Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Sri Lankan rice & curry has to be one of my all time favourite dishes. If you haven’t had it, get yourself to your nearest Sri Lankan grocer or curry shop immediately. It’s exactly what it sounds like – a plate of rice and different types of curries. Normally you’d have a spicy meat curry that balanced out with a few different types of milder vegetable curries and dahl. It is served with pickle, sambal (the Sri Lankan side dish made from grated coconut tossed with dried fish and spices, don’t get confused with the Malaysian sambal which is a chilli sauce) and a poppadum.

This is a great recipe for a mild ‘white’ curry. It’s great for using up cauliflowers or other vegetables that you have lying around. I adapted it from one of my favourite cookbooks of all time, Sri Lankan Flavours by Channa Dassanayaka. It’s a gorgeous book with lovely photgraphy and the recipes are very easy to tackle. Don’t let the number of spices put you off. They are cheap and easily available. Head to your closest Asian or South Asian grocer to stock up on your spices.

Sri Lankan is one of my favourite cuisines to cook at home. It has great focus on vegetables and, with a well stocked spice cupboard, is very flexible and can be made with whatever is around. Channa says you can add other vegetables such as carrots and potatoes or whatever is available in the fridge.

Cauliflower Curry For Two

• 1/2 medium head cauliflower, cut into florets
• 1/2 cup cashew nuts (roasted, salted, raw – they all work)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/8 tsp ground turmeric
• 1/8 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 5 curry leaves (or 1 bay leaf – pictured)
• 1/4 mustard seeds
• 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic, chopped

Boil the cashew nuts while you’re preparing the other ingredients to soften. This should take about 20 minutes. If you like a bit of crunch in the cashew nuts as I do, 10 minutes should be enough.

Add the cauliflower florets to the cashew nuts. Add turmeric, cumin, coriander and bring to boil. Simmer for a few minutes until the cauliflower is soft. Add frozen peas and coconut milk and bring back to the boil.

In another pan, fry the onion, curry leaves (or bay leaf), mustard seeds, garlic and chilli until the onion is soft and coloured. Toss the onion mixture into the cauliflower curry. Season with lemon juice and salt to taste.

Channa said this is great with roti or bread. I served it on rice with Sri Lankan chicken curry.

Before we continue, have you seen my post about having had enough of hearing about famine in Africa and wanting to do something about it?

I have to admit I am such a sucker for sales. So when my local supermarket had lovely looking brown onions for $1.29/kg. I went crazy and bought 3 kg. I made A LOT of caramelised onions that day. They are so good in sandwiches and if you’re desperate enough, add some stock and voila: onion soup!

I know. It’s a bit embarassing. Now it’s a time to remind you that I am, after all, a suburban housewife.

Not only that, I also found a really sorry looking radicchio that I bought at the farmers’ market two markets ago (that’s two months, people) that I forgot about and was going to throw out anyway. Except as I peeled away the outer leaves I realised that the inner leaves were as good as fresh. You have to love cabbages. With all those layers, they tend to surprise you.

But wait, there is more! I happened to have a reduced Turkish pide that I picked up earlier for $1 that I planned to make toasted ham and cheese sandwich with. So at this point we have radicchio, pide and caramelised onion – together with a few of cheeses we usually have lying around the fridge anyway, I knew a fantastic but really easy pizza is on the way.

Never one to be satisfied with just fantastic, however, I went digging around in the freezer. And sure enough I discovered some gorgeous duck a l’Orange sausages that we bought from the farmers’ market that I had almost forgotten about.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how tightarse Tuesday is being rocked by this suburban housewife. Impromptu pizza. Yes.

Caramelised Onion

1. 4 onion, thinly sliced lengthwise
2. 30 g. butter
3. a few twists of salt and pepper
4. 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
5. 1 tsp brown sugar

Melt butter in a non-stick frying pan on medium heat. Add the onions and fry for 5 minutes until soften but don’t let the onion colour too much. Turn the heat down to low and keep stirring the onion for another five minutes. Add sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar. Cook on low heat for another five minutes.

I personally like the onions to retain a little of a chew to them but if you prefer jammy gooey onions, by all means, continue to cook for another ten or twenty minutes, adding a little of water if you need to.

