Quick(er) Zucchini and Potato Fritters

Juggling work and the daycare drop-off is tiring, and when I get home I'm less than inspired to cook. I have tried saving myself some hassle by ordering a vegetable box online, but was really disappointed with the first one I tried. Even though it's the middle of summer, I was given loads of potatoes, onions, and carrots, and only small amounts of interesting veg. (What do you do with eight mushrooms? EIGHT!)

Amongst my kilogram of potatoes was a single zucchini. What to do, what to do... fritters! But I couldn't face cooking the potatoes, mashing them, etc etc. And I vaguely recalled totally failing to make a swiss dish involving frying raw potatoes. So I figured someone else must have gone through this before. And someone had! So here's something loosely based on their ideas -- the main thing to mimic was thoroughly squeezing the liquid out of the potato (not so much the zucchini, surprisingly) before you start.

Ingredients

• 2 medium potatoes
• 1 zucchini
• 4 spring onions
• 50-75g feta cheese
• 1-2 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp paprika
• a handful of finely-chopped herbs, especially mint and parsley
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Grate the potatoes using a tower grater. Put in a colander or sieve and squeeze the liquid out: I find using my hands is the best way to do it. Shred the zucchini in the same way. Finely dice the spring onions and crumble the feta cheese. Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Fry dollops of the mixture in olive oil, pushing down with a spatula to make them no more than 1cm thick, so the potato cooks well; fry 3-4 minutes each side, until golden and cooked through.

Spiralizer Week: Day Four: Ginger Egg Drop Soup

This was the evening of another exercise class and I knew that the very simple soup we had in mind was just not going to cut it. So I beefed it up with some extra ingredients, while keeping the rest mostly the same. I was really unsure about adding vinegar to a soup, but it worked *really* well. In fact I can't quite believe how smooth and tasty this dish was. Of course it helped that I had made a really great chicken stock with the chicken carcass I had left from jointing a chicken earlier in the week. I think that is crucial for any non-puréed soup. The photo really doesn't do this soup justice!

Ingredients

• a thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
  
• 3 tbsp dried wakame
• 4-5 spring onions, shredded
• 1/3 tsp chilli flakes
• 4 tsp sherry or apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 3 cups really good chicken stock
• 2 large eggs, gently beaten
• two chicken thighs or a chicken breast, cooked, shredded
• two grilled corn-on-the-cobs, kernels cut
• 1 zucchini, spiralized into thin noodles

Fry the ginger gently until golden and beginning to crisp, then add the wakame, spring onions, chilli flakes, vinegar, soy sauce and chicken stock. Let it come to a simmer and cook for a few minutes, then add in the eggs, stirring as they cook. Add in the shredded chicken, corn kernels, and zucchini, and bring back up to temperature. Serve!

Silken Tofu with Ginger and Spring Onions

For years I have struggled to use silken tofu correctly. I've made some good brownies, and some utterly terrible ones. I've lost the stuff in a stir fry more times than I can count. I bought a packet the other day and vowed to find a way to use it. I remembered a few months ago reading that you can tell a Japanese restaurant by their agedashi tofu, in the same way you can tell an Indian restaurant from its butter chicken. And I thought -- hmm, that's served cold, right? Maybe I can use the silken tofu. Turns out, you can, and it's fantastic. Very different from crispy fried firm tofu, but delicious in its own right. Probably not for you if you don't like jelly-like textures; it was like a thick set custard but with a grassy, light flavour. Worked really well with some tempura'd veggies and simple cucumber sushi.

Ingredients

• 3-4 spring onions
• half a thumb of fresh ginger
• light soy sauce
• one packet of silken tofu, drained

Trim, tail and finely slice the spring onions cross ways. Peel, then grate or finely chop the ginger. Fry gently with the spring onions for 3-4 minutes, until softened and golden. Slice the tofu lengthways into two large rectangular pieces. Top with the fried ginger and spring onion and drizzle with soy sauce. Serve!

