Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Being a born-and-bred tropical girl, Winter is definitely not my favourite season. I hate having to rug up and battle the Winter wind and rain that Melbourne has to offer. I hate getting out of warm bed to the cold in the morning. I hate seeing trees without leaves. You get the idea. it is not my favourite season.

So while I love my citrus fruits and warm nourishing soups, stews and casseroles, I miss Summer terribly. This is why I have made this dish a few times in Winter to remind us of the good times ahead. Using all the ingredients that are available all year around (thank you, Queensland) – this salad is really simple to make and fabulous for a light dinner when it’s too cold to bother with anything. Just make sure you don’t make it with cold watermelon from straight the fridge.

Watermelon Salad For Two

1. 700 g watermelon at room temperature, seedless variety or seeds removed, chopped into large cubes
2. 2 tbsp sunflower seeds
3. 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
4. 1 tsp + 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
5. 1 lime, juiced
6. 50 g goat’s cheese or feta cheese
7. 3 spring onions, chopped
8. 1 cup loosely packed mint leaves, chopped
9. salt & pepper, to taste

In a nonstick frying pan, drizzle about 1/2 tsp of extra virgin olive oil and heat. Add pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. Toss the seeds in the olive oil and toast gently on low heat until they start to colour. Take the pan off the heat off immediately as the seeds will continue to cook and may burn. Continue to toss for another minute or so.

The seeds will now be excellent finger food. But refrain yourself from nibbling them. Save them for the salad!

Mix together the lime juice and 1 tsp of olive oil. Season to taste and drizzle on the watermelon. Add the spring onions and mint and toss gently. Sprinkle with the seeds.

Or you can file this recipe away for Summer and take it to your first barbecue of the year and wow your friends.

This time last year I made: Prawns and Glass Noodles in Claypot (Goong Ob Woonsen)

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!

Cookbook Challenge Week 20

Book: The Food of China: the Journey for Food Lovers Theme: Tangy Recipe: Sweet-and-sour Prawns and Vegetables

Who came up with this bloody stupid theme? Oh wait, it was probably me. Anyway, I had capsicums lying around the house from Jim’s garden and since I have everything else around the house, I figured I should kill two birds with one stone (hang on, this sounds a lot like the last post, doesn’t it?) Although I hardly think sweet-and-sour prawns could pass for ‘tangy’ theme but it’s better than being yet-another-week behind, which I’m about to be,  since I’m off to Vanuatu for a week next week. Yay!

Sweet and Sour Prawns (for two)

1. 12 large green prawns, shelled, deveined and semi-butterflied*
2. 1 small red capsicum, diced irregularly
3. 1 small green capsicum, diced irregularly
4. 2 slices of ginger, chopped
5. 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
6. 4 white parts of the spring onions, chopped
7. 2 tbsp of chopped spring onion leaves (green part

Prawn marinade

1. 2 tbsp Shao Tsing rice wine
2. 1 tbsp corn flour
3. 1 tsp sesame oil
4. 2 slices of ginger, bruised

Add the ingredients together and mix well. Add prawns, toss and leave to marinade for 15 minutes.

Heat 3 tbsp of oil in a wok until very hot. Remove the ginger pieces from the prawns and drain. Fry the prawns in hot oil for a few minutes until the prawns changed colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Remove some of the oil until there are about 2 tbsp of oil left.

Fry the white parts of the green onion, garlic and chopped ginger until fragrant. Add the capsicums and fry quickly for two or three minutes. Add the prawns back. Make sure you keep the heat nice and high all the time and stir quickly. 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 »

Book: Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen Theme: Soft Recipe: Salt & Pepper Tofu

First of all, I have to apologise profusely about being useless with the whole Cookbook Challenge thing. I am going to catch up. I promise. This was for Week 7 with the theme of soft. The reason this has stopped because my computer has decided to stop recognising my portable hard drive so my photos have been stuck there. That, and I have been away a lot and um, lazy!

First of all I love, love, LOVE the Secrets of the Red Lantern. It was the only cookbook I have ever read from start to finish (skipping the recipes) because it is just a truly special book. I remember sniffing on the train reading it everyday!

The theme soft was inpired by my (then) recent visit to New Kum Den where I fell hard in love with their salt and pepper tofu and soft tofu is one of my favourite soft foods ever. I unfortunately had decided that I should half wing it and half follow the recipe. I went for two separate types of tofu – one Japanese silken tofu and one egg tofu. I found that the egg tofu was by far tastier and much easier to handle while the silken tofu tasted average and was extremely hard to handle.

Anyway! What a disaster! I hate deep frying stuff, it’s horrible. Messy, messy, messy! Because I used the silken and egg tofu, I had to adapt a little. To be perfectly honest, this recipe really isn’t worth the hassle. Not only that, I managed to forget about the oil and caused a HUGE fire! Lesson learned: go and buy a fire blanket and keep it handy. Australia Post sells them relatively cheaply.

Salt & pepper mix

1. 1 tsp of white pepper, ground (I ground the peppercorn in pestle & mortar)
2. 1 1/2 tsp of salt
3. 1 tsp of ground ginger
4. 1/2 tsp of five spice powder

Mix all ingredients together well.

Deep fried tofu

1. tofu
2. corn flour to dust
3. oil for deep frying

Heat vegetable oil in a saucepan until it shimmers. Carefully slice the tofu and dust with the corn flour and deep fry until golden brown. Season with the salt & pepper mixture.

Spring onion mixture

1. 2 spring onion, chopped
2. 2 red chilli, sliced
3. 2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
4. 1/2 onion, finely chopped

Fry the onions, chilli and garlic in a bit of oil until fragrant. Top the tofu.

Right, these are all the Cookbook Challenges outstanding for me. I’m going to try to get them out over the next couple of weeks or so. Stay tuned.

• Week 8 Monday 4/01/2010 Sweet
• Week 9 Monday 11/01/2010 Berry
• Week 10 Monday 18/01/2010 Cool
• Week 11 Monday 25/01/2010 Mixed
• Week 12 Monday 1/02/2010 Eggs
• Week 13 Monday 8/02/2010 Love
• Week 14 Monday 15/02/2010 Japanese
• Week 15 Monday 22/02/2010 Muffins
• Week 16 Monday 1/03/2010 Noodles
• Week 17 Monday 8/03/2010 Vietnamese

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 »