WokandSpoon

Favourite things

2008-10-09T13:40:00.004+01:00

4 months have passed since my last post and I’m still suffering from a lack of inspiration to cook up anything interesting, so this post is just an excuse to put up some photos of some of my favourite things.

Cold Hoegaarden beer on a hot day

A berry sundae dripping with red sauce

And last but not least, the little monster on moving day!

Absolutely sinful

2008-06-21T12:24:00.008+01:00

Sleep deprived as I am right now, I still can’t say no to chocolate cookies!! These cookies were easy to make despite only having 2 hours sleep the night before!
Sickly Sinful Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups self-raising flour
¼ cup rolled oats
Roughly ½ cup cocoa powder (I guess the lack of sleep is getting to me as I don’t remember exactly how much cocoa powder I used!)
Roughly 1 cup chocolate chips/ chocolate chunks (White, milk or dark. I used a mixture of milk and dark chunks)

Cream the butter and the sugar until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla to the creamed mixture and beat well.

Add the flour to the beaten mixture and fold in lightly. Add the oats and the chocolate chips or chunks

Line your baking tray with a baking sheet and drop small spoonfuls of the mixture on baking sheet.

Bake the cookies at 180C for 12-15 minutes. Remove when slightly soft, the cookies will harden when cool.

Mini-me

2008-06-04T14:09:00.003+01:00

What have I been cooking up lately?

Meet Mini-WoknSpoon who emerged well-done out of the oven on the 27th of May!

Happy Chinese New Year!

2008-02-05T21:18:00.001+01:00

Ok, I admit, this is probably the most boring Happy Chinese New Year post but I'm too brain-dead from work (which has been sucking the soul out of my poor body) to be creative.

Anyway, I hope you all have a happy and prosperous new year, while stuffing yourselves with lots of yummy food!

GONG XI FA CHAI

Rain rain go-away

2008-01-20T09:49:00.000+01:00

England, as I have discovered, is full of 2 things. Round-a-bouts and rain!

The never-ending rain over here has got me all nostalgic for summer, which seems like a long long time away at the moment.

The only way to counter the gloomy state of affairs over here is to make a summer berry treat with blueberries from some sunny country on the other side of the world. Well, it’s either that or stick my head in a HUGE tub of ice-cream…which I can say that I am tempted to do given that our heating has gone a bit crazy and refuses to turn off!

This recipe adapted from Allrecipes isn’t dairy-free but Hubs was even willing to overlook that and suffer the consequences! Hehe!
Ingredients (adapted from Allrecipes)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar (Allrecipes uses white)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 (8 ounce) container plain yogurt (Allrecipes uses blueberry flavoured yogurt)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 cups blueberries

Preheat your oven to 175C (or 350F).

Line a 12-cup muffin tray with muffin liners.

Mix the dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, baking powder).

Mix the wet ingredients (yogurt, egg, vanilla extract, butter) and blueberries in another bowl.

Combine mixtures and spoon into muffin tray. Bake for 25 minutes or until cooked.

Mini black cherry (almost dairy-free) clafoutis and Happy New Year

2007-12-30T20:50:00.000+01:00

I was first introduced to the clafoutis back in Australia when Hubs and I just moved in together. Having never tasted it myself back then, Hubs used to rave about his mum’s clafoutis aux cerises (cherry clafoutis) until I could almost smell it baking in the oven. As it was just the beginning of our relationship, I wasn’t quite ready to ask my ‘potential mother-in-law’ for her clafoutis recipe, so I went on the hunt for my own.

8 years later, I don’t hear Hubs going on about his mum’s clafoutis anymore (as good as it is)! Hehe!

Anyway, as Hubs is now dairy-intolerant, I had to adapt the original recipe to an almost dairy-free recipe (except for the butter for greasing!). I was a bit unsure of how it would turn out using a ‘soya cream’ but I didn’t hear any complaints from Hubs.

This super-easy-1-bowl recipe is adapted from Donna Hay’s Modern Classics 2. I usually just make one huge clafoutis but as we now have a mini-fridge, I had to make mini-clafoutis as it’s easier to store the leftovers.
This is what I used:

Butter for greasing
Caster sugar for dusting
1 can (425g) pitted black cherries (drained)
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
2.5 teaspoons vanilla extract (I added more vanilla extract to hide the “soya” taste in the batter! The original recipe only uses 1 teaspoon)
1 cup dairy-free (soya) cream or single cream
3 eggs

The original recipe suggests preheating the oven to 180C but I found that was too hot and so preheated to 150C.

Grease an 8 cup capacity ovenproof dish with butter, and dust with sugar to prevent sticking. I used a muffin pan (holds 18) to make the mini-clafoutis.

Put the flour, sugar, vanilla and cream in a bowl and whisk. Add the eggs and whisk till smooth.

Pour the batter into the muffin tray then add the cherries. Or you could add the cherries first then pour the batter over (original recipe).

Bake for 35-40 mins and voila, easy-peasy clafoutis for a cold winter’s evening.

Dust with sugar and serve.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

Wishing all of you out there a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Hope your plates are stacked and your glasses are full!

Exhausted

2007-12-09T12:20:00.000+01:00

Judy from Grandmother Stories is right. Moving to the UK involves a lot of rubbish. Big mounds of garbage unfortunately. However, on the bright side, we’ve managed to chip away at a teeny tiny section of that garbage and whoohoo – we’re almost settled.

We have a roof over our heads and that roof comes with a nice warm kitchen. What more could you ask for? Um, well, that kitchen could have come with a gas cooker however, it has electric hobs!! I’m not usually best friends with electric cookers however I think I’m going to have to make an effort this time. I tend to forget that you have to take pots and pans off the hobs once I’m done otherwise it will continue to cook (and burn) while the hob cools down!

Other than that, a new and extremely frustrating and exhausting job (and life) has unfortunately robbed me of all creativity and prevented me from blogging (and also reading your blogs) more often (If only money grew on trees!).

My lack of energy has definitely been reflected in my poor attempts at cooking. I’m sure Hubs will start complaining soon about having to eat the same things night after night after night. However, I still prefer to eat my boring attempts at cooking rather than Hubs’ attempts (trust me it’s not pretty when he gets in the kitchen!). Anyway, I not only need a ‘money tree’, I also need an ‘energy tree’!

This has been our dinner for the last 2 nights running: stir fry green beans and tofu with rice…zzzzzzzzzzzz. Well, at least it’s balanced!

Ps.
Also, a big thank you to all of you for checking back here to make sure that I’m still surviving England and the English weather!

Nearly back

2007-12-02T17:52:00.001+01:00

….give and take a week or so!

Grumpy me

2007-10-12T15:51:00.000+01:00

Wow, a month has just flown by and it really amazes me how time can fly even when you’re not having fun! Yes, yes, I’m still little Miss Grumpy at the moment and still living in a B&B. However, there is light at the end of this very long and narrow tunnel! We’ll be finally moving into our flat on the 20th and that’s only just over a week away.

Living in a grotty B&B (why or why doesn’t the B&B lady ever clean?? In fact, I’d even clean the place if it weren’t for the fact that we’re paying them good money to stay there and by principal, we’re paying so I shouldn’t’ have to clean!) for a month has resulted in bad diet, bad sleep and a very grumpy WoknSpoon. And don’t even mention the fact that Australia lost to England in the Rugby World Cup last weekend!

Despite having access to a miniature kitchenette, I haven’t really felt motivated to cook and we’ve been living on takeaway food and ready-made meals (including packaged fresh and canned soups) that we can throw in the microwave. I’ve never actually eaten those ready-made meals that you find in the local supermarket before this episode and I think I never will E.V.E.R again!

In fact, the thought of a ready-made meal is making my stomach churn so we are running out of things to eat…which makes me even grumpier.

Anyway, no lovely photos of mouth-watering food to share however I do have one photo which always makes me smile: Hubs in Germany with a gigantic meat skewer!
1 week to go and counting!

Tortilla du Fond du Frigo

2007-09-13T15:50:00.000+01:00

Firstly, I'm going to just say that I’m never ever ever moving countries (except either back to France or Australia of course) ever again! I won’t share the gory details but let’s just say it has been a complete nightmare, what with the house hunting, the job hunting and everything else!

We’re currently living out of our backpacks and in various B&Bs in the lovely Surrey countryside, which actually sounds more exotic (and expensive!) than it actually is. On the bright side…we’ll hopefully be settled in…say…2 months!

Otherwise, moving enables you to develop creativity by trying to use up all the odd bits and pieces that are left in your fridge 2 days before you move out. (I don’t like wasting!)

Here’s what I chaotically put together with what wasn’t already green with mould in our Frankfurt fridge - a tortilla.

A Tortilla du Fond du Frigo (loosely translated to “Bottom of the Fridge Tortilla”) to be precise. I like to give my meals French names – it sounds much more posh and edible ;-)

Ingredients
1 spanish onion diced
1 medium sweet potato sliced (I microwaved the sweet potato slices in order to cook the tortilla faster)
½ a very wrinkly old red capsicum sliced
7 eggs
lots of minced garlic
bits of left-over, wilted “fresh” coriander chopped
½ tsp salt (or to taste)
pepper to taste
olive oil for cooking

There are probably a million ways to make a tortilla but I beat eggs in a bowl and added the cooked sweet potato, red capsicum, salt, pepper and coriander to the eggs.

I first gently browned the diced onion and garlic in a non-stick pan. I then added a little bit more oil to the pan and then poured in the egg mixture. The egg mixture was cooked over a low fire until it was pretty firm. Then the hard part, I flipped the entire tortilla over to cook the top-side. Do this carefully as if you have a big pan, the big omelette will break up into little pieces…though, this is still very edible!

And voila, 20-30 minutes later, you have a delish hot meal to sit down to!
ps.
Thank you to everyone for all your well wishes. Hehe! But after the move we’ve just had, you’re all obviously not wishing hard enough! ;-)

Selamat Hari Merdeka

2007-08-30T19:40:00.000+01:00

Selamat Hari Merdeka to all the Malaysians out there!
I won’t be blogging for a while as we’re in the middle of yet another move! This time to the UK! Well, at least theoretically to the UK as I’m still waiting for my visa and we’re supposed to move this weekend. What a nightmare!

Anyway, see you all in about 3 weeks when hopefully, we’ll be happy, merry and all settled in the UK!

Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens….

2007-08-29T07:58:00.000+01:00

Here are a few more of my favourite things! (ie. More eye candy for all you homesick Malaysians out there!)

The satay man in Kuala Lumpur (KL). All that satay just waiting to be grilled.

KL satay. This came with only a little bowl of satay (peanut) sauce. Back in the old days when I lived in Klang, you would get a big bowl! The ketupat (the cubes of rice in the foreground) also used to come wrapped up in coconut palm leaves...those were the days!

Wantan mee complete with pickled green chillis. Hubs loves this!

Ice kacang, one of my favourite desserts (seems like I'm saying "favourite" a lot here!). I was disappointed with this ice kacang. It was nothing like the ice kacang of my childhood which was full of red beans and attap chee, topped with shaved ice and completely drenched in condensed milk and syrup. This version was light on the condensed milk and syrup, had no attap chee and had a high ice to bean ratio!

Comfort food snacks from my childhood: assamboi (dried plum things) and picked green mangoes. The assamboi are the dried up shrivelled looking things. They're not pretty but I find them very more-ish!

I don’t know what these little biscuits are called but when I was a little girl, I loved them and my mum used to buy them all the time! I pigged out on them when I was in KL and then bounced around from all the sugar in the colourful toppings!

And last but not least, tropical fruits! Pure heaven!
Duku langsat

Rambutan
and my personal favourite, mangosteen!

I'm giving myself all these cravings by posting these photos! ;-)

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…

2007-08-26T12:02:00.000+01:00

…these are a few of my favourite things!

My mum’s fantastic homemade super hot and spicy nasi lemak (she cooks it without using a recipe!)! I ate plates and plates of this in Melbourne! By the time I was done, I was sweating, peeing and pooing ikan bilis (anchovy) sambal! ;-)

(the photo doesn’t do it justice!)

Diving off Perhentian Besar in Malaysia. It’s like swimming in one giant heated aquarium.
(Photo by one of our dive masters Ozzie – sorry Ozzie, had to swipe your photos as we have none of our own!)

Oh and naturally, the slightly expensive (it’s an island – they have to ship food there!) meals after the dives.

Being a fairly small island (I know, even though it’s Perhentian Besar, it’s still small. "besar" = big in Malay), there are not a whole lot of decent eating places. In fact, most of the places actually served up pretty crappy food!

However, it was still Malaysia so even the badly cooked food was still way better than many many Asian restaurants here in Europe!

