Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Book: Mediterranean Street Food by Anissa Helou Theme: Hor d’oeuvre Recipe: Stuffed Mussels

And we’re up to Week 3 of the Cookbook Challenge already! The theme is hor d’oeuvre. Not a word I can spell without help, to be perfectly honest. Nor am I so much of a finger food person either. But one day I was flipping through a few of my ‘street food’ type books and figured hey I could just work on that angle.

Slightly fiddly – having to make the stuffing and cooking the mussels but the effort is well worth it. It was so good. I suspect the key reason was that I had some truly good mussels. These are the Spring Bay mussels (their mussel fact sheet is a good read) I bought from a fish monger at Queen Victoria Market. I have to go back to the market every week for my seafood.

Mediterranean Street Food: what a great book. It’s all black & white and very few pictures but the travelling stories and the recipes are well worth reading from cover to cover. That’s a hall mark of a good book: the ability to read from cover to cover and not get bored. Josh bought me this book as a birthday present last year. I love it.

As usual I changed the recipe a bit to suit what I have on hands but the gist of it is still the same. It’s well worth the effort to source the best live mussels you can find. You need large-ish mussels to be able to stuff successfully. I had 20 mussels for 1/2 kg. That’s the size that’s perfect for the amount of stuffing I have given here. Read the rest of this entry »

Book: Food Safari by Maeve O’Meara (recipe by Kumar Mahadevan) Theme: Indian Recipe: Rogan Josh

This week flew, didn’t it? The Cookbook Challenge Week 2 theme is Indian. I have been itching to buy myself an Indian cookbook as I love making Indian food but never really got around to it. The Food Safari book is the companion to the Food Safari series (which I love and have on DVDs despite not having a functional TV at home). It has amazing recipes – which better still can be watched individually on the SBS Food website.

This recipe is such a winner. It’s spicy, and oniony and meaty. The lamb was just so soft and rich. We have a bit of love for this Kashmiri specialty in our house because Josh orders a rogan josh when he is out of ideas at Indian restaurants simply because of its name. We amazingly enough never made it at home. I told Josh the night before about the idea of making rogan josh for the Cookbook Challenge and came home to find that he had defrosted the lamb chops, bought some tomatoes and fennel seeds and already made a start on chopping up the onions so I ended up backseat-cooking and helping him chopping things instead. He did most of the cooking.

We tweaked the recipe a little bit due to availability of ingredients – substituting here and there. But the full recipe, including a video, is available on the SBS Food site. 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.

I love the Japanese omelet rice! Of course when we went past a little cafe in Harajuku that specialised in omuraisu, we could not not go in. From my hazy recollection, we were absolutely starving on the day so excuse me for quick, useless photos. I’m pretty sure my hands shook from hunger.

Naturally this was what drew us. The food models. I love Japan for their food models. So we walked down the tiny (seriously you don’t know tiny until you go to Tokyo, and I’m like 5′ 0″) stairwell to a little cafe full of Japanese teenagers. You know, the usual Harajuku crowd. God I love Tokyo!

We were presented with the menu with, thankfully, had pictures on them. I decided on the brown sauce looking one (E). No idea what it was. I kinda thought it was gravy/brown sauce type thing, which I was led to believe to be one of the popular omuraisu toppings.

(Omuraisu with beef and red wine stew – 850 yen)

But I was wrong (naturally). I was correct that it was the standard omuraisu but the brown sauce wasn’t gravy at all. It was beef and red wine stew. I can’t say there was a lot of beef in it (compared to the plastic model). While it was all right, I wasn’t (still am not) a fan of anything red wine-y taste in food. The rice was well made with tomato sauce flavour. The omelet was lovely and soft as it should be.

(my meal – the plastic version)

Josh ordered what we presumed to be the takoyaki omuraisu. I mean, think about it! Takoyaki in your omelet rice. How cool is that?

(Takoyaki omuraisu – 850 yen)

I think Josh won this one. It was absolutely yummy. It was served topped with takoyaki sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed and of course, the beautifully dancing bonito shaving. The most surprising thing was the rice inside the omelet. It had actual tako pieces alongside the usual takoyaki ingredients like ginger, spring onion and cabbage. It was very yummy. Definitely recommended.

(Josh’s meal – the plastic version)

So if you’re ever around there, I strongly recommend it.

Apple Tree, somewhere in Harajuku. I honestly can’t remember where it is. It’s not very far from JR Harajuku though.

PS. I’m so making omuraisu this week! I miss Japan.

This comes about as an emergency lunch as we have nothing left in the house and we were too hungry to go shopping. I always have some Ikea meatballs hanging around in the fridge because they make really good spaghetti meatballs. I also have a packet of the Ikea instant meatball sauce lying around so I give this dish a whirl.

