With an abundance of broccoli languishing in the bottom of the fridge as I’d forgotten what I’d actually bought it for, and knowing that I had a bag of cashew nuts in the cupboard, I decided to combine them to make a cashew and broccoli stir-fry.

If I’m honest, I’m not a huge fan of stir fries, but the husband is quite partial and if he ever orders one from the local takeaway it usually involves some kind of veg and cashew nuts. So, I was on to a winner.

A lot of the recipes on the web called for the use of blackbean or oyster sauce, but having neither of them, I searched a little more until I came across this broccoli cashew stir-fry recipe  from on Food.com, which pretty much lists the ingredients that I had intended on using in the first place. One change I made was to ignore most of the veg used as I only had broccoli (in abundance) and half a pack of fine green beans. I also added a sliced red chilli as the husband and I like a bit of chilli in our meals.

On the subject of my love of spicy food, my brother and I used to hate chilli when we were kids. The mother used to make the mildest vegetable curry on the planet, but the brother and I used to refuse to eat it – or should I say, try and refuse to eat it. Refusing food was futile in our house as you were made to sit at the table until you did eat it, so your best bet was to tuck in and finish it as quickly as you could. This took me a LONG time to realise, and I was regularly found picking at a plate of food at the dinner table when my siblings, mum and dad had long vacated. But I digress, what I was going to say was, the brother and I have gone from chilli haters to extreme chilli lovers. I am therefore holding out for the boy to stop being so fussy about his food. If I can learn to love chillies he will no doubt learn to eat more than just beige food (rice, pasta, potatoes and chicken) and carrots. Here’s hoping, anyway.

So, back to the stir-fry, it took next to no time to cook, and the husband ate it in record time with the addition of some plain boiled rice.

The verdict from the husband: ‘I’d have that again.’ And he probably will.