Recipe: Pumpkin soup with a twist From: Neil Perry’s Good Food
The theme for week 25 of the Cookbook Challenge is “silky”. I had a number of things in mind for this week.
I ended up doing a lot of cooking this weekend – egg fu yung, chicken stock, waffles with poached pears, ox cheek stew, and two different types of dumplings (which will be unveiled on Wednesday) so unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of energy to devote to the Cookbook Challenge. I had intended to make a tart with a curd filling, but couldn’t be bothered going up the road to get cream! Also I hate buying cream because I tend to only use half the container and the rest is wasted.
And then last night it hit me. Soup! A nice pureed soup can be smooth and silky. I had a large pumpkin that I needed to cook so pumpkin soup it was.
I have made pumpkin soup a zillion times before, and I never follow a recipe. But for the purposes of the Cookbook Challenge, I found a recipe and followed the directions exactly. Wow! That is rather rare for me, unless I’m baking. The recipe I selected was called pumpkin soup with a twist – with the twist being the addition of ginger, ground coriander and ground turmeric.
When I make pumpkin soup, I normally add a touch of curry powder because I love the slight spiciness with the sweetness of the pumpkin. So this version was okay, the spices give a touch of difference from normal pumpkin soup – but I prefer my usual version! Still, it was relatively quick to whip up for this week’s Challenge and worth a shot if you don’t already have a favourite recipe for pumpkin soup.
1kg peeled butternut pumpkin, cut into 2cm thick pieces 30g unsalted butter 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 3cm piece ginger, peeled and finely chopped sea salt 1 heaped teaspoon ground coriander 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric 1 litre chicken stock freshly ground pepper creme fraiche to serve (optional)
In a large heavy based pot, heat the butter and oil over a medium heat.
Add the onion, garlic, ginger and a bit of sea salt and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes. Don’t let it colour.
Stir in the coriander and turmeric and cook for another minute.
Add the stock and pumpkin to the pot and bring to the boil. Turn it down to a simmer and let it cook gently for about 25 minutes, or until the pumpkin is soft.
Remove from the heat and puree the soup until smooth – I use a stick blender. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve the soup with a dollop of creme fraiche, some freshly ground pepper and a splash of oil. I just laid on a parsley leaf for garnish.
Cookbook Challenge: Week 24
Theme: Chocolate
Recipe: Spicy chocolate cookies From: The Golden Book of Chocolate
Second recipe: Mexican chicken mole From: The Golden Book of Chocolate
We’re on week 24 of the Cookbook Challenge and the theme this week is chocolate. I decided to crack open a book that Bro gave me a while ago – the Golden Book of Chocolate – and make two recipes. One sweet, and one savoury. Oh yes, savoury!
Let’s start with the sweet. I LOVE chilli and chocolate together, so I decided to make spicy chocolate cookies (biscuits? let’s stick with cookies). As I was baking these cookies, I realised why I don’t make cookies often. Because I don’t find it rewarding! The batch of cookies used 250g of chocolate as one of the ingredients and I only made 19 cookies! C’mon! For that amount of chocolate I could have had a massive chocolate cake, such as the best chocolate cake ever.
That aside, what did I think of the cookies? I made a couple of changes to the recipe – rather than using coffee liqueur I opted for strong espresso, and instead of chocolate chips I dug out some cocoa nibs that I had in the pantry. I’m glad I didn’t use chocolate chips because OH MY GOD these things were sweet! Mostly, I blame the inclusion of raisins – why oh why oh why with the raisins? If I felt like making these again I would definitely leave out the raisins. I would also up the amount of chilli flakes, they were only very faintly spicy and could have used a bit more punchiness.