Wagamama Week: Rice Noodle Soup

We used the leftover konbu and katsuobushi from making yesterday's dashi to make a second dashi stock for this recipe, which did indeed taste stronger and more interesting than the primary stock. Unfortunately, the subtle notes were buried under an avalanche of miso...

Ingredients (Quantities in brackets are my revised suggestions):

• 150g rice noodles
• 500g tofu block, cut into small steaks (400g)
• 2 tbsp miso paste (1/4 tsp -- not a typo!)
• 1/2 tsp shichimi (1 1/2 tsp)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• handful of roughly-chopped choi sum
• 2 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
• 1 litre miso soup (600 ml)
• small handful of coriander

Cook the rice noodles according to the packet instructions. Lightly blot the tofu steaks with kitchen paper. Combine the miso paste with the shichimi and spread over the tops, then fry on a hot griddle, miso-side up, for 6-8 minutes or until the tofu is hot and the base is crispy. Remove the steaks to a warm plate and fry the choi sum and spring onions on the griddle for a minute, until just wilted. Serve the noodles topped with choi sum topped with tofu, with miso soup ladled over.

Verdict:

The tofu stands up to the frying nicely, much better than yesterday's mushrooms. But:

WHOA. MISO. SO MUCH MISO. MORE MISO THAN MY TASTE BUDS HAVE ROOM FOR.

Seriously, 2 tbsp of raw miso paste on your tofu is just too rich. I think you want just enough to stick the shichimi to the tops of the tofu... which on balance I prefer fried on both sides, for maximum crispiness. It's also important to serve this right away, since the crispy base immediately starts sogging underneath the stock, of which there is a ridiculous quantity in the original recipe.

BBQ Stuffed Potato Skins

I'd been craving this for a while, for some reason. They were a meal in themselves - although we had a little side salad to offset the sheer decadence of the carb-fat-bacon-tastic skins :)

Ingredients

• six medium roasting or baking potatoes
• 4 full rashers of bacon (or 8 streaky, or 3 back)
• a small bunch of chives or two spring onions
• 100ml sour cream
• 120g cheddar or soft blue cheese

Put the potatoes in a pot just large enough to take them all, and top up with boiling water. Simmer for 15 minutes, until just soft enough to pierce with a fork. Remove and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, BBQ, grill or fry the bacon until crispy, then crumble; finely chop the chives or spring onions. Slice the potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop out the cooked flesh, putting it in a glass bowl. Leave a 2-10mm border of cooked potato in the skins, and try not to tear them.

Mash the potatoes and sour cream together in the bowl; stir in the chives/onions and crumbled bacon. Spoon back into the skins, packing the mixture in well. Top with a little grated cheddar or a knob of soft blue cheese. Brush a hot BBQ plate with olive oil and pop the potatoes on for 5-10 minutes, until the cheese has melted and the skins are crispy. (Alternatively, put in a hot oiled roasting tin and roast for 10-15 minutes.)

Lazy Stuffed Peppers with Gorgonzola

Peppers are coming into season as the weather properly warms up, so I started looking around for recipes to use up the inevitable giant cheap bags at the market. I found this rather fiddly recipe that had an interesting flavour combination I hadn't tried before. I knew I couldn't be bothered with all that string nonsense, and doubly so when we found a big $1 bag of sweet pointed peppers just beginning to wrinkle into overripe territory. So we skipped all that stuffing malarky, and just bbq'd the peppers into tender, charred strips, made the stuffing separately and laid it over the top. Lovely!

Ingredients:

• 6 pointed or 4 bell peppers
• 50g pine nuts
• 2 garlic cloves
• 140g long grain rice
• 350g vegetable stock
• 4 spring onions
• 2 tomatoes
• handful each of parsley and basil
• 150g gorgonzola

Slice the peppers lengthwise and remove all the pith and seeds, but leave the stems on. If you are using large round bell peppers, slice them into thirds so that each piece can lie flat on the bbq. BBQ or grill for 5-20 minutes, skin-side-down, until the flesh is sweet and the edges are charred (the cooking time will depend strongly on the thickness and ripeness of the peppers, and the heat of your grill or bbq).

