Spicy prawn and lemon grass soup

I honestly thought I'd written this one up, but it's not there, so I guess I didn't.

This is actually one we have made a few times in the past, so it's more tried and tested than experimental, but the deal was every recipe, and so we made it anyway. Also, because it's delicious!

Bring 1.2 litres of chicken stock to the boil in a big pot. Throw in some lemon grass. The recipe says "two lemon grass stalks", but we can't find fresh lemon grass here, so I basically just threw in a bunch of the bottled stuff. Reduce heat and simmer, covered for 10 mins. (It says remove the lemon grass and discard. This is probably necessary with the fresh ones, but with the bottled stuff I didn't bother.)

Add 8 lime leaves, 3 fresh red chillies, seeded and chopped, a pinch of black pepper, 3 tablespoons of fish sauce and three tablespoons of lime juice. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then throw in the prawns (225g, shelled and de-veined) and remove from the heat and leave to stand for ten mins. Stir in two chopped spring onions and some fresh coriander and serve immediately.

This is a really great soup for a starter. It's quick and easy, and light and exceptionally tasty.

Lots of thumbs up!

Garlic Bread

It really doesn't get more simple than this.

Take one French loaf. Cut it into thick part slices (about 3/4 of the way through). Combine 125g butter, a bunch of chopped garlic (the recipe says 2-3 cloves, but I put a LOT more than that in), a tablespoon of chopped parsley and some black pepper. Beat it till it's smooth. (I made it in advance, melting the butter, because it's COLD in Dunedin, and butter doesn't go soft. Then I left it to harden partially.)

Spread the butter mixture between each slice of bread. Wrap bread in foil and bake for 10-15 mins on 180C.

Basic garlic bread, ftw. Delicious. NOM.

Salt Pilchard Bruschetta

Okay, so we played sort of fast and loose with this one. We can't get salt pilchards here, so we used fresh sardines. Here's how it goes:

Take 4 salt pilchards/sardines and descale and clean them. Preheat the grill to high, and grill the fish for about 3 minutes on each side. Leave to cool, and then break the fish into small flakes. Throw out the skin and bones (or turn it into fishstock, if you're feeling really energetic!).

Toast slices of ciabatta (or something similar) on both sides. Rub one side of each with peeled garlic cloves and drizzle with good olive oil.

Put the fish on the bread, top with slices of vine-ripened tomato, some very thinly sliced red onion, some chopped parsley, and freshly ground black pepper.

Eat, with delight.

At least, that's the idea, but I was not that convinced. It was... nice. But I wasn't blown away. I think maybe sardines weren't a great replacement for pilchards, even though I think, technically, they're the same fish at different ages. (I may be totally wrong about that, and I am too lazy to google it right now.

In any case, it was okay. But not fabulous. I expected more from this recipe. On the plus side, it was pretty quick and easy.

Basic Chocolate Sauce

It doesn't get much more basic than this, guys.

About half a cup of water. A tablespoon of castor sugar. And 50g of good dark chocolate.

Melt the sugar in the water. Add the chocolate, and stir till melted. Take off the heat and serve immediately over icecream or chocolate sponge cake.

It's not as thick as I like my chocolate sauce usually, but it does the trick.

Talk about basic.

Anchovy butter

The thing about starting at the beginning of all the books is that you end up doing a lot of those initial things - you know, sauces and basics and whatnot.

This book, though, needs an introduction. It's called Ouma's Cookery Book, and is a collection of traditional South African recipes. Many of them terrify me! But the first one is easy and simple and DELICIOUS.

You take 125g butter, softened (in the microwave, if you live in Dunedin), a couple of teaspoons of what we call fish paste (available in the international section of New World, if you're here), a generous pinch of cayenne pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. Mix it together, and serve spread on hot toast.

OMIGOD, YUM.