Or perhaps I might just bake a cake next time. 🙂
On to the savoury – the second recipe was a Mexican (inspired) chicken mole. Having never eaten a proper mole before, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. What can I say about this? It was weird and I’m sure that it was the recipe’s/my fault as I have no doubt that a proper and authentic mole would be rather delicious. My main issue with my mole was due to an oily aftertaste I thought I could detect. The recipe asked for a cup of breadcrumbs, and I’m sure that the aftertaste was due to the breadcrumbs. I should’ve used better quality breadcrumbs! Oh well. As for the inclusion of chocolate, the dish didn’t taste like chocolate – it just seemed to add an interesting dimension to the sauce. I would really like to try a proper mole one day.
Anyway, enough of that. Let’s have a look at the cookies again, shall we?
Spicy chocolate cookies Adapted from The Golden Book of Chocolate
Makes about 18 cookies
2/3 cup (100g) plain flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or more if you’re feeling brave – do it!) 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (60g) raisins (highly recommend that you leave this out!) 2 tablespoons strong coffee 250g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped 1/4 cup (60g) butter 2 large eggs 3/4 cup (150g) caster sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1/2 cup (90g) cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips)
Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
Heat the raisins and coffee in a small saucepan (or in the microwave).
Place the chocolate and butter in a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water until melted. Set aside to cool.
In an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar at high speed until very pale and creamy (about 5 minutes).
Add the chocolate mixture and vanilla extract to the eggs, and mix at medium speed.
Add the flour, baking powder, red pepper flakes and salt to the mixer and beat on low speed. Add the raisin mixture and cocoa nibs (or chocolate chips) and mix until combined. It will be a very wet, thick batter/dough.
Drop tablespoons of the dough a couple of centimetres apart on the prepared baking tray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until risen slightly.
Let the cookies cool on the baking tray for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Mexican inspired chicken mole
From The Golden Book of Chocolate
Serves 4
1.3kg chicken pieces 1 onion, peeled and cut into quarters 4 tablespoons blanched almonds 2 tablespoons sesame seeds 2 tablespoons raisins 3 black peppercorns 1 clove 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 2 teaspoons red chilli paste 2/3 cup water 1 onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped 1 cup fine dry breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon sunflower oil 30g dark chocolate salt and pepper
In a large pot, place the chicken pieces, the quartered onion, and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and let it simmer until cooked – about 30 minutes should do the trick. Remove the chicken and strain the liquid into a bowl, setting aside for later. Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces, discarding the skin.
Place the chicken in a large oven proof bowl and set aside. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
In a dry frying pan, toast the almonds and sesame seeds until lightly browned. Transfer to a mortar and pestle with the raisins, peppercorns, clove and cinnamon and crush until finely ground. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, along with the chile paste, water, chopped onion, garlic, tomatoes and breadcrumbs and process until smooth.
Heat a frying pan over medium heat and saute the processed mixture for about 5 minutes. In a separate saucepan, add 2/3 cup of the reserved stock and the chocolate. Stir over a low heat until melted.
Add the chocolate mixture to the sauteed mixture and season well with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce over the chicken, and place in
the oven, baking for about 30 minutes. Serve hot.
Recipe: Silverbeet frittata From: The Cook’s Companion
Second recipe: Chard with olive oil & lemon From: Nigel Slater’s Tender
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “leaf” and I’ve decided to showcase silverbeet (chard). I think silverbeet is a seriously beautiful vegetable, with its snowy white stems and large dark green, ribbed leaves. And the rainbow versions are even more stunning, with their red, yellow, purple or orange stems. When Bro and I were younger, a friend who lived near us used to give mum silverbeet throughout winter. She must have grown buckets of the stuff, because we seemed to receive it constantly. So much in fact, that after we moved houses, we didn’t (couldn’t?) eat silverbeet again for years!
I don’t blame my mother for not cooking silverbeet again for ages. While I think it’s a fantastic vegetable there’s only so much I can think to do with it. And a bunch goes a rather long way – I made two recipes out of my bunch of silverbeet. The first recipe was a silverbeet frittata from the Cook’s Companion. I made us a large frittata for lunch, and a wee mini one for photos – aww look! Isn’t it cute? Yes, that is a mini frying pan, and it was perfect for an individual sized frittata. The frittata was lovely, the earthiness of the silverbeet working really well with the egg and particularly the cheese. It was a very satisfying lunch, which we ate with fresh tomatoes.
