The concept is simple enough – you stir as you fry. Not quite brain surgery.

However, during my 27 years on this planet, I’ve come across quite a few people who seem to find this equation a little perplexing…

I’ve had more than a few friends partake in my stir-fries and the most common comment that I receive is that the dish is full of flavour and texture. The compliment regarding flavour I contribute partially to the stir-fry sauce that I like to use, but texture is something that comes down to one important factor:

All foods take different lengths of time to cook.

See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it?

I quizzed each friend that commented on my stir-fries and there appeared to be a common problem – they were all dumping all the ingredients into a wok at the same time and cooking till the final firm vegetable was cooked…at which point, half of the other ingredients were overcooked.

Anyone who has ever cooked vegetables should understand that capsicum cooks quicker than carrot but slower than snowpeas (as an example), and this is the rule which you should bear in mind when making this dish. The ‘difficult’ part of a stir-fry is the preparation – it might take 15-30 minutes to prepare all the bits and pieces that you want to use, but once they are ready to go, their progression into the wok should be quick and uniform.

From the photo above, you can see the components of today’s stir-fry:

broccoli
snow peas / mangetout
mushrooms
bok choi (you can see that I’ve actually separated the leafy tops from the stalks since they take different lengths of time to cook)
carrots
zucchini
cabbage
red & green capsicum
half a rump steak, trimmed of all fat and sinew and finely sliced
6 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
a brown onion, trimmed and cut into 8 segments (not actually in the photo)

I like to brown my main protein (whether beef, chicken, seafood or tofu) in a separate frying pan before adding to a stir-fry, but that really is a personal quirk. A high heat will help you to cook quickly without liquid seeping from the veg into the bottom of the stir-fry and making it ’soggy’, and veg that takes almost no time to cook (such as snow peas and bok choi) can actually be stirred through once everything else has cooked and the heat has been turned off – the residual heat of the dish will cook these veg during their trip from stove top to the kitchen bench.

Once you have ordered your veg in order of those which take the longest time to cook to those which cook in a heartbeat, you’ll need to actually go ahead with it. Heat up the wok with 1-2 tbsp of oil till it begins to smoke, then add the veg in progression – starting with one and adding the next as soon as the veg in the wok begins to soften.

Beef Stir-fry

Ingredients
Whatever you have in the fridge or pantry!

I generally make a stir-fry when I have bits of veg in the fridge…the odd bit of cabbage, a handful of snowpeas, half a capsicum, a few lonely bunches of bok choi. There is no rule and there’s generally no limit – but I’d suggest sticking with vegetables that cook relatively quickly (so root vegetables are generally not great, except for lotus root!)

The other rule with preparing vegetables for a stir-fry is that you want to cut them into similar sized pieces. This is because a stir-fry should be cooked quickly, and ensuring uniform size means they cook quickly and evenly.

Stir-Fry Sauce

Most people flavour their stir-fry with a simple drizzle of oyster sauce, however my preferred is sweet, salty, spicy sauce that can be boiled and bottled up and stored in the fridge for up to a month, ready to flavour any dish which needs a little boost.

Ingredients
1/2 cup kecap manis (sweet Indonesian soy sauce)
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1-3 thai birdseye chillis, finely sliced (depending on how spicy you like your food)
1/4 cup cold water

Combine these into a small saucepan over a low heat and bring to a simmer, allowing to cook until the mixture is reduced by 1/3. Pour into a clean container and store in the fridge for up to a month.

Technorati Tags: stirfry, Asian, noodles, beef

So, am I the most lax food blogger, or what?

Happy belated new year, dear readers. I hope you’re all having a fabulous 2010 that has so far been full of delicious food and amusing escapades, whether they be in or out of the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the reason for my rather extended hiatus from blogging is an ongoing family situation which will most likely mean that my blogging continues to be somewhat haphazard this year, but I promise that I will try my best to entice you with as many delightful dishes as possible!

Forgive me? *insert prettily cajoling smile here*

To start off with, how about this absolutely stunning recipe for stuffed squid served with a tomato sambal?

This is actually a dish that I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time, but unfortunately baby squid have been a little…well, to be completely honest – nonexistent at my local fishmongers (BAD Mr fishmonger! Tsk tsk tsk!). However, on my weekend trip to the Springvale markets, I happened to come across some at a small fishmongers that I hadn’t visited before, so I thanked my lucky stars and nabbed the whole 2 kg.

I kinda think this was one of those cases of my eyes being bigger than my stomach. But in this case, my shopping trolley…

At any rate, I eventually traipsed home with my glorious squiddy purchase, then decided to roll up my sleeves and set about cleaning and prepping the squid so that I wouldn’t lose my motivation and could jump straight into cooking.

