Pan-fried Tofu

While away in Margaret River, we went out to a nice restaurant I'd visited before. After a day tasting wine and nibbles and a fairly hefty brunch, I wanted something simple and vegetarian, so ordered the 'corn-crusted tofu with noodle salad'. To my surprise, when it arrived, they had 'run out of corn-crusted tofu', so replaced it with a blob of silken tofu! Of course, you can't just eat silken tofu on top of a salad; it's an ingredient for say, vegan brownies or Chinese soup. Baffling to have it trickling down the side of my cold noodle salad... for maybe the second time in my life, I sent the meal back and asked for a speedy replacement (fish of the day, excellent).

So when I got back home, I still had a craving for properly-cooked tofu, so picked up a lovely firm block from my local Chinese greengrocers', along with a big bundle of cheerful, flowering greens. I cut the tofu into half-inch thick triangles and dipped them into a mix of half-flour, half Chinese spice and a generous grating of black pepper and salt. Pan-fried over a moderate heat until golden and crisp, but still moist and wobbly in the middle, hen served atop the greens and rice, it was exactly what I wanted. Yum!

Fried Spicy Fish

Lazy meal for one tonight: a lovely fillet of bronzy shark from the fishmonger's, dipped in a mix of crushed dried chillis, coriander, turmeric and salt, then fried for a minute or two either side, and served on a bed of stir-fried Chinese greens. Minutes to make, heaven to eat. (Days of guilt over eating shark . :-/ )

Oyster Mushrooms and Chinese Greens in Peanut Sauce

There were big boxes of Chinese greens at the grocers' market at the weekend, and because it's spring, some still had beautiful little yellow flowers on them. I couldn't resist, and bought a tray of oyster mushrooms to go with, since I'd enjoyed the ones I ate at Greenhouse so much. Most stir-fry recipes just tell you to throw them in with everything else, but I can't argue against this strongly enough. The best way to cook them is to lay them all out in a large flat pan with a drizzle of oil, and fry until golden, then flip and repeat - it only takes a couple of minutes and you simply have to be strong and leave them alone. The rest of the veg can be stir-fried normally and then you can put it all together at the end. The result has far better flavour than stir-frying everything together.

Ingredients:

• a large bunch of Chinese greens (we used flowering choy sum)
• a carrot
• 3 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
• knife-point of cayenne or chilli powder
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tsp lemon or lime juice
• 1 clove garlic
• 5 tbsp boiling water
• 300g oyster mushrooms

Cut the choy sum bunches widthways in half to separate the thick stalks from the thin stalks with leaves. Slice the thick stalks diagonally into bite-sized pieces, and roughly chop the leafy ends. Reserve any flowers. Peel and mandolin or julienne the carrot. Combine the peanut butter, five-spice, cayenne, sugar, soy sauce, mirin and lemon juice in a small bowl.

Heat a wok and a large flat frying pan, each with a little vegetable oil, until shimmering. Place the oyster mushrooms in the frying pan in a single layer, and fry until golden - about two minutes - then turn and caramelise on the other side. Meanwhile, stir-fry the carrot in the wok for a minute, then add the choy sum stalks and crush in the garlic and fry for a further two minutes. Add the leaves of the choy sum and the bowl of sauce and stir until the leaves have wilted. Top up with boiling water if the sauce looks dry. Serve over rice, with the oyster mushrooms and flowers placed on top, and the sauce drizzled over.

Hot and Sour Chicken Broth

We spent most of the day playing board games with the Western Australian Boardgames Association, who have an ENORMOUS collection of games and loads of friendly people to play with. Learned three new games: a sailing/trading/collecting game a bit like Bohnanza, a game about trading and selling tea (my favourite! But maybe because I won :) and a game about defeating Cthulu using schoolgirl powers, like a British Buffy.

The upshot for dinner was that we didn't go shopping, and I had to use all my powers of improvisation on the remaining sad vegetables in the fridge to create a decent meal. Fortunately I had also used my power of foresight and left a chicken breast defrosting in the fridge, knowing I'd need some protein after morning Zumba.

