Salmon and rice

 

Recently when a cousin visited us in Sydney, her daughter noticed this pickle in the Indian food store we were browsing saying they had that at home and it was quite nice. I took her recommendation and bought the bottle. It is very hot and tastes like the Chinese pickled chilli one eats with wantan mee in Malaysia. It goes very well with any Indian meal, it adds the sour citrus flavours with the chilli kick. Exactly what we need when cooking for children sans chilli.

I dont cook much Indian food, but something that works is grilled salmon, healthy, quick, full of omega 3. However, being farmed salmon, there is such a great risk the flavours just isn't good enough always. I marinade the fish and here is the quick grilled salmon I find works. Eaten with this chilli pickle, it works to make a favourite comfort food. 

Grilled Salmon

1 piece of salmon

2 tspn organic soy sauce

2 tspn cooking sake

salt

Spoon marinade over salmon and grill

 Serve on white rice with 'Mother's recipe green chilli pickle on the side.

Marble Ice cream

This is the best chocolate ice cream ever. I thought that in 2009 before I left Japan. Tasting it again, I re confirm this. I wish I could taste the other flavours - citron milk.

Yoghurt Breakfast

At the Sri Lankan grocery store, I saw Larich's Kittul. I had seen my cousin have it with natural yoghurt and ever since I wanted to try it. I had seen some others eat yoghurt with honey and I guessed this must be similar combination. I was curious to the difference between honey and Kittul, they both look the same. So I bought it. It was a large bottle and as I dont usually eat yoghurt as a breakfast dish, I needed to find ways to use it.Otherwise it would end up being, just another bottle in the pantry - unused for a decade.

Jun's baptism lunch was a big event in our house. I decided I'd use some of it here. I would serve a yoghurt breakfast. Natural greek yoghurt served with good quality home made toasted maple flavoured muesli, sprinkled with crushed Ikea's Anna's ginger snaps and drizzled with Kittul and Cherry Berry Jam. I wanted to serve strawberries but I forgot to get it out of the fridge. It was the best idea I had - no preparation, ask a guest to combine it and serve. So easy, but I had not tasted it. They finished all the yoghurt.

A few days later, I thought I should try it, I had left over muesli and Kittul. Delicious.

A Christmas gingerbread house needed to be finished, so I crushed that up into the yoghurt. It has been the sweetest breakfast ever.

Roast Chicken

I am making a roast chicken for 3 of Nathan's friends and 2 of their mothers. One of them is vegetarian so I am including lots of vegetables for her. This is how I do it:

Menu
Roast chicken
Roast vegetables
Roast vegetables tossed in homemade pesto
Celery and apple salad
Bean salad
Roast Sweet potato

1. Peal and soak potatoes in lots of salted water. I make roughly one potato per person. I have one less (none for Stephen, but I think the children all wont eat their potatoes..)

2. Prepare the vegetables: Peel and chunk organic carrots (this is the only vege I expect the children to eat!), remove stalk from shitake mushrooms, cut zucchini into large chunks, cut red and orange peppers into 2 inch squares, slice naga negi from left over piece. I might add aubergine later??

3. Peel and slice celery for salad. Peel and cube apples. Add raisins. Mix all together. This is a waldorf salad with no mayonaise because Nathan wont enjoy it otherwise (Dressing???? yuckh). I would put walnuts (yum!) but Dylan is allergic to nuts.

4. I also have a sweet potato and a whole head of garlic to add to the roast vegetables.

5. Heat the oven to 180 Celsius and bake the potatoes.

6. Prepare the chicken: poke a fork round a lemon and rub it on the chicken, squeezing gently. Then stuff the chicken with the lemon. Slice 3 cloves of garlic into slivers, make holes into chicken flesh and stuff the slivers into them. Separate the skin from the chicken breast and add garlic to the deepest parts. You may add thyme and butter the same way too. Salt and pepper the chicken, brush a little olive oil to the highest parts of the chicken.

7. Add the chicken breast side down on top of the potatoes. Add the carrots and one head of garlic now.

8. Half an hour later turn the chicken over.

9. Another half an hour add the rest of the vegetables to the roasting dish or into another dish. Try not to overcrowd the dish.

