Going With My Gut

Homemade Granola Recipe

 

I've loved granola since about the age of 9. It was the only topping I would ever get on a peach Yami Yogurt, a relatively healthy treat my Mum would allow me to get while we shopped in Singapore malls. I loved its earthy not-too-sweetness and its ambivalence between crunchiness and chewiness. I'm pretty sure it was at this point that I abandoned cornflakes altogether. Their hollow, cardboardy texture just didn't cut it anymore. Even their sugary coatings just made it taste like sugary cardboard.

Over the many years since, granola has graced my breakfast table in fits and starts, mostly because it frustrated me that the good gourmet blends would charge quite a lot, for not enough for my liking.

Finally about this time last year I decided to buy raw oats direct from a farm and learn how to make granola from scratch. It's fundamentally quite easy to do, but it did take me patching together a few recipes and a few trial and error rounds with technique to get to something I was happy to share with you all.

So below is my basic granola recipe. Please use your favourite mix of nuts and dried fruits. For those watching your sugar and salt intake, feel free to reduce the sugar, sweetener and salt levels to your liking.

I like my granola served up with sliced banana and either greek-style yoghurt, or just cold skimmed milk. How do you like yours?

 

Ingredients

• 4 cups jumbo oats (I use Pimhill Organic)
• 100ml oil (I use a half and half blend of sunflower oil and mild olive oil)
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup liquid sweetener (I use a blend of runny honey, maple syrup and agave nectar)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
• Your choice of seeds
  
  
• Choice of nuts, roughly chopped
• Choice of dried fruit
• Pinch of finely ground coffee powder (optional)

 

Directions

• Put oven on bake setting and preheat to 170 deg C
• In a big bowl, mix all of the ingredients above except the nuts and dried fruit until you get an evenly wet sticky mix

Tip: Use the same measuring cup for the oil and the liquid sweeteners. Measure and pour out the oil first, then the liquid sweeteners. This way barely any of the sweetener will stick to the measuring cup, leading to less wastage

• Line 2 baking trays with baking paper
• Spread out the sticky oaty mix onto the 2 trays
• Bake for 15 minutes
• Extract the trays, turn the oaty mix
• Bake for 10 minutes
• Extract the trays, add the chopped nuts, turn the oaty mix. This way the nuts won't burn
• Bake for last 10 minutes until golden brown
• Extract the trays, add the dried fruit, turn the oaty mix. This way the fruits won't burn
• If you like, sprinkle on the coffee powder at this point. This way the coffee won't burn and turn the mix bitter, but will add a lovely aroma to the mix
• Leave to cool. The granola will crisp and cluster up as it cools
• Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks

Corn to Run: 2 Simple and Ludicrously Tasty Recipes

Fifteen months gallavanting around the world was fabulous and all, but I'm so happy to be back within kitchen's reach and, as of last week, rooting around in my Riverford Organic veggie box again.

But between unpacking, catching up with loved ones in the UK, trying to make any kind of dent in my long backlog of travel posts, and now starting some proper market research for my percolating business idea (watch this space), I've had less time to potter around in the kitchen than I would like. Hats off to those of you who whip up so many culinary wonders while maintaining a full time job!

So I'm always on the lookout for quick and fuss-free recipes that don't compromise on deliciousness. These 2 corn recipes -- by 2 of the best chefs you probably haven't heard of -- make the most of now-in-season corn, and are absolutely inspirational in terms of ease and taste. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

 

 

Kosambari (Corn and Pomegranate Indian Salad)

This one's from Babs's Mum, whose amazing cooking skills makes our post-gallavant diet a daily struggle! To make meals a win-win situation, I've been cajoling her to show me more of her South Indian salads. This one blew me away. I'm hoping to eat a lot more of this while the corn and pomegranate seasons overlap.

 

Ingredients

Serves 4

1/2 tablespoon of rapeseed oil
1/4 onion, finely chopped
1 small green chili, finely chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
Pinch of curry leaves (~10 leaves)
Kernels from 2 ears of corn
Salt to taste

Seeds from 1 large pomegranate
Handful of grated fresh coconut
Pinch of cilantro / coriander, finely chopped

Directions

• Warm a medium-sized pan on the stove, on medium heat
• Add oil to the pan
• Just as the oil starts to smoke, add the onion, chili, mustard seeds and curry leaves. Warm for 2-3 minutes to release fragrance
• Add the corn kernels to the pan, and cook for 5-7 minutes, until the kernels are bright yellow and soft. Add pinch of salt to taste
• Empty the pan's contents into a bowl
• Mix in the pomegranate seeds, coconut and coriander
• Serve up!

 

Elote (Mexican Corn on the Cob)

All through our 15 months on the road, I was tortured by friends' rave reviews, and blog and Facebook photos of dishes whipped up or slaved over by Si, a relatively recent addition to my food obsessed circle of friends. I left shameless flattering and pleading comments on every post about fish tacos, handmade burgers from hand-ground beef, salmon carpaccio et al, which all came back to one key message "Can I please please please try your cooking sometime".