Overall this worked pretty well, even the courgette (carefully not overcooked). Not a patch on fresh Chinese greens of course. The heart of cauliflower just needed using up; you could easily sub this for something more tasty, like some broccoli or sugar-snap peas.

Ingredients:

• a thumb of ginger
• a stick of lemongrass
• a handful of coriander stalks
• a couple of bay leaves
• 1 tsp vegetable stock powder
• a chilli (optional)
• juice of half a lemon
• a large carrot
• a heart of cauliflower
• a large courgette
• a chicken breast
• 2 x 75g bundles of dried egg noodles

Cut the ginger in half and slice perpendicular grooves into the flesh, to increase the surface area without breaking the ginger up into small pieces. Simmer with the lemongrass, coriander stalks, bay leaves, stock powder and chilli if using, in around 300ml water, for 20 minutes or until the stock is fragrant.

Meanwhile, peel and dice the carrot and cauliflower. Halve the courgette lengthwise and scoop out the soft seedy interior. Chuck, eat, or feed to the worms. Dice the remaining firm shell of courgette into the same size cubes.

Drain and reserve the stock, discarding the ginger etc. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Fry the carrot in a little vegetable oil, leaving it to sear just a tad. Add the stock and simmer for a couple of minutes. Finely shred or slice the chicken and add with the courgette, cauliflower and noodles. Bring back up to the boil and simmer for a minute or so, until the noodles are soft, the chicken is cooked through and the courgette is barely done. Top up with hot water if  the noodles have absorbed too much. Serve and drizzle over with very dark soy sauce.

Stir-fried Snapper with Sesame and Ginger

The other half is away orienteering (or 'rogaining' as they call it here) this weekend. For me a supper for one is a chance to experiment and buy an expensive ingredient :) I pick up a gorgeous snapper fillet from the fishmonget, bouncy to the touch with just the tiniest scent of the ocean. As this is a stir-fry it's important to prepare everything before you start, even if it feels slow. Everything happens at once at the end! For once, quantities are for one.

Ingredients:

• four tbsp sesame seeds
• a stalk and leaves of a large broccoli, or the florets if you prefer
• a good-sized snapper fillet
• a 75g bundle of udon
• an inch-long piece of ginger
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• juice of half a lemon
• 2-3 tbsp light soy sauce

Start by dry-frying the sesame seeds over a moderate heat, turning occasionally until they are golden brown and smelling gorgeous. Remove from the heat. Wash the broccoli, remove and reserve the leaves, and peel the hard skin from the stalk. Julienne the soft inside into strips. Peel and grate or finely dice the ginger. Rest the udon in some hot water to separate the noodles, or if dried, cook according to the packet instructions.

Cut the snapper fillet into bite-size pieces, and dredge in flour, shaking off the excess. Heat some vegetable oil in a shallow pan and fry the pieces of snapper for a minute or two each side, until golden brown. Meanwhile, stir-fry the broccoli with the ginger for a minute or so, until the leaves are beginning to wilt. Add the udon and the rest of the ingredients and bubble for a further minute. Stir through half of the sesame seeds, then serve, topped with the snapper and the remaining seeds, with more soy sauce to drizzle and the other half lemon to squeeze over.

Telecon Tuna

Tuesday night is telecon night; in summer I have time to cook as Cambridge aren't on daylight savings, but in winter the call starts soon after I get home, so usually super-Man does the cooking. This time he stir-fried some Chinese vegetables with ginger, garlic, soy sauce and sesame seeds, prepared some fragrant Thai rice, and topped the lot with a perfectly-seared tuna steak. I had to mute the microphone to enjoy this properly :)

Sweet and Sour Fish Tempura

This morning I went via the supermarket to stock up on supplies for my gliding trip tomorrow. On the way out I popped into the fishmonger and got some lovely little white fish fillets. (I wish I could remember what they were, but it was one of these Southern Hemisphere fish and I haven't memorised them all yet!) They were small anyway, and sweet and fresh. I was daydreaming about how to prepare them and had a strong craving for my sweet and sour sauce. So I figured we could follow the same recipe, but tempura the fish instead of stir-frying it, as it was so delicate and fragile.