10. When the vegetables are nicely caramilised, the dish is done.

Restaurant: Alexis, BSC

Looking for a place for lunch one day I had decided on Dim Sum as I knew it would be easy to find something for Nathan to eat. But on our way there we walked past Alexis while looking for the race track he wanted to play on before lunch....

Oh, but it was too enticing, we decided the difficult option and walked into Alexis. We were in Malaysia when Alexis first opened in Bangsar in the 1990s. They used to order their cakes from Suchan who had a cafe in PJ opposite University hospital. Suchan's tiramisu cake was legendary in KL (it is different from the pudding, but tastes great) and we were thrilled we could have some easily in Bangsar.

Eventually Alexis made Suchan's tiramisu cake and all the other cakes themselves although it wasn't exactly the same.They also made a banoffee cake - a banana toffee and coffee pie made into a cake.  While I was in university it was my second favourite pie after a meringue pie . I was surprised Suchan knew about it and made the pie into a cake.

The Sarawak Laksa at Alexis was the best! Once I had a birthday party there and that's when we introduced Stephen to the Sarawak Laksa, his favourite too. So we try to go there as often as we can but sometimes getting there isn't easy. Now they have branches all over and unlike Madam Kwan's their standards remain good.

Coming back to our lunch, Nathan and I walked in and I immediately ordered my Sarawak Laksa and took ages to decide on a plain pasta tomato sauce for Nathan. Everything else looked too big and perhaps too spicy. The Sarawak Laksa is so popular that it arrived very soon after but the pasta didn't arrive for a while. Nathan was so hungry he said he wanted some. He tried it, said it wasn't too hot and ate more and more. He even drank the soup and eventually didn't touch the pasta!!! It was still yummy but without the chilli heat. The sambal on the side would have helped but I didnt add it to the soup.

That weekend I met up with Jenny, Mas, Norhayati and Nor Azrina at WIP. It was a little to loud to talk there so we adjourned to Alexis for cakes. At thie visit I got to try their cakes again. Here is a picture of the tiramisu cake. Yummy huh?



I am not a dilligent photographer. But I thought this blog needed some posts and one from my travels. So I googled alexis and tiramisu and sarawak laksa and got these fab photos from A Whiff of Lemongrass's very aptly titled post "The Things that make a girl go weak in her knees"

Chicken Curry - Thiru Aunty’s recipe

1 medium sized chicken
2 potatoes,
1 tsp Tumeric
Salt
5 garlic
1 inch of ginger
1 onion, diced
1 stalk of curry leaves
1 green chilli, left whole
1 inch of cinnamon
1 tsp fenugreek
3 cloves
2 cup coconut milk, separated into thin and thick milk
½ cup of curry powder
1 tbsp ground fennel
Juice from ½ a lime

1. Prepare chicken: cut into pieces, wash and leave to drain. Add the salt and tumeric, but you don’t have to mix it in.
2. Prepare potatoes: cut into same size as chicken pieces. Leave it in water.
3. Prepare ginger and garlic: pound in mortar and pestle into a paste. Put it on the chicken.
1. Fry the onion, curry leaves and spices: cinnamon, fennugreek, cloves (cummin, mustard seeds, pepper are optional) in oil till the onion is soft.
2. Add the pieces of chicken with tumeric and salt, pounded ginger and garlic, potatoes.
3. Add the thin coconut milk. Coconut milk is for the best flavour, it can be substituted with milk.
4. Add the curry powder. If you have ground cummin or ground coriander, add this as well for a different flavour).
5. Cook for 20 minutes
6. Check when the chicken is cooked and it tastes well. At the end, add ground fennel, 1 or 2 tbsp thick coconut milk and the lime juice. This is for added flavour, if you are happy when the chicken is cooked, end there.
7. If you didn’t use coconut milk earlier, you don’t have to use it here. Or, if you didn’t use coconut milk earlier, you could use just cream of coconut here.

Restaurants in Japan

Here is a list of restaurants we visited while in Japan.

Aozora, Tsukiji Market
Aburiya - Fu Do, Nakameguro
Bills, Kamakura
Burger Arms, Yoyogi Park
Ceylon Inn, Nakameguro
Ho Ho Ho, Shirokanedai
Karashi, Shirokanedai
Ninja Restaurant, Akasaka
Negiya Heikichi, Shibuya
Omotemise, Tsukiji Market
Seirinkan, Nakameguro
Su Shi something, Shirokanedai
Ten Ichi, Ginza