Roast Radishes

the one vegetable you need to make now: roasted radishes

Author: Emilie Raffa
Serves: Serves 2

Ingredients

1 bunch of rainbow radishes

olive oil, for coating

lemon pepper seasoning, to taste

1 pat of unsalted butter


Instructions

• Preheat your oven to 425 F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.  

• To prepare the radishes, remove the leafy green tops and save for another recipe (they're great tossed into a mesclun salad). Halve the radishes lengthwise through the root. 

• Arrange the radishes onto the baking sheet. Coat lightly with olive oil. Season with lemon pepper, to taste.

• Roast for about 10-20 minutes, depending on size. Check at the 10 minute mark; insert a paring knife into the center of a radish. If it pulls out easily, they're ready. If not, cook for a little bit longer.

• To serve, toss with the butter while still warm.

• Enjoy right away

Taiwanese tomato omelette

I have tended to make this dish using the same method as magic eggs. I have tended to be disappointed with the result as the tomato dilutes the taste of the omelette and chilli. In fact I mentioned this to the lady with the stroke. She said she loved tomato omelet and wanted to make it that day. And Oh! it was a different recipe. 

Slice the tomatoes into 8 wedges.

So beat 3 eggs.

Heat some oil.

When it is piping hot, add the eggs. Swirl the pan, but don't mix the eggs. I think we are looking for the bottom to be well cooked and a little brown. It gives the flavour. 

When it is almost cooked through turn the eggs/omelette over. 

Add the tomato wedges and stir, breaking up the egg.

Add soy sauce for flavour. 

Add chopped spring onions

I haven't tasted it yet. 

Ma Po Tou Fu

I have been cooking for a lady who had a stroke. She has always cooked for the family, and now since her stroke, she cannot use her right hand very well. She is very upbeat about her disabilities and tries to do as much as she can. We are a great team - she the instructor and me the willing doer. Our chats while things are getting done is throughly gossipy.

I am learning a new style of cooking. She hardly uses garlic. The onions come from spring onions added in the end.

She uses a soft tofu that is not the silken type and not the hard chou tofu. After cutting into 1 cm cubes, it is put into salted boiling water until the water boils again. The tofu is then strained, it remains firm.

Heat a little oil, and fry the meat. I fried onion/garlic/ginger before adding the meat. But I think this is unnecessary. The next time I will probably double cook the meat. I shall wash the meat in hot water, remove and strain then add it to the oil to fry.

Add the boiled tofu and heat with the meat for a few minutes before adding soy sauce and the Taiwanese Chilli Bean sauce.

Coat the sauce thoroughly through the meat and tofu. Allow it all to heat and cook through. 

Add chopped spring onions and serve

Another tip I learnt from her: When cooking ready made frozen jiaoza, put it frozen in cold water to boil. When the water starts to boil, add a cup of cold water and let it boil again. When it boils the second time, it is cooked. I think this way, the skin is less likely to break. 

Aubergine Baigan

Watched this video yesterday while searching for Fried Aubergine Marsala. It looks simple enough, had most of the ingredients and I tried it out.

I chopped the onions, and heated the pan with more oil than I normally use.
Threw in the onions, cumin and fenugreek - I forgot he used mustard seeds too.
I chopped the aubergine and salted in while the onions were softening.
I should have left the onions caramelise a little bit but I thought the aubergine would take a while to cook.
As it flavoured the oil, I threw in the aubergine and let it cook. I added some curry leaves.
I prepared the next few ingredients.
When it looked half cooked I added the
 - chilli powder, tumeric powder
 - crushed ginger and garlic (should have added this earlier)
 - chopped tomatoes and 1/4 chilli
 And gave it a stir
I didn't have coriander leaves so I added rice vinegar.

I think this recipe needed some tamarind water. But thats often not in my pantry. The tomatoes were a good substitute. It doesn't often work for me, however, I think the ginger and garlic made up for it.

I cooked cumin lamb for the family. This went fantastically with it.

Cumin lamb you say? How was that made?