Among our regular eating haunts on Perhentian Besar were the Tuna Bay restaurant and Abdul’s (my personal favourite for the beach we were on).

Iced Milo at Tuna Bay! (Yes, I know it’s just Milo but I haven’t had it for ages!! There's no Milo in Germany.) Very average mee goreng and kuay teow at Tuna Bay but eating right on the beach made up for it!
The Hubby’s satay at Tuna Bay.

Not too bad kangkong belacan at Tuna Bay (my mum does better!).

Plate-licking hot and spicy sambal sotong (squid) and sambal long beans at Abdul’s! Mmmmmmm! We ate here a lot but I just kept having the same favourite dishes: sambal everything!

Also….
Thanks everyone for all your very sweet comments about missing me! It's nice to be loved ;-) hehe!

I’m still catching up on all the fantastic eye and mouth watering meals that everyone’s been posting on their blogs! So much food and so little time!

Before I forget, a bit belated but thanks Sharmi for the Rocking Girl Blogger award. I’d like to pass it on to a billion of you out there but it looks like everyone has already been nominated at some point or other! So this is for for every foodie female out there including:

Grandmother Stories
A whiff of lemongrass
Everything4sweets
Flog&Rosbif
You're all Rocking Girl Bloggers!

2.5 weeks later

2007-08-24T21:54:00.000+01:00

First of all, thank you everyone for all your Happy Holiday wishes! I had a great time and why oh why do holidays go so quickly?!

So, what do I have to show for 2-and-a-half weeks of constant eating my way through Melbourne and (very briefly) Malaysia? Tighter pants and an enormous muffin top (yes, it has grown, even in 2.5 weeks!)! Oh yeah, and a much smaller bank balance ;-) It would be great if it was the other way around: smaller muffin top and a bigger bank balance!

Anyway, with all good intentions, I had planned to document and photograph each and every morsel of food that touched my lips. However, unfortunately, as soon as I laid eyes on that first dish of spicy Korean calamari in Melbourne, all those good intentions just got sidelined and all I had at the end of those meals were just empty dishes!

So, what exactly did I do in Melbourne?

Seeing as I wasn’t taking photos of the food that I was scoffing down, so, what exactly did I do in Melbourne?

Well, I was discovering all the changes that Melbourne had seen since the last time I’d been there…I discovered that Melbourne was now a proud owner of at least one Krispy Kreme outlet! I can’t remember where I first read about these sumptuous doughnuts but I know that I didn’t think twice about hot-footing it in there (more than once!) and walking out with a box of pure sugar, which I had to fight both my Husband, AND my mum for a taste! Grrrrr!

Disorganised

2007-08-04T23:06:00.000+01:00

I have to be the most disorganised traveller ever. Before every trip, I make a firm resolution to have everything packed and ready to go a day before the actual departure date, but somehow, that just never happens!

It’s 11:46PM and I’m still up! But on the bright side, I’m nearly done stuffing my (and the Hubs’) luggage with tons of Lindt chocolate. I’m sure the Australian Customs are going to think that I’m trafficking hazelnut praline!
Well, I’m sure you’re all eagerly waiting the results of the draw. I had 15 bits of paper in my paper salad as you can see. (Can you see the TV reflection of some very bad late night program in the bowl?)

Anyway, the lucky recipients of Tim Tams are:
Cookie Baker Lynn
Jaden from Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen
Padma from Padma’s Kitchen
And last but not least,
Wandering Chopsticks

Um, yes, I know that’s 4 names and not 3…but hey, it’s late and I was on a roll!

So ladies, can you please email me (wokandspoon@gmail.com) your snail mail addresses! Ta!

Urggh, it’s 12:07AM already!

See you all in 3 weeks!

Last minute!

2007-08-01T18:05:00.000+01:00

After overwhelming evidence that half of the foodie blogging world has never laid eyes on a Tim Tam, this has compelled me to share some of the joy around. So, seeing as I’ll be in Melbourne for the next 2 weeks, and I’ll be in reach of Tim Tams (all day long!), I’m going to send a packet of Tim Tams to 3 deprived foodie bloggers.

Before I go any further, I really apologise but I’m going to disqualify foodie bloggers who live in Tim Tam accessible countries ie. Australia, New Zealand, UK, and um…Malaysia and Singapore…unless of course, you swear on your wok, blender and overworked oven that you have never ever let a Tim Tam cross your lips and have absolutely no way to obtain any of that most craved for sweetness.

The other disclaimer is that if you are one of the chosen ones and have a packet with your name written all over it, I will do my best to airmail it to you. However, while Australia Post is very reliable, I am in no way responsible for any hungry postman, postal worker, customs officer and others who decide that the packet is for them rather than for you.

Oh, and I’m also not responsible for melted Tim Tams sitting in letter boxes in the heat of summer (for those who are actually having a real summer!). I’m also too lazy to check if I can send foodstuff to where ever you are (customs restrictions for your country?), so I’ll just cross my fingers, stick the stamps on and post!

Anyway, if you’re interested, let me know (email, comment etc) before 9pm Saturday (Frankfurt time please!) and I’ll put all the names in a big salad bowl and pull 3 names out (you can send me your snail mail addresses later). I’ll hopefully be able to organise and let you know before I leave on Sunday.

Ps.
If I was a millionaire I would send you all a packet! Unfortunately, the Lotto Fairy hasn’t yet come my way!

Salade Niçoise à la Wok ‘n Spoon

2007-07-31T19:53:00.000+01:00

The plan was to eat vegetables all week, leading up to our 10 day holiday in Melbourne (and 2 days in Malaysia!) but you know, I just can’t do it!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person to be diet obsessed but dieting was a small price to pay. Much better than having to hear those “oh, you’ve put on weight…you look so much better now, rather than before when you were too thin” comments from my family! (I do love my family dearly!)

The only problem is that I’m sooo very very bored with salads. Plus I think all this vegetable eating is zapping me of any creativity that I had in the kitchen.

Anyway, back to the salad eating.

The Salade Niçoise is named after its origins: Nice (that’s Neece as in Fleece not Nyce) in the south of France. There are of course uncountable versions (mine included) of this salad but the basic ingredients of a Salade Niçoise include green beans, tomatoes, olives, boiled eggs and tuna. I call any salad with boiled eggs and tuna a Salade Niçoise ;-)

I was a little bored with raw vegetables so I lightly pan fried courgette, red and yellow capsicum and mushrooms for the salad. I also added one of my favourite “salady” vegetables: Mache.

Mache is one vegetable that I had never heard of or seen in Australia. Wikipedia lists its English name as “corn salad” (??). I was introduced to the mache in France and absolutely loved it. However when I first saw mache, I asked the Hubs what it was, and his reply was “some kind of salad that cows eat”! Guess that makes us cows!

I also didn’t add any tomatoes to the salad, but instead added blueberries (they’re in season!). Yes, I know, that’s a bit weird but I’m trying to make Hubs eat more blueberries (high in antioxidants).

The salad was initially just plain vegetables.

Then I thought, if I eat that, I’ll be hungry in 1 hour and end up in a bad mood, and be scouring the kitchen on the search for any hint of chocolate! So, I added the tuna and eggs!

Ingredients for Salade Niçoise à la Wok ‘n Spoon
1 courgette (lightly pan fried)
½ a red & ½ a yellow capsicum (lightly pan fried)
4 mushrooms (lightly pan fried)
2 large handfuls of mache
½ onion
¾ cup blueberries
200g canned tuna (enough for Hubs and me. I love canned tuna!)
2 boiled eggs

Sweet chilli dressing for Salade Niçoise à la Wok ‘n Spoon
(this makes enough for 2)
2 tsp lime juice
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
2 tbsp water
½ tsp sesame oil

And there you have it, another exciting salad night at Wok n’ Spoon’s!

It’s all a lie

2007-07-27T07:21:00.000+01:00

The truth is finally out.

I’m not a real foodie.

I’ve just come back from a week of eating my way through the Charentes and Paris, and you know what? I didn’t take a single picture of food! Despite the big eating fests to celebrate the Hubs’ 30th birthday, I don’t have a single photo of food.

Zip. Nada. Nothing. Not a pixel.

I should hang my wok in shame.

The problem? Well, you know, after a nice glass of pineau (or two), I forget to take photos! I blame it on the French and their apéros.

Oh well.

Anyway, here’s a photo of some tomatoes ripening at my in-laws, and young grapes on the grapevine…well, it’s food!

ps. I'm looking forward to catching up with all your blogs soon! Yummmmmmm!

Very berry chocolate brownie muffins

2007-07-20T09:51:00.000+01:00

I have always been fascinated by berries, berries of all and any types. I think it all started back when I was young and read Enid Blyton’s books. The characters in her books were always out picking and eating strawberries, blackberries or raspberries, while all I had in Malaysia were rambutans, lychees, longans and mangosteens. Ok, I admit, it wasn’t so tough having the Malaysian versions!

Anyway, one variety that I have always wanted to try (but never got around to it) is the groseille (red current). For about 4 years, I actually didn’t know what it was called in English…until yesterday when I went on a mad hunt trying to find the English name for it.

I love the bright red colour and the little succulent-looking berries. Seeing some at the local fruit and veg shop the other day, I decided to buy a (big) punnet! I rushed home and eagerly dived into the punnet to try my newly acquired treasure.

And urggghhhh…..they were really really REALLY sour!

Someone could have warned me!

So I’ve had this big punnet of sour red currents for a week and now I only have 1 day left to use them up before my extra long weekend in La Rochelle (yay!)!

What do you do with sour red currents? Sour fruit salad? Sour jam? Sour compote? Sour fruit pie? Chocolate brownie muffins?

Yep – you read correctly, chocolate brownie muffins...with sour red currents.

Ingredients and Recipe (adapted from The Joy of Baking)
150g chocolate chopped or broken into bits
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup (105 grams) all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup of red currents
(Makes 12 muffins)

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. (I was lazy and just melted the 2 ingredients directly in the saucepan).

Mix the chocolate and butter well, and when melted, let the mixture cool for a couple of minutes then add in the sugar. Mix well. Add the vanilla and the eggs one by one, mix well.

Finally, add in the flour and salt and oh, mix well! Then add in the red currents and gently stir until the currents are evenly distributed throughout the batter. Be careful not to squash the currents like I did!

Pour batter into the muffin cups or tray. Bake at 325F (170C) for roughly 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin has moist crumbs sticking to it.

The muffins were absolutely delightful and moist. They weren’t as compact and heavy as brownies, and the tartness of the groseille balanced out the sweetness of the chocolate so it wasn’t sickly sweet (especially important after I’d eaten about 3 in a row!).

Anyway, on that note, have a great weekend everyone. I’m off to the parents in-laws for an extended long weekend in ~~sunny~~ La Rochelle.

To beet or not to beet?

2007-07-17T20:03:00.000+01:00

That is not the question.

The question is but how to make the humble salad more interesting?

And unfortunately, the answer my friend, is definitely not blowing in the wind. I’ve been eating salads for the most part of 3 weeks now and I’m bored bored bored.

My pants aren’t any looser, my muffin top isn’t any smaller and I’m heading for a great big chocolate binge! I spent 10 minutes in the chocolate aisle at the supermarket today, trying to decide if I wanted Lindt with whole hazelnuts or Lindt with chili, before telling myself that I had dried cranberries at home that I could snack on instead. Yes, I know, dried cranberries are also loaded with sugar, however providing I don’t eat 3 packets, dried cranberries are still better than chocolate!

Anyway, I’ve been cruising the ~~streets~~ foodie blogs looking for the perfect lover for my left over rocket, and I’ve found it in Argus’ World. (Thank you Argus!)

Beetroot.

I bought cooked beetroot (I’m too lazy to deal with raw beetroot) and the delicate sweetness was an ideal match for my peppery rocket. Topped with smoked salmon and a scattering of sunflower seeds and it was heaven on my taste buds.

Add to that a light drizzle (or a heavy downpour in my case) of a creamy Asian flavoured dressing and I was once again inspired to chow down on salads for the next 3 weeks….um…ok…maybe 3 weeks is exaggerating, but at least for the next week!

Salad ingredients for 2
Rocket (about 2 big handfuls)
4 beetroots (cooked) sliced
sunflower seeds
150-200g smoked salmon

Garlicky creamy Asian salad dressing (adapted from CooksRecipes)
1 tbs mayonnaise
1/2 tbs soy sauce
3/4 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp sesame seed oil
2 tsp water (omit if you like a thicker dressing)
2 tsp minced garlic lightly fried in olive oil

Mix the mayonnaise, soy sauce, sugar, pepper, sesame seed oil and water well until the sugar is no longer grainy. Lightly fry the garlic in oil. Drain the oil then add the garlic to the dressing. This makes roughly ¼ cup of dressing.

Then, drown your salad in the dressing!

