Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Cookbook Challenge Week 39 TV Chef

Book: Rick Stein’s Seafood Odyssey by Rick Stein Recipe: Char-grilled Snapper with Mango, Prawn and Chilli Salsa

Rick Stein is the man. I totally loved his recent (recent on the ABC anyway) Far East Odyssey. But this is from his original Seafood Odyssey book which is full of really great seafood recipes. It’s definitely a must-have for seafood lovers (now some nice PR person please pay for that blurb of unsolicited advertising).

This dish is so awesomely simple. Well, the fact that I bastardised it so much made it even easier (note my title and Rick’s title?) Unfortunately, I couldn’t find snapper fillet on the day but I figured barramundi would do the trick. And I forgot to add prawns to the salsa but it turned out good anyway.

Fish for two (not Rick’s recipe):

1. 2 x barramundi fillets
2. salt & pepper
3. a dash of olive oil
4. 1 mango, sliced into cubes and scooped out the flesh*
5. 1 avocado, diced
6. 2 spring onions, chopped
7. 1 fresh coriander stalk, chopped
8. 1/2 red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
9. juice of 1/2 a lime
10. pinch of salt

Add the mango, avocado, chilli, lime juice, spring onion, coriander and salt and toss together.

Heat a little bit of olive oil in a frying pan. Season the fish fillet with salt and freshly cracked pepper. Fry the fish on both sides for about 1-2 minutes until the outside is golden brown. Serve with the salsa.

* I honestly thought the Australian way of eating a mango is a much better way than the Thai way of peeling the mango first and then slicing out the cheeks. So cumbersome!

I totally have a sick fascination with cleaning out squid. I never buy pre-cleaned squid tubes or rings. There is no fun in that. I like to buy a whole squid from a fish monger and then clean it out myself. I like the sliminess of ink sacs, cardboardy backbone and half-digested fish.

Anyway, enough about my ridiculous seafood habit. Yes I started this post ages back and no now is not the time. While we are back to the normal aesthetically pleasant white background, I bring bad news. My grandmother is really unwell so I’m off to Thailand for a week or for as long as it takes. Good news is I will be surrounded by family and all the lovely Thai food but bad news is it won’t be a good family moment.

I leave you with a simple, classic Thai dish since I have written most of it before now anyway:

Serves 1 or 2 as shared meal

1. 1 fresh squid, cleaned and sliced into bite-sized pieces
2. 2 large cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
3. 2 large cloves of garlic (again)
4. 1/2 tsp of white peppercorn
5. 2 fresh coriander roots, cleaned
6. 1 tbsp of fish sauce
7. a pinch of sugar
8. 2 tbsp of coriander leaves, chopped

Fry the sliced garlic in some oil until golden. Set aside. Pound the rest of the garlic, peppercorn, coriander into a paste. Heat oil in a wok until smoking, add the garlic/coriander/pepper paste and stir fry for half a minute. Add the squid, stir. Add fish sauce and sugar and stir fry for about another minute. Sprinkle with coriander leaves and crunchy garlic.

Be back when I’m back.

Book: Thai Street Food by David Thompson Theme: Beans Recipe: Crunchy Omelet of Mussels

Week 4 of the Cookbook Challenge! Personally, I feel like this week is a bit of a cheat really. I did use David Thompson’s new Thai Street Food as an inspiration and a guide but I deviated from his recipe so far that it practically was something I made up. Ah well. In fact, I’m even slightly indignant about calling it ‘Crispy Omelet’ as he did because as far as I’m concern egg is an optional ingredient in this dish. I think that’s the main difference between this dish and the Fujian oyster omelet. Well, that, and the fact the mussels, not oysters, are used.

But anyway, I love Thai Street Food. At first I thought, ‘What a silly idea! Aren’t all Thai food sold on the street anyway? What’s the difference?’ Until I had a chance to really flip through the book (I mean the thing weighs a tonne! Who randomly flips through a book that weighs a tonne?) and listened to his explanation of what he meant by street food. ‘Street food in Thailand’, he said, ‘as opposed to home cooking, are those food that are eaten throughout the day as snacks and main meals where a portion is not made for sharing. A single dish food, if you like.’ and that’s when it came to me that I would never find such a book that has all of these recipes. That was when I bought it. And David Thompson signed it. In Thai. Isn’t that cute?

But back to this dish. My mum used to take me around to her favourite hoy tod vendor on the street (of course) near the market where we used to live. It was one of her favourite street vendors (mine was the khao mun gai, chicken rice, lady) She would have hers with extra mussels, no egg and with picked sliced chilli and fish sauce. No Sriracha sauce. I guess it’s one of those childhood street food memory I grew up on. I swear Australia seriously lacks street food culture. You can never be a foodie country without street food culture. No sir-ree. And drinking beer and eating chips outside a pub on a Summer day does not count. Read the rest of this entry »

This is part 3/3 of this week’s $20 Mexican Feast.

This is a really easy side dish. I looked up a few recipes on the internet and came up with this one. I used my rice cooker and it takes minimum of two cups of rice (there’s always leftover rice in this household! I had this for breakfast with bacon and eggs the next day). This makes a lot of rice! Enough for 4-6 people.

