Quorn and Baby Corn Stirfry with Peanut and Passionfruit Sauce

I was determined to do it today. I’d got paid in cash for a gig last night, I’d had a good class this afternoon, the weather was sunny… it was time to cook. The really fun bit was cycling home and trying to figure out what to do with what I found in the reduced items (yey! to the yellow stickers!) shelf of the big fridge at Tesco’s on my way home from work in Marble Arch.

I bought one each of whatever they had on the shelf, except for the pork loin steaks. Like all good Jewish boys I like the pig, but such thick chunks of it are sometimes a bit too much!

So I got:

Baby Corn, reduced to 79p

Spring Onions, reduced to 55p

2 Lemon & Black Pepper Quorn Escalopes, reduced to £1.35

3 Passion Fruit, reduced to 55p

And I added from home:

Beansprouts

Chunky Peanut Butter

White Wine Vinegar

Soya Sauce

Coriander

I don’t remember the exact thought process, but I’ve been into peanut sauce lately – mainly with rice noodles and cucumber and baby peppers and mint and stuff (basically, the insides of a summer roll, but as a salad) – so I knew I wanted more of that, and the passion fruit… or granadilla as we call it back home, and indeed, the granadillas were from South Africa… they seemed like a good combo with the peanut butter, and some chopped spring onion, and I knew I had some coriander left at home. So for the sauce I mixed in  1 tbs peanut butter, 2 tbs white wine vinegar, 2 tbs soya sauce, the pulp of three granadillas, 3 tbs chopped coriander. And that was it for the sauce.

I love stir-fried baby corn, so that blinds me to other ways of preparing it – is there another way? – and because there was going to be a stir-fry, then the escalopes needed to be sliced up, and there was a bag of beansprouts at home… so that was decided. First I grilled the quorn escalopes for about 20 minutes in the oven. I sliced the baby corns in half down the middle, chopped up some spring onions and fried them until the baby corn started to brown. I sliced the escalopes and threw them into the pan with 2 big handfuls of beansprouts, and fried that on a high heat for a minute. Then I added some soya sauce, half a teaspoon of brown sugar, and a generous pinch of coriander.

Verdict: The flavours were great and the sauce went well with the stir fry. The only problem was that the seeds of the granadilla were a bit to hard. Next time I think I’d use mango, perhaps, or a ripe peach. Later, I tucked into what was left over, and even though it was cold, it was delicious. Which reminds me of the years when I was into cold pizza with cottage cheese, but that’s another story.