Tag: food


Laksa

I like to cook “interpretations” – where I read a recipe or two, and then do what I feel like based on what’s in my kitchen and what I think will taste good.

This tasted damn good.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
  • 2 teaspoons crushed/grated ginger
  • 1 tbsp red curry paste
  • Rind of half a lemon
  • 1 tbsp canola oil
  • 2 cups vegetable stock
  • ¾ cup coconut cream (small tin)
  • 2 cups skim milk
  • 4 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1tbsp brown sugar
  • Chilli flakes (dried) or fresh chopped chilli to taste
  • 4 cored, diced tomatoes
  • ½ cup desiccated coconut
  • 5 fresh snapper fillets, cut into 2cm strips
  • 2 cobs boiled corn
  • 1 small capsicum, diced
  • ½ carrot, julienned
  • 2 spring onions, chopped
  • 3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

Method

  1. Heat the oil and add the garlic, ginger and rind on a med-high heat in a large saucepan that will hold all your ingredients. Fry briefly and add the curry paste and stir until the curry releases it’s fragrance.
  2. Add the stock, stir. Add the coconut cream, milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, chilli, tomatoes and coconut, stirring continuously. Heat thoroughly, but pay attention because if it starts to boil it’s likely to escape your pot.
  3. Lastly, reduce the heat to low and add your fish. It won’t take long before the fish is cooked.
  4. Ladle into serving bowls. We topped ours with corn boiled and cut from the cob, fresh capsicum, fresh carrot, spring onion and coriander.

I’d like to say this recipe would serve five, but we definitely had to (because it was delicious) go back for seconds.

Laksa is meant to be served over udon noodles (yum!) but we didn’t have any, and the starchy corn was enough. I’d say this would feed more people with noodles.


Pea & Potato Soup

Last week I made this soup on a rainy, grey Monday evening. It tasted even better reheated the next day at work with some dry toast for lunch.

This soup will keep well refrigerated for about a week – remember to let it cool completely before you refrigerate it, or the condensation in your container will water it down. I haven’t tried freezing it, but I might do that next time – in cupfuls suitable for work lunches.

Ingredients:

  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1 brown onion, diced
  • 2 cloves of garlic… squashed (I couldn’t crush them, but that would be preferable!)
  • 2 cups of peeled, diced potato (about 4 medium sized potatoes)
  • 2 and a half cups of frozen peas (minted peas would be okay, but well, minty…)
  • 2 cups boiling water
  • 2 cups stock (I only had chicken stock, but vegetable would be ideal)
  • Salt and pepper
  • Sour cream (for serving) 

Method:

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the onions and garlic and cook them until the onion is clear. Browned onion would be fine, but I’d advise against going too far in that direction because I burned mine a bit, and it made the soup kinda grey…

Add the potatoes, peas, water, and stock. Bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce to a medium heat, cover the pot and simmer for about ten minutes or until the potato is tender.

At this stage, I took the pot off the stove and roughly blended the soup with a hand-held “whizz stick”/bamix machine with blades. The idea is to blend it to the consistency you expect of soup – I left mine a little chunky (yum!).

If you don’t have a whizz stick, you can let the soup cool a bit and then put it through a blender in batches, then return it to the pot and reheat it on the stove.

Add salt to taste – about a teaspoon in my case. Better too little than too much!

I served mine with toast, salt and white pepper, and a teaspoon of sour cream.