Sweet Potato and Basil Curry

The lazy gets lazier! Here is another lazy cook's dish with the standards and taste at a guaranteed excellence! lol Thanks again to the stockpile of sweet potato earlier from the week, this is yet another example of innovation with whatever that is available. Hahaha Alright, done with the self-praising, let's get into making the dish.

Ingredients to start off with: heaps of sweet potatoes (cut into medium-large chunks), tandoori curry paste (or any curry paste that you like, and can be purchased from the Asian stores, feel free to pull together your own mix of herbs to make the curry, it is something I often do myself), 1 large Spanish red onion (finely chopped), 1 can tomato puree, about 400g (again you can dice your own tomatoes, but I am trying to make things easier for lazy cooks), 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped), 1/2 cup milk (can use coconut milk or yogurt, anything goes). 2 tbsp vegetable oil, 3 stems of basil leafs (take the leafs only, coarsely chopped), salt and pepper to taste.

Method: Start of by heating oil in a wok or pot, add in the chopped garlic and onions and stir fry until fragrant, add some sugar and salt to brown the onions. Add the curry paste and tomato puree, mix well and bring to boil. Stir in the milk, bring to boil again before adding the sweet potato chunks. Add water to cover the sweet potatoes, turn to medium-high heat and braise with closed lid for 10-20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are soft enough (to own preference). Remove lid, season to preferred taste, turn off heat, stir in basil leafs, leave to sit for a couple of minutes prior to serving. There's saying that curries taste better after sitting overnights, the same applies here if you plan to keep the dish for another day.

Serve with rice, noodle or pasta, just beware of the carbohydrate intake! lol

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

We had a stockpile of sweet potato earlier this week and I thought it was too common to just roast the sweet potato and eat it as it is (though it is delicious). Hence I figured this salad to put the dish into our dinner's menu.

Ingredients
Heaps of sweet potato (cleaned and coarsely chopped into medium-large chunks)
2 stems of fresh celery (finely chopped)
5 tbsp of golden syrup
4 tbsp mayonnaise
dash of hot paprika or chili powder
shredded mozzarella cheese (as much as you like!)
salt and pepper to taste
lemon juice

Method
1. Roast the sweet potato in a preheated oven for at least 45 minutes at 240 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, prepare the celery and rinse in cold water until use. After the first round of roasting, remove sweet potato from oven, leave to rest for a while, add the golden syrup and mix well using spoons. Roast for another 10-15 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are really soft. The golden syrup should give the sweet potatoes a light coat of crust.

2. Upon removal from oven, mix all the ingredients together and the dish is ready to serve. This is important as the cheese needs the heat from the sweet potato to be melted.

Tags: Sweet potato, Salad, Mozzarella Cheese, Roast

Pumpkin and Cumin Seeds Stew

This is a dish that I should have published by the end of last month, but as usual, laziness is king...lol At times, laziness takes over in cooking as well, so basically you can label this dish a 'lazy' dish as well. Simple steps with simple ingredients, at least from my point of view XD.

Ingredients
1/4 of Pumpkin, coarsely chopped into chunks
250g minced pork (other mince is fine as well)
about 5 stems of garlic sprouts (cut to desired lengths)
4 cloves garlic(finely chopped)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
about 4 tbsp of cumin seeds

Seasoning
light soy sauce
Thai sweet chili sauce
chili or paprika powder
salt and pepper to taste
oyster sauce
Brown sugar

Method
1. Heat oil in a wok or pot, stir fry the chopped garlic until fragrant, stir in 2tbsp of cumin seeds and 2 tbsp chili powder, sautee until the cumin seed's flavour is released, add minced pork at this point, followed by light soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste, continue to stir fry until the minced pork turns brown.

2. Stir in the pumpkin chunks, mix well, add water to cover the pumpkin, close with lid and bring to boil. Remove lid upon boiling, mix well and check if the pumpkin chunks have to started to soften, add 2 tbsp of oyster sauce, 1tbsp of sugar and another round of light soy sauce, salt and pepper to taste. Close lid, turn to medium heat and braise for about 10-15 minutes.

3. Remove lid, pumpkin should be soft by now, otherwise continue to braise. Turn to high heat, add chopped garlic sprouts and stir fry for another 3-5 minutes. Done.

4. Turn off heat, stir in 2-3tbsp That sweet chili sauce, toast the remaining cumin seeds prior to sprinkling on top of dish. Serve hot or warm.