Just marinade slivers of lamb (lamb chops cut across the grain) of lamb in
 - crushed ginger
 - powdered cumin
 - dark soy sauce
 - tiniest cooking wine
 - tiniest bit of chinkiang vinegar
 - salt
Leave it for 30 minutes, or while I cooked the other accompaniments

Heat wok and oil in it till its quite hot
Add chopped garlic
Add the marinated lamb
When the lamb is half cooked
Add long slices of onion and 1/4 chilli
Stir it
Let the water come out and evaporate
Let it sit for a while to reabsorb the tastes.

Eat with Aubergine Baigan.!!

Next time - add the coriander leaves.

Asparagus with Hard-boiled egg vinaigrette

A small challenge to find this recipe. It got me annoyed that I get so many generic search results from google, none of which has heard of a hard boiled egg vinaigrette. Yet it is so healthy and delicious. Makes any vegetable taste fullsome and edible just on its own. What a lunch it could be.!

So I found this on http://foodnouveau.com/recipes/sandwiches/asparagus-with-hard-boiled-egg-vinaigrette/ but, just in case this recipe/website disappears, I copied and pasted it. It sounds great. the addition of the chilli's.

Serves 2 as a main or 4 as an appetizer 

Kosher salt or fleur de sel
2 scallions, white and light green parts separated and finely sliced
1 tsp [5 ml] red wine vinegar
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled
1 tsp [5 ml] Dijon mustard
1/3 cup [80 ml] extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbsp [15 ml] capers, rinsed and dried
Pinch dried chili flakes
2 tbsp [30 ml] handful of fresh, flat leaf parsley leaves, chopped
1 lb [450 g] asparagus, peeled if needed, trimmed and cooked to your liking

In a small bowl, pinch together 1/4 tsp [1.25 ml] salt with the white part of the sliced scallions. Once the scallion begins to release some juice, stir in the red wine vinegar and set aside.

Separate the egg yolks from the hard boiled eggs. Place one egg yolk in a medium bowl. Chop the other egg yolk and egg whites separately, and keep both aside for later.

Mix the Dijon mustard into whole egg yolk until smooth. Using the back of a spoon or fork, beat in 1/3 cup of the olive oil in a thin, steady stream. Once emulsified, stir in the vinegar and white scallions.

Add the reserved egg whites to the sauce, along with the capers, the chili flakes and most of the parsley. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. If the sauce seems too thick, loosen with the extra olive oil.

To serve, arrange the cooked asparagus on a plate. Spoon over the sauce, then garnish with the chopped egg yolk, reserved parsley and scallion greens.

Note: This asparagus makes a fine tartine topping (as pictured). If desired, toast two large slices of whole wheat sourdough bread, then top with the asparagus and the hard-boiled egg vinaigrette.


Recipe Credit: Seven Spoons

Hainanese Chicken Rice video

Its amazing how he leaves the whole chicken in boiling water and it cooks completely through. 

I am learning here how to loosen up the chicken before cooking, it softens the meat. And interesting how he treats the rice before cooking it. It is the same way I have learnt rice has to be cooked. 

There is a thermomix recipe for chicken rice. It puts the a stock on the bottom, the rice over the stock to cook, the chicken over both so the juices drop into the rice, and a vegetable can be cooked on a top layer if we could fit it all in. What an idea! I don't have a thermomix and I don't intend to get one. But I wonder if this method would work in a pressure cooker. I am thinking this because we have a deep pressure cooker which could hold different layers. After all the preparation, it might take minutes to cook. Just let it come to pressure and switch off. The one thing missing from this thermomix method is the ginger / garlic / onion oil essential to this dish. Perhaps we could use it in the preparation of the rice and let it mix with the chicken and stock through the steam. 

Anyway, the kids love chicken rice. The most important part (not here) is the chilli sauce that goes with it. I'll have to add a how to do that video part later. 

Mould: how safe can the food be?

Burning question: If you cut mould off food, is it then safe to eat?

First posted 17 May 2017 at 10:20 am

You're hanging out for a sandwich, but your heart sinks when you find the cheese is sporting a blue and white bloom and the bread is covered in white fluffy spots.

Can you attempt a rescue operation by cutting off the mould or should the whole lot go in the bin?

The answer to some extent depends on how you balance your approach to a potential health risk versus your desire to avoid wasting food.

If the cheese is a hard cheese, it's probably safe just to cut the bad bit off, says Dr Ailsa Hocking, of CSIRO Agriculture and Food.