Here’s a note – I doubt any of you are as daft as I am, but when prepping for a recipe that you haven’t read in, say, about a year or so, it’s a good idea to actually OPEN the cookbook in question and refresh your memory. I mean, I have an absolutely lousy memory at the best of times (I’m the only person I know who has actually managed to once forget THEIR OWN BIRTHDAY. That was one helluva confusing day, I tell you), so I don’t know what possessed me to think that I could actually rely on my grey matter to know what was going on.

Okay, so why the ranting about my memory?

Because in my desire to quickly prep the squid – I tossed out all the tentacles, which are actually needed for the filling. I did briefly contemplate digging them out of the bin to clean and use, but at that stage they were buried under a considerable pile of fish scales, guts, trimmed beef fat and chicken skin (grossed out yet?) so I thought better of it.

Despite my idiocy, I did actually manage to make the dish and it turned out quite fabulously, if I may say so myself. You absolutely want to serve this with the accompanying recipe for tomato sambal, as it is a perfect pairing of flavours to spoil your tastebuds with

Actually, let me interject with another note – the recipe will make about 12 stuffed baby squid which is plenty if they are served 3 per person, but you may want to consider making extra. I learnt this the hard way when I discovered that my mother and kid brother had snarfled almost the entire lot while I was looking for backdrops and the plate to use for my main photoshoot!

Stuffed squid with tomato sambal
(adapted from Blue Ginger by Les Huynh)

Stuffed squid ingredients
9 small-medium squid
25g bean thread vermicelli, soaked in cold water and cut into 1″/2.5cm lengths
200g lean minced pork
3 spring onions, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced OR crushed
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tbsp coriander leaves, finely sliced
1/8 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
Pinch of salt and pepper

Tomato sambal ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small brown onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 thai/birds eye chillis, finelysliced (reduce to one chilli if you’re not a heat person)
3 large tomatoes, diced
3 tbsp tomato sauce (ketchup)
2 spring onions, finely sliced

Coriander sprigs, to serve

Stuffed squid instructions

1. Make sure your baby squid are thoroughly defrosted before starting the recipe – their small bodies can be a little (actually, more than a little) irritating to navigate if not properly defrosted, and it also means you may be more likely to leave innards behind when cleaning them as they won’t come out as cleanly!

2. Take each baby squid and chop its head off at the base of the hood. Insert your finger (any of you thinking impure thoughts here can just stop – there was no other way of writing this!) into the hood and scoop out any and all gunk that you come across, making sure that you get every last bit. Also pull off all of the skin and the fins.

Make sure you RESERVE the tentacles by chopping them off the body, and finely dice them. Add them to a bowl with the rest of the stuffing ingredients.

3. Use your hand to make sure that all the stuffing ingredients are evenly mixed together (we don’t want any clumps of mince), then stuff each squid hood, leaving about 1.5cm empty at the end. Carefully close the end with a toothpick and set aside.

Note: Make sure that when you’re stuffing the squid, you don’t leave any air bubbles in the hood, or this can result in bursting squid and misshappen hoods

4. Once you’ve filled all the squid hoods, heat some oil in a non-stick frying pan (a well-seasoned cast iron job will be marvellous here, but any non-stick pan will do), and cook the stuffed squid over a medium flame, making sure to turn to ensure that they are evenly browned all over.

5. Once your squid is completely cooked (this is pork mince we’re working with so this is a must – I found that 15-20 minutes was enough cooking time for me as you also don’t want to overcook the squid), remove from the pan and drain on paper towels.

6. Once the squid has been drained, remove the toothpick from the open end and slice them in half diagonally before plating onto dishes and serve alongside some tomato sambal!

Tomato sambal recipe

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onion and garlic till the onion and garlic are softened and the onion is translucent.

2. Add the chilli and cook for a minute or two, then add the tomato and cook over a low flame until the tomato is soft and begins to break up. At this stage, add the tomato sauce, spring onion and a pinch of salt and cook for another minute, before removing from the heat and allowing to cool.

When plating up, garnishing the tomato sambal with some finely sliced spring onion or chives provides a nice colour contrast, and decorate the dish with either torn or shredded coriander.

Technorati Tags: squid, seafood, pork, Vietnamese, Malaysian, savoury, Asian

I’m sorry for the long absence folks, but after feeling utterly burnt out for awhile with work and family stuff, I decided to take the weekend off and go to one of Victoria’s most beautiful destinations, a little coastal town called Apollo Bay

However, even that didn’t seem like a total holiday as I was only down for the weekend, so up at dawn and frantically running about taking as many photos as possible, as well as cooking up quick and healthy meals that would sustain my friend and myself so we didn’t have to leave the cosy little cottage we had rented.

Having gotten back, it’s taken awhile to work up the enthusiasm to blog (or do anything again), but hopefully today’s recipe will make you think it’s been worth the wait

This is one of my absolute favourite salads, and can you see why? Vegetarian-friendly, it is healthy and light, yet quite filling, and so amazingly filled with texture and flavour that it makes a wonderful lunch or light dinner.

