Pumpkin Chilli

Finding myself with a surfeit of pumpkin from the garden, and a craving for chilli, I searched around until I found this recipe. It really is a delicious combination, and you won't even notice that this is not a 'con carne'. That said, I love to throw in a little chorizo or bacon to smoke things up a bit. I modified the ingredients slightly, since I don't know what was in their 'chilli powder', but I assume you wouldn't want an Indian-style chilli powder, and that's all that's available here. You can leave this in the fridge for a few days and the flavours will keep developing.

Ingredients

• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 red or green peppers, chopped
• 750g butternut squash or eating pumpkin, peeled and chopped
• 100g of smoked bacon or cured chorizo, finely diced (optional)
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1/2 to 1 tsp chilli flakes (up to you)
• 1/2 tsp cocoa powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 can diced tomatoes, including the liquid
• 2 cans kidney or black eye beans
• 300-500ml vegetable stock
• 2 avocados
• sour cream (optional)
• crispy tortilla strips
• fresh leaf coriander (optional, for garnish)

Method

In a large Le Creuset or sauce pan, sautée the chopped vegetables (onion, pepper, squash, garlic) and bacon or sausage, if using, in one to two tablespoons of olive oil on medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the onions are translucent. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add all of the spices canned ingredients and stock, and stir. Don't use all of the stock if it looks like it will make the chilli very runny, but feel free to top up as it cooks if it looks too dry. Cover for about one hour, stirring occasionally.

By the time your chilli is done, the butternut squash should be nice and tender and the liquid should have reduced a bit, producing the hearty chilli consistency that we all know and love. Serve the chilli in individual bowls, topped with diced avocado and sour cream, if using. Use the strips to eat mouthfuls of chilli!

Wagamama Week: Ginger Chilli Mushrooms

Years ago, I bought my friend a copy of The Wagamama Cookbook and posted it to him for his birthday. Unbeknownst to me, he had also posted me a copy, so they arrived at almost the same time :) I've occasionally used recipes from it, but early in my cooking career, I didn't have many of the exotic-seeming Japanese ingredients, so stuck to the simplest recipes. Opening my closet now, I find I have almost everything I need, so thought I'd get stuck in by trying the first seven vegetarian recipes in the book, one by one. Otherwise, I'd never have been able to pick - they all look so yummy!

I went through each one and wrote down what I needed - the only new storecupboard ingredient was konbu for making dashi, as the store I go to doesn't have dashi no moto, even though that's what Wagamama use ;) Writing down exactly what I needed made shopping strange - I don't think I've ever gone to the store looking to buy '4 carrots' instead of just 'carrots'. And it had the unfortunate side-effect of making me completely forget about lunch ingredients. On the plus side, I know I spent almost exactly $100, and in theory I will be out of food in exactly one week's time.

So to kick off the week, the brave SO started with one of the simpler recipes while I went to Zumba. It's nice when someone else suffers for your art ;)

Ingredients (Quantities in brackets are my revised suggestions):

• 250g soba noodles (150g)
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 red chilli, trimmed, deseeded and finely sliced
• 2 tbsp peeled and grated fresh ginger root
• 4 (king) oyster mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• 4 shiitake mushrooms, cut into 1cm slices
• clump of enoki mushrooms, about the size of your first, broken up
• handful of roughly chopped choi sum
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• generous handful of beansprouts
• 600ml miso soup (500ml)
• 4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
• 2 sprigs coriander

Cook the noodles in a large pan of boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain and divide between two bowls, dropping the beansprouts on top. In a large hot wok, fry the chilli and ginger in the vegetable oil for 15-20 seconds, then add the mushrooms, choi sum and spring onions. Season with salt and sugar, and stir fry for 2-3 minutes.

Spoon the stir fry over the beansprouts and noodles, and ladle over the hot miso soup. Scatter with coriander and serve.

Verdict:

This was a pretty nice combination. The mushrooms lent a sort-of earthiness which was balanced well by the warming ginger and chilli, and the umame miso soup. We did feel like there were too many noodles; we ended up saving about 1/3 of the whole meal for one person's lunch the next day. I think 150g would be a more sensible amount. The mushroom pack we bought had a king oyster mushroom in it, and that stood up to the stir frying considerably better than the oysters and enokis, which basically vanished. I would switch to just using king oyster and shiitake, or even chestnut mushrooms, or add the enokis and oysters only 1 minute before serving. Lastly, the flavours were balanced, but a bit samey. I'd serve this with a hot lemon tea, or a lemonade, to try to bring in some contrasting sourness, as it's missing that note entirely.