The second recipe was a simple one – boiled silverbeet with garlic and lemon juice. I couldn’t resist adding a big knob of butter to the pan when cooking the garlic and I’m glad I did. It made a tangy, buttery, garlicky sauce for the silverbeet and was a nice side dish for dinner tonight. (I also added some to the top of the frittata as a garnish).
So silverbeet – are you a lover or hater? And does anyone have any brilliant ideas on cooking it?
400g silverbeet olive oil onion, peeled and finely diced 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced freshly ground black pepper salt 1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan Handful of grated mozzarella (I just added this in because I had some in the fridge) 6 eggs, lightly beaten
Separate the silverbeet leaves from the stems. Trim the ends off the stems and cut into 1cm pieces and rinse thoroughly. Give the leaves a good rinse, then roll them up and slice.
In a 22-24cm frying pan, saute the stems, diced onion and garlic in oil over a medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the leaves, covering the pan until the leaves are wilted, and then saute for several more minutes. Tip the stems and leaves into a colander and allow to drain. After it has cooled a bit, give the silverbeet a squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible.
Into a large bowl, add the egg, pepper, a bit of salt, cheese and drained silverbeet and mix well. Wipe the frying pan with kitchen paper and place on a high heat with a good glug of oil. When the pan is hot, tip in the egg mixture and lower the heat to medium.
Let the egg mixture cook until the top is just moist, running a spatula around the sides and under the frittata as it cooks to make sure it doesn’t stick.
Slide the pan under a preheated grill for a minute to cook the top, then loosen with a spatula and slide on to a warmed plate. Cut into thick wedges and serve.
First, cook the veg (if you don’t, they will release their juices into the frittata, which will be too watery). Cut the stems from the Swiss chard and roughly chop. Cook in a large pot of simmering salted water for 10 minutes. Wash the leaves well, roughly chop, and add to the pot. Cook for 3 or 4 minutes until wilted.
Drain well and cool, then squeeze out any excess water. Beat the eggs, egg yolks, cream, parmesan, salt, pepper and nutmeg in a bowl. Heat the butter and oil in a non-stick fry pan, and pour in the eggs. Arrange the drained greens in the pan, jiggling them so they settle into the egg.
Cook over moderate heat until the eggs have set on the bottom and are lightly golden. Heat the grill, wrap the fry pan handle with kitchen foil and place under the grill for a few minutes until lightly golden and just-set in the middle. If it’s still runny, cover the pan and give it another couple of minutes over moderate heat. Cut into big wedges and serve.
450g white stemmed chard / silverbeet 3 garlic cloves, peeled & sliced finely 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil knob of butter a lemon, cut in half
Separate the stems from the leaves and wash thoroughly in cold water.
Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add the stems. Cook for about 3-4 minutes, or until they are soft and still retain some bite. Remove the stems from the water and leave to drain in a colander.
Bring the water back to the boil and add the leaves – they will only take 1-2 minutes to cook. Remove the leaves from the water and drain in a colander.
Pour the olive oil and butter into a pan on low heat. Add the garlic and cook gently – don’t let it colour. Tip in the drained silverbeet leaves and stems and fold them over in the warm oil and garlic. Season with salt and pepper, and squeeze half of the lemon over the silverbeet. Serve immediately with the other half of the lemon on the side.
Recipe: Must-try red cabbage braised with apple, bacon and balsamic vinegar From: Cook with Jamie
It’s week 22 of the Cookbook Challenge and the theme is “red”. I had a ton of ideas for red week, but I got a bit caught up in piezzas (that’s a pie/pizza hybrid for those uneducated in the way of the piezza) and opted for an easy recipe.