Ok, I know, eating salad drenched in dressing sort of defeats the purpose but I can’t just eat plain salad!

7 things

2007-07-16T08:16:00.001+01:00

I’ve been tagged!

Thanks to Sharmi from Neivedyam, Sunita from Sunita’s World and the Cooking Ninja , I’ve been feeling guilty for the whole weekend, not being able to sleep or eat (!!!) due to the remorse that I’ve been carrying around for procrastinating with this tag.

Ok, maybe it’s not that dramatic (just kidding Ladies!) but it has been at the back of my mind!

Coming up with 7 random things about myself wasn’t easy. I tried to make it as “foody” as I could but you know, the stress and old age, my memory isn’t that good anymore! Oh well, here goes:

1. I’m ethnically Chinese but I can’t speak or read a word of mandarin (apart from a very small handful of characters)! When I was little, I hated the mandarin classes in school as well as the mandarin classes that I had to do after school so I never really put any effort in and made every excuse I could to skip the classes.

I totally regret that now because when I go to Chinese restaurants, I can’t read the Chinese menus and am forced to either order what I already know or go with the boring “foreigner” menus. One day, I’ll properly learn to read mandarin!

2. I was a real tom boy when I was young and would climb trees and run around the neighbourhood with all my boy friends (not boyfriends! I was 7 or 8!). However, the only time I liked playing with soft toys (I never liked dolls!) was when my mum made little pandan cup cakes, filling the house with the most beautiful aroma. I then got to have little tea parties with real tea and pandan cup cakes with my soft toys! MMMmmmmm.

3. I like eating ketchup and plain white rice.

4. I’m a danger in the kitchen. I once burnt rice on an electric stove.
About 10 years ago, I was visiting a friend of my mum’s in Bath and decided to make dinner. I had fish, veggies and rice, everything for a nice meal. The only problem was that I had never cooked rice without a rice cooker before. I ended up putting in too much water in the pot so the rice was very very gluggy. Then once the rice was ~~over~~cooked, I didn’t take it off the stove, which meant that the electric element, continued to cook the rice…until I started smelling something burning!

So much for my cooking skills! I had just made burnt, dry chuk.

My mum’s friend was very nice however and ate the burnt, soggy rice!

5. Another reason why I’m a danger in the kitchen, I forget that I have things on the stove! I once forgot that I was boiling 2 eggs until I heard 2 loud explosions coming from the kitchen! It was the eggs! The water had dried up and the eggs had exploded from being in the saucepan without any water! Quite dangerous!

6. I love chocolate! I can eat an entire mega long (I think they’re 500g) Milka chocolate slab with whole hazelnuts all at once! Without getting sick…and still wanting more.

7. When I was studying in Québec a long time ago, I cooked seeni sambol (Sri Lankan maldive fish sambal) for 8 friends and it was sooooo hot and spicy that we all had what my cousins and I call, “burny” bums, for the next 2 days ;-)

Only 4 out of those 8 are still friends.

Oh, and my husband obviously didn’t mind as he was also one of the 8!

This tag has been going around the food bloggers in the last week so I’m not sure who has and hasn’t been tagged yet. And I also have to tag 7 people! I don’t have that many friends :-(

Ok, I tag:

Tigerfish from Tezcape
MeltingWok
WanderingChopsticks
Argus
Cynthia from Tastes Like Home
Retno from Kedai Hamburg
Judy from Grandmother Stories

Ps.
Oh, and because I really really slaved over this tag, you all have to do it too ;-)

Tilapia à la nectarine salsa

2007-07-14T07:08:00.000+01:00

The great thing about food blogging is getting to know all the other incredibly creative food bloggers out there and then ~~stealing~~ being inspired by their ideas. After seeing Jaden from SteamyKitchen’s delightful mango-melon salsa and also EastMeetsWestKitchen’s equally luscious lychee salsa (thank you ladies!), I wanted to make a fruit salsa too!

The only thing standing in my way was the lack of quality fresh mangos or lychees in Frankfurt. What to do? Well, substitute!

I’m terrible at creating (and following) recipes so here’s what I roughly used for my fruit salsa:
2 very ripe and super sweet nectarines
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp lime juice
¼ Spanish onion diced (I like raw onion!)
fresh coriander chopped
pinch of salt
pinch of chilli powder

Mix all ingredients, mash the mixture a little and voila, there you have it – a nice sweet, salty and spicy salsa.

The other thing that I didn’t really think about is what to have the salsa with! I was so keen on the salsa that I didn’t think about what to serve the salsa with. Luckily I had some Tilapia (that almost sounds dirty!) filets on hand.

I don’t ever remember seeing Tilapia in France or in Australia so I have no idea what kind of fish this is. When I bought it, I just pointed, said “Ja, ja, ja” and paid! Anyway, the fish is just simply seasoned with a salt, pepper and olive oil mixture.

I love fried fish but I’m not big on the frying part as the apartment tends to be filled with super fishy odours for days on end. So to make the frying time shorter, I zapped the fish in the microwave for a few minutes till semi-cooked, then lightly fried it to brown the sides.

I piled everything on top of some rocket and that was last night’s meal! I am still eating semi-healthily to compensate for all the German beer that I’ve been drinking. Only 3 weeks till we leave for Melbourne so I need to keep the spare tyre under control!

Anyway, I really loved the fruit salsa with the fish but the Hubs inhaled the salsa quickly so he could squirt ketchup all over the fish! Hmmmpfff! Some people have no taste!

Carbs galore!

2007-07-11T12:36:00.000+01:00

Still on the subject of last weekend, what else did we eat apart from very expensive Tim Tams?

Well, German food of course!

German food was definitely great opportunity to replenish my body with those food groups that I’ve been missing: sugar, carbohydrates, fat….! To add to that, there was a huge street festival in our neighbourhood filled with just food and alcohol! And for a change, it didn’t rain! What more could we have asked for?

Anyway, in Frankfurt, the best place to fill up on German food on a cool ~~winter~~ summer’s day but the traditional Frankfurter Ebbelwei taverns.

Ebbelwei is apfelwein (apple wine) or in other words, apple cider. I’m not really sure exactly what the difference is between apfelwein and cider (apart from what I can find on the Internet) but apfelwein tastes less sweet than cider and has a cloudier liquid.

In any case, we’re lucky that we live in Sachsenhausen where our main street has 2 of the oldest (so they claim) Ebbelwei taverns in Frankfurt. These taverns are filled with long, solid and dark wooden tables and benches, and are often filled with merry Germans digging into hearty meals!

The first couple of times that the Hubs and I went to one of these taverns, we were completely unfamiliar with the food and so ordered by pointing at dishes that someone else was having at the table next to us! This time round, we knew what we wanted!

This is what I had.
This dish is apparently a Frankfurter speciality: Grüne Soße (pronounced “groone sosse”, something like that). The sauce is a mixture of herbs and sour cream, yogurt or cream. This lovely sauce is served usually over plain hard boiled eggs and potatoes.

Hubs on the other hand, being very dairy-intolerant, decided on the stereotypical German meal: sausages, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. His mashed potatoes seemed to have been mixed with what we thought was apfelwein, which gave it a little sweetness.
And we washed all that down with apfelwein naturally! 2 hours later, we all strolled out of the tavern clutching our bellies ;-)

Here’s a picture of what apfelwein is usually served in! Ok, the jug’s not usually that big but you get the picture ;-)
And this picture is for Lyrical Lemongrass who loves German beer! No, it’s not the umbrellas that you should be interested in; it’s what’s written on the umbrellas: Schöfferhofer, my current favourite German weizen beer.

Australian delicacy

2007-07-09T10:59:00.000+01:00

There’s an Australian delicacy that’s quite rare over here in Europe (well, at least in France and Germany). However last Saturday, there was a stand full of these goodies just down the street from me.

I’m sure you’re all thinking…Australian delicacy…hmm..kangaroo burgers? Crocodile ham? Koala steaks? Wrong wrong and wrong.

I’m talking about the humble TIM TAM. Ok, you might say well, Tim Tams aren’t Australian anymore; they’re American as Arnott’s is now American owned. But that’s beside the point. Tim Tams were born in Australia as far as I’m concerned!

What are Tim Tams? It’s basically a synonym for a little “slice of heaven”! Well, ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. It’s basically a chocolate cream biscuit sandwich enrobed by yet more chocolate! In other words, it’s the ultimate comfort food!

Anyway, over the weekend, my in-laws were in town and coincidentally, there was a huge street festival in our neighbourhood, where that particular Tim Tam-filled stand was. So naturally, I had to share a part of Australian heritage with them.

So, how much would you pay for a packet of Tim Tams?

I paid 5 euros!!!!! But it was worth every centime!

Ginger Tuna Patties with Wakame Salad and Wasabi

2007-07-05T08:41:00.000+01:00

I think the lack of sugar and fat in my food has been robbing me of any little creativity that I had in the kitchen, plus I’m still stuck in wakame land! On top of that, I love canned tuna so what better to make then tuna patties to sit on top of yet more wakame!

Making tuna patties is pretty basic and I’m sure everyone’s tried them at least once. Here’s what I used:

Tuna Patties
2 eggs
2 x 200g canned tuna
1/4 cup flour
3 stalks green onions diced finely
2 tsp ginger minced
1/4 capsicum
1/3 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients.
Drop spoonfuls onto a heated and oiled frying pan. Flatten the spoonfuls into patties and fry both sides until browned and cooked.

For the salad, I used cucumber, wakame and sesame seeds. I also recycled the salad dressing recipe that I used in my last wakame adventure.

However this time, once the tuna patties and the salad had been assembled, I drizzled a slightly runny wasabi paste over the whole dish! It definitely gave the meal a bit of a kick!

I usually buy wasabi in powder form. A Japanese friend once told me that I should only prepare the paste just before using as the flavour tends to evaporate. For this meal, I made my wasabi paste runnier that I usually have it when I’m eating sushi or sashimi.

Runny wasabi paste
½ tsp wasabi ~~power~~powder
3 tsp water

Mix well and spoon into mouth…hehe..no, drizzle on the tuna patties and salad!

Voila, another healthy meal! (I don’t think I can take this salad eating much longer!)

Wakame salad topped with smoked salmon

2007-07-02T19:46:00.000+01:00

Even though it feels like an eternity, it’s only been about 2-and-a-half-weeks since I started trying to eat a little more healthily (is that a word?). Why the healthy eating? No, I’m not one of those women who live perpetually on rice cakes and salad, and for whom “diet” is a lifestyle not some tortuous ritual.

However, I am heading home to Melbourne for a holiday in August and expect to be eating up a storm then! Plus, I’m not willing to incur any of the “oh you look so….healthy” type remarks from my relatives when they see that I have been enjoying all those German beers! (Ok, my relatives are not that tactful. They usually just get right to the point and say “oh, you’ve put on weight”!)

Anyway, it’s definitely been a ~~pain~~ challenge trying to come up with healthy yet interesting meals. All I want to do is eat lots of rice, fried noodles and cookies!

On top of that, I already lacked creativity in the kitchen before the healthy eating thing! Take away the rice, noodles, oil, fat and sugar….it doesn’t leave much for me to play with!

Anyway, luckily, I found a lifesaver: wakame. Wakame is basically a type of edible seaweed. It’s usually the green stuff that’s floating around in your miso soup at Japanese restaurants (well, in Parisian“Japanese” restaurants anyway).

According to Wikipedia, wakame is supposed to be pretty good for you but I just like it for its semi-crunchy consistency, which gives a little texture to boring ol’ salads. Plus, it’s also pretty easy to prepare (extra points there!).

I buy dried unsalted wakame in packets and all I need to do is soak a handful in water for about 3 minutes then drain. My Japanese friends tell me that in Japan, wakame is also sold fresh.

Anyway, here’s what Hubs and I have been eating for 2 days in a row: Wakame salad topped with smoked salmon. Yum.

To prepare the dried wakame, I soaked it in a bowl of water for 3-5 minutes then drained. I then lightly squeezed the wakame with my hands to remove the water. Be careful not to over soak the wakame otherwise it becomes too soft and loses its crunch.

The time that the wakame needs to soak in water tends to depend on the brand. I’ve found that while one brand only took about 1-2 minutes, another brand took 5 minutes.

This is what I used for the salad:
Cucumber
Rocket
Wakame (I used roughly 1/3 a cup of dried unsalted wakame for 2 people)
Cherry tomatoes
Dried cranberries (left over from those cookies!)
Sesame seeds
Smoked salmon (store bought)

For the salad dressing, I just made a simple and commonly used Asian-type dressing:
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tsp brown sugar
a splash of sesame oil
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp chilli flakes (I love my chilli)

And ta-da – dinner for 2! I found that the sweetness of the dried cranberries went really well with the salty smoked salmon.