Spicy Potato-stuffed Green Peppers

Back in March we had a wonderful visit from friends from the UK :) Amongst the fun of visiting Fremantle, Rottnest, Margaret River and generally pottering about and playing games, we had time to cook a few favourites: lamb abruzzio, T-bone steaks with salad and BBQ'd potatoes, and of course, lots of kangaroo!

Since then I've been a bit swamped by work, and under the weather from the 'winter'. We've had lots of old favourites and fallbacks, like that wonderful chicken, orange and almond salad. I just started getting the cooking bug again this week, but I'll be away for work next week! So I thought I'd better update while I had a little enthusiasm.

This recipe came originally from The Flavour Thesaurus, under the 'peppers and chillis' combo. I didn't actually get much of a taste of the chilli in this - yes, it was spicy, but it didn't have that kind of jalapeno-like aroma to it. What I really liked was the savoury contrast of the spiced potato with the fresh green peppers. All it needs is a touch of sweetness to round it all out. You could serve it with some sweet chutney, or some peshwari naan. I made gajar ka halwa to go after, but it was too sweet, too late. Next time perhaps I'll cook the carrots with fenugreek and a little honey, and have them with, instead.

Ingredients:

• 2-4 large to medium green peppers
• one large white onion
• 4-5 mashing potatoes
• 2-3 tsp garam masala
• a whole chilli (optional)
• butter, ghee or oil
• sour cream or yoghurt
• 1tsp paprika
  

Halve and deseed the peppers, then grill or microwave, cut-side down, until beginning to go tender. Arrange in a roasting tin or baking dish, cut-side up. Meanwhile, scrub and boil the potatoes, and finely chop and gently fry the onions and chilli, until golden and sweet. Mash the potatoes and stir into the onions, with the garam masala. Spoon into the green peppers and top with a little butter, ghee or oil. Roast at 180C for 20 minutes, until the green peppers are soft and the tops of the potatoes are golden. Stir the paprika into the sour cream or yoghurt and serve the peppers topped with a blob.

Pumpkin Pangrattato

Pumpkin was cheap at the market. Turns out that's because it has almost zero flavour at this time of year (midsummer). I have written down the basic recipe, which comes from Nigel's Tender, a book I have struggled to use well since it's aimed at someone growing vegetables in a much more temperate climate. I certainly remember the pumpkins in Cambridge being sweeter than the sad specimen I cooked tonight. Anyway, I include in italics the ingredients to include if you suspect your pumpkin is lacking a certain joie de vivre. And I'm toning down the amount of chilli: we had to have a yoghurt afterwards to cool down!

Ingredients:

• 750g pumpkin or butternut squash
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 1 1/2 tbsp rosemary leaves
• zest of an orange
• a handful of parsley leaves
• four handfuls of breadcrumbs
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 40g butter
• segments of an orange

Peel and deseed the squash, then cut into ~2cm pieces. Steam for 15-20 minutes until just tender. Crush the garlic into a frying pan with some olive oil and fry gently until just beginning to colour. Meanwhile, finely chop the rosemary and parsley leaves, and zest the orange. Add the herbs, chilli and orange zest to the garlic, then tip in the breadcrumbs and mix well; fry for a further 3-4 minutes until fragrant and just beginning to crisp.

Tip the pumpkin into a large roasting tray and taste; if it's lacking in flavour then season with the sugar, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. Tip over the breadcrumbs and dot with butter. Roast at 180C or on a moderate bbq for 35-40 minutes until the crumbs are deep gold and the pumpkin is tender. If you like, stir through the orange segments before serving.

