Raw beetroot, carrot, radish and basil salad

Pretty self explanatory – a tasty, crispy salad.

Grate or finely chop the root vegetables, splash over some sherry vinegar, a pinch of salt, and some truffle oil for a bit of excitement.

Gyoza

More Japanese food! Gyoza are the Japanese take on Chinese ‘potsticker’ dumplings: usually pork, cabbage, spring onions, and other flavourings; crispy on the bottom and soft and chewy on the top.

I didn’t have any cabbage, but I used some Chinese spinach.

The key to authentically “Japanese” tasting gyoza is garlic and ginger (or, in my case, garlic chives).

I cooked up the vegetables for a minute, squeezed the water out, and mixed it through minced pork, along with some flavourings:

Japanese soy (tastes different from other soy sauces for some reason), mirin, wasabi, sesame oil. When making dumplings like this it’s always good to check the seasoning before you put them in the skins — I usually do this by cooking up a little of the mix and tasting it.

We bought a set of 50 gyoza skins (made with rice flour and water). I really didn’t think that we’d get through them, but a mix with 500g of pork makes almost exactly the right amount for that many dumplings. Gyoza freeze very well (and can be cooked straight from frozen), so don’t be afraid to make them in big batches.

You make the dumplings by placing a teaspoon full of mix in the centre of a gyoza skin, wetting the edges, and folding and pressing the edges together in a line. It’s important that they are flat on the bottom to go crispy, so sit them on a tray to settle, and dust with corn flour.

To cook gyoza: Place them in a hot pan with a little oil for around 2 minutes, then add a little water, and cook with the lid on for about 7 minutes — this allows the bottom to stick to the pan while the top steams (add more water if they seem to be drying out). Take of the lid and let the water cook away, and add a little more oil so they can become crispy. They should stick together as they come out of the pan — the cornflour will have formed a crispy ‘skin’ on the bottom.

For a dipping sauce, use a mix of soy and rice wine vinegar, with a few fried spring onions.

Udon soup with greens and garlic

On a bit of a Japanese food roll at the moment. We made udon the other night, I’d forgotten how easy it is.

You can serve udon noodle soup with just about any flavouring you like. I used some chinese broccoli, spring onions and garlic.

I just quickly stir fried the greens to char them a bit.

Here’s a neat trick: If you place a chopstick over the pot while the noodles are boiling, it stops the water from boiling over. I was skeptical when I heard about it, but it really works.

The soup stock is just from a packet dashi mix. I guess you could make your own, but this is much faster and very tasty.

Hijiki, carrot and bamboo salad

A tasty japanese salad, good served either warm or cold.

Hijiki is a thick black seaweed. To prepare it you soak it in hot water for about an hour. It increases in volume quite a lot — you only need a little per person.

Hijiki is really good with carrots, plus whatever else you like. I added bamboo because we had an open can in the fridge.

Just fry up all the ingredients for a few minutes, add rice wine vinegar, mirin and sesame oil, and cook until most of the liquid is gone. Really good as a side dish to a japanese meal, with some extra sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Green tofu curry

A tasty vegetarian curry. Well, “vegetarian” to a point: it does contain fish sauce.

The main ingredients: coriander, spring onions, carrot, tofu (use a hard kind so it doesn’t disintegrate), pak choi, bamboo shoots, tomato.

First fry up the spring onions with green curry paste. I used a paste by “Turban Chopsticks” (it was a gift), which was really delicious and fresh tasting, and I often use an “Ayam” brand one from the supermarket which is fine too.

After the curry paste is fragrant, add tofu, the thicker greens, carrot and coconut milk.

Then the tomato and bamboo.

Cook over medium heat until the sauce thickens and the tomato disappears, then add coriander, lime juice, sriracha, and fish sauce to taste.

I garnished it with extra coriander and fried shallots (from a packet), and served it with a packet roti (fried in a pan).

Rice vermicelli with minced chicken, chilli, bamboo, basil and other things

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this “Thai” dish, but I can vouch for the flavour. There is something about the combination of chicken, Thai basil, chilli and sweet soy that is just really good.

So: here is my attempt at Almost a Recipe. (I say almost because I’m not really very specific with quantities here).

