Asian Steamed Seabass

Ok so now you are probably all aware that I love Asian flavours, but I’m also really into seafood above all else. So much of Asian cooking is seafood in many areas, and it’s a perfect marriage of flavours. This dish is an amalgamation of several others in a similar vein, and was largely borne out of the stuff we had knocking about in the fridge at the end of the week. It’s super healthy, really quick and easy to make and great for a midweek meal.

So for a different supper for two (or more, if you have a bigger steamer than we do) give this a try.

2 seabass fillets (bream, mullet, snapper or any similar delicate fish will do)

Broccoli

Leek, sliced lengthways

2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

For the sauce:

3cm piece ginger, sliced into thin matchsticks

1 red birdseye chilli

2 spring onions, chopped

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

Line a steamer with foil and put the fish fillets in the bottom. Mix the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, pour over the top of the fish. Add the broccoli and leek to the top and put the lid on.

Steam for 8 minutes (sounds like a lot but there’s a lot in the steamer here – if your ingredients are a bit more spread out then reduce the cooking time). We served it with rice but noodles would be fine too, we also had a couple of steamed dumplings bought from our nearby Chinese supermarket.

I hope you like this recipe and I definitely encourage you to play around with the flavours in the sauce, adding more or less garlic, chilli and ginger as needed. Enjoy!

Breakfast Pasta and Other Delights

Look, I already know you are going to think I’m weird. Everyone who knows this about me thinks I’m weird, so I’ve no doubt you’ll agree with them on this. But please – hear me out.

I love pasta for breakfast. I don’t have much interest in filling my face with big stodgy fried breakfasts full of greasy pork products. I do bloody love pork, but the prospect of two sausages, two rashers, black pudding, plus all the eggs, bread, tomatoes, beans and the rest most of the time just leaves me feeling a bit queasy. Far from setting me up for the day, all I want to do after such a beast is crawl back into bed and nurse a food baby. I also don’t go in for cereal especially often. For me, generally it falls into one of two camps – being too sugary or being too dry and boring.

When I started work as a waitress in an Italian restaurant and the head chef would make a big vat of pasta to serve the staff just prior to opening for lunch, I attacked those meals with gusto. Pasta is healthy, filling, generally comes with vegetables, and gives enough slow-releasing energy to keep me happy for a while. For the last few years it has been met with raised eyebrows, laughter and derision (and that’s just from my husband) but I genuinely believe pasta is a better and cheaper way to start your day. Also it comes with cheese, which pretty much seals the deal for me.

On our recent travels to South East Asia, it became apparent pretty quickly that they would have no problem with my breakfast choice (well, if they made pasta, that is). Bar a few choice items, there’s no particular meal that is solely a breakfast, or a lunch, or a dinner. If you want noodle soup, that’s fine at any time of day or night, and I think that’s wonderful.

Some dishes were more readily available at certain times of day – in Malaysia you could get roti with dhall or sambal from very early morning until about 11am, and then again from about 5pm. I’m not too sure why there’s a six hour break, but nonetheless that’s the deal! In Vietnam you would struggle to find banh mi after lunchtime, though it is still possible if you look hard. And in Thailand, the locals see curry as more of a breakfast or lunch thing, and wouldn’t really go for it as their evening meal. But for all that, if you were to order a curry for dinner, they’ll make it for you. I love that way of thinking as it is so close to what I already believe – food should just be food no matter what time of day.

So laugh all you like, but please think about giving it a go – and I don’t mean just reaching for the leftover Chinese in the morning when you’re super hungover. I’ll be here, eating my breakfast pasta, waiting for anyone who wants to join me.

I Love Brunch

Sunday brunch in the sunshine

When we lived in Dublin, Matt and I went out for brunch a lot. We also made our own at home when the mood struck, especially when we had guests and an idea to test out of them. It’s a brilliant way to eat out cheaply but still have something kinda special, and Dublin was full of amazing places dishing up great food on a Sunday afternoon. From the understated Brother Hubbard with its great coffee, generous portions and rustic cakes, to flashy Cleaver East with its bottomless mimosas and a DJ playing ambient trance – Dublin had a wide variety.