Parsley Rice

1. 1 cup of long grain rice
2. 3 cups of filtered water
3. 2 tbsp of chopped fresh parsley

Wash the rice thoroughly until the water runs clear. The reason for this is to get rid of excess starch. We are going to serve this rice with a saucy dish so you want nice and fluffy rice that does not stick together.

Bring water to boil, add the rice and stir. Keep boiling for ten minutes. Stir every 20-30 seconds for the first few minutes or so to prevent the rice from the stick to the bottom. Stir occasionally after that. After 10 minutes, drain the rice. Add the parsley, stir through and cover for a few more minutes before serving.

Ikea Meatballs and Cream Sauce

Bring to boil a cup of milk, add three tbsp of sour cream. Add the half a packet of the Ikea Meatball cream sauce and whisk vigorously until the sauce is smooth. Add additional water if the sauce is too thick. Add the frozen Ikea meatballs to the sauce. Bring to boil then simmer for 10 minutes on low.

That’s it. Didn’t I mention it’s an emergency lunch?

I love the way the Chinese refer to certain food items as ‘delights’. Is that not the best way to talk about food? Delights. I love the way they name their food too – ‘ants climbing a tree’, ‘crossing the bridge noodle’. So poetic sounding. I’m not really digressing, I’m about to get to the point that Chinese roasted meat stalls in Singapore tend to call themselves something along the line of ‘Roast Delights.’ It’s such a good way of naming your food.I can’t get over it.

Anyway, generally in a roasted meat stall, we usually the roast duck, roast pork, char siu pork and sometimes soy sauce roast chicken. I only had the roast pork rice today, so I’ll only be talking about that. Basically, it’s a big piece of pork belly that has been seasoned and roasted in a vertical Chinese oven. I’m not too sure if they deep fried it as well but I don’t think so. What we then have is a really nice piece of pork with crispy crackling (which I love). So the roast pork rice is thus – steamed rice topped with roast pork and some sort of soy sauce based sauce to flavour the rice and some garnish of cucumber. It also comes with a disproportionate bowl of peanut soup i.e. broth with boiled peanuts in it. And of course some description of chilli sauce on the side (which seems to feature rather heavily with all Singaporean food. I have had roast pork rice at the cafeteria at work and I thought that was much nicer because of the sauce that comes with it. But all in all, I find the dish rather uninteresting.

Being on a low-protein diet sucks sometimes.

I really should sleep more.

The thing with risotto is that you can take it pretty much whatever direction you want. Again, you can just toss in any leftover vegetables or stew and cheese into it and it will be wonderful. I often make a lot of risotto rice up to the stage before you flavour it (I think it’s called risotto bianco i.e. just plain ‘white’ risotto) so the next time you can whip up risotto within 10 minutes. Efficiency plus eh? There’s really no other way other than that though. You just need to stand in front of the risotto and give it love and undivided attention (otherwise it just won’t be good).

So we start by making us some stock. Sure, you can make your own stock from scratch, but I’m lazy and time poor. I use about a heap tablespoon of vegeta gourmet stock powder and a litre of water. If I have some dried porcini mushrooms, I would throw that in but tragically enough, I don’t. I think my blog is be called ‘this is what I make if I’m too lazy to go grocery shopping properly’. So put some stock to simmer. Admittedly, the stock is very important because it will flavour your whole risotto, so if you don’t have nice stock, you’re not going to have a nice risotto. Fortunately enough, this vegeta stock thing is quite good and I’m relatively happy with it. Sometimes, I throw bits of whatever ingredients I’m using for the risotto into the stock (such as pumpkin) and that makes it slightly nicer.

So for four portions of risotto bianco, I used a chopped large-ish brown onion, two celery sticks, also chopped and two cloves of garlic. They go into a warmed tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of butter on low heat for about 5 minutes until they’re lovely and translucent. Turn the heat up slightly. In go four handfuls of arborio rice. You need about a handful for each person. So if they’re bigger, they’ll need a bigger handful obviously. Such a great method of measuring. Keep turning the rice around until they’re nicely coated in the oil and very hot. They will become a bit transculent. This is when you add a bit of white wine to it. Which unsurprisingly I don’t have. But are you really surprised? So we have a pot of hot simmering stock and the rice frying up nicely. Add a ladle of stock, it should sizzle and the rice will start to absorb the stock. Keep stirring the rice around until all the stock has evaporated and/or absorbed into the rice and then add another ladel of hot stock.

Repeat this for about 5-10 more minutes. By now the rice should be slightly creamy but still undercooked. If you’re making additional risotto portion for later days, remove the excess now. It will keep in the fridge for a few days. Keep adding stock and stir the remaining risotto for another 5-10 minutes. The rice should be cooked but have firm bite too it.