Bacon and Chilli Yoghurt Muffins

I'm in a muffin mood! Specifically I seem to be hooked on bacon muffins. SO GOOD. This recipe comes from an awesome Christmas present, The Flavour Thesaurus. It's an incredible book in which the author set out to describe every possible flavour combination, scaling back from an insane number that could only be represented in scientific notation to a 'more feasible' 4,591 combinations - of which, to be fair, only the edible ones are described. It's brilliant to flick through as the prose is amusing and filled with interesting historical and cultural tidbits- it was in the 'everything goes with bacon' chapter that I came across this lovely recipe. I didn't have any cornmeal, so in place of the plain flour and cornmeal, I used a 'corn bread' baking mix, which is half-and-half white flour and coarse corn meal flour. Don't be scared by the quantity of chilli flakes: their heat is well-tempered by the yoghurt and butter. I also took the advice in the recipe and served with cream cheese: a wonderful combination.

Ingredients

• four rashers of bacon
• two eggs
• 450g plain yoghurt
• 50g butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 65g plain flour 
• 275g fine cornmeal
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes

Fry or grill the bacon until crispy and easy to snip or crumble. Whisk the eggs together with the yoghurt in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter and drizzle it in, whisking all the while. Combine the salt, soda, flour, cornmeal and chilli flakes in a bowl and then fold into the yoghurt mixture, stopping as soon as you no longer see any dry flour. Pop into 12-18 muffin cases or trays and bake at 200 C for 20 minutes, until golden and risen.

Sticky BBQ Chicken Wings

Another one from Nigel; I popped the jointed chicken wings and legs into a bowl and immediately covered with the marinade. Refrigerated, they were happy for four days, after which the marinade had completely permeated the chicken.

Ingredients:

• two chicken wings and two chicken legs, or roughly the same quantity of whatever chicken pieces you have to hand

For the marinade:

• 1 tsbp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove of garlic
• half a stalk of lemongrass
• 1 tsp sugar

For the dipping sauce:

• 1 1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 3 tbsp white sugar
• half a thumb of ginger
• 1 chilli (optional)
• juice of a lime

Crush the garlic and finely slice the lemongrass, then mix together with the other marinade ingredients; cover the chicken pieces and refrigerate for 1-100 hours. For the dipping sauce, finely dice the chilli and grate the ginger into a very small saucepan, and add the other ingredients. Heat gently to dissolve the sugar, then take off the heat.

BBQ the chicken pieces for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through and crispy at the edges. Serve with the dipping sauce, over plain steamed rice with some stir-fried vegetables.

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.

BBQ Snapper with Basil, Lime and Chilli

Back to the old butcher today - and they had a couple of huge snapper fillets for sale! Bit of a treat, so we picked them up along with the rest of our purchases, and I marinaded them before popping them on the barbie. We also had Sophie's pots, and the still-cheap-and-awesome-corn-on-the-cob.

Ingredients:

• one lime
• half a chilli
• a small bunch of basil
• a spring onion
• two large snapper fillets
• olive oil

Using a sharp knife, peeler, or zester, remove the zest from the lime and finely chop, along with the chilli, basil and spring onion. Coat the fillets with the mixture and drizzle over a little olive oil, and squeeze over the juice from half of the lime. Leave for at least half an hour, up to three hours (chill if the room is warm). BBQ for 4-5 minutes per side, until seared golden, and cooked all the way through.

Spice-Rub Roast Beef and Corn Bread

Yesterday I went to the butcher and once again marveled at how cheap beef is! Well... when in Rome :) So I bought a huge (1kg) topside roasting piece for $12. Over last week we used the nice leafy bits of a bunch of coriander and the inside of a stick of lemongrass, so we had all the husky stemmy rooty bits left over. I thought they'd make a great base for a spice rub for the piece of beef, so I whizzed them up in a blender, along with a whole red chilli, a few tsp of whole coriander seeds, a slosh of soy sauce and a tbsp of vegetable oil. I rubbed the mixture all over the piece of meat and roasted it indirectly in the BBQ for 45 minutes - a little rarer than the packet instructions of 25 minutes per 500g.

To go with, I was tempted to make Sophie's pots again. But it's Sunday, and if I'm not going to innovate at the weekend, when else will I?? I poked around the cupboards for a bit until I spotted half a bag of corn bread mix - not a full add-water-and-go mix, just a nice combination of corn flour, white flour and corn meal. We'd used it in the bread maker before but I figured it would work well if I adapted a recipe I found online to use it instead. I also got to use these darling little non-stick baking tins my mum gave me at Xmas, so that we could each have our own tiny little loaf! Exquisite :) A couple leaves of lettuce and the meal was complete - and well within the spec of the BBQ challenge week rules, which I appear to have completely adopted on hot days!