Tags: Pumpkin, Cumin seeds, stew, pork, garlic sprouts

Crunchy Lettuce Seaweed Salad

A few days back I was trying to make something new out of one the most common vegetables available, the easiest way is obviously to stir-fry the Chinese way, but I think you'll just get sick of it when you have too much of it, or too much of anything for that matter. Anyway, this was what I came out with, an experiment with some corriander powder I found from the storage cabinet and sort of fusion of East and West, as always. lol

Ingredients:
1 whole iceberg lettuce (rinsed and cleaned thoroughly, roughly chop and leave aside to dry)
25g of finely sliced seaweed (rinse and clean thoroughly leave aside to dry)
3 tbsp white sesame (lightly toasted and set aside)
4 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
3 tbsp cooking oil
3 tbsp corriander powder
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp dark vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
1. Heat oil in a wok, add in chopped garlic and stir fry till fragrant, stir in the sliced seaweed at this point, stir-fry for another 3 minutes.
2. Add all the seasoning, give the ingredients a good mix, add some water to dilute the gravy (around 1/2 to 1 cup of water), bring to boil and turn to lowest heat.
3. Stir in the chopped lettuce and mix the ingredients, adding water bit by bit if it turns out too dry. Turn off heat, stir in the toasted sesame as well, done, serve warm or cold.

Whacky Pumpkin Curry Pasta

Yesterday's nice-sunny Sunday was spent with Connie as she wanted to learn something to make for her other friends on the coming week. That said, the whole cooking experience began from buying the ingredients itself. We had to walk our way up to Randwick to get the ingredients, though I think that with the final product, the ingredients could have all been bought around Kingsford area. Anyway, not that I'm complaining as Connie's a good company. By the time we got back to her place, it was already 2pm, far behind schedule as we spent too much time hovering around, hence we had to pull a quickie before it gets too late and the meal end up as a dinner instead. So quickly, we manage to pull the dish off in 45, faster than I thought as I was expecting no less than an hour, but the outcome was pretty good as well...

This time around I decided to throw a bit of West into a wholesome of East, i.e. the pasta base with the Thai curry, which was really aromatic, I should have remembered the brand though, so that everyone else can get their hands on it. Anyway here are the ingredients:

300-500g pasta (any type will do, boil in water until desired softness)
1 large red Spanish onion (finely chopped)
3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
50g shitake mushroom (chopped, rinsed, seasoned with sugar, salt and dry Basil)
about 300-500g pumpkin (any type will do, you can use butternut as well, coarsely chopped)
2tbsp Thai red hot curry paste (or more for those spice fans, you can use panang curry or yellow curry as well)
about 300g small washed potatoes
200g of tuna flakes
100g of diced tomatoes (just use the canned ones for those who are lazy, they come with the tomato sauce as well)
5tbsp vegetable oil
about 1 cup of milk (you can use coconut milk as well)
grated Parmasen cheese for finishing
salt and pepper to taste
half a bunch of Australian corriander (or use any herb that you like, basil and curry leafs are good options as well)

The methodology is simple, it's like making a curry dish, but add in more of the tomato to make it more subtle. Start of by poaching the chopped pumpkin and potatoes in salted water until the pumpkin are soft and tender, the potatoes will be further cooked in the curry later, so don't worry about them.
Meanwhile, dry-fry (or called toast) the chopped onions and shitake mushroom on a medium-high heat, add in sugar and salt when the ingredients start to dry, followed by vegetable oil and turning to high heat, saute for about 5 minutes or until the onions start to brown. Add in the garlic, saute until fragrant and add in curry paste, followed by diced tomato and half a cup of milk, mix well and simmer until it boils.

Add in the half-poached potatoes and the remaining milk upon boiling, leave to simmer. Meanwhile, mash the poached pumpkin evenly add some salt and pepper to taste. Done with that, add in the tuna flakes into the sauce and mix well, add seasoning to taste and bring to boil again on medium-low heat, add in the mashed pumpkin at last (so that much of the sweetness is retained), turn to low-heat and mix well. Done, serve with pasta, coarsely chopped herbs and finish off with grated Parmesan cheese.

Last note, feel free to add more water to make the sauce more diluted than the dry-pasty version that I like, and you could also substitute the tuna flakes with any other meat, preferably of stronger aroma, like minced beef or pork, or even herb-seasoned sausages, but make sure to pre-roast them to intensify the flavours.

