive enzymes such as amylase and diastase that convert starch to sugar and digest carbohydrates. Nagaimo is one of them, also know as Chinese Mountain Yam (山药 Shan Yao, or 淮山 Huai Shan. There is plenty of nutrients in Nagaimo and you should really check them out. When in season, they can be found in Asian Supermarket - Ranch 99, and Japanese Supermarkets - Nijiya and Mitsuwa, in California, USA.
I have done a stir-fry at home before and while I was staying at my friend's place, we also stir-fried these wild yams but it does not seem popular with guys (our husbands) - they do not enjoy the slimy texture! They complained it was weird.
However, when I make soup out of these yams one day ...you know what, hubby did not say anything (a good sign). He just finished the soup. The sliminess seems to have "dissolved"(disappeared) and became really subtle when cooked in a soup. Oh, maybe hubby thought he was drinking Chicken and Potato Soup? NO. They are not the same. The "sliminess" in potatoes is starch but the "sliminess" in these yams is definitely NOT starch but mucilaginous property of proteins.