I seem to like a lot of vegetables that other people deem boring – eg broccoli, cauliflower, spinach and the ever so humble cabbage. I like cabbage both raw and cooked, so when I saw this red cabbage recipe AND it was titled “must-try” I naturally had to try it!
The cabbage is braised with bacon, apples and balsamic vinegar. The original recipe used a whole head of red cabbage. Now, I know I said I like cabbage, but a whole head of cabbage would mean NOTHING but cabbage for a week. So I only used half a head of cabbage, but I kept the bacon and apple quantities about the same – because you can never get enough bacon, right? At the end of the cooking time, I tasted the cabbage – Jamie’s book describes it as a “gorgeously sticky-sweet cabbage dish that you’ll want to eat immediately”. It was tangy and vinegary, but didn’t really enthuse me, but since we weren’t going to be eating it that night I popped it into the fridge.
It sat in the fridge for two days, and we ate it last night with piezzas left over from the pizza party. In those two days, the flavour improved and I found it much more exciting than on the night I had made it. I was also glad I hadn’t halved the quantity of bacon because the bits of salty bacon were GREAT amongst the sharp tanginess of the cabbage.
So the verdict? I think it is a must try recipe, but only if you can leave it for at least a day!
Recipe: Must-try red cabbage braised with apple, bacon and balsamic vinegar
Adapted from Cook with Jamie
Serves 4
olive oil 250g bacon, finely sliced 1/2 tablespoon fennel seeds, bashed 1 onion, peeled and sliced 3 apples, peeled and chopped into 2.5cm pieces 1/2 red cabbage, outer leaves & core removed, chopped into irregular chunks salt and pepper to taste 75ml balsamic vinegar sugar to taste (if necessary) a knob of butter chopped parsley leaves (optional)
Heat some oil in a saucepan until hot, add the bacon and fennel and cook until golden.
Add the onion and cook with the lid on for several minutes until golden and sticky.
Add the apple, cabbage, some salt and pepper and vinegar and stir well. Put the lid on and cook on a low heat for an hour, stirring occasionally. Taste the cabbage – you may want to add some sugar if it’s too vinegary.
Scoop into a serving dish, place butter on top and garnish with the parsley.
Recipe: Chinese Chive Cakes From: Thai Street Food
Second recipe: Son in law eggs From: The Cook’s Companion
It’s Thai week for the Cookbook Challenge! I received a copy of Thai Street Food for Christmas, and it is a rather large, but gorgeously presented tome. I read it cover to cover last night in preparation for the Thai challenge (obviously I’m still having issues with being better organised) and I want to eat everything that’s in there!
I really wanted to make something from Thai Street Food this week, but all the recipes seem very complicated. They all have big blocks of text and specialised ingredients, and many of them need to be started the night before. So I choose the easiest recipe I could find, which was Chinese Chive Cakes…….. I know, I know, it’s THAI week, but it’s in Thai Street Food and they’re commonly sold in Thailand, so I think I’m still good with the theme.
If you have a look at the recipe down below, it’s rather long, even though I did simplify it a lot. I must say that the recipe looked more complicated than it actually was. I made the dough, then the filling, then placed the filling into the dough, similar to making dumplings. After the chive cakes were made, they were steamed – they could have been eaten at this point or shallow fried. You can guess which option I took, can’t you? I fried the suckers!
The chive cakes have a chewy pastry, and fried you get little firm, crisp parts. My filling had a fair amount of pepper, so they were salty and peppery and rather tasty. I can definitely see myself making these again.
My second recipe was from the always reliable Cook’s Companion – son-in-law eggs. They are just basically deep fried hard boiled eggs, with a sweetish, sour, salty sauce that’s made of fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind water and lime juice. After I made the sauce, Alastair walked downstairs into the kitchen and exclaimed, “It smells like Asian cooking in here!” and Bro asked if I had used shrimp paste. I blame the fish sauce – it was pretty pungent!
