Garlic-chili paste (or how to make veggies more exciting)

In a valiant attempt to use a great deal of the CSA vegetables before the next crop arrives tomorrow, last night I threw together a vegetable stir-fry with whatever seemed appropriate in the fridge for a stir-fry:

- green beans
- a red pepper (no, not from the CSA, but in the fridge nonetheless)
- green onions
- spinach
- garlic scapes
- ginger

What made this dinner delicious - and worth making again - was the addition of Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce. After sauteeing everything up to a suitable tenderness, I just added some soy sauce and a generous spoonful of the chili garlic sauce, and you'd have thought I slaved over the sauce on the stir fry for ages.

The sauce isn't really hot - honest. If it were, I would not be singing its praises. It had just enough heat to make the dish interesting, and was simultaneously sweet and garlicky and vinegary. Which makes sense when you look at the ingredients. Sure, it's not that low in sodium, but a small spoonful in a large pan of veggies can't add up to that much salt per serving. I seem to remember a version of it being offered as a topping for some onion pancakes P and I had at a Chinese restaurant in Edmonton, and when I make the pancakes again, this will definitely be on the table with them.

As an encore use, tonight I sauteed the zucchini from last week's CSA, and at the last minute added a bit of the chili garlic sauce. Delicious! The only danger now is that I'll use this condiment so much we'll get sick of it...though that doesn't seem likely that soon.