A Profusion of Prawns

This is not a good look!

Bit of a kitchen disaster here……

I do love prawns, and I have had put aside in my copious piles of “to try” recipes, a sample recipe from one of those “buy it in 52 parts” cookbook folder thingies. Actually I don’t see how those publishers make money these days, with the plethora of free recipes for anything you can think of, freely available online. But, I got this junk mail in my letterbox and put aside the Crisp Honey Prawns leaflet as it looked super easy and delicious.

On Easter Monday, I went to the supermarket for dinner inspiration, and thought hmmm I’ll make that prawn dish. The recipe called for 20 prawns, but I had no idea how much weight that would be so just bought 700gms, thinking this would be plenty and I’d have leftovers.

The weather here was stunning right through Easter – 27-31 and all blue skies – really perfect. So in the afternoon, I had a last minute invite out for a walk (& a bottle of wine) along the river, near home. Had a lovely relaxing time, but by the time I got home I just couldn’t be bothered starting to cook, so just had a sandwich.

Next day, I realised I’d better use up these prawns as they were “thawed” ones so I didn’t want to re-freeze them. I was already going out in the evening for a meal, so decided to make the Crisp Honey Prawns for lunch instead. WELL, as you can see from the photos, there were a darn sight more than 20 prawns when I opened up the paper!! I over-purchased, just a tad lol…..

Anyway here’s the recipe, but it was a flop as you can see. Easy yes, but I just NEVER have any luck with batter – onion rings, calamari, squid, prawns…..my batter never bloody stays on!! It doesn’t look anything like the leaflet photo. They didn’t taste too bad, but really too deep-fried/oily flavoured for me. Oh well, it was worth a try.

Crisp Honey Prawns

2 tsp cornflour

2 egg whites

2 tsp oyster sauce

3 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp plain flour

salt & pepper, to taste

20 raw prawns, peeled & deveined, tails intact

1/2 cup honey

Combine cornflour, egg whites and oyster sauce in a bowl. Use a whisk to beat the mixture together until thickened.

Heat olive oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat (or use a wok). Put flour in a bowl and season with salt & pepper.

Dip prawns into flour, shaking off any excess, then dip into batter mixture to coat.

Cook in the pan for 2 minutes each side until golden. Place cooked prawns on paper towel to absorb excess oil, while preparing and cooking the remaining prawns.

Once all of the prawns have been cooked, add honey to the pan and heat gently until runny, then add the prawns and gently toss to coat.

Batter-less!

After doing a batch I thought nope this just isn’t going to work, so I just chucked the rest of the prawns in the pans un-battered, with some pepper, truffle salt and a splash of soy sauce (see pic above). I then had a mountain of prawns to get through haha, so had a pile of them in a sandwich with lettuce, crunchy bean sprouts and chilli paste. Prawns are great in a sandwich or bread roll!

I then ate prawns for a few days, in various forms…..it’s a good thing I didn’t mind that!

Lots of prawns…

Happy Fooding!

Super Duper Salmon Pad Thai

I know, I know….there’s been a definite emphasis on Thai style curry flavours in my cooking, since Christmas. I have no idea why!  Perhaps it’s the hot weather and the fact that Thai dishes are a lot lighter and fresher than the stodginess of say an Indian curry (much as I LOVE Indian curries!) or a casserole.

Whatever the reason, this recipe from the Tassal Tasmanian salmon producer’s website, is amazing! I adore Pad Thai, but the only one I’ve ever tried to make, a few years ago, was a vegetarian one and was majorly complicated. When I saw this salmon version I thought it looked too easy to be great tasting – not so. Easy yes (I made it after a day at work when tired, so that shows how uncomplicated it is), tasty yes yes yes!

I followed the recipe exactly, except I garnished with cashews instead of peanuts, as I just like them a lot better. And I was starting to make it when I realised I had completely overlooked the red capsicum when I wrote out my shopping list, and had none in the fridge – so just had to leave that out.

If you can please imagine flecks of red here and there, when looking at the photo, then you will have it about right….

I made the full serving, so as it definitely does make enough for 4 as stated in the recipe, I had it for lunch at work for the next couple of days – I could have reheated it, but I just ate it cold as a kind of noodle salad and it was delicious.

Happy Summer Fooding!

