Yellow Curry Chicken

I recently added a small chilli garden out the front of the house. One of the small plants I bought was loaded up with yellow chillies, so I decided to relieve the plant of its chillies and make a yellow curry chicken.

Starting with the dry spice mix - the usual suspects including cumin and coriander seeds.

When making the curry paste I find that its best to begin breaking down the ingredients in the mortar and pestle. I don't have the stamina or patience to grind the ingredients to a paste, but on the other hand putting ingredients straight into a food processor doesn't seem to do the job. The ingredients are chopped rather than crushed. Anything fibrous - particularly the lemongrass - stays fibrous with that approach.

So... with each ingredient I chop it up, give it a good whack...

...then it all goes in the food processor...

Lemongrass, fresh turmeric, shallots, garlic etc.

There was quite a bit of paste in the end. Enough for a couple of meals, though I couldn't resist using the whole lot in one curry for the extra flavour. There wasn't a lot of heat in the chillies (which I de-seeded) - so it was family friendly.

Fry off the paste, then add coconut milk and a few kaffir lime leaves for added flavour. Cook the paste in the coconut milk for a little while.

Add chicken legs and slow cook so they become tender. Cooking on the bone adds extra flavour to the meat as well.

I added carrot first as it takes a little while to cook through.

Then finally snow peas. These don't take long to cook. I prefer if they're slightly undercooked so you still get a little bit of crunch.

Season the curry with the usual sweet / sour / salt. In this case palm sugar / lime juice / fish sauce. Get some jasmine rice ready in advance and dinner is served.

Beef Lo Mein

Chow Mein vs. Lo Mein.
With Chow Mein - the noodles are fried. They are sometimes fried into a base, almost like a plate, with stir-fried meat and veges placed over the top.
For Lo Mein - the noodles are boiled and stirred through the stir-fried meat and veges. Lo Mein usually relies on sauces more to bring the dish together. (seeing I love the Chinese sauces I'm more a fan of lo mein)

For this dish I used the pasta machine to make fresh egg noodles. I added sesame oil to the dough in keeping with the Asian flavours, and used more egg yolks rather than whole eggs in the dough. My youngest daughter taught me a new technique for separating the yolk from the white...

Like a Boss!!

Then we get the pasta going. The machine mixes the dough in one direction firstly.

Then swaps direction to get the dough through the extruder.

 Once the noodles are ready - boil and strain.

I used beef mince for this one, as well as carrot, capsicum, onion, and snow peas.

Start with garlic and ginger, cook up the onions, add the mince and fry off, and add beef stock and the rest of the veges.

Once the veges are ready, add in the noodles, season with Chinese flavours, and thicken.

And voila! - Beef Lo Mein.

Baked Dough

An interesting one. I've been using my newly acquired pasta machine of late rather than the hand roller. A side effect of my pasta machine experiments has been the left-over pasta, which my youngest daughter has claimed for her own pasta experiments.

After squishing and re-rolling the pasta she's been rolling it into three long thick pieces, then platting and joining it into a circle. She decided to egg wash the dough and bake it in the oven.

Surprisingly (to me at least) it seems to work. It comes out looking very 'decorative'??? Maybe a mega-size pretzel without the salt? What I found surprising however was how edible it is. Not sweet, not quite savoury, but moreish nonetheless. It didn't have fluffiness or any air pockets as it doesn't use any raising agents. It did break apart without any problem and was easy to eat.

Thumbs up for baked dough!

Garlic Clams and Mussels with Somen Noodles

From Spice by Christine Manfield page 143

I made a couple of modifications with this recipe. Firstly I couldn't get any clams so it was mussels all the way. Secondly I used store bought fish stock (sellout...).

I haven't cooked with somen noodles for ages. The Italian equivalent would be the 'angel hair' pasta, because they are so thin and delicate. It only takes two minutes to cook, and once cooked the texture if very silkien.

I also haven't cooked mussels in a while.

The recipe is one of the simpler recipes in the book, which was good seeing I didn't have a lot of time. A little bit of chopping and prepping and we were ready to cook.

I cooked the mussels first. And with well developed asbestos fingers, I was able to sort the meat from the shell.

When I tested the flavour I found it quite salty, which I discovered was due to my store bought fish stock. Thankfully with a little palm sugar and half a lime the balance was brought back.

There was some protest in the house about eating seafood noodles with mussels for dinner, but that stance was reversed once the diners tasted it. The flavours were great. Add an oversized bowl for dramatic effect, and...

Then of course being me I add chilli.

Happy cooking!

Kiddie Adventures in Chocolate

I have a tradition on Sunday mornings of toasting croissants and providing sweet and savoury options for the girls, in the form of ham and cheese, or chocolate ganache.

There's always a bit of the ganache left over, which I put in a container and pop in the fridge, so we can use it next week.

Yeah right...

Invariably the container is discovered by my budding young chefs and they make their own chocolate creations. Of late it has involved fruit. Healthy options!!

Introducing Kiddie Adventures in Chocolate

I have to admit - I had some too. It really was...

mmm. delicious.