Help! Sauce this for me. I have baby bok choy, baby leeks, mushrooms, a red pepper,

[Skidmore]

a yellow pepper, and some nice center cut pork and jasmine rice. I sorta want to make a stir fry of some sort but am not certain about this combination. What kind of sauce or seasoning would you use?

[hippywife]

1. Hmmm...

off hand I would say soy, grated ginger, honey, garlic, red pepper flake, a little cilantro, maybe a wee bit of five spice. I usually end up mixing this kind of thing on the fly.

Edited to add that a little pineapple juice and chunks are also good in this kind of sauce.

[Tektonik]

2. depends if you want it to be a light sauce or a velvety one

I'd personally make a mushroom sauce (taking some of the mushrooms from the dish and blending it into the sauce) and serve it over the entire dish.

[Warpy]

4. I'd go with a light sauce

for ingredients that shouldn't be overpowered. Homestyle Chinese food is not swimming in sauce the way restaurant food is.

Aromatics should be ginger and leek. Seasonings should be white pepper, soy and a few drops of toasted sesame oil at the end.

The tender spring veggies and light pork should be the stars. The sauce needs to hide in the background, the ginger and pepper adding just enough zing to bring out the other flavors.

[Tektonik]

6. If I had those ingredients I wouldn't stir fry it

I prefer rich, hearty foods, but I'd make a Suprême sauce and omit the red pepper.

With the pork, chances are it's very lean (like all American pork tends to be) and could use all the help it could get. Also I detest plain rice so I'd tend to use the sauce for it (not swimming in sauce, but enough to coat the grains).

If it was beef and not pork, maybe one could get away with not having sturdy sauce, but most pork is usually bland.

[Skidmore]

7. Ok, Warpy, I juiced a couple of blood oranges and

added the juice and soy and white pepper and ginger and garlic (because there is no life without a little garlic) with the sesame seed oil. It was yummy and a very pretty dish.

[hippywife]

8. That sounds

really wonderful! Glad it was a success!

[Warpy]

9. That sounds beautiful as well as perfectly suited

to the ingredients. Better write that one down for future reference.

[The empressof all]

3. We like spicy

I'd do Rice Wine, Rice Vinegar, sugar, garlic, Spicy Oyster Sauce, chicken broth, Red chili paste and a little corn starch slurry. I'd finish with a little chili oil or sesame oil

[grasswire]

5. your ingredients are great

And isn't it fun to have all these various takes on them?

In this stir fry, I would use garlic and ginger and hot pepper flakes if you want them, then sesame oil, soy sauce, and a bit of sherry at the very last. If you want a real sauce, you could use a cornstarch-water-soy slurry at the end. But I think just the glistening ingredients are sauced enough.

Oh, one other thing. A sprinkle of sesame seeds really adds punch to a stir fry.