Party Nibbles 1

I made a batch of mountain bread rollups on Christmas Day – these little savoury bites always go down well and you can put whatever fillings in you like. In this case I made some with smoked salmon, some with asparagus, and some with both.

These are quite suitable for making the day before and then just slicing up when you are ready to serve – always a plus at party time.

There aren’t really proper quantities here – just make as many as you like. I usually keep going ’til I’ve run out of cream cheese.

Rollups

lavash/mountain bread (you could also use thin tortillas, but you get a fair bit of wastage by the time you trim them into a rectangle/square shape)

cream cheese (I use low-fat)

smoked salmon

fresh asparagus spears (I prefer to use them raw, for a bit of crunch, but if you prefer you can blanch them in the microwave for 1 minute per bunch)

cracked pepper, to taste

Spread each sheet of bread thickly with cream cheese. Lay fillings on the lower half, topped with cracked pepper and then carefully roll the bread up as tightly as you can.

Wrap the “log” in cling wrap and refrigerate for a few hours (or overnight). Thinly slice and arrange on a plate to serve.

Other filling ideas: grated carrot, thin slices of ham or turkey, shredded lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, canned tuna, cucumber (skip things like avocado, tomato etc as they will just go soggy or discoloured by the time you slice them up).

Happy Summer Fooding!

Chilli Prawns With Sesame Noodles

I love spicy food, and often choose chilli or garlic prawns when out at Asian restaurants. In fact, I’ve eaten more prawns in the last year, then ever in my life before, which is not intentional but I just have this need for a lot of seafood, no idea why.

This recipe, adapted from one in the same BBC Australian Good Food magazine as the cornbread from the other day, was very easy – once I had chopped up the bits and pieces and soaked the noodles, it was literally a 5 minute job to cook it in the wok.

Recipes like this are great for entertaining, as you can prepare things earlier and then relax with guests until throwing it all together at the last minute, looking like a real pro! Actually, I haven’t really done any proper entertaining in the last six months, because I live in a shoebox and can’t even fit in a dining table, but I’m always practicing on just me, for future dinner party extravaganzas that currently exist in my head only!

The noodles themselves would be great served with any stir-fried food, not just the prawn mixture here. Sesame oil gives a great flavour to this kind of dish, and a little goes a long way.

On a heat scale, this meal is on the Mild side of Medium – it isn’t enough chilli to blow your head off, just leaves a gentle tang afterwards. I will double it to 2 red chillies next time, cos’ that’s the kinda gal I am!

Garlic Chilli Prawns With Sesame Noodles

220 gms hokkien or Singapore noodles (1 pkt)

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tbsp olive oil

250 gms bean sprouts

3 spring onions, thinly sliced

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 long red chilli, finely chopped

500 gms large uncooked prawns, peeled & deveined (I left the tails on – up to you)

1 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp light soy sauce

Place noodles in a large bowl; cover with boiling water and stand for 5 minutes. Stir with a fork to separate the strands, then drain well and toss half of the sesame oil through the noodles to combine. Set aside.

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a wok on high heat. Stir-fry bean sprouts and spring onions for 30 seconds, until sprouts just wilt. Add the noodles and stir-fry for 1 minute. Stir in remaining sesame oil and set aside in a bowl.

Heat remaining olive oil in the wok and stir-fry the garlic and chilli for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add the prawns and stir-fry for about 4 minutes, until curled and opaque in colour. Stir in the sugar and soy sauce, then add the noodle mixture back to the pan and stir-fry for 1 minute until all combined and heated through.

Serves 4

On a completely unrelated-to-prawns note, later this week I will be having a small giveaway – my first ever! So stay tuned and encourage your friends to subscribe, as I’d like to share my recipes and food explorations with as many readers as possible 🙂

Happy Fooding!

Korma Fish Curry

On the plane last month on the way home from London, I watched an episode of Jamie’s Fish Suppers, in which he panfried a piece of coley (not a fish I’ve ever heard of!), smeared with korma paste and served with a sauce made of coconut milk, chilli & spring onions.

I decided to muck around with the idea of these flavours, and came up with this fish curry, which I am quite happy with. I used snapper fillets, but any firm fish will do – I was tempted to use salmon, as is my wont, but my boyfriend doesn’t like it all that much in its cooked form (blasphemous I know – luckily he has other redeeming qualities!).

Korma is not a particularly spicy curry paste, but the addition of a large red chilli helped haha. Leave this out though if you truly like your curry very mild (does anyone???!!  I guess they do… they’re in trouble if they come to my house lol).

The photo above is not very gourmet, but I actually forgot to take a photo until we’d finished eating – so what you see is the leftovers in a plastic container!

Korma Fish Curry

1 tbsp olive oil

9 spring onions, cut into 3cm pieces

1 green capsicum, roughly chopped

1 fresh red chilli, finely sliced (including seeds)

3 tbsp korma paste

3 firm white fish fillets (mine were 520 gms altogether), cut into 4cm pieces

400 ml can coconut milk (low-fat)

100 gms baby spinach leaves

2 cups bean shoots

1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped (including some of the stalks)

juice of 1 small lemon

Heat the oil in a deep pan. Saute the spring onions, capsicum and chilli for 2 minutes. Add the korma paste, stir to coat and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring so it doesn’t burn. Add the fish and coconut milk, bring to boil and simmer with lid on for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add remaining ingredients, stir to combine, and cook for 1 minute or until spinach has wilted.

Serve with rice and naan bread.

Serves 4.

Happy Fooding!

CYO….Cook Your Own….A Very Foodie Weekend.

On Saturday night we had a delicious Korean meal at Shilla restaurant in East Perth. We arrived by boat, had drinks on the boat first, then went to dinner. Whilst some people might not like the idea of going out only to cook their own dinner, I love the concept, especially as with this type of food it is all prepared for you and is very quick to stirfry over the coals in the centre of the table. You can really relax and take your time over the meal. Actually, when I say coals, it was gas-fired lol, but the idea was there!

For entree we shared two dishes – yummy little pieces of flattened, marinated beef that had been quickly seared and then rolled around fresh enoki mushroom stalks and sticks of green capsicum. Really light tasting and refreshing. I have to tell you, I am NOT a mushroom fan. I eat it to be polite but I really don’t like it. Enoki are the exception – I really like them – because they don’t taste anything like mushrooms!!

Our other entree was a seafood pancake – quite like the ones you get in Japanese restaurants – very nice. Then for the main course we chose the BBQ option, and ordered chilli pork and marinated beef. It came with the little garnish bits of vegies as you can see in the photo, and also accompanying dishes of rice, pickled potato, bean sprouts and divinely spicy kimchee. We also asked for lettuce cups, and wrapped our morsels of cooked meat in these, with sauces and bits of the other goodies. The meat just melts in your mouth when you cook it like this.

Afterwards we had a couple of champagnes at The Royal, and then slept on the boat, to make a weekend out of it. On Sunday morning we had brekky at The Partisan cafe, in the same little cove (manmade) and as you can see below, it is jacaranda flowering season, which is soooo pretty for just a short time of the year. I had poached eggs with smoked salmon, served on potato rosti with a herb salad. Delicious.

Then after pottering around on the river for a few hours we had a late lunch at Zephyr cafe in East Fremantle, where I had the most divine lamb salad and of course, some more champagne!

All in all, a totally relaxing and very food-related weekend – although I didn’t cook any of it myself.

Happy Fooding!

Oh no the pizza place is closed on Mondays!

After a late class on Monday night this week, I caught the train to my boyfriend’s house, and when he picked me up from the station he had not had time to think about cooking anything. As his place has a decidedly “no woman’s touch here” feel to it, the contents of the fridge are usually not up to much –  so we decided to grab a pizza from this lovely little Italian restaurant, Vincenzo’s, that has a yummy takeaway pizza shop attached to it.

BUT oh dear, it is not open on Mondays!  It was 5 minutes until closing time at the nearby independent supermarket, so we raced in and quickly grabbed a pkt of chicken “tenders”, some bean shoots, a bag of pre-cut lettuce leaves, a packet of tortillas and some chilli seasoning.  With the addition of an onion I threw together this last minute effort, and as often happens with unplanned meals, it was actually really yummy!

Don’t laugh – but we had opened a packet of Smiths crisps to munch on whilst waiting (as well as pouring a glass of wine, of course), and decided to add some crisps to the tortilla along with the chicken, bean shoots and lettuce – YUM!!  I didn’t have my camera with me so the pic above is taken with my phone, and I was too busy eating my meat/chip-filled fajitas to take another photo – take my word for it, add some chips (crisps) next time you are looking for something new to add to your Tex-Mex dinner!

Happy Fooding!

Salmon & Avocado…Vital Ingredients…

Tomorrow I am flitting off to Brisbane to attend Koala Convention, a 9 day embroidery extravaganza. This is my 4th Koala in a row and I just love it to bits. My mum is flying in from Melbourne to meet me there, and we will enjoy various workshops, a banquet dinner, trivia night and cheese/wine night. Yay for us!

The lunches, which are included in the cost, are amazing – I really have to keep up my morning 6km walks, because the rest of the time our activities are fairly sedentary (apart from walks to the local pub for drinks on occasion!) – by the end of the event everyone is complaining about the kgs they have put on!

I am on holidays from study for the next 3 weeks, so am really going to make the most of this craft catchup time. And I passed all my first semester units, so even more reason to enjoy myself!

I won’t have much Internet access for the next 10 days, but will leave you with this easy meal idea….you already know that salmon and avo are my 2 favourite foods, so a salad involving both of them is irresistible to me.  As I am often alone for evening meals I sometimes cannot be bothered cooking a “proper” meal just for me, so I have a few recipes I just throw together when I’m feeling lazy.

One such recipe is this salad….the main ingredients are rice stick noodles (OH so healthy and light tasting, without that bloated too-many-carbs feeling you get from a pasta salad), smoked salmon and avocado, with a dressing of lemon juice, rice vinegar and wasabi.  Don’t let the wasabi put you off – this is not a hot dish, the wasabi is minimal enough to just give a hint of flavour.

And if you can get it, always use wasabi powder rather than the paste that comes in tubes – any good Asian grocery store should have the powder, in little tins, or in humongous 1kg bags if you’re really keen to use it a lot!  I can always tell whether it is paste or powder when I eat Japanese food: the tubed stuff gives you less of an immediate “kick”, but stays with you longer – the powder gives you an almighty blast that really clears your nose (great if you have a cold!!!), but it goes quickly and leaves you with a much nicer after-taste.  If you’ve only ever had the paste, try the powder and you’ll understand what I mean. Very different experiences.

There is no actual recipe or proper quantities for this – just start with your noodles, salmon and avo, and make up the rest as you go along. Here is what I did this time:

a handful of rice stick noodles (place in a bowl, pour boiling water over and let sit for about 15 mins then drain, rinse & drain again)

1/2 ripe avocado, chopped roughly

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped

2 radishes, finely chopped

handful of bean sprouts (ie mung, chickpea, alfalfa etc

smoked salmon, chopped

cracked pepper

1 tsp wasabi powder, mixed to a smooth paste with about 3 tsp of water

about 2 tbsp rice vinegar

about 2 tbsp lemon juice

Mix everything together well and scoff into it with a fork!

Other ingredients that I often toss in include cucumber, snow pea sprouts, bean shoots, baby corn spears (chopped), asparagus (raw or lightly steamed), cooked frozen peas or beans, pine nuts, baby spinach, carrots, coriander, parsley and semi-dried tomatoes.  Add anything you like in fact. This is real pig-out comfort food, only healthy!

Until post-Koala, Happy Fooding!

Super Splendid Salad….Chicken, Cucumber & Sprout

All I need to tell you about this salad recipe is that it is uber-awesome and will be a big hit at your table, believe me. Healthy, tasty, a meal in one really.  Don’t take my word for it – try it now!

Chicken, Cucumber & Sprout Salad

1 1/4 cups chicken stock

1/4 cup lime juice

1/4 cup white wine

3 chicken breast fillets (~500 gm) (skinless)

1 large (~300 gms) cucumber

200 gms egg noodles (dried or fresh)

120 gms bean sprouts

2 small or 1 large fresh red chilli, seeded, sliced

2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tbsp lime juice, extra

1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp hoisin sauce

1 tbsp soy sauce

Combine stock, lime juice, wine and chicken fillets in a large pan.  Bring to boil and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until chicken is just tender.  Remove chicken from stock; when cool enough to handle, slice thinly.

Halve cucumber; remove seeds by running a teaspoon down the central cavity, then slice thinly.

Cook noodles in a large pan of boiling water, uncovered, until just tender. Drain, rinse under cold water and drain again.

Gently toss chicken, cucumber and noodles in a large bowl with bean sprouts, chillies, coriander leaves and combined remaining ingredients.

Happy Fooding!