Today Matt and I made brunch for his parents, starting with a Bloody Mary. This is Matt’s specialty and it’s excellent – practically a mini meal all on its own.

Matt’s Bloody Mary

He mixed a few cubes of ice with 50ml vodka, 100 ml passata, a splash of hot sauce, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and a big turn of the pepper mill. Once the ice melted a little he gave it a stir and added a bit of chopped coriander for garnish. You will see lots of versions of this drink – some with celery salt on the rim, some with a stick of celery in the glass, and others with a cocktail stick skewering quails eggs or pickles. To be honest, go with whatever you fancy, and adjust it to your taste. This used some of the flavours repeated in the main brunch dish, so it made sense across the meal.

As it was a special brunch, I even set out to make my own bread! I’m not much of a baker usually, as I prefer to just throw unspecified handfuls of ingredients into a pot where baking requires precision. I also don’t have much patience for allowing time to rise and prove, or for having dough sitting in the airing cupboard for half a day. Fortunately this recipe requires none of that hassle which is why I like it so much! So here is my favourite recipe for soda bread. Unfortunately the massive Tesco down the road didn’t stock any buttermilk – about 50 types of rice milk, almond milk, soy milk and a myriad other things, but not one measly carton of buttermilk – so I had to buy a loaf instead. Very frustrating! But I have made it several times before and I promise it’s easy and produces great results.

450g plain white flour

1tsp salt

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

400ml buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 230 degrees. Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the milk. Using the fingers of one hand like a claw, stir from the centre to the edge of the bowl in circles. The dough should be softish – not too wet and sticky. When it all comes together, turn out onto a well-floured surface. Wash and dry your hands thoroughly. Pat the dough into a round about 4cm thick, and turn over. Transfer to a floured baking tray. Cut a deep cross into the loaf and prick the centre of each quarter. Bake for 15 minutes then reduce the heat to 200 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more or until cooked. To check it’s cooked, tap the bottom – it should sound hollow.

You could have the bread for a nibbly starter – it’s great with a bit of butter or dipped in some good olive oil and most importantly it’s perfect for keeping hungry people out of the kitchen while the main meal is cooking!

So onto the main event! I think brunch should be something a little unusual; as it’s such a luxurious meal anyway I really like the idea of having something a bit special. To me that can mean a good steak, or hollandaise sauce, or buttermilk pancakes, or just an item you’ve never tried before or is too involved to make at home too frequently. I also really think a brunch should include eggs, they’re so cheap and versatile and they go well with any flavour grouping. We made poached eggs with chorizo, bean and potato hash and served it with a bit of bread on the side.

This is a great meal for using up whatever is in the fridge, but here is how we made ours – to serve 4 people.

1/2 a white onion, diced

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 carrot, diced

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp tomato puree

1 tsp chipotle paste (or cut a chipotle pepper in half and throw into the pan, remove before serving)

1 tin butter beans (could use cannellini beans, black eyed beans, chickpeas or similar)

1 tin chopped tomatoes

2 medium potatoes, cubed

1/2 ring of chorizo, roughly chopped

handful of coriander, chopped

4 eggs

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tsp brown sugar

In a large saucepan, fry the garlic, onion and carrot in olive oil for a couple of minutes on a medium heat. Add the cumin and stir for a minute before adding the tomato puree, chipotle paste and red wine vinegar. Throw in the potato, beans and chopped tomatoes, give a stir and leave to simmer for 45 minutes – or until the potatoes are just soft. Taste it as you go and if the mix seems like it needs sugar (ours did) or more vinegar then put in a little bit. The mixture shouldn’t be too liquid, but if it is, just leave simmering a little longer while you cook the eggs.