It is, basically, anchovy toast dressed up fancy. The cayenne bite and the citrus honestly do knock it up a notch though. It's really good. My kid even loved it. :)

Coconut Chicken Nuggets

I'll say right at the outset that I was very sceptical about this one. To say I am not a fan of commercial chicken nuggets would be grossly understating things. I think they're pretty disgusting things. (A friend of mine insists on bringing them to our fortnightly gatherings, and every time I try them, and every time I regret it. But that's a whole different post.)

So I was pretty sceptical about this recipe from the outset.

It's from a book of "finger food", which is something of which I *am* a fan. I love eating with my fingers. Tapas is like my favourite kind of food ever.

It's a pretty straightforward recipe. Cut chicken into bite size pieces. Dip into a combination of flour and chicken stock powder, and then into a milk and egg mixture, and finally into coconut. Deep fry.

As usual, I did not follow the instructions, and instead of deep frying, I shallow fried them, turning till they were golden brown all over. (This was a logistics thing - I was already using the pot we normally use for deep frying to make chips (aka, french fries).)

They're... okay. Not as vile as I expected, though I wasn't a huge fan of the coconut. Compared to commercial chicken nuggets they were ambrosia! But not a recipe I would want to pull out on a super regular basis. We ate them with sweet chilli sauce, and they kind of took on a vaguely Thai sense (what with the coconut). They were nice enough.

But not amazing.

Ratings:
Husband: I think he liked them. I seem to recall he liked them more than I did.
Me: Meh tending towards thumbs up, but only really because their fastfood knockoffs are so dire.

Homemade muesli

One of the greatest collections I have is a series of low GI cookbooks from SA called "Eating for Sustained Energy". I own several of them, and they are a godsend for my wonky sugar levels.

This is the first recipe out of the very first of these books.

It consists mostly of rolled oats and hi fibre bran. From memory, it was about 3 cups of each. And then a cup of chopped mixed dried fruit and about 3 tablespoons of chopped dried nuts. Mix together. Consume.

I will admit that I probably skewed the low GIness of it by putting less oats and bran and more fruit and nuts.

About a million times better than the store bought stuff. YUM.

Ratings:
Me: Thumbs up
Husband: Thumbs up.

Peach Tart

This was one of simplest recipes I think I have ever encountered. And I still had to change it!

It boiled down to the following:

Roll out some puff pastry and place it on a greased baking tray, pinching up the edges to form a shallow base. Cover with peach halves. (Peaches are not in season, so we used apricots.) Bake for about 25mins or until the pastry starts going golden. Take out the oven and baste in melted apricot jam. Bake for another ten mins. Eat with fresh whipped cream.

Easy, and really very delicious.

OK, disclaimer: I adore apricots. I love the tart sweetness. I eat them in handfuls. So I was predisposed to enjoy this one.

However, people agreed!

I used this to experiment on guests, and they agreed it was yummy. Even the teen liked it! Success all round.

Ratings:

Me: Thumbs up!
Husband: Thumbs up!
Teen: Thumbs up! (Though I feel honour bound to reveal that he ate it with nutella.
Experimented upon guest: Thumbs up!

Mussel and Chorizo Stew

This was a WINNER.

Fried up some onions, garlic and chorizo. Threw in a tin of chopped tomatoes. Added some fresh parsley. Cooked for a bit. Threw in some green lipped mussels for long enough for them to open. Served on a bed of long grain rice.

Oh. My. Gods.

So simple. Deceptively simple. But the flavours married perfectly, and it was mouthwateringly awesome. I expect it would be even better if you could get really good spicy chorizo, which we struggle to find here in Dunedin, but it was truly delicious.

Would totally make again. Plus, ready in the time it takes to cook the rice. About 20 minutes. Awesome.


Ratings:
Me: Enthusiastic thumbs up.
Husband: Enthusiastic thumbs up.

Chicken and Prawn noodle broth

This one is more or less a "what it says on the can" thing. Though I played fast and loose with the recipe.