So when Si offered to cook for me the first weekend I got back to the UK, I jumped about 3 buildings high at the chance.

This dish -- Si's cheeseless rendition of elote, a ubiquitous sweet-salty-spicy Mexican street snack -- was phenomenal. And it's just the beginning... I hope.

 

Ingredients

Serves 4

4 ears of corn on the cob
1/4 cup Mayonnaise
Cayenne pepper to taste
Lemon pepper to taste
Salt to taste

Directions

• Grill corn on BBQ for 20-25 minutes. Turn several times to ensure even grilling. Don't mind the char too much. It brings out a lovely caramelly flavour from the corn
• Mix the cayenne pepper, lemon pepper and salt in a bowl
• When corn is cooked, slather on mayonnaise
• Sprinkle the spice mixture evenly on the corn
• Serve up!

Coming Home to the Same Old Mee

After you've been away from home for a while, what's the first thing you absolutely need to sink your chops into the minute you walk through the door, as confirmation that "Ahhhhh.....I'm finally home?"

Said a few members of my lovely Facebook and Twitter community:

@Dan: "Anything noodlely and heart clogging- bak chor mee (kae liao), hokkien mee, char kway teow or laska. Well thats also kinda whats available from the nearest kopi tiam."

@Preeti: "Dal chawal + bhindi for me (rice + lentils and okra)."

@Nick: "Sausage and mash, gammon and eggs, pie and mash, montgomery cheddar cheese on toast with lea & perrins."

@Lucy: "Rozbif and cider, innocent smoothies, middle-eastern cuisine, crumble and custard. Ramen and Formosa Delights dumplings when going back to Singapore."

@Said Hwee Li: "Laksa, char kuay teow, deep fried dough fritters with soya bean milk."

@gnoserif: "THIS IS PRATAAAAAA...."

@cupcakesfortwo: "I can't eat anything after my travels, I must have peppermint tea before I can even think about food."

@michtan: "Bak Chor Mee! Peranankan Popiah! *salivate*"

@thegardenslug: "Prata or maggi mee goreng + Teh tarik :P"

How about you?

While I always come home to Singapore with a long to-eat list of hawker food, the first taste I want is a big steaming bowl of Myojo mee (noodles) pimped up with prawns, squid, cai xin, bean sprouts, and an egg beaten into the soup. With a side of pickled sliced green chili. Wolfed down right between chucking my bags in my room and taking a shower.

My Dad started this particular food habit of mine (among others). Growing up, anytime we were coming home from a family trip, he'd call ahead and ask our longtime family housekeeper Aunty Kiew Moi to whip a bowl of these noodles with egg, bean sprouts and haybee (dried shrimp). When asked what I wanted prepared, I'd just say, "That sounds good. One for me too."

Over the years we'd experiment with adding different ingredients. There were luncheon meat phases, cuttlefish ball phases, crabstick phases, exotic Japanese mushroom phases. There were pimp-my-ramen suggestions -- including cheese and strips of bak kwa (barbequed pork jerky) -- from friends. But the recipe finally stablised into the picture above: all fresh (besides the noodles); all fast to cook, good to eat (much like the ramen TV jingles of my youth). So much so that after I started traveling on my own, there was no need to even call ahead. Upon coming home, I'd simply poke my head into the kitchen to say hello to Aunty Kiew Moi, troop to my room to put down my bags, check my mail, amble back out to the dining room to the welcoming cauldron.

Nothing's changed, even now that I've lived away and abroad for almost 4 years. Thankfully.

Asking for the same homecoming dish every time is clearly a fix of comfort food for me. But recently I've started to wonder if on some level it's also a dose of comfort for members of the welcome-home-wagon. That no matter how long or how far I've been away from home, regardless of new experiences, new ideas, new friends, wolfing down with gusto the same old mee means that, at heart, I'm still the same old me.

Homecoming Myojo Mee Recipe:

Serves 1 homesick person

Ingredients:

1 packet Myojo mee (your choice of flavour. I like chicken curry)
1 egg
1/2 handful of cai xin, cut into finger-length sections
1 handful of small peeled prawns and squid, cleaned and cut into bite-size pieces
1/2 handful of beansprouts
Light soya sauce and white pepper, to taste

Directions:

Possibly overly fussy, but this specific sequence (perfected by trial and error over the last couple of decades!) optimizes the softness of the noodle and the crunch of the vegetables and seafood.

• Bring half a small saucepan of water to a rolling boil, sprinkle in the packet of seasoning from the noodle packet
• Add the noodles, let it cook for ~2 minutes
• Gently crack the egg in. If you like an eggy soup, use chopsticks to break up the egg and stir it around. If you want the egg whole but don't want it to catch at the bottom of the saucepan, make sure it sits on top of the bed of noodles
• Add the cai xin, let sit for 30 seconds
• Add the prawns and squid, stir for 30 seconds
• Add the beansprouts, stir for 30 seconds
• Check that the prawns have turned pink
• Empty the saucepan into a large bowl (contents first, then the broth, to avoid hot painful splashing)
• Add light soya sauce and white pepper to taste, if necessary
• Garnish with slices of green chili pickled in white vinegar (optional)

Just A Little Taste of Aunty Shaistha's Khara Seeve (Rice Noodles with Lentils)

I said in December, at the beginning of our 2 months in India, that Babs and I were doomed to fatness and bliss. To be precise, we both put on 4kg each while we were in India. This post is about the precise moment when I pushed off down this slippery slope.

A little context for the uninitiated: One of the big ways Indian relatives show their love for you is by feeding you. (I think the other big way -- if it's a very close relative, like a parent -- is that they buy a house for you. So that they know exactly where you are, so that they know exactly where to go to feed you.) If you tell them "I'm not hungry, I already ate," it's like you're telling an angsty 14-year-old who just wrote you an epic confession of their affection that you just want to be friends.

Most of the time this results in just garden-variety overfeeding. A mandatory 2nd or 3rd helping at any given meal. Fine. We do that anyway. For better or worse, our India relatives love us for it.

The thing is, some of our them love us a little too dangerously.

"You're going to get me into trouble at dinner. They're going to ask me why I'm not eating as much," I whispered weakly that December evening in Bangalore to Aunty Shaistha.

"You're walking to dinner. You'll be hungry again by then," she whispered back.

"But dinner is at Mahboob Pasha's house."

Mahboob Pasha is Aunty Shaistha's brother-in-law. He lives in the same building. One flight upstairs.

"It's just a small bowl. Just a little taste," she says.

Just a little taste then.

My tastebuds go into overdrive. My eyes bulge. My mind races. When was the last time I had a taste of rice noodles? London? 7 months ago?

"I don't... think... I can... stop at just one bowl..."

Aunty Shaistha smiled. She knew she has me in the venus flytrap of her khara seeve casserole now. And yet dinner obligations -- inevitably involving at least 2 mutton dishes -- remained at hand. Surely I couldn't tell them the saboteur of their lovingly prepared meal came from downstairs.

And so I found myself turning into a dinner bigamist. Slippety slide. And then find out our hosts upstairs pull the exact same manovuere any time we're trying to leave their house to go to our next engagement. Slippety slide. It doesn't matter that we've just come from downstairs, or that downstairs is our next engagement "So what you've eaten downstairs? You haven't eaten up here yet." Slippety slide.

And now, in Singapore, if I'm going out to meet friends for a meal, but something yummy is cooking at home, I'll sneak a little bowl before I head out. "Just a little taste," I tell my Mum.

This dish -- Aunty Shaistha's khara seeve -- is the dish that started it all. If you are able to resist, you are clearly a better human being than I. But probably a little hungrier.

Makes ~6 servings or up to 10 "little tastes"

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 cup yellow lentils, uncooked
1 large onion, chopped finely
2-3 tomatoes (depending on size), chopped
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
4 green chili, stems removed
A large pinch of curry leaves
1 small bunch of coriander, chopped
Salt to taste
1 packet rice noodles (Mehra brand was used here)

Directions

• Drizzle a couple of glugs of olive oil in a chef's pan set on medium-high heat
• On a separate hob on the stove, boil half a kettle of water
• Add everything except the rice noodles to the chef-pan, and fry for ~5 minutes
• Add boiling water until the chef-pan is half full
• Bash and twist the rice noodles while still in its packaging, to break the noodles into small sections
• Add the broken rice noodles to the chef pan
• Stir until the rice noodles and ingredients are evenly distributed, then let sit for about 10 minutes until the rice noodles have softend and soaked in all the liquid in the pan
• Add salt to taste if necessary

Aunty Chandra's Wake Me Up Coconut Chutney

Above: Next to a tasty dosa (especially a paper dosa) and a spicy-tamarindy-tomatoey sambar, an anaemic looking coconut chutney is usually nothing to trumpet about. Then I met Aunty Chandra

I'd never really paid much attention to coconut chutney before. Sat next to the bowl of red sambar for my dosai (a South Indian breakfast-staple crepe), coconut chutney's dirty shade of white isn't the most inspiring colour. On the occasions I try it, it usually tastes like...watery paper mulch, sometimes with a touch of salt. Who's got the time and spare calories, know what I mean?

So when Auntry Chandra -- the wife of Uncle Anand, Babs's Dad's buddy from medical school -- served coconut chutney with breakfast when we stayed with her in Mangalore in December, I dipped in initially only out of politeness.

It kicked me awake and almost off my chair. My mouth was literally watering, triggered by a refreshing sour twang. As were my eyes -- always a good sign of chili-heat. Or happiness. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

I kept dipping. Then digging. In that familiar gentle but determined race with Babs to the bottom of the bowl.