Meanwhile, dry-fry the pine nuts until golden, then set aside. Heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and crush in the garlic, then tip in the rice thirty seconds after it starts to sizzle. Stir, fry for a further thirty seconds, then pour in the stock; cover and simmer until the rice is cooked. Finely dice the spring onions and herbs, and dice the tomatoes, then stir into the rice, replacing the lid to let everything wilt a little, and the flavours mingle.

When the peppers are done, place them on a serving plate, skin-side-down. Dice the Gorgonzola and stir it, and two-thirds of the pine nuts, through the rice, but don't completely combine the cheese; allow little pockets to remain. Tip the stuffing onto the peppers and scatter with the remaining pine nuts, and a few torn leaves of basil.

Okonomiyaki (Japanese Savoury Pancake)

Another inspiration from my amazing Flavour Thesaurus, with guidance from one of my favourite food blogs and a helpful Japanese cooking info page. This time I was reading the underwhelming-sounding 'cabbage and egg' section. Turns out the Japanese have a long tradition of making these gorgeous savoury pancakes with a range of different ingredients, but almost-always including shredded cabbage as the base. And since cabbage was on my list of 'cheap veg at the market this week', I have a whole head to use up. I made up the money saved buying the cabbage by buying beautiful katsuobushi, the dried bonito flakes that 'dance' in the convection currents generated by the hot pancake. I also made my own okonomiyaki sauce, which meant I had to buy ketchup for the first time in my life. Oh well - maybe when winter rolls around I'll deep-fry some potato chips. Or, more likely, I'll just make these again, because they were AMAZING! Even easier to flip than Korean pancakes, less fiddly than fried veggie fritters, and absolutely divine in flavour. I think it's worth putting in the extra effort to make the sauce, and track down the katsuobushi and wakame (dried seaweed).

Ingredients

What is so exciting about this seaweed??

For the pancake: 

• 1/4 white/green cabbage
• 1 carrot
• 2 spring onions
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup room-temperature dashi stock (substitute seafood stock, or vegetable stock, or even water)
• 1 cup plain flour

For the toppings:

• 2tbsp ketchup (tomato sauce)
• 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• 50g katsuobushi (fine bonito flakes)
• a small handful of wakame (dried seaweed)

Japanese pancake on the barbie.
Now that's what I call fusion food :)

Shred the cabbage, grate the carrot and finely slice the spring onions. Combine with the egg, stock and flour in a large mixing bowl. Get a bbq hot plate nice and hot and brush generously with oil. When you can see it start to shimmer, plop the mixture onto the hotplate and push down and smooth out to make a pancake or two (how many depends on your confidence in your ability to flip them!). Close the lid and bbq for 5-10 minutes, until crisp and golden on the bottom, and cooked through enough not to fall apart when you lift the edges with a spatula. Flip onto the other side and cook for a further 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl, to make the okonomiyaki sauce. Put the mayonnaise in a small plastic bag with the corner cut off, or piping bag, if it's not in a squeezy bottle already. When the pancake is nearly done, turn off the heat and brush the top surface with the okonomiyaki sauce. Pipe on the mayonnaise in long lines, or whatever pattern you like. Tip on the katsuobushi and scatter with a handful of wakame. Serve hot off the grill, with the bonito flakes dancing to their tasty song :)

Prawn and Sweet Potato Fritters ('Ukoy')

We had a sad sweet potato hanging around in the cupboard that I wanted to use up. This recipe turned out to be a stunningly inefficient way to do that, but made totally delicious and great finger food. You could eat them as a starters, but we just made 25 or so and chowed down while watching a movie :)

Ingredient:

• 250ml boiling water
• 250g raw small prawns
• 150g plain flour
• 80g ground rice
• 30g cornflour
• 2 eggs
• black pepper
• 125g peeled and grated sweet potato
• 115g bean sprouts
• 4 spring onions, finely sliced
• 1 small garlic clove
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp mild vinegar

Cook the prawns in the boiling water (in a saucepan, presumably) for 3-4 minutes, until pink and just cooked. Drain, reserving the prawn stock and leaving both prawns and stock to cool for ten minutes or so. Pluck the heads off, and if the shells are tough (i.e. if you couldn't find really small prawns), shell them completely.