Now all I have to do is find something interesting and low-fat to make for the next 4 weeks!

Schneeballen

2007-06-30T09:15:00.000+01:00

A while ago we took a short trip down the Romantic Road in Bavaria. Along the way, we stopped at a little medieval town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. I use the term “medieval” very loosely seeing as the town has probably been restored over and over again and all the medieval bits don’t really look that medieval anymore.

Anyway, the local speciality in Rotheburg was a sweet ~~little~~ big schneeball (snowball) covered with anything from cinnamon and sugar to chocolate and grated coconut.

These little schneeballen are actually strips of dough all glued together in the shape of a ball, and then fried! Wish I had known that they were fried before I gobbled down 2 of those things!

While it looks like you could take a big bite into a scheeball, it’s actually quite hard. It was easier to break the ball up into little bits before eating it. The schneeball actually tastes like bits of shortbread or biscuits (the English kind). Very moreish…though I felt a little sick after greedily wolfing down the 2 ballen!

I haven’t tried to make them myself (I don’t think I could ever look at them again!) but here’s a link that shows you how.

Schneeball covered with cinnamon and sugar.

Schneeball covered with chocolate.

Freaky looking things aren’t they?

Do-not-try-this-yourself Apple Crumble Muffins

2007-06-27T18:09:00.000+01:00

Ok, I’m going to firstly put the following disclaimer:
“Please do not try the following in your own homes”

You might risk having to eat dry muffins (not the English kind)/cupcakes for 4 days in a row!

Yes, I have been baking again. This time, I made muffins (or cupcakes if you prefer). Lots of muffins (What’s the difference between muffins and cupcakes anyway?).

I have this muffin recipe that I’ve been using to make banana choc chip muffins for years now. And it used to work well every single time. The problem is, I recently decided to try to adapt the recipe to make other muffins. Not so wise a choice unfortunately!

I saw this recipe and thought that I’d make pretty much the same thing only it seemed to be more like an apple crumble muffin to me. So, I made apple-crumble-muffins.

So I used my own basic muffin recipe, added 1 diced apple and topped it with the crumble topping found in this recipe (Note that I only used the crumble topping from this recipe, not the rest of the recipe).

Sure, the idea seemed great…and the results are ok…for the first day at least. However, on the second day, the muffins started to get a little dry (ok, very dry!), and by the third day, every time I took a bite, I ended up spluttering and choking on dry crumbs!

I won’t post my dry apple muffin recipe because there are definitely some better recipes around. However, the crumble topping that I adapted from the recipe turned out great!

Crumble Topping (adapted from Allrecipes.com)
5 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs butter melted
½ tsp cinnamon
3 tbs flour
5 tbs rolled oats

And voila, the results! I can’t make them look good no matter how hard I try. They look a little like they have a skin disease! But trust me – they were really good for 1 day!
Anyway, all that was before I found this great site:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/muffins/muffins.html

I think I’ll just stick to the recipe in future!

Oatmeal cranberry cookie heaven!

2007-06-24T19:10:00.000+01:00

All this healthy eating lately has left me with a huge sugar craving! Plus, there’s been a lot of foodie blogger baking and cookie stacking as well. Inspired by both Tigerfish and Lynn’s latest efforts, I’ve decided to go where I don’t usually go…the baking zone!

The truth is, I’m not a great baker. Hubs has suffered through lots of dry muffins and super-hard-teeth-breaking cookies! I just can’t follow recipes properly.

First of all, I don’t read properly, that is, I miss lines and forget to add ingredients. Then I get bored measuring things and end up just adding a little too much sugar or flour because I think the batter needs it!

Also, to add to the problem, I also don’t have proper measuring utensils (cups, spoons etc) at the moment and just tend to guess. When a recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, I literally use 1 cup … any cup that I find in the kitchen!

Anyway, I decided to try Lynn’s oatmeal raisin cookie recipe, it looked pretty fool-proof to me, plus she had lots of helpful advice for the novice baker like me.

You’ll find the recipe here.

A few things though. I substituted the raisins with cranberries as I love cranberries. Also, I couldn’t find vanilla essence in my local supermarket and so had to use “vanilla sugar” (never seen this before!)!

On top of that, I couldn’t find any “quick-cooking” oats and so just used the normal oats that I found in the supermarket. And, I couldn’t find any baking soda either so I used baking powder. The oven in our current apartment isn’t great so the cookies took about 15 minutes to bake. Oh, and I have only 1 tray so I had to bake the cookies in 3 batches!

The end result was fantastic (no complains from Hubs either!)! Here’s my cookie stack!

I’ve eaten so many cookies today that I think I’m going to have to go for a big loooonggg run tomorrow ;-)

Ps.
Pay careful attention to Lynn’s advice about taking the cookies out while they’re still slightly underbaked. I left my first batch in for too long and they were slightly too hard. I made sure I took my other batches out early!

Asian Tuna and Sweet Potato Shepard’s Pie

2007-06-21T07:26:00.000+01:00

Why?
I know, I know, I keep making variations of the same thing! I’m going through a slight sweet potato obsession at the moment and have been making just anything and everything I can with it (I’ll stop soon I promise!).

Shepard’s pie is a pretty basic dish – usually it’s just a minced meat (beef or lamb) layer topped with a layer of potato and baked until crusty. This used to be one of my favourite dishes…until I stopped liking red meat (don’t know why, I just went off it! Too many Shepard’s Pies perhaps?).

Anyway, I tried combining an old favourite (Shepard’s pie) and a new favourite (sweet potato!) and ended up with a tuna and sweet potato Shepard’s pie!

What?
Bottom layer
3x 200g canned tuna in spring water (flaked)
2 1/2 tsp ready-made red curry paste
2 eggs
1/2 red capsicum diced and lightly fried
1 onion diced and lightly fried
1 tsp garlic minced

Top Layer
2 medium sweet potatoes
1/4 tsp salt
3 spring onions chopped
3 tbs coconut milk

How?
1. Bottom layer: Mix all ingredients and spread in an greased baking dish. I used a (roughly) 26cm x 16cm x 4cm baking dish.
2. Top layer: Cook sweet potatoes then mash in a bowl. Mix all ingredients and spread on top of the tuna layer.
3. Put the baking dish in the oven at roughly 220C for around 40 minutes (I think…I forgot to time it!).

I didn’t add any salt to the tuna as canned tuna tends to be already salty and I used store-bought red curry paste which also had salt in it. The bottom layer ended up slightly salty but this was ok as it balanced out with the sweet potato. I would probably use home-made red curry paste next time – less salt!

I was also too impatient (and hungry) and didn’t wait till the top got slightly burnt and crusty. The dish turned out great and the sweet potato-coconut milk combination is absolutely delectable!

Hmm…maybe my sweet potato obsession is due to the fact that I’m not eating enough chocolate! You know, not enough sugar in my body! ;-)

Third-time-lucky Roti canal

2007-06-18T09:38:00.000+01:00

One thing about being so far away from Malaysia and Australia (where you can find decent Asian food!), I have to make my own whenever I get a craving!

I’ve been eating loads of healthy food lately and that probably explains my craving for oily and fatty calorie-laden Roti Canai! My body is deprived from its fat input ;-) I suppose it doesn’t help that the hubby loves this as well and when I mentioned that I wanted to try to make it, he didn’t let me forget about it!

Roti canai, as most of you probably already know, is a Malaysian speciality. However, I think in India and Indonesia, it is also known as roti paratha. There’s probably a whole history behind Malaysian roti canai but but I’m too lazy to do the research so there's more information here.

Anyway, this is my third attempt in making roti canai! The first time, I used Amy Beh’s roti canai recipe but for some reason, it just didn’t work for me. First of all, I had trouble stretching out the dough from the recipe, and then when cooked, my roti canai, instead of being crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside, turned out a weird dry-crispy-doughy-flat biscuit! Urghgh.

For my second attempt, I dug up a different recipe. This time after days and days (ok…only 1 day!) of searching the Internet, I found a different recipe by MamaFaMi here. This time, the results were a lot closer to the real thing…but still not quite there. The cooked roti was still a little doughy. Probably because I still didn’t stretch the dough out enough. By then, both the Hubby and I were starting to get very excited by the prospect of having almost-real roti canai!

This brings me to my third attempt. Using the same recipe as a base, I made a few minor modifications and this is so far my most edible attempt!

Here’s what I used:

3 cups flour
roughly 1 cup of water (enough to make a slightly sticky dough)
2 tbs margarine (the original recipe only used 1 tbs)
1 ¼ tsp salt (or to taste)
1 ¼ tsp sugar (or to taste)
2 tbs milk (the original recipe uses condensed milk. I used ordinary low fat milk)
1 tbs oil
Extra oil for frying

1. Mix the salt, sugar and flour in a bowl.
2. Add the milk to the mixture and mix.
3. Add the water bit by bit while mixing (or kneading). Stop when you have a slightly sticky dough. If you add too much water, the dough gets too sticky and it’s a real pain to handle.
4. Add in margarine.
5. Add in the cooking oil.
6. Once the margarine and cooking oil has been well integrated into a smooth dough, divide the dough into small balls (I got about 6 balls out of the dough).
7. Coat the balls with oil and cover. I left them to rest for about an hour.
8. Lightly oil your kitchen workbench and hands.
9. Flatten each ball and slowly stretch the dough to a thin, almost transparent layer. For my first 2 attempts, I used a rolling pin to do this but for the last attempt, I found it was just as easy to just carefully stretch the dough out with my fingers.
10. Fold in 2 opposite sides of the stretched out dough to the middle. Then fold in the other 2 opposite sides to the middle.
11. Fry in a pan.
12. Serve with your favourite curry!

This time, the roti came out really well. However, I think I would add a bit more oil to the dough, as well as when I was cooking it, as it wasn’t as oily as it should be.

Still….mmmmm! Talk about a diet breaker!

Slow-grilled vegetables on a bed of sweet potato mash

2007-06-16T12:19:00.000+01:00

I’m still on a health kick but that doesn’t have to mean boring food! Well, not all of the time anyway.

I find it takes a lot of effort to plan fresh, healthy and interesting meals! For example, if I were to say, eat a relatively unhealthy meal…meat patty and chips. I’d just go to the supermarket, get myself a bag of frozen chips and frozen patties (or even fresh patties from the deli section), fry it all up quickly and call that a meal. OR, I could just hop over to the nearest fast food outlet!

A fresh and healthy (ie. full of vegetables) meal on the other hand means that I have to check to see if I have fresh veggies in the fridge, and also how to spice up the veggies and make them more interesting! If I can’t find any decent vegetables (that are still alive!) in the fridge, I would have to decide which vegetables I would like to have and what spices I would need. I would then have to head to the fruit and vegetable shop or the market, which is only open on certain days (more planning involved there!)!

I’ve therefore learnt to keep some basic vegetables always on hand, eg. courgettes (zucchini), broccoli, tomatoes, capsicum, mushrooms and sweet potatoes! The problem is not forgetting about the vegetables and finding out 1 week later that I have 10 black mushrooms and 3 mushy tomatoes with nice green mould on them!

Anyway, this brings me to my last concoction: Slow-grilled vegetables on a bed of sweet potato mash. Well, actually, the vegetables were just grilled not slow-grilled. Slow-grilled just sounds fancier! (I suppose if I turned the heat down, they would be slow-grilled!)

Sweet potato mash
2 stalks spring onions (green onions or scallions, however you call them!) chopped
2 medium sweet potatoes
1 tsp coconut milk
¼ tsp salt

I diced the sweet potatoes, boiled them then mashed them with a fork (I need to buy a proper potato masher). I then added the spring onions, coconut milk and salt to the sweet potatoes and mixed away. The coconut milk and salt nicely contrasted the sweetness of the sweet potatoes. I found myself sneaking little bits while mixing it up!

Grilled Vegetables
½ zucchini sliced thinly lengthwise
½ capsicum sliced
3 mushrooms sliced
a few florets of broccoli
1 tsp garlic roughly

I mixed the garlic in with the vegetables before grilling. You could even stir-fry the vegetables!

I also made a quick and easy light curry sauce (I love curry!) to drown the nice healthy meal in but I didn’t really need to use it.

Curry sauce
½ tsp chill powder
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground tumeric
1 ½ tbs ground coriander
pinch of salt
½ cup coconut milk
pinch sugar
1tsp tomato paste

Mix all ingredients together and heat until boiling.

Last but not least, spread your mash on your plate and top with grilled vegetables! The ingredients above were just right for 2 people.

I also decided to add a bit of protein to the meal and had some leftover store-bought smoked tofu (I didn’t smoke it myself!) so I plonked the tofu on top of it all.

I felt all nice and healthy after the meal!

