This isn’t really cooking, but it uses my favourite ingredients. Steam-frying the asparagus and boiling the quail eggs is basically the bulk of the work, so it’s very simple. Steam-frying is a good way to cook tougher vegetables, like carrot, bamboo and asparagus whilst still only cooking lightly, with little oil. If you combine extra-virgin olive oil with water and minced garlic, you can steam-fry vegetables quickly. They retain most of their vitamins and the olive oil, if combined with water remains at a stable temperature, so it doesn’t alter much nutritionally. But be very careful of ‘spitting water’, you only use a little oil in the water.
It’s an alternative to frying with olive oil (which is a no-no). The quail egg garnish can include anything you fancy really, this one is a combination of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, finely sliced red onion, fresh coriander, finely diced red pepper, cherry tomatoes and fresh red chilli (and tonnes of minced garlic and ginger and any other of your delicious seasonings of course).