Stir Fry Vegetables with Plum Sauce

Flavorful plum sauce encases stir fried vegetables to create an exquisite Asian style dinner!

In menu planning prior to my last grocery shopping, I realized we had not had a stir fry meal in ages. Knowing what we had from our own garden to use I began picking up some of my favorites to stir-fry. Sno peas, on sale mushrooms and of course our crunchy favorite Bok Choy. In addition I made sure I hit the International aisle to look for baby corn.
To make this dinner different than my other stir-fry meals, I decided to take the very ripe plums I had and make a plum sauce. All of the flavors jelled together nicely.

For this recipe use a liquid measuring cup to measure the vegetables where I indicate cups. The meat in this dish was some of the left-over pulled pork I had from our pulled pork dinner. I tossed it in at the very end. It was a great way to use up the left-over pork, but adding meat to this dish is entirely optional.

• 1 can baby corn - drained and rinsed
• 1 cup sno peas
• 1 bunch bok choy - white and some of the green leaves - sliced
• 1 cup garden squash - sliced
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup green or red pepper - slices
• 5-6 ripe plums - pits removed and diced
• 1/2 cup sweet onion - small dice
• 2 garlic cloves - minced
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 1 tbsp. hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp. oil 
• salt to taste

1. Cut your plums to remove the pits, but leave the skin on. Chop up.
2. Dice the onion and mince the garlic.
3. To a small sauce pot, add a touch of oil and add in the onions, garlic and a pinch of salt to sweat down the onion. Stir. Add in the plums and hoisin sauce, cover and cook for about 10 minutes. You can mash up the plums with a masher or back of a spoon. Taste the sauce and adjust for needed salt. Once cooked down, turn off the heat.
4. Turn your attention to the vegetables. Slice them all and keep them separated into piles or in bowls. I used a very large bowl and made piles.
5. Get your wok going and add in a tablespoon or so of oil. Do the squash first. It will caramelize a bit and that's okay.
6. Next add in the pepper and stir fry for a minute or so. Then add in the bok choy and stir-fry for a couple of minutes.
7. Finally add in the mushrooms, sno peas and corn. Keep stirring. Add in the plum sauce and give a good mix.
8. Cook for a few minutes to allow the flavors to meld and until the veggies are cooked to your liking.
9. Serve over your favorite rice. For this dinner I used Jasmine rice and we loved it.

An array of delicious vegetables that all have different flavors and textures came together beautifully in this stir-fry dinner.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with hoisin sauce and it's taste, it has a balanced mix of salty, sweet, and tangy, with a hint of spicy heat. This balanced mixture of flavors makes it the perfect base for many sauces and can be used with a variety of different meats or seafood. Added to the plums was to balance out all of the flavors.

For my plum sauce I decided to leave the skins on, they are really not noticeable once it has cooked down. I am leaving you with some facts about hoisin and plums in Asian cooking.