The bread though, is probably better off thrown away, she believes.
Assessing the risk

It's not just an awful taste you're risking if you eat mouldy food.

Actively growing mould can release toxins into food.

Since the spread of the tiny mould tips is not always visible, it might be hard to know where it (and hence the toxin) is.

So how do you decide what to do when you haven't got a food safety expert on hand?

The low moisture content and dense structure of hard cheese means mould will usually survive only on the surface, rather than spreading invisibly into the cheese, Dr Hocking says.Two factors that should guide you are the moisture content of the food and how densely it's structured, Dr Hocking says.

So it should be safe to cut around the affected area and eat the rest of block. But she advises cutting with a margin of a couple of centimetres, just to be on the safe side.

But many other foods, including mouldy bread, are better off thrown away as the mould is more likely to be growing beyond the areas you can see.

Also, if a food like yoghurt is old enough to have mould, it might also contain harmful bacteria which could cause a bout of diarrhoea.

"If you can see a mould growing, there can be other microbes such as bacteria and yeast in the food as well. It's really not worth making yourself sick," Dr Hocking says.

Low-acid foods such as dairy products – think yoghurt, cottage cheese, dips – are the foods where this risk is greatest.
What's the concern?

There are many different types of moulds that can grow on our food; the most common include Aspergillusand Penicillium, and Botrytis which you might see as a fur on your strawberries.

So what do toxins from such moulds do to us?

One elderly man who became ill after eating canned soup contaminated with mould was reported in the Medical Journal of Australia as saying he felt so sick, he thought he would die.While it's rare, they can cause severe illness with symptoms including excessive sweating, tremors, muscle weakness, twitching, headache, fever, and vomiting.

Most toxins from moulds are heat-resistant and so may not be destroyed in the cooking process.

Eating mouldy food has also been known to cause illness in livestock and to kill dogs.

Domestic dogs are at particular risk when they have access to household waste.

But most toxins from moulds are only a risk if we eat them over a long period of time.

A lot of these compounds are carcinogenic, and ongoing exposure has been linked to liver cancer, Dr Hocking said.

That would be very unlikely to happen in Australia, where we have very strict food production standards.

But it is seen in developing countries where communities sometimes inadvertently use grain which is contaminated with mould.
What's safe?

If it's mouldy soft cheese, casserole leftovers or soft fruit like say berries, nectarines or peaches, it pays to know the high moisture content of these items means there is a greater chance branches of the mould have grown deeper into the food, where you won't necessarily be able to see them, Dr Hocking says.

The same rule goes for porous foods such as bread and cakes which have become mouldy. All of these foods should be binned if you spot mould on the surface.

Of course, certain domesticated moulds are deliberately introduced into our food as part of the production process — think blue cheese, for example.

While these are safe to eat, if a soft cheese that has been made with domesticated mould starts growing other types of mould, it should be discarded. (It can be tricky to tell, but Dr Hocking suggests looking out for any patches that are a different colour from the rest of the cheese.)
The jam and jelly debate

You can try to scoop off the affected jam, but its wobbly consistency means you risk dislodging air-borne spores that all moulds produce, that can float around, settle and start a fresh crop of mould.One area of some debate is whether fruit jams and jellies can be rescued if they have developed mould on their surface.

The US Food Safety and Inspection Service says moulds on jam could be producing toxins and the whole lot should be discarded.

However, Dr Hocking expects Australian jams would have a lower moisture content and are therefore less of a risk.
To eat or not to eat?

Moulds can grow in the fridge and will even survive freezing. They can also survive in salty, sugary and acidic environments.

As mould on our food is so hard to avoid, here are some general guidelines from the US Food Safety and Inspection Service on responding to the problem:

Discard all of these foods if mouldy:

• Luncheon meat, bacon, and hot dogs. 
• Yoghurt, sour cream and soft cheese. 
• Soft fruits and vegetables 
• Bread and baked goods. 
• Peanut butter, nuts and legumes. 
• Jams and jellies - but note Dr Hocking has a slightly different view for Australian jams. 

These foods can be saved from mould:

• Hard salami (the dry, aged type) – scrub mould from the surface. 
• Hard cheese – cut off at least 2.5 centimetres around and below the mould. Don't let the knife touch the mould and recover the cheese with fresh wrap. 
• Firm fruit and veg – small mould spots can be cut off