We poached the eggs, but fried would be amazing too. Or for the total one-pot brunch, try making a couple of wells in the hash and cracking eggs into that. Put the lid on the pan for 5 minutes and allow them to cook that way, and dish up in one lump. Definitely saves on washing up, and time spent at the stove. Whichever method you choose, once plated, grind a little pepper on the top, sprinkle some coriander over it, and serve.

Poached eggs with chorizo, bean and potato hash

Obviously this is a bit of a splurge – my bank account and waistline couldn’t afford to do this every week! But for a special occasion, a date, a get-together with mates, or a visit from the parents, this is an excellent way to while away an afternoon. It’s also an excellent excuse to crack open some bubbly – cheers!

Hot Competition

The other day my husband and I were bored – we can only job hunt for so long before our minds wander! So with the princely sum of about a fiver in our pockets we went to our friendly local Tesco to purchase ingredients for a hot sauce. We made it a competition with Matt’s parents being the judges. I wanted to make something quite classic that we could throw into a chilli , have with cheese (cheese on toast with hot sauce is amazing!), or use in place of Tabasco in a Bloody Mary. So here is my recipe for an easy, cheap, classic ingredient hot sauce.

My ingredients – I didn’t use the second pepper

30 red chillies (I had a mixture of varieties, mostly birdseye and a few of the large milder red ones)

3 small garlic bulbs

a few sprigs of thyme

1 tbsp tomato puree

100-200ml red wine vinegar

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 bell pepper

1 small white onion

Splash olive oil over the chillies and pepper and threw them in the oven at 160 degrees for about half an hour (take the oven tray out when the chillies start to get a bit darker and you see the pepper browning round the edge). When the pepper has cooled, peel and throw away the skin and roughly chop the flesh along with the chillies.

Cut the tops off the garlic bulbs so each clove has a bit nipped off the end. Place the bulbs into baking foil with a bit of olive oil, a chilli and a couple of sprigs of thyme, and close the foil over to form a parcel. Roast for around an hour at 140 degrees. Once you’ve left the garlic to cool, you can squeeze the bulbs and the squishy roasted cloves will ooze out of the end. Yummy, but smelly!

Squeezing the garlic into the pot

Dice the onion, and fry on a very gentle heat in olive oil in a large saucepan. You don’t want to brown the onions, just cook them out a bit. I add a bit of water to the pan after a few minutes which helps to keep the onions moist and translucent. Then add the pepper, chillies, garlic, tomato puree and some thyme, and stir for a minute. Throw in 100ml of the red wine vinegar and about the same again of water and allow the mixture to bubble.

Once it has cooled slightly, tip the mixture into a blender and whizz for a couple of minutes until smooth. At this point grab a cracker and a glass of milk because you need to taste it. Add more vinegar, sugar, salt or a squidge of lemon juice if you think it’s needed, and at any point in this process add a bit more water if the mixture is too thick. Store the sauce in a clip-top jar and enjoy!

The finished article

I should point out all the chillies came from the in-laws’ garden and there were bags of em waiting for us in the freezer, so I guess you might spend more than a fiver if you include that as well. Don’t go to the supermarkets if you can help it, better and cheaper chillies are available at any Asian food store, of which there are plenty around the country. If you would like a milder sauce you could either replace some of the chillies with more bell pepper, or use milder chillies and avoid the likes of birdseye, scotch bonnet, habanero and other rather hot varieties like that.

This sauce turned out exactly as I had hoped, and we used it in a peri-peri chicken marinade as well as in soft tacos – and in case you’re wondering, this was the winning sauce!

Lessons From Asia (Part 2)

Last time I wrote about South East Asian food, and how it is typified by eating less meat and adding more herbs. It probably stated the bloody obvious, but as it was news to me, I felt it was worth saying! And here are the second two things I learned…

Lesson Three – Let Your Guests Season Their Own Dishes

I have one particular pet hate when I cook for people (no, not vegans… well, vegans a bit). I really hate it when I put the plate down and the first thing a person does is flood it in salt and pepper. On the whole, I have already done that bit whilst cooking. I add salt where necessary, and I add more than enough pepper every single time – in fact I’m a bit of a pepper fiend. Obviously everyone has their own palette and I know people may want more salt than I would prepare the dish with (almost always the case, I don’t like too much salt). The issue here is with anyone who doesn’t taste the food first. Maybe they would like it as it is, after all I spent some time preparing, cooking and tasting it. But regardless, this is the basis of the next thing we learned whilst travelling.

In Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia (less so in Malaysia) the restaurant/stall gives the customer the means to season and flavour their own dish. Notably in Thailand when ordering a stir-fry, you will have the opportunity to add dried chilli flakes, chillies in vinegar, sugar and fish sauce in whatever combination suits you best. On the whole, the locals would add a bit of everything, but for us it allowed us to play around with the flavours of the country and work out our preferences. We spiced up pad thai, sweetened a kra pao, and used the fish sauce to salt a chicken and cashew nut dish that resembled a bit of a glutinous Chinese takeaway-style kung po. In fact, as every cook made every dish differently, it helped us to find the middle ground, and we had fun working out how spicy the chillies and chilli vinegar were in each place. As Western tourists it definitely helped to have the extra chillies – whoever keeps going over there and asking for everything less spicy, they do seem to be taking it on board, and a lot of the time we had to reassure waiters that we can take the heat! But for the times we forgot to tell them or they didn’t believe us, we could do it for ourselves. Once we have found jobs and a house and therefore a kitchen, Matt and I can get some jars and bust out the “season it yourself” ingredients for ourselves and our guests. And this just might turn my culinary pet hate into a fun way to eat with a group of people with very different ideas of what constitutes spicy.

Seasonings available at a Thai street food stall

Lesson Four – Smaller Portions

This will hardly come as a shock to anyone, but in the West we eat a lot. Duh. In South East Asia the most obvious thing about the meals arriving at the table was the much smaller portion size, served on smaller dishes, and – shock of shocks – the food was still enough to fill us. Sure, I usually can clear a plate of Christmas dinner piled high with all the trimmings. But should I? When half the amount of food fills me completely without leaving me ill or uncomfortable, what the hell do I think I’m playing at by shovelling tons of nosh into my face?!

There are loads of benefits that come with having smaller portions. The health benefits for one thing – portion control is hardly a new diet idea, but seems to be one of the hardest to implement. Feeling bloated, having heartburn, feeling overly full, and many even less pleasant scenarios await after a big meal, especially a meat-heavy one.  Saving money is another obvious benefit, as you clearly spend half the money when eating half the amount of food. But certainly whilst away, there was another benefit – having room for a snack! I know, this is counter-intuitive to the healthy eating I just mentioned, but I was consuming significantly less than usual. So much of the street food in Asia is little snacks and I’d be an idiot to ignore the tasty morsels staring at me, shouting “eat me eat me!” The Thai grilled marinated chunks of pork on sticks, dipped in chilli paste were a particular highlight. But there are also spring rolls, frogs legs, shrimp, fruit skewers, roti, steamed buns, cakes, and – well, you get the idea! Less at lunch means more in the afternoon, less at dinner means more room for drinner (drunk dinner, the best and greasiest meal of the day!).

Street food on sticks at Soi 38, Bangkok

Since being back in the UK we have been faced with some enormous portions when eating out, so it has been down to my willpower to ensure I don’t gobble the lot. Thus far I have succumbed to my greed (oops), but I will get better – or at least ensure that when eating at home, I’m careful about how much goes on the plate.

Lessons From Asia (Part 1)

My husband and I have just returned from several months of travelling across South East Asia. Of course for us that involved tasting everything we saw – fresh grilled seafood, fragrant stir-fries, spicy curries, steaming bowls of noodle soup and unidentified meat on sticks – nothing was safe from us (except dog, Vietnam is weird sometimes). In one way we were in absolute paradise munching our way through the region, but there was a major food downside for us. We weren’t able to cook! The markets were incredible, with food so fresh the fish were flapping and the chickens were clucking. Now of course I am in no way prepared for getting a live chicken to a plate, but you take my point. In so many of the towns and cities we visited, the fresh markets were among the top sights to see – but to what end? We had to content ourselves with looking at the loot then hitting up a street food stall next to the market for a taste.

