Recipe: Margarita
From: Marie Claire Food & Drink
The theme for the Cookbook Challenge this week is “cup” and I must admit that I have stretched the theme a bit.
My thinking went like this:
Cup = glass = drink = cocktail = MARGARITAS!
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Recipe: Ceviche with coconut dressing
From: Marie and Claire Food and Drink
I really struggled with the theme for the Cookbook Challenge this week, which was “raw”. At first I thought I would do a salad, but none of the salads I found that were completely raw excited me.
But if there’s one thing doing these posts every week have taught me – think a little harder! And this little noggin eventually came up with far more exciting things than salad: ceviche, tataki, steak tartare, and sashimi.
I decided to do ceviche, which is a seafood dish that’s particularly popular in Central and South America. Typically in ceviche, fresh raw fish is marinated in lemon/lime juice and additional seasonings. While the acid in the citrus “cooks” the fish (the citric acid denatures the proteins), it’s not actually cooked with heat so I’m still counting it as raw for the purposes of the theme this week.The second thing that I’ve learnt from doing these posts every week is that it’s okay to stretch the theme a little. 🙂
To make the ceviche, I marinated raw bite sized pieces of a white, firm-fleshed fish in lime juice for a couple of hours. The fish was then drained and added to a coconut cream dressing. It was very easy to prepare and for food hygiene reasons, it can’t sit around for long since it’s not cooked. So I only made a small amount to take photos of, and left the rest of the fish in the fridge, thinking I would prepare it later when we were ready to eat dinner. It worked out well that I only made a small amount because I didn’t like it at all! The lime juice was quite strong in the marinated fish, and the coconut dressing was too sweet. I quite like ceviche, but there was something about this one that just didn’t appeal to me.
So that I didn’t waste the fish, I ended up poaching the rest in the coconut dressing instead. With the addition of a bit more salt it wasn’t too bad, but not something I’d want to make again (and of course, once it was cooked, it wasn’t ceviche anymore).
I can’t say this one is a winner, but if you’re interested, the recipe is below!
And see previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.
Ceviche with coconut dressing
Adapted from Marie Claire Food & Drink
Makes 20 small serves
250g firm white-fleshed fish, skin removed and boned
1 lime, juiced
50ml coconut cream
1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Large pinch of salt
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander
1 spring onion, finely sliced on the diagonal
Cut the fish into bite sized pieces and place into a bowl. Add the lime juice to the fish and stir. Cover and refrigerate for two hours.
In a separate bowl, combine the coconut cream, ginger, turmeric, sugar, coriander and salt. Drain the fish and add it to the coconut dressing.
Sprinkle with the spring onion and serve.
Recipe: Sticky Asian Pork Belly
From: Donna Hay Simple Essentials: Lamb, Beef and Pork
It’s Chinese week for the Cookbook Challenge, and I didn’t have a plan for this week. What?! How did that happen? Being Chinese, I should have had a TON of ideas. Maybe I had too many options and was paralysed by indecision. Who knows! In the end, I made pork belly for this week just because I saw it at the shop – it was a total impulse purchase.
The pork belly I bought didn’t have the skin on it, so I couldn’t make the classic Chinese crispy roast pork. Instead, I followed a Donna Hay recipe for a sticky Asian pork belly (close enough) and braised the belly in a mixture of wine, hoisin sauce, kecap manis and soy sauce. (The recipe says to bake it, but I braised it and it worked well enough.) I cooked the pork and then let it cool in the fridge overnight, a step that I highly recommend because it meant I could scoop off a lot of the solidified fat. And, holy cow, was there rather a lot of fat and oil – it’s pork belly after all!
After hours of braising, the pork belly was soft and tender. It was a bit fatty, but not excessively so. The marinade and cooking sauce was quite strong and tangy, and there was an edge to it that I wasn’t sure I liked. Too much hoisin? Too much rice wine? I’m not sure. So it wasn’t the best pork belly I’ve ever eaten, though it was much better when eaten with plain rice to help cut through some of the richness.
Pork belly isn’t something I cook or eat often – everything in moderation of course! But next time I make it, I’ll try another recipe. I want something better than okay if I’m making pork belly – I want absolutely drool worthy! Does anyone have any recipe suggestions?
See previous Cookbook Challenge posts here.
