by Alistair » Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:28 pm
Speaking of chillis- does anyone have a good source of fresh Jalapeno's in Melbourne? I can't seem to find them ever (and I live 100 metres from Vic Market!)
A couple of recipes from the past week- I don't ever follow recipes so all proportions are very rough- cook to taste.
Thai coconut curry
Boil up some noodles/rice, rinse and set aside. I like rice noodles but it's up to you.
Chop up an onion, 2 gloves of good garlic (or half a bulb of the shitty chinese stuff!), little bit of ginger, and a whole chilli, and fry in the wok for about 2 minutes. Grapeseed oil is cool for cooking it hot without anything burning or smoking.
Then I add about 400 grams of thinly cubed tofu, but I'm sure you could substitute meat/chicken/fish as desired. To taste it should be bloody spicy at this point!
Cook for a few minutes until it's lightly browned, then add a few cups of water, a generous helping of soy sauce, palm sugar, curry powder, vegetable stock and a tin of coconut milk. The coconut milk will calm down the chilli immensely, which is why it needs to be too spicy to start with.
Throw in some chopped capsicum/carrots/bamboo shoots/bok choy etc. You only want to cook these for 2-3 minutes so they don't get soft and soggy.
Put your noodles/rice in a bowl, pour over a good helping of your curry. Add fresh chopped chilli, coriander, lime, peanuts and vietnamese mint to taste.
All up once you get it down it should only take about 10-15 minutes to make, and it's pretty bloody nice!
Pizza- we often make our own pizzas from scratch. A little more involved than Thai food, but pretty nice.
I always make my own bases- 2 cups of white flour, 1 cup wholemeal, 1 and 1/4 cups of luke warm water, a few tablespoons dry yeast, squirt of olive oil, pinch of salt and sugar.
You put the water in a bowl first, and slowly add the flour so you don't get wet/dry bits. You know when to stop when the dough is a beautiful soft texture, and not too sticky to the touch. Then you knead it firmly for a few minutes until it starts to toughen up- this way you can roll it out super thin without it breaking.
Let it rest for at least 30 minutes, cut it up into 3 even size balls, and let it rest again for 10 minutes. Then it's good to roll out.
We always make a couple of different kinds and have meals for a few days out of them. Our favourite at the moment is pumpkin, walnuts, ricotta and rocket.
Caramelise butternut pumpkin in the oven with garlic, rosemary, sage, a touch of red wine/honey/brown sugar.
Caramelise spanish onoin and walnuts in the pan with honey and some red wine.
On your bases lay out your pumpkin, onion and walnuts, as well as the cloves of garlic from the pumpkin, and add some fresh ricotta, fetta cheese, some mango or tomato chutney and a good drizzle of olive oil, crack of salt and pepper.
Give them 10 minutes in a super hot oven, then take them out and add some fresh rocket on top, and squeeze a lemon over the top. Super delicious (and with the wholemeal dough and ricotta it's pretty healthy for pizza).
A lot of places do a pumpkin/fetta/rocket pizza now, but the richness and crunch of the walnuts really kicks it along.
I made some pretty nice mexican the other day too- we've got an awesome Mexican place in Melbourne that opened up not too long ago called Mamasita. It's well worth the effort to go if you're in Melbourne.
I won't bore you guys with my stories of cooking beans and guac, but they do make an awesome sauce at Mamasita that I've stolen (actually my girlfriend figured it out, so I shouldn't take the credit).
1 clove of garlic
a couple of diced jalapenos
a medium sized bunch of coriander
good squirt of olive oil
a handful of almonds
salt and pepper
a small amount of lime juice
Put all that stuff in a mortar and pestle and give a good workout for a few minutes. It's one of my favourite flavours in the world, and is so easy to make.
I also got a really great easy recipe for salsa from one of the worst cooking shows I've ever seen (Antony Bourdain or whoever that idiot is)
1 tomato
1 sweet pepper
1 jalapeno
Chuck them all on the bbq till they are chargrilled on all sides.
Slice up and mix together! Mexicans often remove the seeds from the tomato, or put in a fresh tomato without seeds but I just chuck it all in. Really nice and easy.
Alistair McLean