Enough preamble. I need to learn how to make this. So do you. Thankfully Aunty Chandra graciously obliges, much amused.

Makes 2-3 portions

1 saucer of freshly grated coconut
2 green chilis
1/4 onion
1 thumb-sized stem of ginger, skinned
1 seed taramind, de-seeded

Combine with a splash of water and grind in a food processor. Add water a little bit at a time and continue grinding until you get this consistency (below).

Uber Healthy Apple Cinnamon Oat Bran Muffins

'Twas a recent wintry Sunday in London when @eatlikeagirl and @brucey1 both tweeted about baking apple cinnamon muffins. The version that always springs to my mind my Mum's uber healthy recipe using oat bran. For quite a few of my teenage years, Mum would make these muffins for my Dad to help manage his cholesterol levels, especially just after his return from a business trip.

I remember spending quite a few nights hanging out with Mum in the kitchen, watching her whizz oat bran into a rough flour, helping her chop apples and walnuts, and playing with this nifty gadget that separated egg whites from their yolks.

In retrospect, I admit I was never the biggest fan of actually eating these muffins. They were more healthy than tasty, shall we say. But I have lovely memories of making them, because it meant Mum and I would be mucking about in a kitchen that smelled of spicy warm cinnamon, because it would be a girly hour of talking with Mum about the latest capers at school (hers and mine both, since she was a teacher), and because oat bran muffins usually meant Dad was coming home from somewhere far away soon.

On a lark I emailed Mum to see if she still had the recipe somewhere. Ever organised, she almost immediately shot it over. I'll next see Mum in February. Maybe we'll take a crack at making another batch of these. I'd like to see if we can make them more tempting without making them any less healthy. Maybe use more apple. Maybe make them sweeter but by using agave nectar instead of sugar.

If you have modifcations on this recipe you like, I'd love to hear them.

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

Dry:
2 1/4 cups oat bran cereal
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup raisins

Wet:
1/2 cup skimmed milk
3/4 cup frozen apple juice concentrate
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons olive oil

1 apple, cored and chopped

Directions

• Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl
• Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl
• Add the wet mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients, and mix
• Add the chopped apple
• Line a muffin pan with paper baking cups and fill with batter
• Bake at 425 deg F (220 deg C) for 17 minutes

(Soup) Stock Tip: Tom Yum

Above: Tom yumyumyum

Tom yum soup is my panacea for many of life's minor troubles -- blocked sinuses, tummy upsets, and lousy moods. There's something about the combined sweetness, tartness and heat that comforts and stimulates all at the same time. During a 3 month period when I was commuting weekly to the Netherlands for work, Babs would pick me up at Heathrow and we would go home via Khao San on the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Park Road; my favourite Thai restaurant in London run by a lovely woman called Pan, just so I could recharge with a double-portion of her tom yum seafood soup.

I learnt how to make this from scratch so that I could stop using the processed pre-fab soup packets. Don't be intimidated by the list of ingredients, once you get them together they just need chucking together in a pot.

I've tried to stay faithful to the traditional recipe in this post, with indications of what you can get away with leaving out if you don't have a comprehensive Asian grocer nearby. Apologies to the purists in advance!

29 September update: Just discovered Joelen's Culinary Adventures's blogging event with a soup / stock pot theme, and decided I just had to add this one into the mix! My original contribution to the event is my home-made Mushroom Soup recipe.

Above: The fiery red is from prawn shells, not chillies. Some of the spiciest tom yum soups I've had have no colour in the stock at all!

For Sweetness and Richness:

• White fish skeletons (e.g. hake, bream, pollock aka colin), heads removed and set aside. Use 1 if you're making 2-4 portions; 2 if you're making a larger pot
• 2 handfuls of dried shrimp
• 1-2 large onions, quartered
• A small bagful of prawn shells or crab shells or lobster shells (Optional but try this if at all possible for a luxurious kick! Babs and I both grew up in families that had a habit of buying fresh whole shrimp, shelling them in batches, and freezing the meat and the shells separately for later use)

Above: Many thanks to Steve Hall from the Handpicked Shellfish Company for the hake skeletons, the foundation of this tom yum soup recipe

For Tartness and Fragrance:

• 8-12 stalks lemongrass, lightly bashed
• Juice from 2-4 limes (don't add the lime rinds to the stock -- it will make the stock bitter)
• A handful of kefir lime leaves (if available)
• A handful of holy basil leaves (if available)
• Fish sauce, to taste

For Heat (dial this up and down according to your taste):

• 6-10 large red chillies, lightly bashed, seeds kept in
• 4-6 birds eye chillies, lightly bashed, seeds kept in
• A handful of black or white peppercorns
• 1 large stem of ginger, skin peeled, chunked up and lightly bashed
• 1 medium stem of blue ginger aka galangal, if available, chunked up and lightly bashed
• Tip: If you've overdone it on the heat, you can mitigate the effect by adding a little sugar to the stock. Go easy though!

Directions for soup stock:

• Combine all the ingredients above EXCEPT THE LIME JUICE above in a large stockpot of filtered water
• Turn the stove heat to medium-high, boil for at least 1 hour, preferably 2 hours.
• Strain the stock through a sieve or muslin cloth
• If you're feeling adventurous, rub salt on the fish heads and cook in the boiling broth after straining for the last 15-20 minutes. Fish aficionados will fight over the lovely tender meat on the head, in the cheeks and under the collars. The jelly around the eyes is also considered a delicacy
• I have to admit, I don't know how long this stock keeps if you freeze it -- I usually plow through all of it within 1-3 days! Advice, anyone?

If Serving as a Soup Dish, Add Your Desired Amount Of...

• Slices of solid-meat fish (e.g. pollock, salmon, trout)
• Whole shrimp, peeled
• Mussels on the half-shell
• Crab or lobster meat (if you really want to pimp it up)
• Mushrooms. Purists will use straw mushrooms; I really like using sliced up fresh shitake, and enoki aka golden mushrooms, which really absorb the tom yum flavour
• Add all of the above to the stock, and cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes at most
• Add the fresh lime juice
• Garnish with fresh red chilli sliced on the bias, and a few coriander leaves

Make A Meal of It!

I often make this as a quick one-bowl meal, if I have leftover stock from the previous day. In addition to the ingredients above, I add a couple of handfuls of kang kong aka water morning glory, or baby spinach leaves, and 1 single-serving bundle of tang hoon aka glass noodles per portion. This can all go into the stock pot at the same time as the ingredients above, as the cooking time is equally quick.

Khao San
108 Chepstow Road
London, W2 5QS, United Kingdom
+44 20 7221 9984

Handpicked Shellfish Company
Wimbledon Park and Ealing farmer markets every Saturday, Queens Park every Sunday, and every other Wednesday at Swiss Cottage.

Veggie Spanish Omelette

A quick one without photos, since I made this in a hurry on the day we were scheduled to leave the finca in Orgiva, Spain.

After spending 3 weeks in the Spanish countryside, I've developed a taste for adding potato to omelettes as the Spanish do, to bulk up a quick and simple lunch. This recipe makes lunch for 2, or a snack for 4.

1 medium-sized potato, skinned. Slice widthways into thin discs, then cut each of the discs (in a stack) into thin strips
1 small onion
1 green pepper
1 large tomato
4-8 mushrooms, depending on size
Chop all of the above finely

4-6 eggs, depending on size, preferably free-range organic
Olive oil, preferably extra virgin and organic
Salt and ground black pepper to taste

• Drizzle olive oil into a frying pan on medium heat on the stove, and warm for a couple of minutes
• Add in the potato strips and the chopped onion. Add a couple of shakes of salt, and a pinch of ground black pepper. Fry for about 5 minutes. If cooking on the go, stir occasionally while you chop the green pepper and tomatoes
• Add the green pepper and tomatoes and again, stir occasionally while you chop the mushrooms
• Add the mushrooms and stir again
• Add the eggs. You can break them into a bowl and whisk them a little with a fork if you like an even yellow colour. I cracked them straight into the pan and just spread the yolk around, to save washing up a bowl. Spread the egg around evenly and cook for 3-5 minutes
• Turn the oven grill on
• Stick the frying pan in the oven for another ~3 minutes to finish cooking the top of the omelette

If you're the more carnivorous type, you can add bits of chopped up chorizo or jamon, or even morcillo (black pudding sausage), which adds the intense flavour of morcillo without its heaviness.

Mussel Flexing

The reality of a backpacking sabbatical kicks in. At €15-25 a pot, mussels in Bruges are out of budget. Initial sulks aside, it's hard to give in when I know I can get a stellar 2kg bag for £6 from Steve Hall and Matt Baldwin at their Hand Picked Shellfish Company stall at the Queens Park Farmers Market in London.

So the next best thing: a little mussel memory, and a reminder to myself that life is good. The rest -- like this entry -- is gravy.

Prepping Mussels

Soak mussels in a basin of cold water with salt and a little flour, and agitate to shake out any sand. Scrub any barnacles off the shells, and pull out their beards (turns out they're a biological part of the mussel rather than bits of whatever they've been clinging on to). Tap any open mussels on the kitchen counter, and throw away those that don't close. After cooking, throw away any that refuse to open.

A 2 kg bag will make 2 generous main portions, or 4-6 appetiser portions.

Garlic & White Wine

My basic recipe for steaming mussels - a building block for the other recipes below. If you like, you can also chop up a handful of flat-leaf parsley and mix it into the pot of mussels after they're cooked.

Provencale

1 bulb garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 tin plum tomatoes, preferably organic
1 cup white wine
Sweet basil
Oregano
Olive oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste

Fry the garlic and onion in a couple of glugs of olive oil in a heavy saucepan until soft. Add the tomatoes, including the juice, 1 cup of white wine, a handful of chopped fresh sweet basil and oregano (or 1/2 tablespoon each if dried). Add tomato paste if you like a thicker sauce. Simmer for ~10-15 minutes to reduce the sauce, then turn off the heat.

Add the layer of mussels, then turn the heat back on to medium-high. Follow cooking method in basic recipe.


Tom Yum

1 ginger stem (about the size of 4 fingers), sliced thick
1 onion, sliced thick
3 large red chilies
3 small (birds eye) chilies
3-4 stalks lemongrass, depending on size
1 handful Asia basil leaves
2 key limes
Fish sauce

Take the chilies and lemograss and give them each a few bashes with a pestle on a cutting board or mortar to release their juices. Combine with the garlic and onion, and a handful of Asian basil (they have jagged leaf edges unlike sweet basil, which have smooth leaf edges) and enough fish stock to cover in a large heavy saucepan. Add a splash of fish sauce and cook on medium heat for 20-30 minutes.

Add the layer of mussels, then turn the heat back on to medium-high. Follow cooking method in basic recipe. When cooked, cut the limes into halves and squeeze the juice into the saucepan. Garnish with chopped coriander / cilantro if desired.

Curry Butter Bake

Babs improvised on this one, combining chili powder, ground up coriander seeds and cardamom seeds, tumeric and black pepper with organic salted butter. (If you like, Recipeland has a more precise recipe for curry butter.)

Create 1 even layer of mussels on a baking try. Dot the mussels with curry butter, and cover with chopped coriander and slices of lime. Add a small splash of water (to help create steam) and cover the tray tightly with foil.

Grill or bake at 200 deg C in the oven for 7-10 minutes.

Let me know which of these you liked best, or if you have a mussel recipe for me to try when I'm back in the kitchen.

According to Gin Lady, the Hand picked Shellfish Company is at the following London farmers markets: Wimbledon and Ealing every Saturday, Queens Park every Sunday, and Swiss Cottage every other Wednesday.

Easy Boxed Lunches for a Boxed Life

The last week(s?) have been spent trip planning and packing. The last 2 years of our lives are now in 31 boxes, and the next 1 is on 1 spreadsheet.

As our kitchen infrastructure, remaining time, and budgets tighten, the rules for making meals at home have become as follows:

1) Are the ingredients unfussy / easy to prep?

2) Can everything be cooked in 1 pot or pan?

3) Does it store and reheat well so that 1 cooking session can last 2 or 3 meals?

4) ... is it a punnet of strawberries from the farmers market?

The recipes below will hopefully provide a few ideas for when you're feeling over-worked and under-flush. Remember! Use what's already in your kitchen or very nearby. If an accessory ingredient is missing, improvise. These recipes are for when you already have enough stress in your day.

Asparagus and Cheese Frittata

This currently being the thick of asparagus season, they were going for £4 for 2 bundles at the Perry Court Farm stall at my Sunday morning haunt, Queens Park Farmers Market in London. So I went to get while the going was good.

The English summer bounty at the Perry Court Farm stall at Queens Park Farmers Market

Makes 2-4 portions

Ingredients:
4-6 eggs, depending on size of eggs and how much leftovers you want
1 bundle asparagus, segregated into fat and skinny stalks
1 medium-sized onion
1 large ball fresh mozzerella (cheddar or halloumi or brie will work too, if that's what's in the fridge)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

• Set oven to grill at medium heat
• Finely chop the onion, and chop the fat-stalked asparagus into 2-3cm segments
• Turn stove on to medium heat. Drizzle the olive oil into the skillet, then add the onions and fry until they soften and turn slightly translucent
• Add the chopped asparagus, and stir fry for ~3-5 minutes
• Lightly mix 4-6 eggs in a bowl (leave room for yellow and white streaks), season lightly with salt, add to skillet and distribute evenly
• When most (but not all) of the egg is cooked, turn off the stove. Add half of the skinny asparagus across the skillet, cover with cheese of choice, then add the remaining asparagus to form criss-crosses as above
• Place the skillet in the oven just under the grill (you can leave the oven door open if you're worried about the skillet handle)
• Grill for 5 minutes. This will be enough to grill the asparagus and melt and brown the cheese
• Season with black pepper (I used a sprinkle of Turkish red pepper flakes as well - it brings more fragrance than heat)
• Divide into segments and serve with salad leaves

Fried Tang Hoon (glass noodles)

Carrots, spring greens and spring onions have been recent features in my Riverford Organic vegetable box. Perfect for this light, tangy, Thai-twangy dish.

Makes 4 portions

Ingredients:
Some combination of carrots, spring greens, any sort of cabbage, leeks, shitake mushrooms, golden / enoki mushrooms, spring onions
1 large onion, chopped finely
1/2 bulb garlic, chopped finely
~400 grams tang hoon (aka glass noodles, green been or mung bean noodles)
3-4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons lemongrass powder
1 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 lime, quartered

• Slice all the vegetables into thin strips
• Soak the glass noodles in a bowl of cold water
• Using a wok or a large chef pan, turn stove to medium-high heat and add 2-3 glugs of olive oil
• Add the chopped garlic and onion and fry for 1-2 minutes until soft
• Add the vegetables. Carrots and spring greens take longer; leeks and mushrooms take much less time
• Season with lemongrass powder, white pepper, chili powder and fish sauce. Stir fry and let sit for ~7 minutes. You can add a few splashes of water to keep the bottom of the pan moist, but not too much as the vegetables will naturally "sweat"
• Add the glass noodles (but not the cold water) to the pan, and fold in everything together as the noodles soften. Season with more fish sauce and lemongrass powder to taste
• Slice the spring onions on the bias and add as garnishing
• Serve with a wedge of lime, to squeeze over the plate of noodles

Half and Half Vegetable Pasta

Named as such since half the veggies are cooked, and the other half added raw as garnishing right at the end. Aside from the olives, the vegetables used here once again came from my fortnightly Riverford Organic vegetable box, and The Tomato Stall at Queens Park Farmers Market.

Makes 4 portions

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped finely
1 large bulb of garlic, chopped finely
Olive oil
500g pasta (I used organic wholewheat). Spirals or penne can pick up bits of onion and garlic well
1 small jar of pesto
Salt and pepper

Cooked veggies: Any combination of broccoli, red/orange/yellow/green peppers, brown/field mushrooms, asparagus, courgettes, eggplant. Chop roughly and set aside

Raw veggies: Any combination of various-coloured cherry tomatoes, black olives in brine, green scallions / spring onions, wild garlic, flat leaf parsley, fresh basil.

• Bring a large pot of water to a fast boil. Add a pinch of salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Add the pasta, cook for 10-12 minutes depending on how al dente you like your pasta
• While waiting for the pasta to cook, chop up the "raw" veggies. I tend to slice the cherry tomatoes in half so they don't slip away when I spear them with a fork
• Drain the water from the pot, set the pasta aside. Wipe the pot dry, put it back on the stove at medium-high heat and add a couple of glugs of olive oil
• Add the chopped onion and garlic and fry for 1-2 minutes
• Add the veggies for cooking (broccoli will take the longest so add that first). Fry for 5-7 minutes. Never put the lid on the pot / pan when stir frying veggies - it will turn the greens a gormless yellow
• Turn off the flame
• Add the cooked pasta, and the jar of pesto, and the raw garnishing veggies. Season with black pepper. Stir until everything is evenly coated with pesto
• Season with salt only if the pesto hasn't done enough

If you're clearing out the fridge or larder anyway, feel free to pimp this up with shreds of ham or flaked smoked fish e.g. mackerel or trout.

Reheat, repeat.

Clam Bam Thank You Ma'am

My brother and I both went to college in the Boston area, so over the last decade vacationing on Cape Cod has become a bit of a tradition with my parents, and a bit of a legend among our friends. (This year we had one friend cursing and swearing that they had to attend a wedding instead of crashing with us).

The story is a catchy one possibly because it's a simple one. We rent a beach house for a week, spend a few hours during the day doing our own thing, a few hours at night doing some family bonding over gin rummy or mahjong, and everything in between decimating the local crustacean population.

Thanks to the good (and slightly bemused) folks at Joe's Lobster Mart in Sandwich MA, this year we had the good fortune of chowing down on 3 types of native clams in 5 different ways.

Aw shucks, they're a little neckkid



When you have great ingredients, sometimes the best thing you can do to them is … nothing. All I did with these little necks (also called cherry stones) was to shuck them. If you're trying this at home, I highly recommend a proper clam knife and a steel mesh glove, or at least a few good thick rags so that you don't bleed too much when you stab yourself when the knife slips (and it will...I have 2 scars on my left thumb to prove it).

People tend to suck these down with some combination of salt, pepper, tobasco sauce and lemon. You'll know your clams are REALLY fresh when the lemon juice makes them wince. I personally prefer to leave them stark nekkid.

Steamers – West side



Steamers, the lobster's key partner in a New England Clambake, are oval-shaped, in contrast to the little neck's roundness. Steamers have a “foot” hanging out of their shell, and wear a sock-like protective membrane along the shell opening that needs to be removed before eating but after steaming. The foot is a great little handle for dragging the clam through melted butter when eating.

I used my basic clam and mussel steaming recipe for this dish.


Steamers – East side



You can use little necks or quahogs (also called chowder clams) for this salad / starter. Quahogs as far as I can tell are just little necks that have spent their lives in clam body building gyms. They have the same shape, colour and taste, but are the size of your palm or larger.