Produce market, Phnom Penh

Now that we are home we have gone totally nuts in the kitchen, cooking everything we have missed over the last few months, along with showing my in-laws the food of Asia. In cooking a little (ok, a lot!) of each, we have really been able to compare the food of the East with that of the West and try to take some lessons from our travels. Over the last couple of weeks we have begun to apply four lessons to our cooking, regardless of cuisine, and here are the first two things we learned…

Lesson One – Eat Less Meat

I know. I can’t believe I wrote this down either. My favourite meal is steak, my most missed meal whilst away was roast dinner, and my hangover cure is rotisserie chicken. But really – one of the first things we noticed when ordering curries and stir-fries was the smaller amounts of meat they used. For example someone making a Thai red curry in the West may use one chicken breast per person. In Thailand one breast would serve 3-4 people. Of course the meals are mostly served with less meat due to cost, but to be honest we didn’t really miss it anyway, and quickly realised the amount of meat we eat at home is pretty obscene. As it accounts for the largest portion of the shopping bill it can only make sense to cut it down. So with my father in law aghast, we cooked a Thai red curry but scaled it down. We actually used two small chicken breasts between the three of us, so not quite the scale of Thailand (if we had been more authentic we may have been ex-communicated), and we added more vegetables. The traditional version would only contain Thai eggplant and no other vegetables, but I actually found that to be a downside of their cuisine, so I will always add plenty into my own dish.

Chicken and vegetable red Thai curry with steamed rice

Using a bit less meat not only saves money, it also saves on cooking time – especially if you are similar to me and like crunchy vegetables. It allowed me to add a variety of vegetables into the curry without bulking it out into an unmanageable portion size. Pretty much any vegetable could be used – I chose baby corn, red pepper, mangetout, aubergine, onions and beansprouts. But you could also use cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, courgette, spring onion… well, whatever you have lying around really. It might take a while to win over other people to this way of doing things, but if you don’t tell them what you’re up to, there’s a very good chance they won’t notice!

Lesson Two – Add More Herbs

Bear with me on this, as you might already be doing it and we’re just behind the times! Before travelling if ever we made a curry or stir-fry we would grab a large bunch of coriander from the Asian supermarket, use a bit of it, and find the rest a week later liquefying at the back of the salad crisper. Such a waste of a great-tasting ingredient, and on our travels we realised what we were doing wrong – using only a bit of it. For the average one person meal in Thailand we would have the equivalent of a quarter of a supermarket bag of herbs on the plate. In Vietnam, where the food is less spicy but much more fragrant, half a bag of coriander and half a bag of basil would be waiting for your delectation. Clearly, we are not using enough in our home cooking.

Pho with beef balls, lime and chilli on the side, and a huge plate of herbs (Vinh Long, Mekong Delta)

When I made beef pho, I bought a bag of coriander and used a lot of basil from the in-laws’ pot on the windowsill. The best for this recipe is Thai sweet basil, but the standard basil we’re used to putting in Italian dishes will also do. The result was a really flavoursome bowl of broth that smelled incredible and had the taste of the herbs in every mouthful. It completely lifted the meal from a good but boring beef and fish sauce soup into a healthy but delicious meal that everyone enjoyed thoroughly. And best of all, between the pho and the Thai red curry made the next day, all the herbs were put to great use.

Beef pho – with coriander, basil, chilli, beansprouts and ginger in the middle of the table for everyone to dig in

Rather than throwing all my new-found food lessons at you now (and you dealing with my rambling sentences), I thought I’d split it in two. So next time – seasoning and smaller portions. Exciting, right?! Now, I’m off to see about the beef rendang recipe I want to recreate… What did I say about eating less meat?