Poivrons farcis

2007-06-14T17:33:00.000+01:00

Ok, that’s just a fancy name for plain ol’ Stuffed Capsicum. I just wanted to make it sound more exotic by using French!

Anyway, it’s not easy coming up with healthy meals when all I want to eat is fat and carbohydrate-laden stir fry noodles and chips! Big fat golden chips glistening with oil and lightly sprinkled with salt…to be precise!

Basically, I had a bit of leftover rice and wanted to use it up, while having a healthy meal at the same time. So I dug out 3 whole red capsicums (or peppers – is that what you call it in the US?) that were starting to get a bit wrinkly and old (things get pushed to the back of the fridge and then I forget about them!), stuffed them and stuck them in the oven.

The result came out better than I thought! The only problem was eating them! There is no easy way to eat these things. No matter how you try, it ends up being a big (but yummy) mess on your plate!

Here’s what I used:

3 red peppers
3/4 cup cooked rice (I had leftovers!)
250g canned tuna
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
1 onion lightly fried
2 tsp mayonnaise
1 tsp sweet chili sauce
1 tsp garlic
sesame seeds

1. Mix the rice, tuna, egg, salt, mayonnaise and sweet chili sauce in a bowl.
2. Lightly fry the onion and garlic before adding them to mixture.
3. Mix the ingredients well.
4. Remove the stalk, top and seeds from the capsicums. Also slightly trim the bottom of the capsicums to make the bottom level so that they stand up.
5. Oil a baking dish and stand the capsicums in the dish.
6. Stuff away with the tuna-rice mixture!
7. Top with sesame seeds.
8. Bake for roughly 20-25 minutes (or until cooked) at 220C.

Quick and easy!

Dublin

2007-06-11T07:46:00.000+01:00

Clockwise from top right:
Irish pub, the Guiness lake (looks like a pint of Guiness on the side!), Celtic cross at Glendalough, Georgian doors in Dublin.

One good thing about May to the beginning of June in Germany is that there are so many public holidays. In May, practically every second weekend was a long, either 3- or 4-day weekend.

We took advantage of last weekend (4 days!) to hop over to Dublin and came back ready to pack up and move there. Compared to sedate Frankfurt, Dublin was definitely jumping with life and full of extremely warm and friendly people with cute accents!

Eating out however was an expensive affair. Dublin is not a cheap city. In fact, prices were similar to those in Paris, which I found surprising as Paris is a pretty expensive city. Main meals in Dublin ranged from roughly 11EUR upwards. However, we were spoilt for choice! It seemed that there are as many eateries and restaurants as there were pubs in Dublin!

Looking back on the photos now, it seems that I hardly took any photos of food because I kept forgetting (probably due to the obligatory pre-dinner beer! Too many Irish pubs!)! And the times that I did remember to take photos, they turned out slightly blurry (once again, too many Irish pubs!).

Clockwise from top right:
Modern pub food – fish on a bed of minty mashed peas & a huge bowl of chips (not in photo), fried gyoza, huge chunks of fried tofu with mango dressing, bento box.

Spicy Asian tofu burgers

2007-06-05T08:13:00.000+01:00

While I did enjoy the German spätzle, I wasn’t too keen on eating it as a main dish, smothered by cheese as they serve in the restaurants here. So, inspired by Melting Wok’s tofu burgers and having just enough left-over ingredients, this seemed like the perfect accompaniment to the spätzle (or was the spätzle accompanying the burgers?).

These are extremely healthy (I’m still trying to be on a diet!) semi-spicy tofu burgers which are much easier to make if you have an electric mixer thing and not just a handheld fork powered by ~~chocolate~~ carrot sticks as in my case!

Ingredients
1/2 onion diced
250g plain firm tofu mashed
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tbsp rolled oats
1 tbsp fresh coriander chopped
1 tsp ginger minced
1 tbsp garlic minced
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp red curry paste

I mashed the tofu with my handheld fork, mixed in all ingredients, shaped the patties and popped them into the freezer for 5-10 minutes. The wonderfully healthy patties were then grilled (with very little oil!) and served up with the not so healthy spätzle!

This dish probably best reflects my beliefs in yin-yang eating…combining the fat and not-so-fat on 1 plate ;-)

Ps.
I didn’t serve any buns with the burgers; I figured there were enough carbohydrates in the spätzle!

Spätzle

2007-05-30T07:10:00.000+01:00

I have to admit, German food is still a bit of a mystery to me. However it’s not all sausages and sauerkraut.

A few weeks ago, at a loss for what to eat at a local restaurant (I didn’t feel like the over seasoned, greasy sausages), I tried the Kässpätzle (cheesy Spätzle topped with a generous serving of fried caramelised onions) and was hooked on this comfort food.

What is Spätzle you ask? This is Spätzle.

I agree, it looks a little scary. Kinda like a ton load of little white worms trying to wriggle their way out of the frying pan!

Spätzle is basically like weird textured pasta, made from flour and eggs and is served instead of potatoes with meat or just on its own as a main dish.

Ready-made Spätzle can be found in the fresh pasta section of supermarkets, or you can just make it yourself. I cheated and bought mine ready-made from the supermarket.

Recipe for calorie-packed very-moreish plain Spätzle with onions
1 packet fresh Spätzle
1 onion

Dice onion and fry in a pan. Add Spätzle and fry till cooked.

Looks completely bizarre but let me assure you, it’s very yummy comfort (and very anti-diet) food!

Ps.
If you’re a addicted to chilli like I am, eat your Spätzle with sweet chilli sauce. That’s how I eat my Spätzle!

Macaron fever

2007-05-26T09:06:00.000+01:00

I had to take a short trip to Paris this week and came back sick, with a sore throat and a bad cold. However that didn’t stop me from bringing back the most perfect macarons ever for Hubs! Hehe!
Wish I could make them like Shipa did here!

Nb. There are only 4 macarons in the photo because we ate them all before I could take a photo!

Brunching in Frankfurt

2007-05-20T16:11:00.000+01:00

The “brunch” I hear, is very popular in the U.S. and becoming more popular in Australia. Many of my friends back in Melbourne tend to do the “brunch” on Sundays where most people sleep in, skip breakfast then have a long and lazy brunch.

However I never really caught on to the idea. Given that most people have only 3 main meals a day, it just seemed that combining breakfast and lunch into 1 meal resulted in depriving me of 1 main meal!

Last Sunday however, after a big sleep in, we decided to stroll over to our local NY Café (yes, that’s its actual name) and have breakfast even though it was really lunch!

Hubs had the English breakfast, while I had the Huevos Rancheros. The English Breakfast was ok. Nothing out of the ordinary.
The Huevos Rancheros was topped with a very synthetic looking and tasting yellow cheese (cheddar??)! Even in the photo it looks plastic!

Anyway, the other thing missing was toast or just any kind of bread. For some reason, meals are not accompanied by bread here, while in France, I’d be jumping up and down if the waiter didn’t bring us any bread!

Diet? What diet?

2007-05-20T14:11:00.000+01:00

Germans love ice-cream! Frankfurt is full of Eiscafés, that is, little cafés with menus completely dedicated to sundaes and all forms of ice-cream and sorbet. Just wandering down 1 block of our local main street in Sachsenhausen, I can count about 3 Eiscafés! That’s pretty crazy.

Anyway, the weather has finally picked up over here so we’ve been indulging in German desserts! Check out the strawberry sundaes. Mmmm, I love strawberries!

Bad

2007-05-15T17:08:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I had a craving.

And ate a whole bag of corn chips.
I’ve been bad.

At least they were organic!

Vegetable-tofu bake crumble

2007-05-11T19:53:00.000+01:00

I’m on a diet.

Well, at least I’m trying to be on a diet. But it’s not really working. Well, take last night for example. Having lots of carrots left over, I figured I’d make a low-fat vegetable bake.

So I started chopping away, carrots, a bit of broccoli, cherry tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I then lightly stir fried the vegetables to give them a little flavour.

I then decided I’d make it a curry vegetable-tofu bake. So I added curry power mix and about a cup-and-a-half of water to the baking dish. And then topped it all off with tofu. Only problem, I had only what was a sliver of tofu left! So the baking dish looked a little bare on the top.

Anyway, I decided to make a topping to make it look a little nicer. A crumble topping. I had wholemeal flour, butter and sesame seeds. I mixed the sesame seeds and flour, added a bit of salt and rubbed in the butter, then whacked the mixture onto the bake and stuck the whole thing into the oven. And there you have it: a vegetable-tofu curry crumble!

So much for my creativity as Hubs said it was just a curry that I stuck in the oven!
Taste-wise, it was yum although the crumble topping was a little weird. Sort of like eating pastry with your curry.

Calorie-wise, all that butter didn’t help my diet!

Ingredients:
Lots of vegetables!
Onions
Garlic
Salt

Curry Powder mix:
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tbs ground coriander
½ tsp chilli powder

Sushi craving

2007-05-08T19:42:00.000+01:00

Sushi is definitely another one of my favourite foods. I love how you can stuff yourself silly and because it’s not oily, you can still feel healthy after a heavy meal of fish, rice and vegetables. However, you have to watch out for all that rice and sugar (in the vinegar mixture!) if you’re on a diet.

Sushi is one of those foods that you either absolutely love or hate. I know people who can’t get enough of it, and others who won’t go near it with a 500metre pole! But even my French in-laws love it and try to make it themselves. Though I have to admit that I was shocked to see my father in-law make handrolls with cheese (how French is that!) one day. Yuck!

Anyway, I had a craving for sushi the other day, and having not yet sussed out the whereabouts of decent Japanese restaurants in Frankfurt, I decided to make my own. Nothing complicated, just simple hand rolls (I think these are called futomaki). I wanted to make some nigiri but unfortunately, I haven’t found a decent fish shop near our place yet and didn’t want to give myself food poisoning by buying stale fish at the supermarket.

Here’s what I used for the hand roll ingredients:
Japanese short grained rice (+rice vinegar mixture)

Nori
Smoked salmon slices
Carrot
Cucumber
Sesame seed

The best part about hand rolls is that you can add anything that you want (please don’t add cheese! That should be outlawed!).

As for the vinegar mixture for the rice, I never know how much salt and sugar to add in, I just tend to guess! However, most of the time, it comes out tasting alright. I should probably find a recipe for this as I might be doing it all wrong.

So for the rice vinegar mixture, I used 1 cup of Japanese short grain rice, roughly 100ml of vinegar, 1-2 tablespoons of sugar and about 1 teaspoon of salt.

I ended up with a bit too much rice and ended up making giant hand rolls! The results definitely satisfied my craving!

Semi-homemade pesto pizza with feta (dedicated to JoeBob)

2007-05-04T16:33:00.000+01:00

At the moment, my life is scattered between 3 countries! Hubs and I have personal belongings in storage in Melbourne, at my mum’s in Melbourne, in storage in Paris, in La Rochelle (Hubs’ parents’ place), and also with us! While we’ve got our essentials such as underwear, laptop (I can’t live without my laptop) and passports (!), what we don’t have are my cooking utensils. I’m talking basic things such as a vegetable peeler, baking trays, and even knives – what I wouldn’t give for decent knives!

As we’ve just moved into a “furnished” apartment, we do have some basics such as a very rusty vegetable peeler and a very blunt serrated edged knife. So, we’ve had to invest in a few more (cheap) basics (given that we already have this stuff somewhere between France and Australia) for the time being.

So yesterday, having a craving for semi-homemade pizza, I went on a hunt for a simple tray that I could stick in the oven. Either I’m not looking in the right places or Frankfurt is out of trays. I found one round pizza tray for 33EUR (that almost seems like robbery to me!), which of course, I didn’t buy. But that was about it.

So after much thought (about 5 minutes), I decided to buy a muffin tray (we already have 2!). I figured I could use it to make muffins, and also put a pizza on it. It worked like a charm but we just had to remember that we couldn’t actually cut the pizza on the tray!

I have to give credit to my good friend JoeBob from Nebraska, who introduced me to the joys of pesto and feta on pizza way back in snowy Québec (yes, that’s another story)! And no, I didn’t make the pizza base (I’m too lazy and the breadmaker is in Melbourne).

Pizza topping
Broccoli (I love broccoli)
Cherry tomatoes
Onion
Red capsicum
Ready-made pesto sauce

I usually add chili flakes on to give it a bit of a kick, but unfortunately, didn’t have any.

This is what it looked like perched on the muffin tray before it went into the oven.

Yum Yum Sup Sup – continued…

2007-05-01T10:49:00.000+01:00

Being a Melbournite, I couldn’t resist listing my Top 5 for Melbourne as well. I’ll make it quick and not bore you with long descriptions. Melbourne is definitely foodie heaven and I apologise if any of these places are now outdated, it’s been a while since I’ve been back!

