Monday, May 17, 2010

Sauted Oriental But Still Healthy Spinach

This is one of the recipes that came because of a pot luck at my house. How I love those pot lucks! I no longer have the recipe but the idea is simple. This recipe is especially good for a pot luck because it can be made in advance and a great deal of spinach is reduced to at least one quarter the volume.
At the potluck, take a small serving, savour the flavour and enjoy the rest of the food crowding your plate.

Recipe
at least 2 fresh bunches of spinach
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp tamarind soy sauce
3 drops of sesame oil
2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (the original had black seeds)
Place a small bit of water in a large pot and stuff it with spinach. Cook on medium high heat. You can steam it if the pot is not tightly stuffed. As the spinach wilts, feed more leaves into the pot. After all the spinach is stuffed in and wilted. Remove. Cool. Squeeze out all the excess moisture. Please do not skip this step. It really makes a difference. Add all the other ingredients except the 1 tbsp sesame seeds. Toss until all the leaves are coated. Serve in a nice dish and sprinkle the remaining 1 tbsp sesame seeds on top. For this picture I added another tbsp of sesame seeds.
You could serve the dish with a pair of chop sticks as the serving utensils.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Cheddar Ale Soup

Sometimes you just want a very special soup. Something unusual, light but still creamy, an introduction to the symphony about to be played. Four of us travelled to Iona and decided to have a reunion, to look at our pictures and to talk about our impressions. After we had reviewed our experiences of going on the pilgrimage, attending the church services, some of us freezing in our sea facing dorm rooms and commenting on the story of our fellow guests, we decided that the week had been worth while and in fact we were impressed with how much we did.

I started the meal with this soup but did not serve the guests because in my pretasting I found the soup to be sharp, bitter, and bold. It starts softly on your palette and then bang, it hits you. The next day my son and daughter-in-law came over to try the left over soup. They loved it and asked when it would be posted on the blog. It is definitely a repeat. When I asked them to describe the flavour, it was a challenge. It is like a a gentle ripple and then there is a huge rogue wave.

I will try making the soup again but will try a different ale to see what the effect will be. If the soup is too thin, just simmer longer or decrease the liquids.

Recipe

1 tbsp butter
1 large white onion chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup 10 per cent cream
1 1/2 cups very good quality chicken broth
1 bottle of Kilkenny Irish cream ale (440 mls)
8 oz of three year old Balderson white cheddar cheese

salt and pepper to taste

decorate with cilantro but beware, the cilantro does change the flavour

Melt butter and saute onions till almost transparent. Add minced garlic and saute lightly. Add the rest of the ingredient. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Simmer for at least 30 minutes. Cool slightly. Blend.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Scrambled Eggs with a Secret Ingredient

Scrambled eggs are easy, safe and just plain comforting. We decided to do a Mother's Day brunch and one of the dishes on the menu were these eggs. I had watched a DVD and the authour was describing how to make a gourmet egg salad sandwich. He used the recipe below as his filling. His bread was a croissant so perhaps it was the croissant that made the difference and not the scrambled eggs. Regardless, these are worth making for a special brunch.
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup 10% cream
2 doz eggs
8 oz of cream cheese cut into cubes
1/4 cup snipped chives fresh from the garden
salt and better to taste
Melt the butter, add the cream and eggs. Stir and just as the mixture is starting to form into lumps, stir in the cubes of cream cheese. When the eggs are congealed and the cream cheese melted, stir in the chives and serve. This dish does not like sitting around waiting to be served.
The secret ingredient is the cream cheese and you will taste it immediately. Nice.

Jamaican Jerked Chicken Salad

I have gotten into the habit of asking people what they would call their signature dish and of course 'why?'. It is a great way of seeing another dimension to a person's personality in terms of what they value. I had decided to make Mark's signature dish. He was our guide when we hiked the Blue Mountains south of Sydney for a day in April, 2010. So I emailed my friends whom I was having over for an Iona reunion dinner and asked them if they would like to have curried fish which was Mark's dish. All of them thought this was fine. The day before the dinner, some one stuffed a metro news paper into my bicycle carrier. I quickly had to read it and there was a recipe with a fantastic picture of Jamaican Jerked Chicken Salad. Right there the menu changed. It is all in the power of a picture. The one thing I really liked about this salad is that I could eat it the next day. I really dislike day old dressed salad - wimpy, soggy and messy but this salad was about a 7 out of 10. Only the kiwi went a bit mushy. Had I sliced it into wedges like the authour of the recipe stated, it might have kept its shape.
Ingredients:
4 green onions
3 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
1 pound grilled chicken breasts
1 small pineapple, ringed and then cubed
4 kiwis, peeled and chopped into wedges
1 large red pepper
1 cup jicama cut into match sticks
2 cups of spinach leaves
small bunch of cilantro
In a large non metal bowl stir together garlic, thyme, black pepper, allspice and 1/2 tsp salt. Stir in 2 tbsp vinegar, 1 tbsp mustard and 1 tbsp brown sugar. When mixed, add chicken and ensure all surfaces are covered. Marinate at least 2 hours. As always, I plumped the chicken up by marinating the breasts in milk and lemon for eight hours, draining and then adding the breasts to the jerk marinade. Grill the chicken breasts for 4 minutes per side on the barbecue or about 15 cm from the oven grill. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together remaining spices, oil, mustard and sugar. Add cut fruit, red pepper, jicama and chopped green onions. Toss. Lay the spinach leaves on a interesting serving plate. Pile the salad on top. Remove the chicken and slice in vertical thin strips. Arrange on top of the salad. Sprinkle with cilantro. Present. We did talk about Iona and the guest who was from Jamaica. He would keep his children home to harvest allspice berries but he called them Jamaican peppers. They would put blankets underneath the trees and shake them. The berries would fall onto the blankets. So aside from that aside, this recipe has little to do with Iona and a great deal to do with friends eating a meal together expecting to be eating fish curry but adapting well to the hostess's impulsive recipe whims.