Put the flours and ground rice into a bowl and whisk in the eggs and the cooled prawn liquid; season well with black pepper and salt. Add the grated sweet potato, bean sprouts and spring onions, and fold gently to combine. Drop 1 to 1 1/2 tbsp of batter into a frying pan of hot oil, and top with 2-3 prawns, pushing into the batter and then flattening with a spatula. Fry gently so the sweet potato has time to cook through, about 2-3 minutes each side. Stack on a plate with kitchen paper.

Crush the garlic and combine with the salt and vinegar to form a dipping sauce. The fritters also work well with sweet chilli sauce.

Sweetcorn Patties

Was tempted this morning to pop into the butchers' on the way home, and lazily meat my way out of my inventiveness failure. But NO! Instead I remembered that I'd been meaning to make sweetcorn patties for ages, but hadn't because sweetcotn were so perfect on the barbeque during the summer. Miraculously they're still cheap in the store so we picked up a couple at the weekend, along with a massive bag of cheap and wonderful avocados - perfect for salsa. With the remaining sweet potato and a couple of store-cupboard tricks, I had a whole meal ready to eat in half an hour, which was good as I stayed late finishing my talk for the conference in India next week.

Ingredients:

• kernels cut from two large sweetcorn-on-the-cob
• one large egg
• 5 tbsp plain flour (chickpea would probably be quite tasty too)
• three spring onions, roughly cut into pieces

Put half the kernels, the egg, plain flour, and spring onions in a blender, season well with salt and black pepper, and whiz into a chunky paste. Stir with the remaining kernels. Heat a little vegetable oil over a low heat in a non-stick pan. Using two spoons, drop 2-tbsp-size portions into the pan, and flatten with the back of the spoons into a patty shape. Fry gently, about 4 minutes per side, until golden and cooked through.

Miso Soup with Shimeji Mushrooms

A slightly bulked-up variant on my previous miso soup, as I had a very long day running around getting my Indian visa sorted, suffered a flat tire on my bicycle, and had to catch up on nearly a week's worth of email. Helpful husband locked himself out of the house so I needed to put together something fairly quickly. I attempted to follow a recipe, but substituted every single ingredient. Heh.

Ingredients:

• a small handful of dried shitake mushrooms
• 3 tbsp sesame seeds
• sesame oil
• a sweet potato, daikon, carrot, or parsnip
• 1 tsp dashi or seafood stock powder
• 3 tbsp of miso paste
• a couple of pak choi or bok choi, or other leafy Chinese vegetables
• a block of shimeji or a couple of handfuls of oyster mushrooms
• two spring onions
• finely shredded nori (seaweed)

Pour enough boiling water over the shitake mushrooms to cover, and leave for at least ten minutes to fully rehydrate. Dry-fry the sesame seeds until golden, then set aside for later. Peel and cut the sweet potato (or other root vegetable) in half lengthwise, then into fat half-moons (about the only thing I kept from the original recipe). Prepare a wok with a tsp of sesame oil and a tsp of vegetable oil, and a large stock pot or sauce pan with the stock powder in the bottom. Fry the sweet potato in the wok for a few minutes, turning irregularly, so it begins to caramelise. When the half-moons have taken on a golden colour around the edges, tip them into the stock pot, and cover with boiling water. Add the miso paste, shitake mushrooms, and their soaking water (although be careful not to add any grit). Simmer for five minutes - stop as soon as the sweet potatoes begin to yield to a fork.