My Top 5 for Melbourne

1. Pathee Thai, Revolver Upstairs
Reasonably priced scrumptious Thai food in a grungy laid-back setting. You have to climb a very steep staircase and head right to the back of Revolver Upstairs, pushing past the cool rock kids sprawled out on worn-out couches. Dig into spicy Thai food while knocking back a cool Hoegarten (on tap!). Lots of vegetarian options!
229 Chapel Street, Prahran

2. Kimchi
GrandmaRibs, hot steaming dumplings, sizzling spicy octopus, all accompanied by several free side dishes including kimchi, beansprouts, and other little savoury salads. Hidden out in modest Carnegie, this place is worth the trip there!
125 Koornang Road, Carnegie

3. Vegie Bar
As the name suggests, this is an all vegetarian place serving creatively assembled vegetarian dishes, wheat and gluten free cakes (it sounds bland but trust me – YUMMY!) and organic wines (EXTRA YUM), amongst other delicious morsels.
378 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy

4. Espy Kitchen
An institution, The Espy in St. Kilda has been a stable watering hole for generations of Melbournites. The Espy Kitchen, while not fine dining, serves up solid pub meals from fish and chips to Asian-inspired dishes. Convenient to grab a bite after several pots of beer!
The Esplanade, St. Kilda

5. 7 Apples
Still in St. Kilda, this gelati/ice-cream takeaway is the perfect spot to grab a cool dessert before strolling down the St. Kilda pier on a warm summer’s evening. Choose from flavours such as the basic vanilla to more exciting options like ferrero rocher and apple pie!
75 Acland Street, St. Kilda

I could keep going on here as well, but like I said, I’ll keep it (relatively) short and sweet!

Yum Yum Sup Sup Paris

2007-04-30T21:44:00.001+01:00

I’ve been slack and it’s been a while since I was tagged by Tigerfish. I actually don’t eat out that much either, and when I do, I prefer Asian cuisine to Western cuisine as well.

However regardless of cuisine, I like places that basically have a good ambiance, somewhere where you can feel comfortable, where the service is not threatening (ie. they don’t hover over you constantly or do the complete opposite and snub you off), and the price helps as well.

In a huge urban sprawl like Paris, it’s possible to find food to fit any taste and budget, however, it’s best to avoid the more touristy areas when looking for food as the restaurants and cafés there tend to be out to take your euros without providing you with much substance! There are so many restaurants, cafés and brasseries in Paris that it’s probably possible to eat in a different place everyday for a few years (no, I haven’t tried that yet! Maybe when I win the lotto, and then I still have to think about my weight!).

Either way, you won’t find any expensive numerous-Michelin hat type restaurants in my top 5 favourite Parisian list. I like my comfort eating and my comfort food!

My Top 5 Paris

1. Japanese, Japanese and more Japanese! I love my rice, and the unassuming Kunitoraya serves donburi, deep bowls of round grain rice with a variety of tasty toppings such as katsudon, gyudon and tendon. It’s VERY comfort food. This is just the tip of the iceberg rice bowl. If you feel like soba or udon noodles in a rich broth, you can also choose from a wide selection of dishes such as …… Sit at the counter on the ground floor and watch the sweaty cooks at work or in the white-washed basement which gets extremely warm during summer. Prices lean towards the expensive side (9-13EUR for a main dish) but it’s so worth it!Needless to say, this is a popular place so show up early for lunch or extremely late if you don’t want to wait.
Kunitoraya, 39 rue Sainte-Anne

2. With a well-established Japanese community in Paris, and hordes of Japanese business men passing through, rue Sainte-Anne is well-served with several decent Japanese eateries as well as grocery stores. If you’re still on rue Sainte-Anne and you feel like sushi and sashimi, head to Korin, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-extremely-small-hole-in-the-wall sushi bar with even less seating space (if possible) than Kunitoraya. The nigiri here is superlicious (no, it’s not really a word but YUM just doesn’t cut it), with perfectly bite-sized shaped morsels of fresh firm fish delicately sitting on equally perfectly shaped oval portions of packed rice. As with most Japanese restaurants in Paris, several menus comprising of a soup, a salad and a main dish are available.
Korin, 58bis rue Sainte-Anne

3. Say you’re visiting Paris, doing the tourist thing and want a quick but tasty meal for under 10euros. Well, hopefully you’re in the Marais (4th arrondissement) as that’s where you find L’as du Felafel (The Ace of Falafels). These falafels are served in a pocket pita filled with fried chickpea balls and heaped full of salad and sauces. While there is (very limited) seating space, most people opt for the takeaway which results in super long queues on weekends (not sure what it’s like during weekdays). In the streets as you approach the little eatery, you’ll encounter hordes of people wandering around with their freshly deep-fried falafel in overflowing pita pockets, wrapped in foil, with a little plastic fork stuck in the abundant salad. It’s open late for those after-hours munchies. Just don’t forget the wet wipes and tissues to wipe all that hummus off your cheeks and pants (the sauce drips!).
L’as du falafel, 34 rue des Rosiers

4. What would a Top 5 in Paris be if it didn’t actually include a traditional Parisian brasserie with traditional French dishes such as confit de canard (preserved duck), steak tartar (seasoned raw minced meat), pavé de rumsteak (chunk of grilled steak) and salade de chèvre chaud (hot goats’ cheese salad). One of my favourite Parisian brasseries for both eating and drinking is the extremely well-situated (we lived just around the corner) La Chope Daguerre on the pedestrian rue Daguerre in the 14th arrondissement. With friendly waiters (which can sometimes be rare in Paris) and a nice outdoor terrace, drinking here with friends on hot summer evenings is one of those things that I love about Paris. Foodwise, La Chope Daguerre does great traditional French food, and great patates risolées (little bits of diced golden fried potatoes) that sometimes accompany the dishes. I love the chèvre chaud which is usually accompanied with a sweet honey-based dressing that perfectly offsets the saltiness of the goats’ cheese. YUM.
La Chope Daguerre, 17 rue Daguerre

5. With so much for choice in Paris, it was hard to pick just 5 places so I went for another local-just-around-the-corner choice. I love crêpes both sweet and savoury, also known as galettes (buckwheat crêpes) and had to include this place. You could probably find another Parisian restaurant that does better crêpes, but hidden away on rue Daguerre, with a large open-air terrace and creeping vines on sides of the exterior walls, La Belle Ronde Crêperie is another summer evening favourite. I love the simple galettes which can be filled with a number of combinations of ingredients such as ham, salmon, spinach, goats’ cheese, tuna, mushrooms, various types of cheeses (eg. Gruyere, emmental), onions, tuna, chicken, salami, eggs and a whole lot more that I can’t remember right now. If that’s not healthy enough for you, these galettes come topped with salad. As for the dessert crêpes…don’t even get me started ! Just think of any sweet filling and you could probably get it there. Plus, the best thing about it is that after your buckwheat galette, you feel like you’ve had a pretty healthy meal and therefore can allow yourself a hellishly decadent dessert crêpe with chocolate, chantilly (sweetened whipped cream), ice-cream, rum and strawberries or bananas! NB. Don’t forget the cider with your meal!
La belle ronde crêperie, 19, Rue Daguerre

I could go on and on but I’m just making myself hungry and homesick for Paris! Where ever you are, don’t hesitate to share your favourite local haunts!

Add a direct link to your post below the name of the person who tagged you. Include the state and country you’re in.

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
eastcoastlife (East Coast, Singapore)
Tigerfish of Teczcape (California, USA)
WokandSpoon (Paris, France…or Frankfurt, Germany)
List your top 5 favorite places to eat at your location.
Tag 5 other people (preferably from other countries/states) ..and let them know they’ve been tagged

I’d like to tag (no pressure guys!):

Flog&Rosbif
I’ve been to Lille but I never know what else to eat apart from moules frites!

thebuddingcook (California (I think), USA)
Having been to California and absolutely loved it, I want to go back! In fact, I liked the US in general, nice people and huge meal portions!)

Lia from Spices Corner (Abu Dhabi, Emirates)
I’ve never been to the Middle East!

Lily from Lily's Wai Sek Hong (Denver, USA)
I’d love to visit Denver, especially in the winter. I’m guessing it’s not just cowboys and rodeos!

Sharmi from neivedyam (somewhere in the USA)
Like I said, I love the US!

Anyone else, feel free to share as well, just let me know so that I can drool over your top 5 as well!

Tango

2007-04-29T08:12:00.000+01:00

Our last few days in Paris, just before moving out, consisted of lazy sleep-ins and mad panic packing after we realised just how much time we lost sleeping in! However, amidst the madness, we managed to spend many afternoons sitting on the terrace of a Parisian café sipping cold beers, my personal favourite being the tango, a sweet grenadine syrup drenched in beer (also known as a monaco). Check out the colours of the beer (Hubs had a blanche ie. White beer).

German servings

2007-04-26T15:32:00.000+01:00

Being in a little town, we’ve been totally blown away by the prices of food here. Coming from Paris where prices are inflated to the maximum, the prices almost seem unrealistic. In fact, the prices seem inversely proportional to the actual proportions of food! Huge servings at a nice price.

We’ve been haunting a little Asian eatery with surprisingly relatively decent food, given that we’re in some tiny lost town in Germany. For a grand total of 3.90€, we were presented with a huge plate heaped with noodles each. We have since learnt to only order 1 plate of noodles or fried rice between both of us.

The only problem was in ordering the very first time we went there. Given our limited non-existent German language skills, it took us a while to decipher the menus until we finally learnt that they had an English menu! And even then, it took us a while to work out the English translations.

“Roasted vegetables and rice” gave me the impression that they were being extremely creative by using oven-roasted vegetables and serving that with a nice sauce and rice. However, when we started reading “roasted rice” and “roasted noodles”, we realised that by “roasted”, they actually meant “fried”!

Either way, the roasted noodles weren’t half bad.

German Kangeroos

2007-04-19T17:20:00.000+01:00

We’ve finally landed in this strange land of beer and sausages. Having explored the tiny town where we’re temporarily staying, I headed into the equally tiny supermarket to see what they had on their shelves. Given that this is a really small town built around a car manufacturer, or the car manufacturer was built around the town…I’m not sure which one came first…you know, the chicken or the egg….

Anyway, firstly, Germans seem to be a health–conscious lot; despite their stereotypical love of beer and sausages, and are really into organic food which is great to see. Even in a small local supermarket, the shelves were loaded with organic supplies.

Secondly, I found a little bit of Australia in this supermarket! A kangaroo snack! No, not a snack for kangaroos ie. not kangaroo food. People-food shaped in tiny kangaroos. They were paprika flavoured-baked (or fried – I’m not sure I can’t read German!) snacks but they were so cute! And yummy!

Diet – I need to remember that I’m attempting to diet!

Moving!

2007-04-17T20:59:00.000+01:00

It’s finally arrived. D-Day.

We’re leaving Paris tomorrow for equally sunny but significantly less romantic Frankfurt so it might be slightly quiet on the blog front for the next couple of weeks!

Let’s hope the Germans have good food!

In the mean time, enjoy spring (or autumn) and see you on the other side!

Kunitoraya revisited

2007-04-16T07:46:00.000+01:00

Back again to one of our favourite Japanese places in Paris (we don’t have a fridge remember!). This time, I stuck to my favourite tendon, a tempura-topped rice dish, while Hubs went for the Katsudon yet again! You know, when you’re on to a good thing….

The tempura in the tendon was absolutely sublime as always, light and crunchy without being oily. I’ve had tempura at other places and it’s always had a heavier and much oilier.

As always, Hubs waited impatiently for me to take photos before plunging into his katsudon (you can see him with chopsticks ready to go in the background!).

Address: 39, rue Sainte-Anne, Paris
Website: http://www.kunitoraya.com/

Restaurant décor: Cosy but can be stifling hot in summer
Ambiance: Japanese families, Japanese businessmen and an assortment of other clientele during lunchtime
Service: 4 wooden spoons (the Japanese waitresses are super efficient)
Total damage: 26 EUR
Food: 4.5 wooden spoons (yum!)

Camping

2007-04-14T15:52:00.000+01:00

We’re in the process of moving house…to Germany! This means moving out of our current apartment in Paris…which means that I haven’t had much time for anything else apart from packing boxes (all 34 of them!).

We’ve also been “camping” in our apartment for the last week as we haven’t had a fridge for a week and a half, and as of yesterday, we don’t have a couch anymore! The couch I can live with, but the fridge – that’s been hard! We haven’t had a cold drink for a while, and no fresh milk! I miss my fresh milk! It’s also meant that we’ve had to plan a little better, that is, buy only the fruit and veggies that we need for the day as we’ve been having a minor “heat wave” here in Paris.