1. 1/2 onion, sliced
2. 1/2 red capsicum, cut into strips
3. 1/2 yellow capsicum, cut into strips
4. 1 coriander (4-5 stalks), chopped
5. 1 tsp tumeric
6. 1 tsp ground coriander
7. 1 tsp ground cumin
8. 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or chilli powder)
9. 2 cups of basmati rice
10. 4 cups of water

(in the rice cooker)

Turn the rice cooker on ‘Cook’, add 2 tbsp of oil to heat up (you might need to hold down your rice cooker button), fry the onion and capsicum for a minute. Add the spices and rice. Stir until the rice is heated through. Sprinkle with coriander. Add water (this depends on your rice and rice cooker, so you’ll need to adjust accordingly) and cook in the rice cooker.

If you don’t have a rice cooker, do the same on a stove. Add water and cover the rice and turn the heat down to simmer and for to cook for 10 minutes. Rest the rice off the heat for another 10 minutes.

(Chicken and Tortilla Soup, topped with avocado, lime and coriander)

This is part 1 out of 3 from this week’s $20 Feast.

The main reason I wanted to do this soup is because it’s fabulous using leftover roast chicken and that’s what I had plenty of. We were at the supermarket late the other night and came across a nice looking barbecued chicken so we thought why not. They make really good sandwiches and other things.* If you don’t have leftover roast chicken, just use some fresh chicken breast instead. Poach it in the stock first and then slice and add to the soup.

So what you’ll need (this makes four servings of soup):

1. 1 litre of chicken stock
2. 1 tbsp of butter
3. 1 stalk of celery, chopped (leaves reserved for stock)
4. 1 small carrot, diced (peel reserved for stock)
5. 1/2 onion, diced
6. 1 garlic, chopped
7. 1 fresh coriander  (4-5 stalks), leaves reserved, stalked chopped
8. 1.5 cups of leftover roast or barbecued chicken, no skin
9. 1 tsp ground cumin
10. 1 tsp ground coriander
11. 1/2 tsp chilli powder
12. 1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
13. 1/3 canned diced tomato
14. 1 tbsp tomato paste
15. 2 corn tortilla
16. wedges of lime, to serve
17. 1/2 avocado, cubed to serve

Making chicken stock

(freshly made chicken stock)

So first things first, the stock. I find that supermarket barbecue chicken bits (skin, wings, frame, bones) make fantastically rich chicken stock. And fast too! I placed a litre of filtered water, handful of chicken bits (that we didn’t really want to eat, no stuffing though!), some carrot peels, some young yellow celery leaves (don’t add the dark green stalks) and tough stalks. You can add a bit of stock powder if you like, I tend to do that instead of salt. Bring the stock to boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Skim off any fat.

Putting the soup together

Heat some butter in a saucepan and sautee onion, celery, coriander stalks and carrot on medium heat until soft. Add bay leaf, garlic and chicken. Turn the heat up and stir for a minute or so until heated through. Add ground cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder, canned tomato and tomato paste. Add 3/4 of the  stock and bring to boil. Simmer for 20 minutes. Taste and season accordingly. If desired, add more stock.

Garnishing the soup

Take the two corn tortill and either cut them into strips and deep them or spray some cooking oil and microwave on high for about 1 minute. Once cooled, the tortilla will be come crispy.

Cut avocado into cubes.

To serve, ladel the soup into a soup bowl. Top with avocado and the crispy tortilla (crack them if they are still whole) Garnish with some coriander leaves and serve with a wedge of lime squeeze over the soup. ¡Buen apetito!

* That chicken ended up being numerous sandwiches, this soup, chicken a la king, and barbecued chicken and veggie stir-fry. Talk about stretching one chookie!

I based this on  Kylie Kwong’s recipe in her My China book – it didn’t really turn out the way I thought it would be. It’s a bit plain on its own so it’s best served as a side dish. The recipe was called stir-fried rice noodles with bean sprouts and ginger but it, strangely enough, didn’t contain any ginger in it!

Instead of normal mung bean sprouts, I use the soy bean sprouts – I like the nutty flavour that it has and it makes the dish a little bit more substantial. I start by adding a bit of oil to a very hot wok and stir fry the soy bean sprouts with a little bit of salt. The soy bean sprouts will take substantially longer than normal bean sprouts to cook. I just keep tasting it as I go along. Add a little bit of water, if necessary.

Once the sprouts are cooked, add 1 tbsp of chopped ginger, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of sugar, 1 tbsp of oyster sauce and 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar. Add the rice noodles and stir quickly until the noodles are coated with the sauce. Have a quick taste and adjust the flavour as necessary.

Push the noodles aside, add a bit of oil and crack an egg onto the hot bit of oil. Let the egg set for about 1/2 a minute before scrambling the eggs into the noodles. Sprinkle the noodles with 3 tbsp of chopped coriander leaves and 1 tbsp of chopped spring onions.

Serve as a side dish. I had it as a main dish and I think it would be better off alongside something else.