6. Chinese recipe: Hong Lu Deng (stir fry potato, green pepper, tomato)

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红绿灯

Chinese stir fried potato, green pepper and tomato

Chinese hong lu deng

Ha, ha… If I tell you the meaning of this dish in Chinese, you are going to laugh…. :)) Hong Lv Deng literally means ‘green and red light’ (Hong as red, Lu as green, and deng as light), it normally refers to ‘traffic light’ in Chinese. I have no idea how people first came up with this name, I would guess it must have been only after traffic lights were first used in China!  :))

I cannot think of any dishes that deserve the adjective ‘home made’ more than this one. I don’t think I have ever cooked it for my friends: it is not a ‘super fancy’ dish that I can proudly present to my guests, but it is perfect for a cozy home dining table. :))

It is a very easy-to-cook dish. In fact, it is the very first Chinese dish my lovely ‘him’ learned to cook, and now he became an expert in cooking it. :))

Ok, the dish is made up with (yellowish) potato, green pepper and red tomato.

The recipe: Hong lu deng

Ingredients

Vegetables:

Potato (I use 2-3 medium size Maris Piper potato, it is easy to get the potato soft just before it goes completely mashy.)

Green pepper, one
(As I mentioned before, if you can get the ‘Italian green pepper’ with much thinner skin, it would be great.)

Tomato, two medium size--- Honestly, I am not a big fun of the tomato in the market here, it is difficult to cook in stir-fry dishes at least. I love those that are less juicy, but firmer and more ‘mashy’ inside for cooking, probably it is only because I grew up with that kind, so when I found the same ones in Spain and Italy, you cannot imagine how many of them I ate ... to a point .. I ended up with a horrible stomachache. :)) So here, I use vine tomato, I think the taste is better.

Veg oil (/soy oil), 5 (or 13) spices powder or Spiced water, sichuan pepper powder, salt, white sugar, cooking wine, vegetable essence or MSG (both optional)

Preparation

Peel and chop the potato into thin slices.
Slice the green pepper and tomato.

Stir-frying

1) Place the wok on medium to strong fire, pour in 4-6 table spoons of veg oil.

2) Put quarter tea spoon of sichuan pepper powder and couple of tea spoons of cooking wine in the oil.

 3) Put sliced potato in, mix well with pepper powder. Stir constantly until the potato is softening down. (This can be checked by the change colour of the potato or just use the cooking utensils to give a touch, see if it is soft enough.) Often potato can get dry in the wok, in this case, put a bit water in, or just spiced water.

4) Before potato gets completely soft, put sliced green pepper and tomato in.

5) Let the green pepper and tomato sit for one minute, then put quarter tea spoon of 5 spice powder in (if only you did not put spiced water in in step 3, otherwise skip this,) a bit more than half tea spoon of salt, 1 - 2 tea spoons of light soy sauce, a small pinch of white sugar (to balance the ‘sourness’ from tomato). Mix everything well.

6) Put one-third tea spoon of vegetable essence (or MSG if you like, both optional).
Leave the things in the wok for a bit, until the potato is completely soft, even a bit ‘mashie’, the green pepper is a bit soft, but still crunchy, and tomato gets really soft, juice of tomato becomes nice sauce of the dish-- now, done!

The taste of the dish is --- a bit ‘sour’ from the tomato, a bit ‘mashed’ potato soaked in tomato juice with crunchy green pepper…. Very good to go with boiled rice…. o, You know, I really like the sauce mix the boiled rice.. :))