The sauce was great though, quite strong, but addictive. But I wonder if the recipe would work with a soft boiled egg – it would be nice to have the eggs with a still slightly squishy yolk. I’ll have to keep that in mind for next time!
Update: See the round up for this week at My Food Trail.
Chinese Chive Cakes From Thai Street Food
Makes 9-10 cakes
Pastry
1 cup rice flour 1/4 cup tapioca flour, plus a couple extra tablespoons for dusting 2 tablespoons sticky rice flour large pinch of salt 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Filling
400g Chinese Chives, cut into 1cm lengths 4 tablespoons oil 1-2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic pinch of salt 1 teaspoon sugar 2-3 tablespoons light soy sauce pinch of ground white pepper
Making the pastry:
In a bowl, mix together the flours and salt. Work in the oil, and then add enough water to make a thick but wet dough (the book specifies 1 & 1/2 cups water but when I added all the water I had a very thin batter rather than dough and had to start again! Mine took about half that amount of water.)
Place a frying pan or wok on a low heat and add the pastry, stirring constantly (you may need to use a whisk). When the pastry is half cooked, it will be very sticky and have an opaque sheen. Take it off the heat and set aside for a couple of minutes.
On a clean working surface, sprinkle on the extra tablespoons of tapioca flour. Add the dough on to it, and work the flour into the warm pastry. Knead for about five minutes, until it is firmish and clean to the touch. Roll the pastry into ten balls and rest for at least ten minutes under a clean, damp cloth.
Next, make the filling. Give the Chinese chives a good wash, and drain well. In a wok or pan, heat the oil and fry the garlic with the pinch of salt until beginning to colour. Add the chives and cook until wilted. Season with the sugar, soy sauce and white pepper. Taste to make sure it is well seasoned but not too salty. Transfer to a sieve or colander to drain and cool. You don’t want too much liquid, so give the filling a squeeze with your hands after it’s cooled a little to get rid of some of the juice.
Give the pastry balls a light knead, then press out into thin discs that are slightly thinner at the edges and about 10cm in diameter. Place a pastry disc into the palm of one hand and spoon 2 heaped tablespoons of filling into the centre. Light the edges of the pastry up and fold and crimp together, pushing the edges up into the centre. Custom says that there should be ten folds! Pinch the edges together in the middle, twist them together and then press down and seal. Repeat with the remaining pastry balls and filling, keeping them covered with a damp cloth as you make them.
Steam the cakes for about 15 minutes on a banana leaf or baking paper. Either cool for a moment before serving – or you could pan fry them (YES).
If pan frying, let the cakes cool for a bit after steaming. Heat a heavy frying pan until quite hot. Add a couple of tablespoons of oil and then add the cakes, shallow frying over a low-medium heat. Turn them a couple of times until they are golden on all sides. Remove and drain on a paper towel.
Serve with soy sauce and chilli.
Son-in-law eggs From The Cook’s Companion
1/2 cup palm sugar 1/4 cup fish sauce 1 tablespoon Tamarind water juice of 1 lime vegetable oil 4 hardboiled eggs, peeled 1 tablespoon friend sliced garlic fresh coriander leaves
In a saucepan, combine the palm sugar, fish sauce and tamarind water. Simmer, stirring, until all the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the lime juice and taste – it should have a balance of sweet, salty and sour. Adjust the seasoning to taste.
Heat the vegetable oil and deep fry the eggs for several minutes until they are golden brown. Drain on paper towels, cut into quarters, and dip into sauce and eat with the fried garlic
and coriander.
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “tangy”, and first up I must make a confession. I cheated this week – I actually made these muffins last week! I was going to make a fresh recipe for the theme this week, but in keeping with our long weekend tradition we did some more house painting on Good Friday (our bedroom and our ensuite). It looks fantastic, but painting seems to suck all the energy from me for the rest of the weekend and I couldn’t muster up the motivation to do anything today!
A colleague of mine gave me some rhubarb from her garden, and I used them in these muffins last weekend. I love it when people give me food – particularly when they have grown it themselves! Coincidentally, the muffins fit with the tangy theme – since they had rhubarb and yoghurt in them.