Meanwhile, separate the leaves from the pak choi, and cut the stalks into diagonal pieces. Stir fry for a couple of minutes, then add to the soup in the stock pot. Separate the shimeji mushrooms with your hands. Turn the wok up to a high heat, then fry the mushrooms for a minute on each side, then add them to the soup. Slice the spring onions lengthwise and roughly chop with the pak choi greens, then add them to the soup. Simmer for a minute or so to bring the soup up to temperature, finish cooking the sweet potato, and wilt the greens, then turn off the heat. Taste and add more miso or a splash of soy sauce if necessary. Serve with the sesame seeds and shredded seaweed scattered over.

Miso Soup

I've been in Seattle for the last week and am absolutely knackered, jet-lagged, and confused. And did I mention tired? I probably did.

Luckily my super husband knows that after a long day's travel -- or two, I think, at least it was Friday at one point, if only for a few minutes -- all I want is something calming, nourishing and above all rehydrating. Enter the Japanese staple, fortified with a handful of udon noodles, a stir-fried pak choi and spring onion, and a handful of coriander leaves.

Now all I need to do is stay awake until 8pm and I'll be... *snore*...

Pad Thai

Tuesdays I have an evening telecon, so the lovely husband takes over the reins in the kitchen. I find the best results are achieved by giving him a detailed recipe, and placing all of the ingredients out where he can find them. And giving him about twice as long as I would need ;) Tonight he absolutely excelled with this recipe, again from taste.com.au. Although we halved the proteins, this was still a generous quantity of food, and I took some to lunch the next day. So cut down on the noodles if you're not super-hungry.

Ingredients:

• 250g packet flat rice noodles
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 250g prawns, peeled, deveined
• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
• 1/2 inch of small red chilli (or more, to taste), deseeded, finely chopped
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped, optional
• small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• lime wedges, to serve

Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl and cover with hot water. Stand until nearly tender - you still want a little bite to them, so that they stand up under stir-frying. Drain and rinse under cold water.Combine lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar in a jug. Heat a wok over high heat, with a little oil. Add the chicken.and stir-fry for 2 minutes until golden. Add the prawns, onions and chilli, and stir-fry for a further 2 to 3 minutes or until the prawns turn pink. Add the part-cooked noodles and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the lemon juice mixture to wok and toss to combine. Pour the beaten eggs over the noodles and stir into the noodles as they cook. Turn off the heat, add the bean sprouts and half the coriander, and toss well to combine everything together. Serve on plates topped with the remaining coriander leaves, peanuts, and lime wedges.

Aubergine and Peanut Stir-Fry

Another one of those recipes brought on by an excessive craving for certain flavours. This time: meltingly soft aubergines, crunchy peanuts, and a big pile of egg noodles - that last probably brought on by the quick cycle ride and run I went for, after work. The meal was roughly inspired by this recipe, but I made a few substitutions and didn't even try griddling the baby aubergines - it takes AGES compared to popping them in the oven and going out. Oh, and this is way better than it looks - sorry the photo isn't super-inspiring, but the ready-prepared tofu just isn't that attractive. Tasty, though.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 baby aubergines, or one large aubergine
• 1/2 tsp Chinese 5-spice or ground coriander
• vegetable oil
• half a head of Chinese cabbage
• three spring onions
• thin egg noodles (we used three bundles, two is enough if you're not super-hungry)
• 3 tbsp peanut butter
• juice of one orange
• juice of one lime
• 3 tbsp cooking rice wine or sake
• soy sauce
• 200g prepared flavoured tofu (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Chop the aubergine(s) into bite-size pieces. Put in a baking dish and toss with the ground spice and enough oil to lightly coat - about 2 tbsp. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown and tender.

Slice the cabbage diagonally, and finely chop the spring onions. Soak the egg noodles in boiling water straight from the kettle, then drain. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl, adding enough soy sauce for your preferred degree of saltiness. Stir-fry the cabbage and spring onions for two minutes, then add the cooked aubergine, tofu, and noodles. Pour the sauce over the noodles- adding the sauce on top of the noodles ensures they will all be coated, and some sauce will sink down to the bottom and go on the vegetables. Turn off the heat, mix together as best you can, and serve.