StirFry T- Chicken

Again, this is another back-tracked dish from last week in which I helped to figure out how to cook some 8 drumsticks, it was not very easy as I was quite sick at that moment, and others are falling sick too, thanks to the awkwardly cold weather this year! Anyway, looking at what was available in the kitchen at that point, and what myself and others can actually take (we didn't want something to heaty, as everyone was not in their best conditions), I decided to give the usually tea-curium chicken a big twist. Maybe I should make the tea-curium chicken some time in the future... Haha
Anyway, this dish is not a hard dish at all, and for those who are looking at the pictures and wondering do we (or can we) actually eat the tea leafs, the answer is yes, they are by nature, leafs, and we eat vegetable leafs don't we? Not compulsory though, if you feel that you cannot get over the idea of eating tea leafs, fine, get rid of them. lol The ingredients are as following:

about 25g tea leafs (you can use any type of tea leafs you want, preferably the ones that have a sweet flavour if you are going to eat them), I used Tieh Guan Yin (literal translation would be steel Bodhisattva? lol)
1 brown onion (finely chopped)
1 tbsp soy paste (you can use SaCha or sandy tea paste? haha)
3 tbsp oil
5 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
Salt and Pepper to taste

Marinade
light soy sauce
dark soy sauce
sesame oil
black pepper
sugar
oyster sauce
some corn starch
*Note that I did not include the proportion of each, I just got fed up with measuring everything I guess, it's really just as much as you want to use, but try things at your own risk! lol

Just for start, lightly dry-fry the chopped brown onions, add sugar and salt and continue to fry until they are dry enough before adding pre-soaked tea leafs, continue the process until the tea leafs are fairly dry as well, add in oil at this point, followed by chopped garlic, stir fry until the tea fragrance is released.

Add in the marinated drumsticks at this point, followed by soy paste, mix the ingredients well, add water to cover all the ingredients, cover with wok lid and bring to boil before turning to medium heat to braise with covered lid for about 10-15 minutes. Remember to open the lid once a while to allow the ingredients some breath and stir about the un-cooked bits.

At the end of the braising, the chicken meat should fall loose from the bones easily, otherwise, consider to continue braising so that the drumsticks are cooked thoroughly, add water occasionally if the gravy starts to dry up, add seasoning to taste prior to serving. Done. Serve hot or warm.

Chicky Belacan Chicky

I thought it was really about time that I post this dish up before I forget how to cook it, so here you are, a dish that I made...about a week ago or maybe even more! Haha It is not very often that my housemates agree to spend a bit of fortune on extra sauces and ingredients for cooking, and it was during this rare opportunity that I managed to chuck a packet of Belacan (Made in Malaysia!) into the shopping basket, all thanks to Randwick Oriental's special discounts! Those who are wondering what discount is that can message me and I'd be glad to tell you how to get those discounts...

Anyway, with the cheaky (chicky) title and the short story introduction, I believe everyone should know that there is no big secret to this dish, basically Belacan (or dried shrimp paste) is the main ingredient, and our beloved Penang back in Malaysia is one the places that comes out with loads of this kind of product. There are two types of shrimp paste in the market (at least the ones from Malaysia that I know), one is in a dry form while the other is literally in paste (liquid) form, both of which are dark brown or black in colour and have a very intense (some say smelly) aroma when sniffed, and even stronger when being cooked!


Ingredients:
500g chicken breast (sliced to fillet size, can have more if desired)
5tbsp water diluted Belacan (about 1/8 of a packed dried Belacan, dilute with warm water bit by bit)
1 carrot (thinly sliced)
1 brown onion (finely chopped, feel free to use red ones also)
4 tbsp vegetable oil
4 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
3 slices ginger (about 1cm, finely chopped)
3pc dried chilie (soaked in water and finely chopped)
corn starch, salt and pepper, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar.


Method:
1. Marinate the chicken breast fillets with a dash of salt, pepper, light and dark soy sauce, corn starch, dark soy sauce, Chinese shaoxing cooking wine, and lastly sesame oil (do not add too much cooking wine and sesame oil otherwise the taste will contradict the belacan flavours). Leave to rest for about 15 minutes.
2. Brown the chopped onions using a dry-clean frying pan (add in a dash of salt and sugar, fry lightly before adding oil to further saute). Bring the oil to its peak heat, add in dried chili, chopped ginger and garlic, lightly fry for a minute or two until fragrant, add in sliced chicken breast fillets.
3. Stir fry for about 3-5 minutes, while the fillets still present slight pink-ish, add in diluted belacan at this point, continue to stir fry for until all fillets are thoroughly cooked (adding water ocassionally when almost drying up). Bring stir fry ingredients to a boil, add additional sugar, salt and pepper to taste if necessary. Done. Serve hot with heaps of rice.