A bunch of chicken stock, some sliced chicken thighs (the recipe said breasts, but I like thighs). The recipe said throw in bok choi, but there was none at the shop, so I used some cabbage and spinach and bean sprouts because that's what we had in the fridge.

Simmer away for a bit, throw in some herbs (I used coriander), drop the prawns in once the chicken is basically done. Add some cooked egg noodles.

Tada!

It was ok. It didn't blow my mind with it's amazingness but it was quite respectable.


Ratings:
Me: Thumbs up
Husband: Thumbs up

Jax's fabulous chicken

On Friday night we had a little dinner party. I made one of my all-time favourite dinner party dishes. I.E: Easy, and always impresses. This once upon a time started out as something I found in an actual recipe book somewhere, but it has since morphed into something I can probably call my very own recipe.

Here's what you do:

Get some chicken pieces. I use legs, because that's what I like, but it would work just as well with breasts, if that's your preference. Brown them in some oil. Once brown, stick them into a casserole dish of some kind.

Fry up some garlic, mushrooms, peppers, onions (and/or whatever other kind of veggies you happen to like), and then toss some white wine in, once the onions have gone clear. I am pretty generous with the wine so don't be shy. Cook it a bit so that the wine cooks off a tad. Pour it over the top of the chicken. Layer some pieces of bacon on top. This is the big secret. See, that yummy bacon fat oozes gently down, and the chicken becomes so tender it absolutely falls off the bone. Heaven!!

Cook it at about 180C for about an hour to an hour and a half.

I also made Ann's potatoes, named after my aunt, who was responsible for them becoming a family staple years ago. I honestly don't know where she got the recipe from but they really are a standard in my (and my mom's, and quite probably, my sister's) house these days.

You take the potatoes. Wash 'em. Don't peel them. Cut them in half and lay them out on a greased baking tray or shallow glass dish and score the tops into little squares. (Don't cut all the way through!) Then melt some butter and olive oil in the microwave, mix in some brown onion soup (or french onion, or just plain onion if you live in a crazy place that doesn't believe in brown onion soup) and then spoon it over the tops of the potatoes and stick 'em in an oven at 180C for anything from an hour to about two hours. They're great for meals where the eating time is flexible, like braais (bbqs).

Those two things combined with a big fresh green salad resulted in some pretty satisfied guests. Yay!

Chilli Con Carne

This is one of the easiest dishes in the world to make. I made it a couple of days ago - we're on a pretty tight budget at the moment, so budget dishes are the way forward. We'd bought a huge thing of beef mince in bulk, half of which became hamburgers and pasta sauce as described
in my last post. So with what remained I made chilli.

This is quick and simple and, as it happens, really good hangover food. ;)

Take a some mince, throw it into a pot with some oil. Let it brown a bit. Add some garlic and onion and some fresh chillis cut up according to taste. Throw in a tin of kidney beans, and a tin of diced tomatoes OR some tomato puree. Or both if you are so inclined. Throw in some herbs - fresh if youhave them, but the dry ones work too. Add some Worcestor sauce, or soy sauce.
Mrs. Balls Chutney is a fabulous addition if you happen to be in South Africa, or somewhere else that stocks Mrs. Balls. And then let it cook and simmer for a bit. I often throw in some cayenne pepper too, because I like it HOT, but that's up to your taste and how hot you like it.

Simple huh? What my dad calls a one-pot meal. You can serve it on rice, with some grated cheese on top (YUM!), or with bread. It's really good the next day on toast. It's a great dish if you are feeding a lot of people, and don't feel the need to feed 'em fancy. Good for parties where you want people to eat and mingle. Plus, like I said, the leftovers make killer hangover food. *grin* Add a couple of cooked veggies or a big green salad for the obligatory veggie stuff. And voila!



NOTE: Once I get my recipe books I'll be starting to do more experimental stuff. In the mean time, you'll just have to deal with my staples, k?? :)