The original recipe made a large cake, but I made small cakes instead. I’m calling them muffins because the rather thick batter is mixed like a muffin rather than a cake – but the texture of them is very cake-like, similar to a butter cake. They look quite flat, but they were very good and moist. The original recipe called for a tablespoon of rose water, which I halved because I was worried that it would be too soapy. Half a tablespoon gave them a faint, sweet, fragrance that went really well with the rhubarb. I think I worried needlessly, a whole tablespoon probably would’ve been fine!
I gave a couple of muffins to my colleague, and she has promised me more rhubarb in the future. Sounds good to me!
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease a 12 cup muffin tin.
In a bowl, mix together the rhubarb and sugar. Sift the flour over, and mix into the rhubarb mixture. Stir in the vanilla, egg, yoghurt, rosewater and butter until just combined (the mixture will be very thick).
Spoon the batter into the muffin trays, and decorate with the extra pieces of rhubarb. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the muffins comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.
Recipe: Sticky rice with mango From: Ballymaloe Cookery Course
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “rice”. Being Chinese, I eat a lot of rice, so I wanted to make something that I wouldn’t normally try and decided on sticky black rice. I read the recipe this morning, just as we were about to go out and purchase black rice, and realised that I was meant to soak the rice overnight. Gaaaah. So much for my intentions of being better organised!
That led me to flick through several of my other cookbooks to find a new recipe – and I came across this recipe for white sticky rice with mango that didn’t need overnight soaking. As a bonus, I already had glutinous rice in the pantry as I normally use it to make a savoury one pot dish with Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms.
After the hour of soaking, I put the rice on to cook. At the same time, I started baking a cake and was gathering ingredients, when the phone rang. It was my mum and dad, so I was juggling flour, sugar and butter while chatting to them on the phone. This meant that I totally forgot that I had the rice on the stove! Fortunately, I remembered it just in time, and managed to get to it just as all the water had absorbed. Phew!
Since it’s no longer mango season, I served the sticky rice with peaches instead and poured over some extra coconut milk. Tastewise, the rice was okay – it was mildly sweet, and had a faint fragrance and flavour of coconut. I would have preferred it sweeter, as it mostly just tasted like glutinous rice and it all seemed a bit wrong.
I doubt I’d make it again. I guess I like my glutinous rice to be savoury!
400g of white glutinous rice 285ml coconut milk pinch of salt 2 tablespoons caster sugar (I would recommend more sugar. Double it!) 300ml water
4 small or 2 large mangoes, peeled and diced (I used peaches) lime juice and sugar mint leaves to decorate
Soak the rice in cold water for at least an hour and drain. In a saucepan, place the rice, coconut milk, salt, sugar and water and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat to a simmer, and let it simmer uncovered until all the water has been absorbed.
Remove from the heat, place the lid back on the pot, and let stand for five minutes.
Transfer the rice to a steamer or a double saucepan and steam for 15-20 minutes.
Serve with the diced mango sprinkled with lime juice and a little sugar. Decorate with mint.
Recipe: Lamb with coriander and chilli Cookbook: AWW Kitchen
Oh, the weather in Melbourne has been so lovely this week. Perfect for this week’s Cookbook Challenge theme – BBQ.
Despite my best intentions when the Cookbook Challenge began, I still find myself on Sunday frantically trying to decide on a recipe, cook, photograph and blog before the week is over. I always intend to be more organised…. but…. I think I need the pressure!
It took me ages to decide on a recipe – you would think that BBQ would be an easy week, but for some reason I just couldn’t find anything I particularly liked. It didn’t help that I had run out of garlic and was trying to find a recipe without it. In the end, we just went out to buy some and I was able to finally decide on a recipe.