Super-husband made all the sauce, set the deep-fryer up, egg-fried the rice and stir-fried the vegetables while I was out Zumba-ing, then I came home and whisked up this batter in a couple of minutes, dunked the fish, and they took just minutes in the fryer. On removal, the batter was crisp and light, and the fish tender and steaming hot, cooked to perfection. Some of the bottom ones did stick to the mesh, I need to work on that... but it did give us an excuse to eat some of the broken ones fresh out of the fryer, tossing them from hand to hand to cool them fast enough to eat. I tried out a new batter today, with a few more additions compared to my usual super-simple version. It was excellent - maybe a tad lighter and crisper!

Ingredients

• one egg white
• 1/4 cup of plain white flour
• 1/4 cup of white rice flour
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup of ice-cold water
• 300g fish fillets, descaled, deboned

Fill your deep fryer and set it to 180 C. If your fillets are thicker than 1cm, slice them widthwise into thinner pieces. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg white by hand until somewhere between frothy and just beginning to go white and form peaks. Put the flours and sugar in a large bowl, and pour in all of the water and the egg white. Stir everything together for maximum one minute, stopping as soon as you see no more visible powdery flour. Lumps are fine.

Lower the basket in the fryer into the oil. Dip each piece of fish into the batter, lift out, let drip of excess and then drop gently into the hot oil, using tongs if necessary. Close the lid and deep-fry for 4 minutes; lift the basket and check. The tempura should just be going a tiny bit gold, and the fish will be cooked through. Pop onto a plate with some paper towel; if you are making many batches, try to serve out as quickly as possible.

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.

Sweet and Sour Pork

Epic thunderstorm today as the front finally broke. At last it was cool enough to make something warm. Since I'm still using up the storecupboard, it was a modification of the sweet-and-sour chicken I made a few weeks ago. This time I sliced up some excellent pork tenderloin and lightly coated it in flour and chinese five-spice, then batch-fried it in a wok before returning it at the end with sauce and slightly different stir-fried vegetables. Yummy!

Chinese Broth and Dumplings

Still running down the freezer - including a lovely pack of mixed dumplings I picked up from the Chinese supermarket an unspeakably long time ago. Luckily they steam right back to life, and go very well with a quick vegetable broth that simmers as we go for a walk. With a batch of quickly stir-fried vegetables it makes a light yet nourishing weekday meal. The trick is to have everything ready before you begin to stir-fry the vegetables, and to make sure they do not overcook; they should still have some bite and taste green, never soggy.

Ingredients:
For the vegetable stock:

• 1 carrot, topped, tailed and scrubbed
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 stick of lemongrass
• a thumb-sized piece of ginger
• a dried chilli
• a handful of coriander stems

For the stir-fried vegetables:

• half a head of broccoli
• two handfuls of sugar-snap peas
• 2-3 spring onions
• 2 cloves of garlic

To finish:

• 8-12 dumplings, steamed according to the packet instructions
• coriander leaves
• lemon wedges
• soy sauce

Put all of the stock ingredients in a saucepan and cover with boiling water; bring to a boil and then simmer for at least an hour. Meanwhile, finely slice the broccoli and cut the sugar-snap peas and spring onions into long strips. Five minutes before the dumplings are done, heat some vegetable oil in a wok and throw in the broccoli, tossing it about for a few minutes. Add the sugar snap peas and spring onions, toss for a further minute, then crush in the garlic and stir-fry for a further two minutes.

Drain the stock into the wok (or into another bowl first, if you dislike enormous clouds of steam), and slosh over a good few tsbp of soy sauce (depending on its strength). Serve the broth and vegetables into bowls and top with the dumplings and coriander leaves. Bring to the table with lemon wedges and soy sauce on the side so that people can lighten and salt the broth to their taste.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

When I did the shopping, it was bright and sunny, another glorious day in a long spring of unexpectedly warm and dry weather. Today, it is absolutely pouring down. So instead of using a classic Nigel June recipe of 'a little roast chicken and leaves' or 'oh it's so hot, let's have a glass of wine and some fruit' or 'oh another one of those dessert-only days', I get out the wok and make the rib-sticking tasty Chinese-British classic. Served with egg-fried rice and an episode of Day Break, it's a great antidote to the miserable weather and a nice treat after a day spent spring-cleaning. I used to make it with brown sugar but I find this method results in a more brightly-coloured sauce, with little detriment to flavour; you can get the umame from the soy sauce in the rice.