However, having no fridge also having an excuse to eat out more often! Unfortunately, our bank account doesn’t really appreciate that :-(

Choc Heaven

2007-04-10T22:15:00.001+01:00

They’ve finally done it.
Incredibly smooth dark chocolate that glides thickly down your throat with a hint of fire.

I couldn’t ask for more!

Restaurant Adélaïde, Carcassonne

2007-04-03T10:06:00.000+01:00

By the time dinner rolled around the first day that we were in Carcassonne, we were struggling to find a decent place to nourish (stuff) ourselves. Amongst all those tourist traps that called themselves restaurants, there were just more tourist traps! I was starting to get worried (when I get hungry; I get grumpy), until we stumbled across this gem of a place, which was hidden way off the extremely beaten path.

I have to admit, the only reason that we initially entered the Adélaïde was because of the funky orange décor. I have a thing for orange walls! We were pleasantly surprised by the relatively “bold” menu (they had dishes other than cassoulet) and the easygoing and friendly waiter (who was unnaturally efficient for a French waiter).

Initially we weren’t too sure about what the food was actually going to be like, given that the place was near empty (usually a bad sign). Later, we just figured that this place just wasn’t on the main tourist hunting grounds.

The first evening that we were there (yes, we went back!), feeling like our arteries had been sufficiently clogged up by eating out 3 days in a row, both Hubs and I went for the vegetable fettuccini. Not a very adventurous choice but it was deliciously healthy topped with a rainbow of fresh vegetables. By then, after trudging around for an hour looking for a decent restaurant, we were so hungry that the food was gone before I even though about taking a photo. So no photos of the food!

On our second visit, this time we were ready and armed with our trusty digital camera, however charmed by the grilled calamari (my choice) and the grilled steak (Hubs’ choice) and a little unnaturally happy due to the aperitif (I have a weakness for kir), I completely forgot to take photos again!

And the desserts! We only had one (clogged arteries remember?) to share – a delectably decadent pear crumble, served upside down like a tarte tatin. Yum!

So if you’re ever in Carcassonne and struggling to find a decent restaurant, don’t miss:
Restaurant Adélaïde
5 r Adélaïde de Toulouse, CARCASSONNE

Service: 4.5 wooden spoons
Ambiance: 4.5 wooden spoons (hard to go wrong with a little Edith Piaf or Gotan Project playing in the background)
Total damage: roughly 40EUR for 2 (including about 4 drinks and dessert)
Food: 4.5 wooden spoons

Brasserie Le Donjon, Carcassonne

2007-04-02T11:29:00.000+01:00

Carcassonne, the medieval city of all medieval cities (can you tell? I haven’t been to that many!). This place is magnificent from a distance, but maybe not as charming close up. The problem – tourists! Even in the off-season, during the day, Carcassonne’s Cité (the fortified old town) was overrun by tourist groups, making it unpleasant in some of its little narrow side streets. I hate to imagine what it would be like in summer during the peak tourist season!

Nevertheless, after all the tourist groups had gone on to visit the next old, charming French town on their 500-stop in 5 days itinerary, the Cité was extraordinarily peaceful in the evenings.

In terms of food, the region around Carcassonne is well known for its cassoulet, a rich mixed stew of haricots blancs (white beans), duck, saucisson (sausage) and other assorted meats (who knows what really goes in there?).

Given the number of tourists in Carcassonne, the restaurants can be very hit-and-miss! The Cité is full of restaurants; most you’d rather be missing than hitting! We ended up in Le Donjon for lunch one afternoon.

While it’s a little too “meaty” for me, Hubs indulged in a tastebud-awakening belly-exploding velvety cassoulet, dripping with calories no doubt!

I on the other hand, was eager to make up for the half-frozen salmon from the other day, and went for the salmon again. This time however, the salmon was perfectly grilled and Hubs left the restaurant dragging his belly along with him!

The service on the other hand, despite the restaurant being half empty, progressed at the pace of a well-grilled shell-less snail, that is to say, it was at a standstill! If the waiters moved any slower, they would have been working in reverse! This doesn’t mean however that they weren’t pleasant enough, just bloody slow.

Anyway, the verdict for Le Donjon in Carcassonne:

Restaurant décor: Cozy and dark, with a nice airy glass ceiling terrace section on the inside.
Service: 1 wooden spoon (they were nice)
Total damage: 34.90EUR
Food: 3 wooden spoons (a bit on the expensive side, but to be expected in touristy places)

Auberge de la Halle, Cordes-sur-Ciel

2007-04-01T09:12:00.000+01:00

It’s been quiet on the WokandSpoon front lately. If I could, I’d give some excuse to say how busy I’ve been and all that, but I can’t as I’ve been on a short but sweet holiday!

Hubs and I spent this week driving from Toulouse to Albi to Carcassonne and back to Toulouse, stopping at charming little lost villages along the way.

One of our first stops was at a little old fortified town called Cordes-sur-Ciel perched on a small hill. It was nice for a change to see a town where people actually lived (roughly 1000 inhabitants according to the Tourist Office), and that wasn’t inundated by tourist shops or over restored to a sparkling brilliance as many historical towns in France are.

Being the off-season, it was really really quiet. Not many places were open for lunch, plus we were running late and wanted to have lunch at 2:30pm (the horror!), and the places that were open, had already stopped serving lunch. After much stumbling over uneven cobbled stones, we managed to find this place, Auberge de la Halle, which looked absolutely charming from the outside.

While Hubs had the escalope de dinde (grilled turket fillet), which actually came out well, I went for the pavé de saumon (salmon). The fact that we were miles away from civilisation, sea or any visual salmon farms should have told me that I would have been better off ordering bread and water! Ordering salmon meant that the chef had to defrost it using a microwave (we actually heard it go ding!) in super quick time.

The good thing was that the salmon came with lots of veggies and some really scrumptious hunks of golden potato wedges seasoned with garlic and herbs. However, the salmon was still a little on the cool side in the middle. We were in a hurry so I didn’t bother to send it back – I just ate around the cold centre! (Yeah, I know I eat raw salmon in nigiri but that salmon is usually a little fresher and hasn’t been defrosted in a microwave – at least I hope not!). Who knows, maybe the food there is a little better when there are more tourists and the turnaround is greater.
Anyway, I highly recommend the town, but maybe not the restaurant in the off-tourist-season.

Total damage: 32EUR (including drinks)
Service: 3.5 wooden spoons (out of 5)
Food: 2.5 wooden spoons (2 for Hubs’ turkey and 0.5 for my potatoes!)

Kunitoraya

2007-03-24T10:23:00.000+01:00

Eating out in Paris can be expensive but I always make an exception for Japanese food. It’s funny how even though I’m in gastro-fabulous France, my favourite restaurant in all of Paris is a little hole-in-the-wall (and sub terrain cave) Japanese rice and noodle place.

The queue hanging in front of its entrance is proof to its popularity, as well as the Japanese family and businessmen clientele. Inside, on the ground floor, there’s a hot and steamy open kitchen where large pots of soup bubble away and counters of hungry stomachs wait patiently (or impatiently) for their bowls of sublime goodness.

Head downstairs to the basement and you’ll find yourself in a windowless (sweat-inducing during summer!) whitewashed cave with as many solid wooden tables for two and four crammed in as possible.

My favourite and regular order is the Tendon – super light and crispy tempura vegetables and prawn on a bed of white steaming rice, served in a large, deep bowl and accompanied by a separate delicate sauce which I use to drench my meal.

However on our last visit there, I opted for the Kitsune-Udon, a voluptuous meal of slippery firm udon in a tasty broth with a large piece of sweet fried tofu floating on top. Yum!

Hubs had the Katsudon, a bowl of fluffy grains of Japanese rice topped with lightly crumbed pork and onions combined with egg, with a sprinkling of a simple yet flavoursome sauce, accompanied by tangy pickles.

It’s a little on the expensive side but definitely worth every centime.

If you’re in Paris, try to get there early (before 12:30PM), or late (after 3PM), or be prepared for a long and hungry wait!

Can’t wait to go there again!

Address: 39, rue Sainte-Anne, Paris
Website: http://www.kunitoraya.com/

Nothing in particular

2007-03-20T09:43:00.000+01:00

With all my cooking utensils packed away, I’m reduced to having the choice of an extremely worn out frying pan (that we will be throwing out) or 2 tinny pots (not keeping these either) from Hubs’ student days (yes, his mum actually kept all this stuff for us!). I’m going to have to be extremely creative…or not…we could just eat out and drain our savings (but at least we’ll be happy!)!

Anyway, we were visiting our in-laws over the weekend in the Charente-Maritime (ok, not really visiting, more like offloading some of ~~our junk~~ the stuff we don’t need) and my father-in-law who’s and extremely good and creative cook, made this simple but scrumptious prawn cocktail – basically prawns on a bed of a light herbal dressing and thinly sliced potatoes.

For the dressing, I think he basically used minced garlic, olive oil, a little sugar, a pinch of salt, lemon juice and a little bit of fresh mint, nothing too complex. I was too busy playing with the cat to take notes!

Anyway, it’s back to more packing…or REpacking. I had to unpack 2 boxes to get our winter coats out again (I was very optimistic last week). After last week’s great spring weather, we’ve returned to toe-numbing winter weather this week.

Super-quick-throw-everything-in-1-pot chickpea curry

2007-03-16T22:34:00.000+01:00

Because I often nibble on snacks that I shouldn’t really be touching with a 10-metre pole (ie. Crisps/chips and chocolate!), most of the time, I feel like I should be eating something healthy when it comes to the main meals. Only problem, I just can’t eat a salad for a main meal. No matter how hard I try.

When I try, I start off eating a salad, then 30 minutes later, raid the kitchen eating everything in sight. So I figure, it’s better to eat something that appeals to me, and try to make that healthy, than have salad as “starters” to a huge meal of junk later.

So here’s another quick and lazy meal that I whipped up in less than 10 minutes with only very very basic spices (I have nothing left in the kitchen!). I added lots of broccoli so that I felt better about having eaten a big packet of chips 2 hours earlier!

This is what I put in:

1 tbs curry powder (mixed in ½ cup of water)
1 tbs ground coriander (mixed with the curry powder paste above)
1 ½ cups water
½ teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1 onion diced
1 tomato diced
lots of garlic (minced)
Sliver of ginger (minced)
400g can chickpeas
broccoli
mushrooms

I first mixed the curry powder and ground coriander in about ½ a cup of water.
I fried the onion till brown, and then added the garlic, ginger, tomato and curry paste. I then cooked the tomato until soft, added the water and threw everything else in.
10 minutes later – it’s all done.

Not exactly an extremely original or creative dish but at least it stopped me from having more chips as dessert!

Sidetracked

2007-03-14T20:49:00.000+01:00

We're in the middle of moving back to Melbourne at the moment and packing doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for cooking (especially when some of my cooking utensils have been packed).

However, it does leave a lot of time for bad snacking habits (especially when I start getting frustrated by the amount of stuff that we’ve accumulated!).

Today, this very yummy little chocolate bunny sidetracked me.

Here’s the before shot.

And the after shot.

It’s not even Easter yet!

9-minute tuna pasta

2007-03-12T20:41:00.000+01:00

We had friends from the UK this weekend and spent most of it sightseeing and eating out, which meant very little cooking. However, a late start to the day today meant a late breakfast and therefore, a very late lunch. We all got hungry around 3:30pm however being a Monday* in Paris meant that some restaurants were either closed, or the lunch hour was over. Not even Pizza Hut’s lunch service was still open (we tried!). And McDonalds was definitely out of the question – urggghhh.

Having only 1 hour until our friends had to leave for the Eurostar, we had to find decent food fast (and sandwiches weren’t going to do the job here!)! Hence, we headed back to our place for a speedy meal.

I have to say, I’m a lazy cook and love being able to throw everything into 1 saucepan or pot to produce something both tasty and edible at the end. (I’m also pretty crap at food presentation but that’s a whole other issue!)

Anyway, being in a rush today and not having planned on cooking a meal, I didn’t have much at all in my fridge, so tuna pasta was the quickest solution.