In the cookbook, the recipe is for chicken, but since I already had lamb chops I just went with them. I thought it was pretty good with lamb. Spicy, sourish, and fragrant – gosh it smelt good cooking on the BBQ. I served the chops with a simple baby spinach and chickpea salad, and I couldn’t resist garnishing with some extra cut chilli. Delicious, and another challenge done for the week. Perhaps I’ll be more organised next week?
Second recipe: Vietnamese creme caramel From: Ballymaloe Cookery Course
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is Vietnamese and I considered making pho, but when I saw that the recipe started with “roast your beef bones for 1.5 hours” and continued with “cook your stock for 4 hours” I couldn’t be bothered going through with it! Perhaps if we had spent the weekend at home, but life is rather busy at the moment and I didn’t have the time to spare. That and pho costs $8 a bowl up the road in Footscray….. and I doubt that I could do it better. (Did anyone else make pho? I applaud you if you did!)
Instead, I made a Vietnamese chicken salad from AWW’s Kitchen. I don’t know how authentic it is (not very, I suspect) but it was delicious. One of the good things about doing this Cookbook Challenge is that it has encouraged me to make recipes I wouldn’t normally make. I’m sure that if it hadn’t been for Vietnamese week, I would never have made this recipe. But it’s such a good salad that I’m going to add it to my salad rotation!
The salad consists of poached chicken, pickled carrots, onions and bean sprouts, and then cabbage, Vietnamese mint, coriander, and a fish sauce and lime dressing. It’s all crunchy and fresh, and I loved the tangy sweetness of the pickled vegetables. The herbs were fantastic in it, giving the salad a fresh pepperyness. I highly recommend trying this recipe!
For dessert, we had Vietnamese creme caramel. It was just like a regular creme caramel, except the caramel was made with palm sugar, and there was coconut milk in the custard.
It was a nice variation on the French dessert, with the coconut milk giving a faint coconut flavour. I did find it a bit eggy though, and (since I’m being critical right now) I should have pushed my caramel further. It wasn’t quite caramel enough, but it was hard to tell the state of caramelisation with the palm sugar when I was cooking it. To be honest, plain old sugar would have done the trick just as well.
I enjoyed the theme for the Cookbook Challenge this week since I hardly ever cook Vietnamese food. The theme for next week is “BBQ”… hopefully the weather stays nice!
500g skinless chicken fillets (I used thigh) 2 shallots, peeled 2cm knob of ginger, peeled 1 large carrot (180g) 1/2 cup (125ml) rice wine vinegar 2 teaspoons salt 2 tablespoons caster sugar 4 stems of spring onion, washed and sliced into small pieces 1 & 1/2 cups (120g) bean sprouts 2 cups (160) finely shredded cabbage (I used wombok) 1/4 cup firmly packed Vietnamese mint leaves 1/2 cup firmly packed fresh coriander leaves 1 tablespoon crushed roasted peanuts 2 tablespoons fried shallots
For the dressing (you could get away with making half this amount)
2 tablespoons fish sauce 1/4 cup (60ml) water 2 tablespoons caster sugar 2 tablespoons lime juice 1 clove garlic, crushed
In a medium saucepan, place the shallots, ginger and water (enough that you think will cover your chicken). Bring the water to the boil and put the chicken into the pot. Bring the water back up to a boil, and then cover the pot and turn the heat off. Let the chicken sit in the water for 10 minutes, and then return the pot to the heat and bring it back up to a boil. As soon as it comes up to a boil, turn the heat off, and let the chicken sit in the poaching liquid for at least another 10 minutes. The chicken should be cooked at this stage – take it out of the liquid and shred it coarsely. Discard the liquid.
Meantime, cut the carrot into matchstick sized pieces. In a large bowl, add the vinegar, salt and sugar, and stir to combine. Add the carrots to the vinegar mixture and let it sit for five minutes. Add the spring onions, and let it stand for another five minutes. Finally, add the bean sprouts and leave it for three minutes. Drain the pickled vegetables, discarding the liquid.
Place the pickled vegetables in a large bowl with the chicken, cabbage, mint and coriander.