For one person, I used one portobello mushroom, three swiss brown mushrooms and four button mushrooms, cut into thick slices. Some morels are really good but I couldn’t find them. But try to get an interesting mix of mushrooms to make this dish great. On a separate frying pan on high heat, you want to brown the mushrooms with a bit of olive oil. Either use a big wok (which I did) or do this in batches. You don’t want to overcrowd the pan being you want the mushrooms to brown nicely. Toss the mushrooms around over high heat until they are nicely coloured. Add the mushrooms to the risotto with a few sprigs of thyme leaves. Grate in the zest of about half a lemon and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice. Don’t overdo the lemon juice though, you only want a tiny bit of fresh lemony taste. Toss the risotto around and taste. The stock should be salty enough, if not, season with some salt and some freshly ground pepper.

Serve with grated parmesan cheese. Chopped fresh parsley would have been be nice but I didn’t have any

Seriously, I did not know how to this. I only got taught this by Josh like 2 weeks ago. I have always had a rice cooker until now. Fresh, well-cooked rice is awesomely nice.

So you start with two cups of water to a cup of rice (when I say one cup I mean 250ml, standard Australian measurement). Bring two cups of filtered water to boil in a covered saucepan. Add one cup of long grain white rice (or brown rice or whatever), stir so that the rice gets equal heat distribution. From this point put a timer on for ten minutes. Close the lid – this is very important). Bring to boil again and then turn the heat down to simmer. At ten minutes, turn off the heat and let it sit for ten minutes. Don’t touch it, don’t open it. Just leave it alone for ten minutes. I usually start the rice and then go off and cook other things so the rice is ready at the same time. After resting the rice for ten minutes, take a spoon and run it through the rice to make it fluffy. If you find it’s slightly too wet at the bottom, just turn the wet part up and leave it uncovered and let it steam until it’s less wet.

Keep leftover in the fridge for fried rice. Or omuraisu! Yay!

If there is one thing I’m good at is totally bastardising Japanese food. Seriously. Not to say that the Japanese are not good at bastardising their own food. Let’s face it, omelet rice?! With tomato sauce!? I have to say though that this whole tomato sauce in fried rice is hardly something new. So it must be okay. If you want all the step-by-step pictures, head on over here.

Omuraisu (omu = omelet, raisu = rice) is basically fried rice with tomato sauce wrapped in an omelet. Great idea! Let’s try it.

So from Googling various sources, the only really compulsory ingredients are diced onions, rice, tomato sauce and eggs. Everything else seems to be up to your imagination.

I used (all this is for one person who is hungry): 1/2 diced onion, 1/2 diced small capsicum, 3 sliced fresh shittake mushrooms, a few chopped French beans, 2 sliced hot dogs, 2 eggs, 1 cup of cold brown rice (you can use white, I only have brown rice), olive oil, salt, pepper, tomato sauce (notice I still use packet tomato sauce from various fast food chains. They are not mine. I just use them.)

So we start by frying off the onion and the hot dogs in a bit of olive oil (why hot dog? I don’t know. I guess because my very first omelet rice was actually just plain tomato rice served with a bratwurst on the side. bratwurst, frankfurt, hot dog, same thing. Many other sites seem to recommend chicken. I didn’t have any.) until it’s nicely coloured. Add the diced vegetables and fry until the vegetables soften. Add the rice and stir until it’s nice and hot. If you don’t know this, leftover, refridgerated cooked rice is always the best for fried rice. Freshly cooked rice have a certain amount of moisture in it that can make the fried rice soggy. Season to taste. Add about 3 tbsp of tomato sauce. So your fried rice is done. You can be uber lazy and just eat it like that but then it wouldn’t be omuraisu, would it? No.
So put your fried rice aside and make an omelet. Mix the eggs together quickly, there is no need to beat the hell out of it. Pour it into a hot non-stick pan. Now this bit depends on how soft you like your eggs. I like mine relatively soft, after a few seconds, I would pour the fried rice back in on top of the eggs. This is the bit you have to be careful. I have this bad (actually good habit but bad for this dish) is try to load up my food with any random vegetables I find in the fridge. So my food ends up being a lot bigger than I thought it would be and end up with disproportionate amount of rice and omelet. Carefully put some fried rice on the egg, don’t overload otherwise you won’t be able to wrap it up. Fold the omelet over the rice and if you can, flip it over to cook the other side. I couldn’t on the day because I just had too much rice and just simply had to put a plate on top of the frying pan and flip the omuraisu out.

With omuraisu, you always have to make the compulsory tomato sauce squiggly on top on it. Hmmm.