Sticky Asian pork belly
Adapted from: Donna Hay Simple Essentials: beef, lamb and pork
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons finely grated ginger
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1 cup Chinese cooking wine
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons kecap manis
1 cup water
2 fresh chillies, roughly chopped
1kg pork belly
In a large bowl, combine the garlic, ginger, hoisin, wine, sugar, kecap manis, chillies and water. Add the pork belly (skin side down, if it has skin) to the marinade, and cover and refridgerate for at least one hour.
Place the pork belly and marinade into a large pot. Bring the liquid up to the boil, and then turn down to a simmer. Let it simmer until tender – probably a couple of hours. When the pork is tender, leave it to cool in the fridge overnight.
The next day, scoop off the solidified fat and discard. Gently reheat the pork belly. When it is warm, remove the pork belly and cut into strips/pieces. Bring the cooking liquid to a boil and let it reduce slightly. Add some cornflour mixed into water to thicken the sauce.
Return the pork belly to the sauce and serve with plain rice.
Recipe: Salt and vinegar baked chips
Inspired from: Donna Hay, Simple Essentials: Salads and Vegetables
The theme for the Cookbook Challenge this week is “crunchy” and initially I thought I would do a salad of some sort. But despite the fact that it’s slowly warming up in Melbourne, it’s still not quite salad weather. Any kind of weather is potato weather though – so I settled on a recipe for baked chips.
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Recipe: Harissa and yoghurt baked chicken
From: Simple essentials: Chicken
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “bird”. While I had grand ideas of doing duck, turkey or quail, it didn’t eventuate and I stuck with the common chook. But we had duck for dinner last night! Does that count? (No, no, I guess it doesn’t.)
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Unbelievably, we’re on to Week 41 of the Cookbook Challenge, and the theme this week is: celebration.
I don’t have a specific occasion to celebrate this weekend, but here are some things that I’d like to celebrate:
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Cookbook Challenge: Week 40
Theme: Apple
Recipe: “Crunchy top” apple & pear muffins
From: Bill Granger’s Holiday
You know when you’ve been baking for a while, you start to get the jist of recipes. Most baked goods follow a similar method – for example, with many cakes you cream the butter and sugar first, and then add the dry and wet ingredients separately in a couple of batches. With muffins, you mix together the dry ingredients and then stir through the wet ingredients. After a while, once you’ve sussed out the necessary quantities of the different ingredients, you don’t really need to read the recipe.
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Chinese chicken parcels
From: Jamie’s Kitchen
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is “TV Chef”. Weeks like this are great because they’re so easy! I could have gone with Rick Stein, Maggie Beer, Bill Granger…. but in the end I decided to go with the Naked Chef himself, Jamie Oliver.
Time for a bit of a rant. I was making these last night when my parents called. They have a knack of calling right when I’m in the middle of making dinner. And last night as I was preparing dinner, I was juggling about several things – as you do. I had a frying pan heating up, the steamer was bubbling away, I had the cabbage and chicken mixture out (ready for rolling), and I was in the laundry starting off a load of washing… then mum and dad called. GAH. We don’t normally talk for more than ten minutes, so I tried to talk while simultaneously doing everything else. But it wasn’t just chit chat, they wanted to talk about the details of our holiday in September, and I couldn’t remember the exact dates that they were asking about. And seriously, if I had to turn on the computer to get the details AND cook AND do washing AND think in Chinese, I think my head would have exploded!
Eventually the phone cut off, and since we were nearing the end of our conversation, they didn’t call back. Thank goodness – I could focus on making dinner again! I love my parents, but how on earth do they manage to always call while I’m cooking??
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Tea spiced pears
From: Lighten Up
It’s spice week for the Cookbook Challenge and I had SO MANY IDEAS. But guess what else I had a lot of? PEARS. FRIGGIN PEARS. After a brief break from them in my fruit and vegetable delivery box – they reappeared in this week’s box.
So a recipe that used pears that also ticked off this week’s theme? Bonus!
From: Darina Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery Course
The theme for this week’s Cookbook Challenge is hearty, and to paraphrase Ange: almost everything I’m cooking at the moment could be classified as hearty. It’s this damned weather – why oh why when Alastair and I left Wellington didn’t we move to a tropical country? Or Queensland? (Oh yeah, because it’s Queensland.)
For the theme this week I made beef provencale – well sort of. Normally when I make a beef stew I don’t follow a recipe. I just throw in whatever vegetables I have (normally carrots and celery) along with copious amounts of onion and garlic, plus whatever spices and seasoning I feel like.