A Few of My Favourite Things !

I was happy to get back into the kitchen after the lead-up to Easter, when we were busy with music practices and so on. I get a lot of enjoyment daydreaming about what I feel like having for dinner and then gathering all the ingredients for the meal when I get home from work (unless I’m bone-tired, of course, in which case I’ll wish dinner was already waiting).

I was happy to get back into the kitchen after the lead-up to Easter, when we were busy with music practices and so on. I get a lot of enjoyment daydreaming about what I feel like having for dinner and then gathering all the ingredients for the meal when I get home from work (unless I’m of course, in which case I’ll wish dinner was already waiting).

We had some big juicy prawns in the fridge, wanting and waiting to be transformed into delicious meal. Something simple like crisp garlic-chilli prawns served with stir-fried vegetables with lap cheong, topped with black sesame seeds. Mmmmm….

The meals that I cook tend to be on the spicy side because both my husband and I love chilli. However, I had to really restrain myself for this meal because C. does not do spicy. Boy, was this difficult! I managed to sneak in a piece of salami that A. managed to snag in his dollop of sauce and I say ’sneak’ because it was chilli salami! Fortunately, it wasn’t spicy enough to really be detected (or at least, C. didn’t SAY anything about it!) but, I was just trying to increase his tolerance slowly

I made pasta again on the weekend and after holding back the last time, boy did I go heavy on the chilli flakes and the pimentos we picked up from the organic stall at Victoria Market! In fact, so much so that I had to tone it down later on - OOPS!!!

This time, I went with a marinara sauce. In other parts of world, the term ‘marinara sauce’ - which originated from the Italian ‘all marinara’ or ’sailor style’ - refers to a spicy tomato-based sauce that includes onions, garlic and herbs but not meat. However if you order a Pasta Marinara in Australia, be ready for a tomato-based seafood dish.

Yet again, there is no recipe for this sauce but it’s pretty similar to the last one, except for the addition of the above mentioned ingredients for their chilli kick. Oh, I forgot to mention last time that I also tend to add one or two anchovies in my sauce. After all the ingredients go in, my favourite part is allowing the sauce to simmer on a really low heat for the afternoon so that it fills the house with a mouthwatering aroma. Just before serving it with the past, I threw in some prawns, mussels, shrimp, octopus and fish.An the pasta itself? Fresh parsley, oregano and basil fettucine from the Donini’s on Lygon Street. What a great meal, served with a slice of toasted sesame seed and sea salt ciabatta!

I think the flavour of the pasta would come out more with a simpler sauce so I may try that next time - any suggestions?

We had our friends, P&C, over for dinner last week. It was just a simple Friday night meal, nothing fancy or troublesome but just an easy-going, lovely time for catching up. I picked up a few things from Lygon Street - chicken & veal ravioli from Domini’s, anti-pasto from King & Godfree - and Victoria Market - foccacia, so the only thing I really had to prepare were the tomato sauce and dessert.

I began the tomato sauce by slow-cooking some onions and garlic with a small piece of salami (for a subtle smoky flavour). A tin of passata and some fresh tomatoes were tipped in and these were closely followed by some oregano. The sauce was left to simmer for some time before fresh basil was torn and stirred in. The fresh ravioli was added to the tomato sauce and served with foccacia studded with rosemary and sprinkled with seasalt and a fig-fresh goat’s curd-rocket salad. The tomato sauce complemented the ravioli perfectly - YUM! And was happy to have accidentally received the single piece of salami:

A: “I REALLY liked how you added salami to the sauce!”

Me:”What salami? Oh, THAT salami! I forgot to fish it out!”

For dessert, a Mocha Coffee Cake drizzles over with melted dark chocolate and Joel Durand Caramel au Beurre Sale and topped with a single coffee bean. Recipe to follow shortly.

A number of tea houses have popped up around the city recently, most of them selling just tea but there is one that also serves tea-based hot meals and desserts. We tried the pork noodles served in a tea broth and some tea-flavoured dim sum, serving it with a simple salad once we got the food home. the broth was lovely and had just a hint of tea-smokiness about it. The dim sum was okay, the skin being slightly too think for my liking. We also bought their plum jelly for dessert, but for the life of me I could not taste any tea flavour in it at all. We may think about trying the black tea jelly next time.

