Category Archives: Recipes
Our favourite recipes
The Price Of Cheap Food Keeps Rising
A short time ago I wrote a post about cooking up a new fish for us, Basa. What do you know about Basa, Pangas, Bocourti or River Cobbler fish fillets? I knew nothing until I decided to investigate this new food fish. It is not a bass like the name sounds but it is being passed off as cod in some fish and chips shops and included in many pre-prepared fish cakes and fingers. Why? Because it’s cheaper.
English: U.S. Huey helicopter spraying Agent Orange over Vietnam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What you do need to know is that it is a catfish which is native to Vietnam. The Mekong river where these fish are farmed is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Its water is laden with high levels of industrial pollutants, arsenic, PCBs, DDT, CHLs, HCH, HCB and metal contaminants. They inject the females with hormones so they breed faster. The farmed fish grow 4 times faster than in the wild. This does not even address the lovely chemicals supplied by that poisonous megalomaniac, Monsanto used in the war; Agent Orange and Napalm. The fish swim in this sludge which flows through the farm pools where they are raised. When they harvest the fillets a lovely ice glaze made from that water is used to preserve them for shipment. Sort of like a deadly fish ice lolly.
I am horrified. I did not connect a mild stomach upset Himself suffered that night with eating Basa. I brushed it off as too much chilli. More than a week later I found out one of the guests had also been feeling a bit ill for days after consuming the fish she supplied for the dinner. She too had bought it thinking it would be a great alternative to cod fillets. When I finally did find out about the fish I immediately e-mailed her with this link; http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=61416
English: Map showing locations of U.S. army aerial herbicide spray missions in South Vietnam taking place from 1965 to 1971. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Before you buy this product which is one of the cheapest fish the supermarkets sell please read this article. Then ask yourself why would supermarkets ignore these associated health hazards and sell Basa to its customers? Scratch this one off our shopping list.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE MEKONG; http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11442-012-0969-3
Related articles
- Fish farming tops beef production in race to the plate (cbc.ca)
- Fish catch declines in the Mekong River (mindanews.com)
- Mekong Dams Could Be Threat to Cambodia’s Food Security (cambodiadaily.com)
- Is Monsanto Trying To Kill Us With GMO Frankenfoods? (personalliberty.com)
Yogyakarta On My Mind
We are on an Indonesian kick right now. Fits in nicely with the Indian sub-continent experience. Just look at how Pangaea puzzles in together. The key to this wonderful food is to have a good Kecap Manis, Sweet Soy Sauce. Yes you can buy a reasonable facsimile in an Asian grocery but it isn’t the same. It would be like comparing boxed Macaroni Cheese made with that disgusting orange powder to your own gooey, cheese-stringy mouth-watering dish. It doesn’t feed the bulldog.
So in the interest of all great cooks out there on the net I am giving you the ridiculously simple recipe for making a great big bottle of infinitely superior home-brew. This comes by way of a great cook book I have owned, and still do, called; The Indonesian Kitchen by Copeland Marks and Mintari Soeharjo. Naturally it is out of print, as it was when I bought my first of many copies 30 years ago. However it is still available second-hand on Amazon. Buy it, you won’t be sorry.
I am also giving you our favourite recipe for Aubergine which I tweaked a bit to bump the flavour up a notch. If you add cubes of 10-minute boiled tofu or for you diehard carnivores, cooked ground pork then serve it over rice topped with fresh coriander/cilantro it makes a complete meal. Unlike most Aubergine recipes this one is not impregnated with oil from frying up the Aubergine prior to adding it to the sauce.
I am about to make a new bottle as we have drizzled, guzzled and dipped our way through the last drop of our stock.
Kecap Manis
- 1 bottle Superior Brand Dark Soy Sauce (the litre size)
- 2 1/2 cups (use 250ml volume here) granulated sugar
- 3 fat cloves of garlic peeled and halved
- 1 complete star of star anise broken into individual pods
- 2 bay leaves
- 4 pieces of dried Laos root/Galangal yes they have this in all the supermarket cook’s ingredients section
- 125ml 1/2cp water
Put the sugar and a tablespoon of water into a large heavy pan. Heat and caramelize it until it is a lovely brown, not black! Immediately add the soy sauce and water to stop the caramelization. Now add all the rest of the ingredients and bring to a low boil cook 10 minutes until the sugar dissolves completely and the liquid is syrupy. Cool with all the ingredients left inside and bottle it without straining it as the spices will continue to improve the flavour. Keep it in the refrigerator and you will have it for weeks. I love this drizzled into rice or tossed into wide rice noodles with chopped spring onions and coriander/cilantro.
Indonesian Aubergine
- 2 aubergines unpeeled and cut into 3/4″ cubes (check to see that the bottom dimple is brown indicating they are ripe, green isn’t, also try to find one with a linear dimple point rather than a round one, the round ones are female and have more seeds)
- 1 tbsp. oil
- 1 vertically thinly sliced red onion
- 2 cloves of garlic peeled and thinly sliced
- 125ml/1/2 cp water
- 2-4 tbsp. Kecap Manis, you can use more if you wish but taste it first
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 dried red chilli, seeded and chopped
- 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 3 tbsp. white vinegar
- 1/2 tsp salt, do this to your taste
- 1 tbsp. brown sugar
Use a big frying pan with a fitted lid. Sauté the onion and garlic in the oil over medium heat to soften and brown. Add the cubes of aubergine and toss them up to distribute them evenly with the onions. Add the other ingredients (remove any of the Kecap Manis anise pods or garlic cloves or bay leaves and return them to their bottle) and toss it all again. Cover the pan and cook it over medium to low heat for 20-30 minutes gently tossing the eggplant once during the cooking so as to not break it down. The sauce should cook down to a syrupy consistency and reduce by 3/4 volume. The flavour should be sweet and sour with a wonderful kick from the nutmeg and peppers. I usually serve it over steamed Jasmine rice topped with toasted coconut and coriander/cilantro. A lovely scattering of chopped roasted and salted peanuts would give it even more texture and flavour.
QUICK UPDATE; If you want another great recipe using Kecap Manis check out the first link below. They made a great Tempeh Manis.
Related articles
- Tempeh manis (edvfood.wordpress.com)
- Spicy Aubergine with Green Beans and Peppers (cookinginsens.wordpress.com)
- Non-spicy Singapore noodles (myinnerfoodie.wordpress.com)
- Dim sum aubergine (eggplant) (caymanbadger.wordpress.com)
- Aubergine Tortino (robin-ellis.net)
- Baighan Tarkari – Simple Aubergine Curry (mycroft212b.com)
- Saturday: Roasted Aubergine with Cumin Vinaigrette and Randomness (cookinginsens.wordpress.com)
- Indonesia: The food issue (asiasketches.wordpress.com)
- Sauteed Long Bean with Sweet Soy Sauce (cooking-holic.com)
- Sautee Fried Tempeh with Sweet Soy Sauce (Orek Tempeh) (cooking-holic.com)
Honouring The Humble Legume
Life Audit Tally; 1 Out / 1 In
In our defence the Out was over 10 times larger than the In.
Total To Date; 1995 Out / 2 In
I am on a legume kick, specifically lentils. It is finally summery weather and that means salads. I know I should love green leafy salads and to an extent I do but what really floats my boat is texture with depth of flavour. The lovely Indian dishes I made are on their last servings so last night I tossed together our next lentil feast. I tried to make something simple but the complexity of Indian food has spoiled me, I crave a bit of spice. I am going to serve this with a bowl of fat green olives, some garlicky fried rings of calamari with a squeeze of even more lemon juice and finish the meal with slices of cold watermelon. Read the rest of this entry
Forget The Full Monty
I am in LOVE with the new flavours I created this weekend. Not that I am totally responsible for this success, the recipes are Anjum Anand‘s. Not only do our digestive systems feel comforted by this ingestion of garlic, ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander and garam masala but we both felt a physical satiety that lasted from 1:30pm until bedtime. I loved it so much I had the Spicy Fish Cakes for breakfast this morning. I know, who would eat fish cakes drizzled with Quick Tamarind Chutney and greedily topped with Red Chilli and Coconut Chutney first thing in the morning? Me! Read the rest of this entry
Sitting On My Tuffet
Well that’s another skill under my belt. Using 2 litres of low-fat milk, 3-4 tbsp. lemon juice I made a 250gm block of fresh Paneer cheese. Just bring the milk to a boil, add the lemon juice and curds form. Pour the curds and whey, (yup just like Little Miss Muffet) into a sieve lined with cheesecloth. Rinse the sweet flavoured whey off the curds with cold water. Gather up the edges of the cloth and form a flat ball of the curds and place them on a plate with a another pate or in my case a clean chopping board on top. Weight the board with a big heavy can and let the curds compress for 2 hours. Either use the cheese right away or wrap it tightly and refrigerate it overnight. You have made Paneer. Simple, delicious and low-fat.
What did I make with the Paneer? Read the rest of this entry
Pulling The Plug Soon
Huge Clearing Out this week. 34 enormous items + 44 regular size bits= 77 Out / 0 In
Total To Date; 1994 Out / 1 In
Finally starting to breathe a bit easier with the new free space. Soon as the buyers pick up their purchases this will achieve empty bedrooms with clean carpets and drapes with radiators closed down and doors closed shutting them off. We will live in the living room until we are able to move to a smaller place. Remember if it doesn’t fit into 6 suitcases we won’t keep it.
This weekend I am cooking up an Indian storm. Keralan Fish Cakes, Spinach Paneer Koftas, Kashmiri Biriani, Dal with Green Beans, Green Peppers Stuffed with low-fat Paneer, Undiyo, Tomato Chutney, Coconut chutney, Coriander & Mint Chutney, Tamarind Chutney and finally Indonesian Bean Curd. Why? I am trying to give Himself heart-healthy choices in a cuisine he loves. Through little fault of his own he seems to have inherited angina. We’ll know more after finishing the tests. Meanwhile I have purchased an expensive bottle of fruity olive oil to dip his toast into rather than slathering it with butter. This caused an eyebrow raised in scepticism but he is willing to try. Thanks to Anjum Anand’s cookbook Anjum’s New Indian (yes I kept this one) and Reza Spice Prince of India (on-line) we can eat light, healthy, fresh food flavoured with health-giving spices.
Most importantly recent studies have recommended a simple, low stress, satisfying life will do his heart the most good. That is why we started this whole Life Audit to simplify and de-stress our ridiculously cluttered existence. Read the rest of this entry
You Is What You Eat
There is now a healthy heart issue in the family. We are tackling it from a holistic point starting by adding more body-adjusting spices, pulses and dal to our diet. I came up with this salad based on the principles of Ayurveda, healthy body through food. Doesn’t hurt that it is delicious. Read the rest of this entry
I’m Cooking Now Ainsley
We have been playing the home version of Ready Steady Cook hosted by Ainsley Harriott, with friends of ours. For those of you unfamiliar with this older televised game show it is based on creative cooking. Contestants are brought out to their individual kitchen stations where a basket of surprise ingredients are presented to them. They are required to cook with all of them in a given period of time. They are judged on their success in creating dishes with taste and presentation. I am the cook in this version.
This Thursday’s basket contained; bassa fish fillets, papaya, tomatoes, aubergines, coriander leaves, spinach, and peas in the pod. Read the rest of this entry
I Am A Bean Counter
Life Audit Bonanza Day 8 Huge Things Out + 34 regular size things Out = 42 Out / 0 In
Total to date; 1917 Out / 1 In
It is funny how specific types of a vegetable are grown to suit a particular recipe. I accidentally grabbed a bag of Borlotti beans out of the cupboard mistakenly thinking they were Pintos. I didn’t read the label but after cooking them in the same way using the same flavours I would add for Frijoles Refritos I found that though they looked similar they did not perform the same. The Borlotti beans I keep for making Minestrone Soup from a classic recipe from Elizabeth David. They remain plump and firm in the broth even though the beans are cooked for a long period of time. This makes them perfect in a soup or for a sausage and bean casserole but unsuitable for refried beans.
Pinto beans are creamy and soft with a tender skin that breaks down well during cooking. Read the rest of this entry
Thinking Outside The Box of Betty Crocker
I ate a piece of Letitia Cropley Triple Ginger Cake for breakfast with my coffee. Hey it has eggs in it.
The cake is moist, (should be with that bit of butter) a wee bit dense and the bourbon really pops with my cup of coffee. The candied ginger soaked up the bourbon and rehydrated into lovely sweet jelly-like bits. The glaze collected in the bottom and top of the cake giving it a wonderful citrus finish. I think it could be improved upon by adding a bit of sultanas or golden raisins, (maybe soak them in the bourbon?) but it’s mighty fine without them.
I think it would be interesting to flavour a cake with either the spice mix used to make Indian Masala Chai or Garam Masala, the sweeter version incorporating cinnamon. I think that would require adding chopped pistachios and raisins as the fruit. Wouldn’t it be interesting to add fresh rose petals instead of raisins adding colour as well as flavour? Maybe next week if the roses bloom?
This is probably the best weather we have had in over a year. Nice to see the smiling face of Helios.
Related articles
- Garam Masala Tuesdays: Homemade Punjabi Garam Masala! (novicehousewife.com)
- Garam Masala (chefdarrentaylor.wordpress.com)
- Masala Chai…A hug in a mug (currydemon.com)
- How To Make (Masala) Chai! Easy RECIPE for ginger or cardamom tea! (mommyniri.com)
- Make Your Own Garam Masala (ratneshjha.com)
