Vegetables Stir-fry

Few dishes are as simple as the stir-fry, which just requires some basic chopping, a few seasonings and a hot pan. As Martha Rose Shulman explains in this week’s Recipes for Health, the vegetables on sale at the farmers’ market can inspire variations on the recipes offered here.
At the end of summer, the vegetables that I most love to stir-fry are abundant in farmers’ markets: fresh corn, sweet and hot peppers of every color, green beans and eggplant, among others. I buy on impulse, then bring them home and decide on combinations. I match some vegetables with meats like chicken or shrimp, some with tofu, and others I stir-fry on their own.

Don’t be put off by the number of ingredients in some of this week’s recipes. Measure them out whenever it is convenient: a certain amount of contemplative time goes into preparing stir-fries. Once everything is ready, the cooking is done in minutes, so get the rice cooked before you begin and be ready to eat before you turn on the burner.
As always I turn to the stir-fry guru Grace Young for inspiration. Her book, “Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge,” is the best guide to the subject I have seen, whatever your level of experience.