Since it requires sweet potatoes and tomatoes to be roasted, it may not be the quickest salad in the world, but if you’re after a wonderful new summer dish to try then this might be it! Oh – and a hint? You can roast the potato and tomato at night and let them cool, and plate up the salad the next day for a super-fast meal. What could be easier?

Baked Sweet Potato & Tomato Salad
(Adapted from ‘The Instant Cook‘ by Donna Hay)

Ingredients (serves 2)
2 medium-sized sweet potatoes (kumara), peeled
3 medium-sized ripe Roma tomatoes
150g baby spinach leaves, thoroughly washed and rinsed
1/2 cup toasted almonds, roughly chopped
60g good quality feta cheese, drained
Olive oil
Sea salt & cracked pepper

Dressing ingredients
3 tbsp honey
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Slice the sweet potatoes lengthwise into wedges, then halve the tomatoes and place on a lined baking tray. Drizzle over a little olive oil, then sprinkle over salt and pepper. Bake for 25 minutes, or till the potato is golden, soft, and can be poked straight through.

2. To make the dressing, whisk together the honey, vinegar and olive oil. Set aside for now. Take two large plates and begin to layer the baby spinach leaves, baked sweet potato wedges and tomato pieces until you have a good amount on each plate.

3. Crumble the feta cheese over the top and sprinkle a liberal amount of chopped almonds over the salad. Use a spoon to sparingly and evenly drizzle the dressing over the top and serve immediately

Technorati Tags: sweet potato, kumara, vegetables, salad, vegetarian, lunch, recipe, light, healthy

Forgive me – I *know* I said that japchae would be my next post but I’ve got a backlog of about 6 recipes that I need to blog otherwise they are going to sit FOREVER in draft form, never being presented to the world! Which, quite frankly, would be a damn shame, especially since they (like this dish) are so damn delightful in their own ways!

I am a SUCKER for panna cotta – if I go out for dinner and it’s on the menu, I can tell you that it is easily my dessert of choice. So when I spotted a new recipe for me to try in Alice Medrich’s Bittersweet, I decided, what the heck – let’s give it a try!

So I did…and I don’t know if it’s just me not having quite the palate for overly rich foods, but while the texture was utterly dreamy, my family found the dessert to be far far too rich for consumption and after having one very satisfying teaspoon each, I ended up rather unceremoniously dumping the rest in the bin. However, I did want to try it again, perhaps in a form that we’d find more palatable, so just had a little bit of a fiddle to come up with these coffee bean infused panna cottas which were divine! Of course, the cream still made it a bit rich, but a nice, sharp rasberry puree to accompany helped to cut out the richness so we could each manage just a few more teaspoons

This is not a dessert for everyday consumption, but if you’re looking for a rather special sweet treat to serve up at the end of a spectacular dinner party, they would probably fit the bill quite well!

Coffee Infused Panna Cotta with Sweet Raspberry Puree
(Adapted from ‘Bittersweet‘ by Alice Medrich)

Coffee Infused Panna Cotta Ingredients (makes 6 serves)
1/4 cup roasted coffee beans, broken into smaller pieces
3 1/4 cups thickened cream (use double cream if you don’t mind the heart-attack richness)
2 1/2 tbsp unflavoured gelatin
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup caster sugar
pinch of salt

1. Pour the roughly chopped coffee beans and the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil while constantly stirring. Once it reaches a boil, turn the heat off and leave to infuse for 20 minutes, giving it the occasional stir.

2. While the cream is infusing, sprinkle the gelatin over the cold milk in a small bowl and set aside for it to soften.

3. Once the cream has steeped, strain out the nibs, pressing lightly to extract all the liquid. Discard the nibs and return the cream to the saucepan and stir in the sugar. Bring the cream to a simmer.

4. Pour simmered cream into a large heatproof bowl, then slowly add the milk while constantly stirring, then add the salt. Set the bowl of cream over a bowl of ice and stir continuously till the mixture is lukewarm and has thickened.

5. Divide evenly between six 1/2-cup ramekins, cover with plastic wrap and leave in the fridge to chill for at least 3 hours.

Raspberry Puree Ingredients
2/3 cup raspberries
3-4 tbsp caster sugar
1/4 cup cold water

To make the raspberry puree:

Pour all the ingredients into a small pot and heat over a low flame till it begins to simmer. Crush the berries lightly and simmer for another 1-2 minutes or till the sugar has completely dissolved, then remove from the heat and give a good blitz in a blender (or, if you have one, with a trusty immersion/stick blender!). Run it through a strainer then leave to cool in a clean bottle till required.

Just before serving, pour a few tablespoons of this ruby red puree over the panna cotta just before serving.

Technorati Tags: panna cotta, raspberry, desserts, sweets, Alice Medrich, Bittersweet, coffee beans, recipes

Well, not in the traditional sense anyway, no creamy churned cow-juice here folks – today’s entry is dairy free! The type of butter I am in fact referring to is peach butter, a jam-like preserve made from peaches is deliciously viscous, sweet and can be enjoyed in any number of ways!

I’m not exactly an old hand when it comes to preserves, and there’s a good reason for it – unfortunately, its just not enjoyed much in our household, I’m pretty much the only person who eats jams, though my father is quite partial to the odd marmalade. My very first foray into the world of jamming was in fact only a few months ago when I made my first strawberry jam.

Well, that one batch of strawberry jam lasted me a few months, and I’ve made it twice again since then, but frankly, I was getting a bit sick of it and feeling rather desperate to try and expand my preserving repertoire. We are, after all, dead in the middle of summer now – the season of bountiful stone fruits and richly-coloured berries, all I needed was the chance to buy a kilo or two of anything to get me going. You could see how then coming across the $2.00 box of nectarines (2kg worth!) was pure fate, to me anyway. My mother raised an eyebrow as I hefted the box into our cart, but when she saw the cheek-splitting grin on my face thought better of saying anything and left me to my fruit.

Once I got my bounty home, it was straight to the internet where I found a recipe for peach butter that I thought sounded promising, so I decided to print it off and give it a try.

DID YOU KNOW:

Did you know that the nectarine is actually a variety of the peach? The fruit differs from the peach in skin texture, aroma, and flavor but closely resembles it in color and in size and shape of seed. Peach seeds occasionally give rise to trees that bear nectarines, and nectarine seeds may give rise to trees bearing either peaches or nectarines. Because it is impossible to know which type of tree will result from the planting of a nectarine seed, buds from branches on which nectarines have grown are grafted to peach trees.

- MSN Encarta

There was, however, one problem – sugar. You see, once I read through the instructions and saw that my total liquid would have reduced to half by the time I was done, 4 cups of sugar seemed like far, far too much. Its actually a bit of a problem that I have with commercial jams, the sheer sweetness often puts me right off enjoying the fruit, which is the whole reason I’m eating it in the first place!

I think this is one of the best things about home-made preserves – not only can you control the sugar content, but you’re also 100% guaranteed to be getting a jam without any sort of colourings or preservatives (though there are many that tote that they have NATURAL additives, I dare you to read Eric Schlosser ‘Fast Food Nation‘ and look the same way at your pantry again), with nothing on the label that you can’t pronounce or understand.

As for the results, I have to admit that I am absolutely smitten. In fact, I was so smitten with the results of my first batch, that the next morning I went straight back to the greengrocer to grab another box of nectarines to make more of this preserve, to be stored in little bottles to be added to our Xmas gift baskets!

I don’t know if this is a selling point for you – but the fact that my non-jam-lovin’ mother has been attacking the currently open jar and eating it by the spoonful is, I think, a fairly decent indication that this marvellous stuff is hard to resist!

Spiced Nectarine butter
(based on this recipe)

Ingredients
2kg ripe nectarines
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup water
1 stick cinnamon
2-3 cloves

1. Wash your nectarines, then halve them and remove the seeds and any dodgy bits – do NOT peel them or throw away any peel.

2. Put the peaches into a large pot with the 1/2 cup of water, cinnamon and cloves and cook over medium heat, simmering the mixture till the nectarines have almost liquefied (you should be able to pulverize them with a bit of pressure from a spoon), this will take about 15-20 minutes, depending on how ripe your fruit is.

3. Run the cooked fruit through a food mill (or a fine mesh strainer) till all you have left are the skins, which can now be discarded.

4. Return the nectarine pulp to a large pot, stir in the sugar and cook over low-medium heat till the colour has deepened, the texture has become quite thick and the amount of liquid roughly halved. This should take anywhere between 45-60 minutes, and you will need to stir it every 5-10 minutes to stop the mixture sticking to the bottom.

WARNING: As this mixture cooks down and water evaporates, it will begin to splatter quite violently. The best way to cook this is to use a wooden spoon to prop up the lid of the pot as it cooks – this way, you’re allowing steam to escape, but retaining enough heat to cook the jam down to the required consistency.

5. CAREFULLY pour into hot sterilized jars till it is filled about 1cm from the top. Place the lid on the jar, then place in simmering water for 10 minutes. Carefully remove from the water and place on a dishcloth on your counter top to cool completely.

This rich, gooey nectarine butter can be enjoyed in a variety of ways:

• Spread into little tartlette cases as jam tarts
• Swirled through a cake or muffin mix to achieve a marbled effect
• In thumbprint jam cookies
• To fill a cake…
• Whatever your imagination can come up with…!

Technorati Tags: preserves, jams, fruit, recipes, peaches, nectarines