Here’s my solution to 4 hungry people needing sustenance immediately:

Spaghetti or any other type of pasta for 4 people
4 tomatoes diced
1 onion diced
Minced garlic to taste (I used about 3 BIG cloves – I love garlic)
2 256g cans of tuna (Don’t ask me why the cans were 256g and not something “round” like 250 or 200g!)
Broccoli or zucchini chopped into small pieces
1tbs tomato paste
½ cup light cream (add more if you prefer a creamier sauce)
Salt and pepper to taste

Boil water in a saucepan, add the spaghetti or pasta, cook to al dente and drain (takes roughly 7 minutes). When I was young, my dad used to tell me that if you took the spaghetti and threw it against the wall and it stuck there, it was cooked! Needless to say, my mum wasn’t very impressed when she saw spaghetti stuck to the walls of her kitchen! Anyway, I’m digressing…

While the pasta is boiling, brown the onion in a saucepan over a low fire until translucent and fragrant (2 minutes). Add the garlic and brown slightly (1.5 minutes). My French father-in-law (who’s a great cook) tells me that garlic should not be sautéed for too long otherwise it gets bitter (something like that anyway). However, I actually like my garlic sautéed until it’s brown. In Malaysia, we cooked garlic in oil until it was nice and brown, and then used the “garlic sauce” as a condiment for jook. Digressing again…

Add the diced tomatoes and cook until soft (2 minutes). Mix the tomato paste and tuna into the saucepan and cook till slightly bubbling (1 minute). Add the vegetables and heat until tender (I like my vegetables crunchy so this usually takes about 2 minutes). Lastly, add the cream and the salt and pepper. If the sauce is too dry, add a little water.
I then usually throw in the drained pasta and mix well with the sauce.

And voila, roughly 9 minutes later, a meal for 4!

* In France, some shops and restaurants close on Monday if they’ve been open on Saturday.

Edamame

2007-03-08T22:28:00.000+01:00

It’s no secret.
I’m Asian and I eat a lot! Hubs is always amazed by how much my family can put away in one sitting. We can eat for hours while he’s usually done in about 15 minutes.

Anyway, I not only eat a lot, I also snack a lot (you know, I have to keep my metabolism up for the really big meals!). I’m always on the lookout for healthy or at least semi-healthy snacks. I’m on an Edamame craze at the moment however it can be a bit of a pain to find sometimes. We’re lucky that our local Tang Frères stock it.

I usually just dump a whole lot into a pot of boiling water, then drain the water and sprinkle some salt over the edamame. My Japanese hairdresser in Melbourne tells me that this is a really popular tv snack in Japan, especially during the baseball season!

It’s very more-ish!

Banana chocolate muffins

2007-03-06T21:05:00.000+01:00

Having left my scales in Melbourne, I haven’t done a lot of baking since I’ve been in France. It’s always a challenge trying to work out how to convert recipes defined in weight to a certain number of cups or tablespoons.

Anyway, I had a huge craving for banana chocolate muffins the other day and just had to make some. (This is what happens when I go on a health kick. I eat healthy for 2 days, then get HUGE cravings for sugar!)

Here’s a quick and easy recipe that makes 12 semi-healthy muffins.

60g butter (softened)
2 eggs
250ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g self-raising flour (or 250g plain flour & 3 tsp baking powder)
½ tsp soda bicarbonate
55g brown sugar
2 ripe bananas (mashed)
½ cup of chocolate chips

Mix the butter, eggs, milk and vanilla extract. Sift the flour and soda bicarbonate into the mixture. Add the choc chips and sugar, and mix. Add the bananas to the mixture.

I usually use wholemeal flour instead of plain flour as it makes me feel like that compensates for all the butter and sugar in the muffins!

Given my lack of scales, I took a very very rough guess at how much butter and flour I needed but unfortunately I’m not Martha Stewart. I used roughly 1 ¾ cups of flour and 2/3 cup of sugar. The butter was a tough one – I ended up adding ¼ of a 250g block of butter. I didn’t have any chocolate chips so I added ¼ cup of cocoa powder instead to give it a bit of a chocolately flavour.

The muffins came out ok and smelt heavenly, however they got a bit dry the next day. Still, that didn’t stop me from totally pigging out anyway!

This definitely isn’t helping my diet!

Palm Sugar and Coconut Milk Agar-agar

2007-03-01T21:14:00.000+01:00

What happens when I have leftover coconut milk and pandan leaves? I make agar-agar!
I remember sneaking mouthfuls of this jelly during (or more precisely, before) family dinners when I was little until I was too full to have any dinner.

It’s very easy to eat but extremely high in calories – what with the coconut milk and sugar! And I’m supposed to be on a diet!

This is simple and quick to make. It’s also especially nice for hot summer days.
Once again, I pirated this recipe off the Internet a while ago and can’t remember exactly where.

· 1 pandan leaf (tied into a knot)
· 2 cups water (500 ml)
· 1 ¼ (180g) cups palm sugar (chopped)
· 3 teaspoons agar-agar powder
· 1 ¼ cups (300ml) thick coconut milk
· Pinch of salt

Place the water, palm sugar, agar-agar power and pandan leaf in a pot. Heat until it starts to boil. Lower heat and simmer until the sugar and agar-agar powder have completely dissolved.

In another bowl, mix the coconut milk and salt. Add this mixture to the agar-agar mixture in the pot. Bring the liquid to the boil then immediately remove from heat.

Pour the mixture into a 16 cm round shallow tin. Leave to cool. Do not move until the agar-agar has set (takes around 1-2 hours). Chill in refrigerator when cool. The agar-agar should separate into 2 distinct layers: a palm sugar layer and a coconut milk layer.
Cut, serve and enjoy.

Chickpea seeni sambal

2007-02-27T09:46:00.000+01:00

A while ago, my mum was introduced to “seeni sambal” by a Sri Lankan friend and loved the spicy hot flavour. It has since been a family staple!

Having never been to Sri Lanka, I’m not really sure how it’s cooked over there but it’s basically a spice mix of maldive fish chips/flakes and chilli. A Sri Lankan ex-colleague said that his wife cooked it with diced potatoes. My mum and I cook it using a ready-made seeni sambal spice mix and add it to fried diced onions and tomatoes to make a hot and incredibly tasty sambal that we eat with rice.

Seeing as eating fried onions, chilli and rice is like eating oil, chilli and carbohydrates – not exactly nutritious (but very very tasty), I’ve modified the recipe to add some protein to make chickpea seeni sambal.

Here’s my recipe for chickpea seeni sambal. In Melbourne, we get the spice mix from an Asian grocery shop. I haven’t seen it sold in Paris, but then again, I probably haven’t been looking as Mum actually sends me packets from Melbourne!

· Oil for frying
· 1 big onion
· 400g can chickpeas
· 2 ripe tomatoes (diced)
· 2 tablespoons (or more if you like it HOT!) seeni sambal spice mix
· Salt to taste
· A squirt of tomato ketchup (it sounds weird but it makes a difference)

Fry onions until soft and brown in a pan.
Add the diced tomatoes and cook till soft.
Add the seeni sambal spice mix to the pan and stir.
Add a squirt of tomato ketchup.
Drain the chickpeas and add to the pan.
Serve hot with rice.

Hubs tends to complain when I cook this, as it’s too spicy for his delicate French tastebuds! Hehe!

Serimuka

2007-02-26T09:02:00.000+01:00

For some reason, my French parents-in-law absolutely love serimuka after having tried it in Australia at my aunty’s place. So I decided to make some as they dropped by last weekend.

I have to say, it takes lots of patience and practise. I still haven’t completely gotten the hang of how to make perfect serimuka. Still, the end results were completely edible and were polished off before I could even take a photo!

Here’s the recipe that I used (copied off the internet from I-can’t-remember-where).

The White Layer
· 1 ½ cups glutinous rice (washed and soaked overnight)
· 2/3 cup thin coconut milk
· 1 pandan leaf (knotted)
· 1 teaspoon salt

Wash the rice well then cover with water and soak overnight. I have to admit that I’m not 100% sure why this must be done but I always do it.
Place the rice into a round or square cake tin (roughly 20cm in diameter).
Mix the coconut milk and salt in the rice.
Place pandan leaf in the rice
Steam over boiling water until the rice is cooked (roughly 20-30minutes).
Remove pandan leaf and fluff up rice with a fork, and then press down the rice to form a compact and even layer. I tend to use the back of a wet spoon to do this.
Steam the rice for another 15 minutes.

The Green Layer
· 3 eggs
· ¾ cup coconut milk
· ¾ cup caster sugar
· 4 teaspoons cornflour
· 2 ½ tablespoons plain flour
· ½ cup pandan juice (to make this, use roughly 5-6 pandan leaves, blend with roughly 2/3 cup of water and strain. Keep the juice)

To make the green layer, add eggs, coconut milk and sugar in a bowl. Mix well with a fork or whisk. Add the cornflour, plain flour and pandan juice. Mix well until smooth and no lumps exist. Strain the mixture into a metal bowl. Place the metal bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir continuously until the mixture begins to thicken.

Bringing it together
Pour the green pandan mixture over the rice layer. Steam over a very gentle heat (apparently steaming over a high heat will result in a bubbly surface).

As you can see, I still get bubbles in my serimuka!

(This makes enough for 1 set of hungry French parents in-law and 1 Malaysian-Australian who really only likes the green layer)

Tartelette aux cerises

2007-02-25T09:29:00.000+01:00

Here’s another mouthful of happiness from our local boulangerie: a cherry tartelette with perfectly melt-in-the-mouth pastry and cherries that are neither too sweet nor too sour.
I need to leave this country before I grow to the size of a hippo.

On ice

2007-02-24T11:14:00.000+01:00

I was really impressed with last year’s Paris Motor Show. This ~~ice cube~~ iceblock was definitely too big to put in my drink.

Religieuse

2007-02-20T14:21:00.000+01:00

One of the advantages of living in France is the abundance of fantastic boulangeries, often just around the corner from where you live (very handy for cravings!). And how do you tell a good boulangerie from a bad? I just look at the queue of people spilling out the door on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Our local boulangerie* usually has an 8-10 metre queue on a Sunday morning!

This little morsel of happiness filled with a lovely chocolate crème is called a religieuse, French for “nun”.

* bakery

Char Kuay Teow

2007-02-19T13:21:00.000+01:00

One of my most favourite foods in the world is char kuay teow. This is basically a super mouth-watering greasy tasty Malaysian hawker-style wok fried rice noodles (Penang, my mum’s home town in Malaysia, has the best char kuay teow!).

In Melbourne, fresh rice noodles (and I mean the ultra fresh slimy noodles, not just your dried variety) can be found in any local Asian store (most suburbs have at least 1 Asian grocery store) or even the local supermarket, making it easy to just whip up some char kuay teow when I feel like it.

Over here, Asian grocery stores are only found in the Quartier Chinois (China Town) in the 13th arrondissement. This is a pain as it means at least a precious weekend morning spent elbowing little old Chinese ladies out of the way in the overcrowded Tang Frères grocery store every time (which is pretty often) I get a craving for char kuay teow.

Last weekend, we braved the little old Chinese ladies in the Quartier Chinois.
Look what I made! Mmmmmmmm.

When it comes to cooking char kuay teow, I have to say that I don’t stick to any particular recipe and I use the “agak-agak” (in Malay, this means “approximate” or “rough estimation”) rule when it comes to ingredients.

Anyway, here’s a basic recipe (for about 4 people). Feel free to add more or less of the ingredients that tickle your fancy. (I tend to add LOADS of garlic and chilli).

· Oil for cooking (hawker stalls in Malaysia tend to use lard)
· Garlic (roughly 1 teaspoon)
· Prawns
· 500g bean sprouts (I love bean sprouts so I tend to add more)
· 400-500g fresh flat white rice noodles (kuay teow)
· A good handful of chinese garlic chives (ku chai), chopped to 2cm bits
· 3 – 4 eggs
· Dark soy sauce
· Light soy sauce (Optional. I find that adding the dark soy sauce gives it enough flavour)
· Dark thick sweet soy sauce (or a pinch of sugar)
· Dried chilli flakes, chilli powder or fresh chilli paste
· Lap cheong (chinese sausage. Optional)
· See ham (cockles. Optional)

Start off by heating the oil in the wok or large frying pan.
Once the oil is heated, add eggs and fry till cooked.
Remove the eggs (I get lazy sometimes and just leave the eggs in, adding all other ingredients to the wok).
Add garlic and prawns.
Add lap cheong and see ham (Optional).
Add the rice noodles. (Remember to separate the rice noodles before adding into the wok.)
Add the bean sprouts.
Add the eggs back in.
Add dark soy sauce for colour and the light soy sauce for taste.
Add the dark thick sweet soy sauce or a pinch of sugar to taste.
Add chilli according to taste.

Tip 1: I tend to use kuay teow (bought fresh), which has been kept in the fridge for a day or two. I find that frying ultra-fresh kuay teow makes the char kuay teow slightly sticky. After a day or two in the fridge, the rice noodles stiffen up a little, making it ideal for frying.

Tip 2: Keep the heat high when frying ingredients.

Tip 3: Divide the ingredients into 2 batches and fry batches separately. I find that it makes it easier to handle in the wok, plus the ingredients cook faster. Having small batches therefore avoids overcooking.

Tip 4: Most of all, experiment with the portions of ingredients to create your own version of char kuay teow.