To make the dressing, add all the ingredients into a screw top jar and shake well. Pour the dressing over the salad, toss to combine, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with the nuts and shallots.
Vietnamese creme caramel (Due Kem Caramen)
From Ballymaloe Cookery Course
Serves 6
110g palm sugar or golden caster sugar 100ml water 225ml water 225ml coconut milk 4 eggs 50g golden caster sugar 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla essence
6 ramekins
Put the sugar and water into a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. After the sugar has dissolved, brush the sides of the pot occasionally with a wet pastry brush, and cook the sugar until it is a rich brown caramel.
Pour the caramel into 6 ramekins, swirling it around so that it coats the side a little as well as the bottom. I find it easier to do each ramekin at a time, otherwise the caramel sets too quickly for swirling!
Preheat the oven to 170°C.
In a different saucepan, heat the milk and coconut milk until it starts to bubble around the edges. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs with the caster sugar and vanilla essence. Remove the milk mixture from the heat and pour into the egg mixture, whisking constantly.
Strain the milk and egg mixture into a jug, and then pour it into the ramekins. Place the ramekins into a tray with boiling water to half way up the side of the ramekins. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until just cooked (mine were cooked after 35 minutes).
Remove from the oven and cool. To serve, run a knife around the edge of each one and dip the bottom of the ramekins into hot water. Invert on to individual plates.
Recipe: Chinese mushrooms with cellophane noodles From: Chinese, the essence of Asian cooking
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “noodles” and for the recipe I’ve gone very Chinese. And by very Chinese, I mean – I’m not sure anyone but us Asians would eat this. :p
This week I made Chinese (shiitake) mushrooms with cellophane noodles. This is a very hearty vegetarian dish, that contains shiitake mushrooms, bean curd skins, fermented bean curd and wood ears/black fungus. It’s very filling. I ate a bowl of it and felt like I had eaten a seven course banquet!
Left: dried wood ear. Right: rehydrated wood ear
Are you wondering what wood ears are? They’re an edible fungus, commonly sold dried, and they’re used for their texture as they don’t have much flavour on their own. The texture is firm, gelatinous and slightly crunchy and they soak up the flavours of whatever they’re cooked in.
I love the strong, meatiness of shiitake mushrooms, so I really enjoyed them in this dish. I’ve never been a huge fan of dried bean curd though, and I think there was far too much in this recipe. It made it all taste very “beany”. I think halving, or even quartering the amount specified in the recipe would be a good idea.
But I’ll just have to get over the “beaniness” of the dish since I have rather a lot left over. Alastair tried it and didn’t like it, so it looks like it’s up to me!
115g dried Chinese mushrooms 25g dried wood ears 115g dried bean curd, broken into small pieces 30 ml vegetable oil 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 slices fresh ginger, finely chopped 10 Szechuan peppercorns, crushed 15ml (about 1 tablespoon) red fermented bean curd 1/2 star anise pinch of sugar 15-30ml soy sauce 50g cellophane noodles, soaked in hot water until soft salt
In separate bowls, soak the Chinese mushroom, wood ears and dried bean curd in plenty of hot water for 30 minutes.
Strain the mushrooms, squeezing out as much liquid as possible, and reserving the liquid. Discard the stems and cut the mushrooms in half if they are vey big.
Drain the wood ears, rinse thoroughly and cut into 2-3cm pieces.
In a heavy based pan, heat the oil, and add the garlic, ginger and Szechuan peppercorns. Fry for a few seconds, then add the mushrooms and red fermented bean curd. Stir and fry for several minutes.
Add the reserved mushroom liquid to the pan, with enough liquid to completely cover the mushrooms. Add the star anise, sugar and soy sauce, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
Add the chopped wood ears and reconstituted drained bean curd pieces to the pan. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.
Drain the noodles and add them to the pan and cook for another 10 minutes, or until tender. Add more liquid if necessary. Season with salt to taste and serve.