Pan-Fried Tofu

I really like tofu - it's best deep-fried at Japanese restaurants (mmmm, with salt and pepper) - but at home you can make a decent version with a shallow pan, a sharp-edged spatula, and some care. It's nice to marinade it beforehand but it's not absolutely essential. Tonight as a base, I quickly fry up some sesame seeds, thinly-sliced cauliflower and broccoli, and toss in some soaked rice noodles with some soy sauce. Nothing too complicated, so that the sweet and subtle tones of the tofu can come through.

Ingredients:

• 350g firm or extra-firm silken tofu block
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tbsp rice wine or mirin
• 2 spring onions, very finely chopped
• 1 tsp sugar

Slice the tofu block in half along its longest axis, then again crossways twice so you have eight large-ish flat pieces. Combine the other ingredients in a bowl and whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Put the tofu in a small flat dish and cover with the marinade, then leave for 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how much time you have. Prepare anything else you want for the meal in the meantime - e.g. cook rice, slice vegetables.

When you're ready, heat a few tbsp of vegetable or sunflower oil in a heavy-based frying pan - non-stick if you have a very good plastic or wooden spatula, or metal-based if you have only a very sharp metal spatula. Once the oil is hot, gently shake or push off any marinade clinging to the tofu blocks, and add the tofu to the pan, in a single layer. Fry for 4-5 minutes on the top and bottom until golden brown. I emphasise using a good spatula because you want to make sure when you turn it that the fried skin does not separate from the milky body. When the tofu slices are done, remove them to a plate. Reduce the heat and pour the marinade ingredients into the pan. Cook for 3-4 minutes until reduced, and the spring onions soften. Serve the tofu atop your chosen accompaniments, with the thickened marinade poured over.

Hameul Pajeon

Ahh, the Korean seafood pancake! From the first time I had it in our local Korean restaurant, I was hooked. The simplest form is makde with flour, water, a little egg and shredded spring onions. It's so easy that I've even made it on a yacht at 45 degrees heel - admittedly, the cooker was on gimbals. My only difficulty is making it thin enough; over the years I have added more and more batter until it has come out quite thick and glutinous. Recently I went back to Little Seoul and ordered it again, and realised that while it is a thicker pancake than a crepe, it is still thin enough to cook through when crisped up on both sides. Therefore I suggest using a pancake pan rather than a frying pan, and only add enough extra ingredients as your batter can take. The recipe below serves four people as a side dish or starter.

Ingredients:
For the pancake:

• 1 egg
• 1 cup plain all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cold water
• 5 medium spring onions
• 1/2 cup of cooked brown shrimp or other small seafood, drained of any excess water

For the dipping sauce:

• 1/4 cup of medium soy sauce (or diluted down dark soy sauce)
• 1/2 clove garlic, finely minced
• 1/2 spring onion, finely minced
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes (optional)

Combine the dipping sauce ingredients, whisking gently so the oil is mixed through. Leave to the side while you prepare the pancakes so that the flavours can mellow together.

Break the egg into a bowl and whisk until the yolk and white are combined. Add in half the flour and a quarter of the water and whisk until smooth. Add the rest of the flour and water and combine into a fairly smooth batter, but don't over-beat or the gluten will become tough. Clean, top and tail, slice along the length of the spring onions, and roughly shred, separating the layers. Stir into the batter.

Heat a few tbsp of vegetable oil in a pancake pan until shimmering. Pour in the batter and spread out to the edges with a spatula. Add the shrimp and push them into the batter with the spatula. Cook for about five minutes on a moderate heat, until the bottom is golden brown. Either flip carefully with a large slice-spatula, or slide onto a plate and quickly overturn back into the pan. Cook for a further 3-4 minutes until the other side is done. Rest for a minute or two before slicing into strips or triangles and serve with the dipping sauce.