Radicchio, Caramelised Onion and  Sausage Pizza

1. 1 large Turkish pide, split
2. 1 large good quality sausage
3. 4 tbsp caramelised onion
4. 1/2 head of radicchio, leaves picked and washed
5. A few fresh sage leaves (mine were a bit pathetic. Thanks, Winter)
6. mozarella cheese
7. gruyere cheese

Squeeze sausage meat from casing into little balls. Fry them in a saucepan until browned on the outside. Set aside.

Line up slices of mozarella cheese on the pide. Top with caramelised onion, radicchio, sausage balls and sage. Grate gruyere on top.

Bake in very hot oven (240′c) for 10 minutes or until the cheese melts.

Spatula, Spoon and Saturday – rocking your suburban housewife role since 2010.

This time last year I made: Wagyu, Baby!

Note: this is a scheduled post, I’m off having a baby!

This was a pure farmers’ market cook-up. I love farmers’ markets but I find it really hard to get out of bed early enough on a Saturday (that’s when my local farmers’ market is on) to be there when the nice veggies are still there. They usually sell out if I get there at about 11am. Anyway, one day we managed to rock up there relatively early by my standard (about 10!) and because it was wet and rainy and flooded, all the lovely veggies were still there and naturally I went nuts and we basically ate veggies for the rest of the week.

Which was probably not a bad thing! Anyway I also scored some lovely super duper free-range-pigs-flying-made-in-the-air-organic pancetta as well and hence this dish was conceived.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since I missed out on the suckling pig* dinner and various other pork related events at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2010, I would like to bring up the roast pork dinner that Josh put together having adapted it based on Jamie Oliver’s recipe of Balsamic-baked onions and potatoes with roast pork from his Jamie at Home book. The roast pork was rubbed with fennel seeds and crackling was just too awesome. It was served with sticky, caramelised onions and potatoes.

This was the best roast pork I have ever had. It was so tender, succulent and just so so scrumptious. Hence I feel the need to title this post with starting with ‘most scrumptious.’ The most important thing, I believe, was the meat. I bought the rolled up boneless pork shoulder from one of the butcher’s at the Queen Vic Market.

(look how beautiful this bit of pork is!)

This little piggy was actually meant as our 2009 Christmas roast but we didn’t get around to it so it sat in our freezer for a few weeks before seeing the light of day!

Roast Pork with Fennel Seed Rub

This will feed about 6-8 people. It lasted the two of us a week. It was fabulous cold in sandwiches.

1. 2 kg of boneless, rolled pork shoulder
2. 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
3. 2 tbsp of fennel seeds, bashed up with a pestle in a mortar
4. salt and pepper
5. a few drizzles of olive oil

Make sure you butcher scores the rind for you. I personally don’t have a single knife or blade in the house that is sharp enough to score pork rind successfully! Preheat the oven at 200′c.  Rub a few drizzles of olive oil into the pork. Sprinkle a chopping board with the chopped rosemary leaves, bashed up fennel seeds, a little bit salt and pepper (not too much, we will do the crackling later). Roll the pork across the mixture. Roast in the oven for about an hour.

Crackling

Up an hour, carefully untie the roast and use a sharp knife to remove the rind from the roast. Remove excess fat (I saved it so I could render my own lard because I am a freak like that). Spread out the rind. Sprinkle about a teaspoon of salt and more olive oil. Place the meaty part back into the oven, fat side down for another 15-20 minutes. Place the crackling under the grill on medium for 5-10 minutes or until puffy and golden brown. Read the rest of this entry »

I am totally going through an asparagus phase at the moment. Every market I go to, they’re selling beautifully fresh, plump asparagus. Who am I to refuse these little beauties?

This soup was adapted from Skye Gyngell’s My Favourite Ingredients, which is really a beautiful cookbook. She writes cookbooks like she writes poetry. It’s great. As Skye said, this recipe is more like a wet, sloppy risotto rather than a soup. It is substantial for dinner.

Hearty Soup for 2:

1. 8 fat asparagus, tough parts peeled back and chopped into 3 cm pieces
2. 1.5 cups of risotto rice
3. 1 spanish onion, finely chopped
4. 3 slices of mild pancetta (about 80g), chopped
5. 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
6. 3 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
7. 5 fresh sage leaves, chopped
8. 2 slices of dried porcini or 2 dried shittake mushrooms
9. 750 ml of hot water + 1/2 cube of Massel vegetable stock + 1 tsp of Vegeta Gourmet stock*
10. a pinch of salt and pepper
11. parmesan, shaved to serve

Heat up 1 tbsp of olive oil and slowly fry off the onion, pancetta, sage and thyme for about 10 minutes on low heat until the onion turns clear and translucent. Add salt, rice and garlic and fry until the rice is too hot to touch. Add the stock and dried mushrooms and bring to boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add asparagus and bring back to boil for another 2 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Serve with freshly cracked pepper and shaved parmasan.

* Or use whatever light (vegetable/chicken) stock you have. I rarely do my own stock but I have started a freezer bag of off cut vegetables so once that’s full I might do up a batch of fresh stock.

Josh made this the other night with a recipe that I suggested (got to get myself in for a bit of credit here) from Pauline Nguyen’s Secrets of the Red Lantern, which is a really, really fantastic book. I literally took it on the train and read it everyday from cover to cover. This is one cookbook I strongly recommend, not for just their great recipes (and believe me, if Josh cooked with it and it turned out well, it’s good recipes because he would follow instructions whereas I just read it once and then wing it), but for the stories of her family and all the events in their lives. I can’t recommend it enough (by the way, I got it at Costco for about $40. Score.)

We adapted a bit (again, he may have made it but I was yelling instructions ) by using beef rather than chicken and adding some green beans. This recipe was enough for the two of us plus lunches on the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

I had this a few times at Thai’s Vietnamese family meals. I loved these DIY rolls. It’s totally one of those really awesome communal eating occasions that I love so much. The idea is you prepare all the salads, noodles and sauce and get everyone to help themselves with the rolls. Genius. Entertain guests without lots of efforts. Amount of ingredients listed here are for abou4 people.

(my roll. nom nom)

There are quite a few combinations of these rice paper rolls. Beef and onion rice paper rolls go with nuoc cham sauce. Simple boiled, sliced pork, cooked prawns or steamed fish go well with the hoisin/peanut sauce. I quite like the beef & onion combination a little more so I make that a bit more often. Read the rest of this entry »

What my esteemed Chinese cookbook told me was that twice-cooked pork is a popular dish where pork is boiled and then stir-fried in chilli bean sauce. I rather thought that that would be a good way to use up the leftover roast pork.

What we would need for two hungry people:

1. 150 g. of roast pork, sliced into bite sized pieces*
2. 200 g. of yellow noodles**
3. 1/2 onion, sliced
4. 1 cup of sliced cabbage
5. 1 cup of snow peas***
6. a few green beans
7. 2 tbsp of chilli bean sauce
8. 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
9. 2 tbsp of shao hsing rice wine
10. 1 tbsp of tomato sauce
11. a few drops of sesame oil Read the rest of this entry »

The very first time I had rabbit was actually at Grossi Florentino and it was absolutely delicious. One Saturday I just decided that cooking a bunny was in order so I perused through all my food books and settled on something vaguely resembling Stephanie Alexander’s Country Rabbit in a Claypot.

I never cooked rabbit before so I figured surely one cannot screw up a casserole and went with that choice. Which turned out to be a rather good one (if I may say so myself). Our local butcher sold whole free-range rabbits, which  she kindly jointed for me (very loudly with a huge cleaver, might I add. Josh commented, ‘Bunny definitely dead now’).

Marinade

1. 1 farmed rabbit (about 800 g.)
2. 1 tbsp dijon mustard
3. 1 tbsp plain flour
4. 1 tsp soy sauce
5. 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

Start by making a paste from the ingredients above (minus the rabbit of course) and then coat the rabbit pieces with it. Leave to marinade while you prepare other things.

(fryin, not boiling, the bunny)

Casserole

1. 1 onion, finely chopped
2. 1 carrot, finely diced (reserve peel)
3. 1 carrot, sliced into chunks (reserve peel)
4. 100 g. of smoked bacon (I used kaiser but try pancetta or any smoked bacon)
5. 8 pickling (small) onions
6. 12 small button mushrooms (leave whole, or halved)
7. 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
8. 1/2 cup of dry white wine
9. 3 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked

Stock

1. 2 fresh (or dried) bay leaves
2. 1/2 litre of boiling water
3. carrot peel
4. pumpkin peel (from the pumpkin and sweet potato mash puree)
5. sweet potato peel
6. 2 tsp of Vegeta gourmet stock powder (or your favourite)
7. 4 pieces of dried porcini
8. rosemary stalks

(simmering the stock)

Start by heating up a bit of olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the rabbit pieces on all sides until browned. Be careful not to dislodge the marinade.  Set the meat aside in a casserole dish and deglaze the pan with the white wine. Pour the pan juice onto the rabbit pieces.

