Dinner in a Jiff? A Quick Sauté of Vegetables

On a recent evening, I got home and I was tired. It had been a long day, and I didn’t want to spend much time cooking. But as people who know me know, I don’t like spending money on delivery unless I’m really desperate (or craving something). So I rooted around in my fridge for something to whip up. I found that I had some eggplants, kale, and basil*. I also had some onions and rice in the pantry.

What was I going to make? A quick vegetable sauté with Asian flavors. It would only take about 15 minutes, and it would be extremely flavorful and delicious.

Years ago, my mother told me that Japanese soup base (as seen in this previous post) is great for all kinds of things. Use it as a salad dressing, no oil needed. Of course, use it as a dip for soba. Here, I used it as a sauce base for my sauté. It’s extremely umami-dense and requires nothing else to be added to the dish.

I washed the vegetables and diced the eggplants and kale into 1-inch cubes/pieces. I diced a small onion. I ripped the basil into small pieces. I cooked the onion in oil until sweated, added the other vegetables, and two table spoons of the soup base. I then added about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water, and let the whole thing cook down (covering for part of the time) until the sauce had reduced to the state you see above.

I separately made a pot of rice. Done! There was dinner, and pretty healthy too.

*I originally purchased the Italian basil for a tomato salad and had some left over, but when you’ve got no Thai basil, Italian basil will do just as well!