Start off with shallots (about 3), bamboo shoots (half a small tin, chopped), red chilli (sliced), coriander and garlic.

Fry off the shallots and chilli in peanut oil,

then add minced chicken (500 grams), the aforementioned vegetables, and some Thai basil leaves.

Make a sauce of light soy, fish sauce, kecap manis, sriracha and lime juice: salty, umami, sweet, hot and sour and add it to the wok. I tend to do the sauce by taste, I’ve got no real idea of quantities here.

Cook it all over high heat until most of the sauce has cooked away and it’s all dark and sticky, then add some more bamboo (the rest of the tin) for texture.

Now, this dish is really good if the flavours can sit around and get to know each other for a while, so take it off the heat and let it sit for about an hour, covered, in the fridge.

Just before serving: reheat in the wok add lots of extra Thai basil and coriander, then stir through cooked rice vermicelli.

You can easily do this without the noodles and serve with rice or just on it’s own. I served it with some quickly stir-fried greens and garlic.

Blueberry and raspberry tartlets

Kate and I made these today for my birthday afternoon tea. Kate was originally planning on a cake, but it’s 40ºC in Melbourne today — not really an oven day.

We cheated a little and bought tart shells from the supermarket, but they were fine.

For the filling I made a simple pastry cream (a thick milk custard with eggs, sugar and corn flour).

We don’t own a piping bag, so we made one using baking paper.

The pastry cream is so sticky that its basically impossible to spoon in to the tart shells: piping is really the only option.

We actually ended up having to make two piping bags: although convenient, paper piping bags are hard to refill once you’ve squeezed the delicious custard out of them.

Once filled with custard, it was just a matter of placing some fruit on top and glazing with some warmed, strained apricot jam (this gives the tarts a lovely sheen).

Tomato, boccocini and basil salad

Some post-christmas picnic fare, for our last evening by the river in Perth before returning to sunny Melbourne.

We also had some of my pickled peppers, which had pickled perfectly! I was very pleased.

Poached egg; grilled leg ham; wilted rocket, mint and goats cheese

This is from a few weeks ago — a breakfast made with delicious Spencer’s Brook ham from WA (we spent Christmas in Perth), and herbs from the garden.

Kate made the perfect poached eggs.

Pickled peppers

I’ve never done this before. The only other pickling that I’ve done was some zucchini pickle with Kate, one batch of which was great, one batch which tasted strange and musty. But I’m pretty confident these pickled peppers will work.

I had the idea to do this after grilling some small peppers the other day with great results. I couldn’t find any small red peppers at the market, but opted for some young looking capsicums instead.

I started by slicing the capsicums and grilling skin side down until quite black.

Once they were black, I placed them in a bowl with a plate over the top to steam the skins off. I cooked them on a very high heat so that the skins would blacken, but they would retain a lot of texture. I find blackening peppers in the oven tends to make them very soft, these still had a nice bite to them.

Once they were cool, I peeled off the skins. Normally I would just stop here: add some salt, maybe a little garlic, some olive oil and eat. But we’re making pickles here… still a lot to do…

I made a brine using a ratio of about 1:3 water to apple cider vinegar. I hope this is acidic enough. I’ve read loads of recipes that use anything from all vinegar to a 1:1 ratio. I also added a few tablespoons of salt, sugar, mustard seeds, some strips of lemon zest, and a large number of lightly crushed garlic cloves. I like garlicky pickles. I boiled the brine for a minute or two to dissolve the sugar and salt.

I think a mistake we might have made last time was not sterilising the jars properly. I endeavoured to do it right this time: boiled for 10 minutes, then dried in a low oven.

So: while the jars and brine were still nice and hot, I tightly packed the jars with pickles and poured over the brine. I did this in layers to help distribute the garlic and lemon zest through the jars, using a knife to remove any air bubbles. I then sealed them lightly (finger tight) and “processed” them, which means boiling the jars again for about 10 minutes so that the air could escape from under the lids.

As they cooled, the pop top lids sealed nicely. Success! (maybe). The trouble with pickles is you really don’t know how they’ll turn out until you open them up, weeks later.

At least they look pretty. Fingers crossed!