Meanwhile, heat up a knob of butter in a frying pan and slowly fry the chopped onion and diced carrot with some garlic and rosemary. Add the bacon and cook on medium heat until the bacon mixture slight lycoloured. Place the bacon and onion mixture on top of the rabbit pieces in the casserole dish. Preheat the oven to 160′C. Put the casserole dish in it to keep warm while making the stock.

Pour the stock ingredients onto the frying pan that was just used for the bacon and simmer the stock ingredients for 5 minutes. Pick out the bay leaf and add to the rabbit. Add the pickling onions. Strain the stock and pour it onto the casserole dish. Cover and cook for an hour.

After an hour, add the mushrooms, carrot slices and the rest of the rosemary leaves. Cook for another hour.

Serve with mashed pumpkin and sweet potato.

I declare my bunny experiment a success!

Hopefully everyone has realised by now that good food is all about love. The food is only as good as the love and care that has gone into it. It’s not about how exclusive and trendy the restaurant is, or how many types of purees there are on the food or how artful it is.

Why is this the best lasagna in the world? It’s because it’s made by one of the person who loves me the most in the world. And, that, is worth everything.

Josh first made this for me about three dates into our relationship. That was the day I distinctly remember as the day I totally fell in love with him. It was a lovely summer day, his plum trees were full of red plump fruits, the sky was bright blue, his roses were in full bloom and the bees were going crazy on the flowers, and I had the best comfort food in the world, lasagna, without the luxury of having an Italian mother.

This is the way Josh makes his lasagna:

He would heat up a tablespoon or so of olive oil, to which he would add half an onion that has been carefully diced. He then adds two chopped rindless bacon.  He would slowly cook it until the onion goes all soft and translucent and the bacon slightly coloured. Then, he would take about 300 g. of good minced beef (not the fatty horrible supermarket one) and two cloves of crushed garlic and add that to the mix.

He would stir until the mince browns and all the juice evaporates. He would add a can of diced tomatoes and two tablespoons of tomato paste (he usually buys those sachet ones that individually contain two tablespoons per serve).

He would then pick leaves from two or three sprigs of fresh oregano and add to the mince sauce.  Sometimes he would put other fresh herbs in. He likes to grow rosemary, sage and thyme together because the combination amuses him (greensleeves, geddit?) When we have some fresh parsley growing, usually in summer, or I bought a bunch from the market, he would chop a handful of parsley stalks in, reserving the leaves for later.

He would then turn the heat down to simmer and let it stew over for twenty minutes. This is where patience comes in. He doesn’t rush. There’s no rushing, no shortcuts to good food for him. He would give it a stir once in a while but mostly just let it sit there, bubbling.

After twenty minutes, he would chop up the reserved parsley leaves and add that to sauce and stir it through. He would get his old faithful glass baking dish and spoon the mince sauce onto the bottom of the baking dish and layer instant lasagna sheets on, ensuring every inch of the sauce is covered, breaking off bits of the sheet if he has to. He would repeat this until the baking dish fills up. There’s no bechamel sauce. No creme fraiche. No cheese in between the layers. Just the mince sauce that had been patiently stewed until it’s just right and the pasta sheets.

He would cut a few slices from a ball of good quality mozzarella cheese, not a fresh white ball, the normal pale cream diseccated one that you get from a deli (or a supermarket with good selection of cheese) and top off the last layer of the lasagna. He would grate a thing sprinkling of parmesan cheese as well. There’s no buying of pregrated icky supermarket cheese, of course.

He would then carefully cover it with a layer of foil, then off it goes into the oven at 180′ c for another good twenty minutes. He would then uncover the lasagna and turn the heat up to 220′c and bake for another ten minutes until the cheese is golden brown.

He would then cut up a good section and plonk a good portion of it for his hungry wife (who would usually be very hungry by now because he needs at least two hours to ‘make it properly’) Sometimes he would do up a nice green salad with various ingredients that take his fancy (I once discovered strawberries and pineapple in his ‘green’ salad, ‘it’s half way fruit salad, isn’t it awesome?’) to go alongside the lasagna.

There’s always leftovers to take to work the next day.