For this one, steam the clams in a shallow bath of just water and/or white wine (i.e. without the garlic and onions). Separately, make a dressing of chopped garlic, coriander / cilantro, spring onions / scallions, light soy sauce, a dash of sesame oil, and black pepper. (Dilute the soy sauce with a bit of water or clam juice)

When cooked, take the clams out of the steaming pan, serve up on a platter, and spoon on the dressing.


Linguine Vongole



A first-time attempt, dedicated to my Dad, who's ordered this at just about every Italian restaurant we've ever been to, ever. I think this one passed his muster, although Mum makes a highly formidable version so I wasn't going to push the “so whose do you like better” issue. I was delighted with the result, at any rate, and can't wait to make it again for myself!

Full version of my Linguine “Wen-gole” recipe here.

Clam Chowder

Another first-time attempt, after years of chugging bowls upon bowls of the stuff any time I visited Boston. I put some leftover roasted potatoes and breakfast bacon to good use for this one, but used way too much paprika. So the chowder was more a sandy beige rather than the expected creamy white. Ah well. So were we, eh?

For this chowder (6-8 servings) I steamed 4.5lbs of quahogs and chopped them up for the body of the chowder. Then I steamed 1.5lbs of little necks and shelled them and served them whole in individual bowls.

Also, in place of anything that called for water, I used stock boiled down from left over lobster shells, as well as any left over liquid from steaming the clams.

Other than that, this chowder was a loose riff based on recipes from All Recipes, Cooking for Engineers, and Suite 101.


In closing, a few notes on buying clams:

• Clams live buried in the sand, so it gets everywhere. Different fishmongers soak and clean it pre-sale to various degrees. Always ask your fishmonger what kind of soaking and cleaning they need.
• If they need soaking, soak in very salty cold water and a couple of teaspoons of cornmeal for at least 2-4 hours.
• If they don't need soaking, give them a good long rinse under cold water.
• If you see any shells open (or smelling particularly fishy), tap them hard. If they don't close, they are dead clams. Junk them.

Super fast Noodle Salad – Udon tossed with samphire, wakame and tobiko

It's one of those nights. You're home late from work. I mean late like it's summer you still got home in the dark. You're grumpy, and you're HUNGRY. You know if you go out and grab a box of fried chicken or a kebab or order pizza (again) you'll loathe yourself after. But today you really cannot be arsed to spend 30-45 minutes chopping prepping cooking washing etc etc etc. Bleah.

How about just boiling 1 saucepan of water and 10 minutes total?

Your salt cravings get naturally satisfied by the samphire, carb cravings by the udon, and your palette gets a little much-needed pampering by the silky dark green sheets of wakame and the rich pop-pop-pop-pop-pops of the vermilion tobiko beads. You get to feel good about getting greens into your meal, complete with sea minerals. And if you don't have the luxury of a dishwasher you can even eat the finished product right from the saucepan so you have less to wash up after.

No fuss, no muss, no grease, no guilt.

 

 

Ingredients for 1 serving;

• ~100-150g samphire (photo above). A cactus-like frond that grows on European coasts, with a refreshing seawatery crunch when you bite down.. Available at good fishmongers in late spring and summer. Use as soon as possible, though the batch I bought lasted a week in the fridge with no damage

• A palmful of dried wakame. This is seaweed, but not nori (nori is the roasted and rolled kind which is used for holding sushi rolls together). Silky with just enough bite when it unfurls in water. You won't need much more than a handful given how much they expand

• 1 packet fresh udon – fat buckwheat noodles. Available at Asian speciality supermarkets. Dried udon could work too but will require 3-5 minutes cooking time

• ~25 g tobiko – bright orange flying fish eggs, each slightly larger than a poppy seed. Not to be confused with salmon eggs, called ikura, also bright orange but about the size of a pearl. Available at Japanese markets. Special thanks to Melf who kindly picked up a tub for me from Natural Natural near the Finchley Road tube stop on this occasion

• Sesame oil

• Extra virgin olive oil

• Japanese red pepper

   

Here's what you do:

• Rinse 1 large handful of samphire in cold water

• Fill half a large saucepan with filtered tap water and bring to a boil on high heat on the stove

• Chuck in the fresh udon. Leave for 2 minutes, then agitate with a fork to help separate the noodles

• Add the samphire and a handful of dried wakame. Agitate for another 30 seconds to 1 minute (not more), then drain off all the water

• Add 2 large tablespoons of tobiko to the noodles and the greens, and toss

• Add a few drops of sesame oil, a tiny drizzle of olive oil, and a dash of Japanese red pepper. Toss again and tuck in

 

12 October 2010 update: I'm submitting this recipe for La Fujimama's Food Ninja Challenge. Come join the fun!

A haiku to Sealad (Samphire and wakame salad)

Samphire. Seaweed.

Searing sea. 60-sec soak.

Spice. Sealad. Simple.