I am trying to bring art into my cooking, and always enjoy finding a new and beautiful food. Especially a healthy one.
My husband and I ventured into a new restaurant, and the primary vegetarian choice there was something called Lotus Root. Having a choice of …one thing, I decided to try lotus root. It turned out to be a lovely and tasty dish. Much better than my husband’s carnivorous fare, by the way! I researched the nutritional info on lotus root, only to find that lotus is not only pretty, it’s HEALTHY and versatile. You can stir fry it, eat it raw, add it to stews and soups, and much more, and it has the nutritional profile of a super food, lots of good healthy stuff. -And so began my quest to find lotus root – FRESH lotus root, not dried.
A WONDERFUL Ojai health food store named Westridge Market, thanks to their AMAZING produce manager Robin, special ordered it for me and had it on their shelves in less than 24 hours. WOW! Let’s hear it for small town America! SPECIAL KUDOS TO WESTRIDGE MARKET! THANK YOU ROBIN!
I wanted to support this lovely market that found this hard-to-find Lotus Root for me, so I did all my shopping there that day. Robin the produce manager introduced me to some fun new things, like Watermelon Beets and Kohlrabi. A recipe idea began forming in my mind. Here are some of the things I purchased at Westridge that day, that form much of the basis of this recipe:
Some of the Ingredients
In this photo you can see the lotus root – it’s the white item in the back with all the holes. For this recipe, I used both lotus roots in the package. This recipe will serve two super generously and up to four fairly comfortably.
The lotus root came fresh but shrink wrapped and already peeled, which I think might be good thing. From the web it appears that cleaning lotus root on your own could be a bear due to the holes, so having the hard part done of cleaning the holes didn’t bother me a bit! You will also see the watermelon beet and kohlrabi, one sweet onion, two tangerines, a bottle of soy sauce, some spaghetti noodles (you can use any type of noodle, or even none, the lotus root holds its own). You will also see one of my all time fav ingredients – so flavorful that using them is almost like cheating – shitaki mushrooms. Not on this photo but taken from my home supplies are minced garlic, minced ginger, a cup of grapefruit juice, 2 tablespoons flour, one fuji apple, about two cups of sugar snap peas (you can use any vegetable that can be stir fried, which is just about any vegetable!), olive oil (about one third cup), toasted sesame seed oil (about one third cup), some yummie ginger-blackberry balsamic (any high end balsamic is nice), 2 cups of veggie broth, one veggie bullion cube, and blue agave nectar. For ‘hardware’ you’ll need a large (and I mean LARGE 12+”) covered saute pan/skillet/wok for sauteeing/stir frying and (only if you want sauce) you will also need a sauce pan with lid.
I call the recipe I made up “Lotus Root Magic”
LOTUS ROOT MAGIC
Here’s what I did:
In your stir fry/sautee/skillet/pan, coat the bottom with olive oil and then begin to sautee the minced ginger and minced garlic. Mmmmmm smells GREAT!
Clean and half an onion, and then slice each half into 1/4 inch thick slices. Perfection not needed here. Add the onion to the stir fry pan. Toss it about a bit. Drizzle with balsamic, a few artistic lines of drizzle of balsamic will do. Toss it about a bit some more. Lower heat and cover the stir fry pan, and mix the ingredients occasionally as you prepare the rest of this recipe.
If you’re going to add noodles to this dish, get the noodles going now. You’re on your own for how to boil water/prep noodles 🙂 Your noodles should be finished a wee bit before the rest of the dish is ready for them – that’s fine – when your noodles are done, put them in a strainer and let them…drain.
Now the fun stuff:
THE MAIN EVENT: Wash thoroughly and then slice lotus root (about 1/8″ thick):
Sliced Beautiful Lotus Root
LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL THE SLICED LOTUS ROOT IS!
Add the lotus root to the onion and then add some toasted sesame oil over the lotus root – you don’t want to drown the dish, but you want to probably use about 1/3 cup toasted sesame seed oil.
After everything in the sautee pan has simmered together a bit and gotten to know each other (about 5 minutes of you mixing the contents), add a generous squirt blue agave nectar.
While the above is simmering, clean and crudely chop the kohlrabi and thinly slice the lovely watermelon beet:
Sliced Watermelon Beet and Kohlrabi
How gorgeous is that watermelon beet?
Add the kohlrabi and the watermelon beet to the stir fry mixture and mix well with everything else.
Clean and crudely chop the Fuji apple and add that to the stir fry pan.
Clean and add sugar snap peas (or snow peas or any other stir fry veggies)
Gently clean and slice the shitaki mushrooms and add that to the stir fry mixture as well.
If you’re wondering what all this looks like, LOOK AT THIS:
Gorgeous Stir Fry
Is that not spectacular?
So you could sautee/stir fry all that until it’s tender, or you can go on at this point and make your favorite sauce. Fyi, if you’re adding noodles, you should probably add sauce.
SAUCE (optional): Here’s the sauce I made up for this particular dish, and my husband loves it, that’s a good sign:
In small pan
add 2 cups veggie broth and 3 capfulls soy sauce
Bring to boil (stir occasionally) and then add
1 vegetarian bullion cube (yes, we’re making this STRONG) (or you can use a heaping tablespoon Better than Bullion vegetarian)(either way, this is not a low sodium dish, but otherwise (in my opinion) it’s awesomely healthy)
After all that has dissolved and is blended together, gently stir in 2 tbs flour, a bit at a time. The two tbs flour makes it just a wee bit thicker, but not super thick. This is not a gravy, it’s just a light sauce. Keep on stirring! Work to get all (OK, you can cheat here – most) of the lumps out of the sauce, continuing to stir.
Here’s the secret yummie part: Add in a generous 1/4 cup grapefruit juice. Stir a bit. Whooohooo – taste that sauce!
Add the sauce from the sauce pan into the stir fry pan. Gently stir everything together. Let it all simmer and dance together over a low heat. You don’t want to burn the sauce (or anything else for that matter). Just let all the goodness simmer together stir occasionally.
After you feel that all the ingredients are best friends (thoroughly mixed, tender to your taste, etc), add your noodles and stir in noodles under low heat let. Give the noodles lots of time to absorb all the juices and heat and yummie symphony of flavors. Here is what it looked like in my pan, after sauce and noodles added and stirred:
Add Noodles of choice
Gorgeous as that is, we’re not done yet.
Peel the two mandarin oranges and separate each wedge, pull off any stringy things.
Here’s how I plated my dish – I serve it on a dish with a slight Asian motif, with mandarin orange slices just placed around the outside edge.
The Final Plate
OMG – SUBLIME!
Voila!
