Scallop & Shiitake Stir-Fry

Whole scallops, shiitake mushrooms, baby bok choy, translucent onions and fragrant garlic. Served with yellow sweet potato (which I recently learned is a very different thing from a Yam), and brown rice with grains, made haole style.

I've had the bok choy sitting in my refridgerator for over a week. Most of it was rotting, but I salvaged the good pieces. I am a bit disappointed with the scallops. They are much fishier than expected, but the texture is wonderful. I'm also quite pleased with the rice. The whole thing feels very healthy, and just salty enough.
The Rice

Ingredients:
oil
1 cup brown rice and grains (I believe there are kidney beans, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, black/purple beans, oats, barley, and a package of what basically looks like bird food)
1 cup water
1/2 an onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 package dashi
black pepper
parsley
1 small sweet potato

How:

1. Soak grains in water, at least 30 minutes. This makes them softer and more palatable later. Drain.
   
2. Fry garlic on very low heat until fragrant. Add onions. Add sugar if desired. Cook until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add pepper to taste.
   
3. Turn heat up to high. Add drained grains. Stir until crackling and translucent. Add 1 cup water. Add dashi.
   
4. Add whole sweet potato to the pot. Cover and cook until done, about 20 minutes.

And the scallops, mushrooms, and bok choy were made in pretty much the same way. My favorite stir-fry sauce is as follows:

Favorite Stir-Fry Sauce
Approximately equal parts of:

• light soy sauce
• sesame oil
• oyster sauce
• sugar

You can also add the following:

• miso
• chinese 5-spice
  
• white pepper
• black pepper
• dark (regular) soy sauce

Mix ingredients in a cup, then add to your stir-fry at the end. Use a wok and a real flame for best results.

Wokked Shiitake and Baby Bok Choy Stir-Fry with Bacon

Finally, something I cook turns out GOOD!

All this experimentation with Indian food has been rather depressing--but I haven't given up yet! I'm going to make Chicken Tikka Masala (my all-time favorite) tomorrow. Back to the dish at hand. I think it turned out well because these are the flavors I've grown up with, and I know how I want the dish to turn out at the end, and I am using cooking techniques well-known to me through watching my parents.

At JA (which I JUST discovered!), I got 6 beautiful shiitake mushrooms for 190 yen. Awesome! Today at Jusco they had the bag of 5 heads of baby bok choy for 138 yen, and the bacon was 500 yen for 6 packs of 2 slices each. Hooray for beautiful fresh vegetables!

Now, then!

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
2-inches ginger, cut into finger-joint sized pieces
1/2 onion, chopped
2 slices bacon, cut into pieces
2 slices canadian bacon, chopped
4 heads Baby Bok Choy,washed and cut into 3" pieces
6 shiitake mushrooms

Sauce:
2 tablespoons Oyster Sauce (Lee Kum Kee brand. It's the most expensive by far, but it is far, far, superior in taste and quality to the other brands)
2 tablespoons Chinese Soy Sauce ("light/less dark soy sauce")
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil
(I mix it all together in a cup)

Method:

1. On LOW heat, fry bacon with olive oil. If your pan is too hot, the bacon does not get crispy, it just stays soft! While bacon is frying, chop garlic, onion, and ginger then add them to the pan, in that order. I always wait until the garlic is golden brown before I add the onions. Optional: add a pinch of sugar to the onions to make them extra sweet and carmelized. Wait until garlic and onion are carmelized in color.

2. Add shiitake mushrooms. Meanwhile, wash and cut baby bok choy. Add to pan. stir occassionally for a few minutes so that it doesn't burn. When the bok choy has almost all turned dark green and when the shiitake look slightly limp, pour the sauce over everything. Let cook a few more minutes.

Serve over rice. Or just eat it plain like I did, if you forgot to make rice in your excitement over the quality of your fresh vegetables! The walnut flower-bread you see in the picture was more like dessert. It was dense, sweet, pastry-like, and full of yummy nuts!

Total price: 544 yen + whatever it cost for the sauce ingredients