Try my recipe for light, delicious stir-fry with shrimp, scallops, edamame

Few would argue it’s an eating time of year. And I, for one, am ready for a break from the bounty.

Rare standing rib roast, succulent roast turkey and glazed ham are delightful, indeed, but sometimes it becomes too much of a good thing.

I’ll share my daughter’s fool-proof recipe for a standing rib roast next week, but for now lighter vegetarian meals and doing without a glass or two of wine each evening has great appeal.

I recently found both wild shrimp and bay scallops, in their frozen state, offered at Heinen’s, so I scooped up bags of both and have combined them for a meal that’s perfect for the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

This recipe is very forgiving, so feel free to substitute the much larger sea scallops for bay scallops, but cut each scallop in half before cooking. The wild versions of these seafoods have much more depth of flavor than the farm-raised versions,but farm-raised will work if you can’t find wild.

It’s a stir-fry — ideal for quick cooking this busy time of year — and it’s accented with good-for-you edamame beans, which are heart-healthy soybeans in pods. I also threw in about one-fourth cup of finely chopped hazelnuts I had leftover from making a Calvados marinated Camembert cheese topped with hazelnuts. If you’d like that recipe, shoot me an email (jpodolak@news-herald.com).

I made this stir-fry without first shelling the shrimp because my husband and I would need to use our hands to heat the edamame anyway. The pods are split open and discarded while the dainty beans inside are sucked out. It can be messy, so serve this dish with plenty of napkins and good bread to soak up the sauce in which it is cooked.

For that sauce, I depended on the line of sauces made by Kikkoman — available at many grocery stores. I used its stir-fry sauce, but others also would be fine.

This dish would be good served over noodles or freshly cooked rice, but I served it to the two of us just as it came hot from my wok, and it was delicious. This recipe feeds two but is easy to double if your household is bigger than mine.

 

Janet’s Shrimp and Scallop Stir-Fry

Ingredients

1 small onion, chopped

⅓ cup peanut oil (or grapeseed oil)

1 cup frozen uncooked wild shrimp, defrosted

1 cup frozen uncooked bay scallops, defrosted

1 cup frozen edamame beans, defrosted

 

½ cup Kikkoman stir-fry sauce

⅓ cup chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger

¼ cup finely chopped hazelnuts

 

Instructions

Heat oil in wok or high-sided saute pan over medium heat.

Swirl it around to evenly coat the pan then stir in chopped onion and cook until translucent.

Remove onion and set aside.

Raise heat to medium-high.

Add shrimp, scallops and edamame beans to wok.

Stir briskly a few minutes until shrimp becomes pink.

Add stir-fry sauce, reserved sauteed onion and flat-leaf parsley.

Continue to stir and cook, lowering heat to medium.

Add chopped garlic, ginger and hazelnuts and cook, mixing well, for a few more minutes.

Serve over rice or noodles or as is with a side of bread.