Ingredients:

• 1 large or 2 small chicken breasts
• 1 carrot, and/or 1 red pepper or some baby sweet corn or sugar snap peas, depending on what you have to hand
• 3 spring onions (you might want to omit them from the rice)
• 1 tin of pineapple rings
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• juice of half a lemon
• 3 tbsp white sugar
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 1/2 tsp salt

Drain some of the pineapple juice into a pyrex bowl or jug, and stir in the plain flour. When it is fully suspended with no lumps, add the rest of the pineapple juice, the vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, tomato puree and salt. Stir well, then microwave for 2-3 minutes, stirring halfway through; it should thicken slightly and become glossy.

Meanwhile, peel and finely slice the carrot into diagonal flat pieces, and do the same for the spring onion. Slice the fillet of the chicken into four diagonal pieces, then cut the rest of the breast in half across the fattest part, then slice all of it into further diagonal pieces.

Heat a little sunflower or vegetable oil in a wok until shimmering, then quickly stir fry the chicken, vegetables and spring onions together for a few minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and just beginning to colour. (If you are using a very large quantity of vegetables, you might want to do this in batches, with the chicken separate.) Add in the pineapple chunks and pour over the sauce, allowing it to bubble for one minute, so it slightly reduces. Serve over the rice with the oh-so-traditional fork :)

Chinese Steamed Sea Bass and Egg-Fried Rice

After a long but quite fun drive up to Edinburgh, we had a cup of tea, a stroll and then made this light and delicious meal for four - my sisters had yet to arrive. Originally there was an official recipe in an official book, but  that has disappeared into the mists of time, and now this is an improvisational recipe doable with whatever springs to hand. I've done this with red mullet, flavoured with spring onions, shavings of root ginger and coriander stems. Tonight we go for something a little deeper-flavoured, as the weather up here is about 15 C cooler than the Southern heatwave!

Ingredients:
For the fish:

• 4 fresh sea bass or bream
• a few tbsp of fermented black beans
• 3 balls of stem ginger in syrup

For the rice:

• 300g white (basmati) rice
• 3 spring onions
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• a cup of frozen peas
• soy sauce

For the vegetables:

• any good stir-friable vegetables, like baby sweetcorn, sugarsnap peas, red or yellow peppers, chinese leaf, water chestnuts, bean sprouts, mushrooms, etc
• 150 ml chicken stock
• 50 ml cold water
• 2 tbsp cornflour

Gut, scale and clean the fish, and slash two or three times across the fattest part of the meat. Finely dice the ginger and stuff the fish with it and the black beans. Wrap in foil and bake at 180C for 30 minutes, or put in a steamer and steam for 20 minutes.

If you like, clean the rice with a few rinses of cold water -- I don't, but my dad does! Simmer in twice as much water until cooked through, and drain if necessary. Leave aside to cool a little. Heat a deep frying pan with peanut or refined sesame oil, and once shimmering, add the rice and toss about to fry. Roughly chop the spring onions, move the rice aside and add them to the pan, with a little more oil if necessary. Once they are cooked, move them aside and pour in the eggs, again with a little more oil if needed. Allow to cook through on the bottom, then flip over and fry the other side. When it is nearly cooked through, break it up with a spatula. Add the cup of peas and combine all the ingredients together. Splash over a little soy sauce and serve immediately.

For the vegetables, stir fry them in order of decreasing cooking time, cooking things like carrots and peppers at the beginning, and soft things like beanspouts and greens just at the end. Each time, add your vegetable selection, toss about at a high heat, then add a few tbsp of chicken stock and cover to steam-cook. Mix the cornflour into the cold water, and when you run out of stock and vegetables, add this, bring up to a simmer and allow to reduce to a light sauce. Taste and season with fish and soy sauce if needed.