Ten Ren Tea (Melbourne) Pty Ltd
146 Swanston St Melbourne 3000

I imagine that black fungus, aka cloud ear mushroom, is one of those foods that I would not have enjoyed much as a kid because I don’t remember eating a lot of it. Now, however, I love the crunchy bite it adds to stirfry dishes and the satiny feel of it on my tongue. In Chinese herbal medicine, this fungus also has a reputation for improving circulation and thinning the blood out - kinda like wine, I guess. The black cloud ear fungus also has a close relative known as - wait for it - white fungus which is much more frilly in appearance and can be used in sweet soups as well as savoury dishes.

Both black and white fungus can be found in dried forms in any Asian grocery store and are reconstituted by soaking for 30 min in warm water. The woody parts can then be trimmed off before cooking them. This dish is my version of Lou Han Vegetables and I’ve listed the ingredients that I used below:

1. Sitr fry garlic
2. Add carrots and peas, followed by shitaake & button mushrooms. Add some water or stock and simmer for a few minutes
3. Add black and white fungus and simmer for a little longer
4. Thicken sauce with cornflour mixed with a few tablespoons of water
5. Serve on top of brown rice (or whatever you prefer)

During his childhood, my husband was fortunate enough to do quite a bit of travelling with his parents. His mother, a journalist, was often invited to conferences and young A. skipped school to tag along to exotic places such as Turkey, Syria, Greece and Jordan, living out of a suitcase from one swanky hotel to the next. Part of this experience, of course, meant that room service meals became the norm.

In general, these meals tend not to be ground-breaking in their execution nor are they, generally-speaking, comforting home-styled dishes. However, there is one dish that has remained in A’s memory, one meal that he has spoken of often with fondness - broccoli soup. Now, he doesn’t remember exactly where they were staying at the time (he was only 8 years old, after all), but thinks that it was either at The Sheraton in Istanbul or The Marriot in Athens. Both A. and his mum enjoyed the soup so much that they put in a second order for it.

It almost sounds like too simple dish to invoke such strong memories but seeing as it’s been with him all these years, I wanted to recreate the soup for A. This task was, of course, made difficult by the fact that although he remembers that it was a wonderful soup, there aren’t too many other details to go by.

I started out by steaming two heads of broccoli and boiling several small potatoes until tender. The onions and leeks were cooked until softened, then 2 tablespoons of flour were added and cooked for a few minutes. The onion/leek mix, broccoli and potatoes were added, together with salt, pepper, dried basil, to about 4 cups of vegetable stock and pureed until smooth. The verdict: we both loved the way the soup turned out - thick and creamy without the need for any dairy. This one’s a keeper!

It looks like I’m not the only one who has been getting into wasabi peas lately and this is a snack that is definitely moreish. Whilst the peas are not as potent as wasabi paste itself, the vapourising heat can still catch you out unexpectedly. Cuttlefish and shrimp flavoured peas are also available but where would the excitement be?

We loved the fresh barramundi fillets from Garfield Fish Farm last time and picked more up over the weekend. The fillets were coated with crushed wasabi peas (mixed with some cuttlefish peas), salt and freshly ground Sze Chuan pepper before being pan-fried. Crunchy texture of the skin contrasts with delicate white flesh, but with fish this fresh it’s hard to go wrong.

On the eve of Chinese New Year, families traditionally gather for a reunion dinner. This year, we invited some work friends over to have dinner with us at mum & dad’s. Mum kindly cooked up a feast for us, starting with Yee Sang, which we tossed enthusiastically to help bring in prosperity and good fortune!

We also had two kinds of noodles, tender octopus, spicy wok-tossed prawns, cold chicken with peanuts (courtesy of A and Ant’s Bistro), baked chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, stir-fried beef, shop-bought roast duck and chicken curry puffs:

Following a breather of good conversation, dessert was brought to the table: homemade pineapple tarts, coconut macaroons that we had brought back from Strasbourg, miniature curry puff-shaped, fried sweet that is filled with peanuts and sugar and a homemade snack that I don’t know the name of - a thin batter that is either fried of baked in a mould that creates 8 holes in the centre then sprinkled with sesame seeds. Of course, there is always a fruit platter: