Pork with Peppers

When I was a student, I almost lived out of my wok. It was a cheap Ken Hom one from Argos; we all had them, and we all cooked up stirfries with scary frequency, because you could make a little bit of meat go a long way. In my final year as an undergraduate, I cooked with a friend every day and we alternated pasta and stirfries. The pasta rotated between bacon and tomato, tuna and tomato and plain tomato (with veggies); the stirfries contained chicken, bacon or just vegetables. I couldn't have lived without a wok then- it was used more than the oven, although suddenly I recall that we didn't even have an oven in our final year. (Cooking was frowned upon; we were all expected to eat the stodge served up in the college buttery - silly Cambridge word for canteen - even though it was only occasionally particularly edible. (Their speciality was florets en vert et blanc au gratin - broccoli and cauliflower cheese - and a particularly sickly tarragon chicken) Anyway all those years ago I couldn't have imagined that I would have lived as long as I have recently without a wok. I have been stirfrying, but I've been damaging my lovely Le Creuset frying pan. The weekend before this one, we bought a wok in the Fenwicks Household Event, an electric wok with adjustable heat settings that can stirfry in minutes, as opposed to my struggling Le Creuset pan on our admittedly hot gas hob. I've rediscovered the joys of stirfrying: speedy, easy, tasty, easy way of eating veggies. Fast food but good for you.

Simon bought me a little book last week in WHSmith called 'Everyday Wok and Stirfry', a small £3.99 book with 100 recipes in. It's a surprising little gem: it has soups and curries as well as stirfries, and the recipes aren't at all samey. Some of the recipes (like fish with pine nuts or kara-age chicken) are quite different from what you'd expect in a wok recipe book. Anyway tonight we tried a simple traditional stirfry: pork with peppers. It was delicious: fillet of pork, sliced and stirfried with red and yellow peppers, spring onion, ginger, chilli oil and chilli sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce and lime juice, and served with rice noodles and parsley.


I had never cooked rice noodles before without ruining them - in truth, I gave up on them years ago - but these were really good. The dish had lots of flavour and was pleasurably easy to eat as well as to cook! Which was really needed today, because the last couple of days have been professionally and personally tough. A colleague died this weekend and the workplace has become a space of tears and disbelief. I spent yesterday screaming and then having emergency dental treatment, which hopefully means an end to my toothache (and related moaning), although the emergency dentist just stopped the pain; my real dentist (who I am starting to doubt...) takes over again on Wednesday. Just to warn anyone fed up of my dental stories not to read me on Wednesday or Thursday... Anyway, self-pity aside, and back to food, because I can't write about real life without descending into meaningless cliche. Stirfries are comforting because they invigorate as well as satiate; they offer interesting depths of flavour but don't weigh you down. And they are unbelievably easy to cook, even when nothing could be further from your mind.

Pork with Peppers

Serves 4

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp chilli oil
450g pork fillet, sliced thinly
2 tbsp green chilli sauce
6 spring onions, slived
2.5 cm piece fresh ginger, sliced thinly
1 red pepper, sliced
1 yellow pepper, sliced
1 orange pepper, sliced
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp Thai soy sauce
juice of 1.2 lime
4 tbsp chopped parsley
cooked flat rice noodles, to serve

Method:

1. Heat both the oils in a wok. Add the pork in batches and stirfry until browned all over. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
2. Add the chilli sauce, spring onions and root ginger to the wok and stirfry for 1-2 minutes. Add the peppers and stirfry for 2-3 minutes.
3. Return the meat to the wok, stir well and add the fish sauce, soy sauce and lime juice. Cook for a further 1-2 minutes then stir in the parsley and serve with the rice noodles.