Ingredients

• 1 ear of sweet corn on the cob
• 1 cup of corn bread mix (or half and half white flour and corn meal)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup natural yoghurt
• 1 tsp vegetable oil
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven (or use an indirect heat on a BBQ) to 180-200C. BBQ, steam or grill the corn until tender - and if possible, singed and golden. Hold the cob vertically, using a corn-on-the-cob-holder or fork if you need, and use a sharp knife to strip off the kernels. Leave to cool while you make the batter. Mix all the rest of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl, stirring and folding until the flour has just stopped appearing. Add the sweet corn kernels, stir, then scrape into two 2x4" baking tins, or one small loaf tin. (You could also double the recipe back up to the original, and use a 19" cake tin). Bake for 35-45 minutes (45-55 if you double the recipe). Serve with butter or margarine for spreading.

Pad Thai

Tuesdays I have an evening telecon, so the lovely husband takes over the reins in the kitchen. I find the best results are achieved by giving him a detailed recipe, and placing all of the ingredients out where he can find them. And giving him about twice as long as I would need ;) Tonight he absolutely excelled with this recipe, again from taste.com.au. Although we halved the proteins, this was still a generous quantity of food, and I took some to lunch the next day. So cut down on the noodles if you're not super-hungry.

Ingredients:

• 250g packet flat rice noodles
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 chicken breast, thinly sliced
• 250g prawns, peeled, deveined
• 3 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
• 1/2 inch of small red chilli (or more, to taste), deseeded, finely chopped
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, finely chopped, optional
• small bunch coriander leaves, roughly chopped
• lime wedges, to serve

Place noodles into a heat-proof bowl and cover with hot water. Stand until nearly tender - you still want a little bite to them, so that they stand up under stir-frying. Drain and rinse under cold water.Combine lemon juice, fish sauce and sugar in a jug. Heat a wok over high heat, with a little oil. Add the chicken.and stir-fry for 2 minutes until golden. Add the prawns, onions and chilli, and stir-fry for a further 2 to 3 minutes or until the prawns turn pink. Add the part-cooked noodles and stir-fry for another 2 minutes.

Add the lemon juice mixture to wok and toss to combine. Pour the beaten eggs over the noodles and stir into the noodles as they cook. Turn off the heat, add the bean sprouts and half the coriander, and toss well to combine everything together. Serve on plates topped with the remaining coriander leaves, peanuts, and lime wedges.

Dolsot Bibimbap

This is one of my favourite Korean dishes, which I discovered at a brilliant Korean restaurant in Cambridge, Little Seoul. The basic ingredients are white rice, an egg, and a mixture of stir-fried vegetables and meat, and it's best served with the traditional kimchi.The trick to the meal is that for each person, you heat their very own stone or clay pot in the oven, then add the ingredients at the last minute and bring it sizzling to the table. The egg should be fried sunny-side, or even dropped in raw at the last second, so that each person can break it into the rice and cook it to their own liking. It's delicious and really interactive.

From the moment I tried it, I wanted to make it at home, but I waited until the move to Australia was over to go out and buy the pots - the less we had to move, the better! Tonight I went for a really simple version since it was my first time preparing it. Surprisingly, it only took about half an hour to prepare - just like a stir fry really, but with the added fun of the hot pot.

Ingredients

• two clay or stone pots, from your local Asian supermarket
• 200-300g white rice, depending on how hungry you are!
• 200-300g eye fillet or other good cut of beef
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 carrot
• 4 thin spring onions
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp rice wine
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 eggs

Put the pots in the oven and set it to 220C. Cook the white rice at a simmer with a 2:1 ratio of water to rice; it should take about ten minutes. Finely slice the beef into wide, flat pieces, then stir fry in a hot wok until just cooked, then remove to a bowl (without paper). Finely mince the garlic and finely slice the spring onions. Cut the carrot in half lengthways and cut thin, flat, diagonal slices from it. Stir fry the vegetables together for a couple of minutes, until cooked but still crisp. Return the beef to the pan, along with the oil, sugar, wine and soy sauce and allow to bubble through for a minute or two. Fry the two eggs sunny-side up, while you ladle rice and the cooked meat and vegetables into the pots. Add the eggs at the last second then serve immediately with kimchi, sweet chilli sauce and soy sauce.

Mackerel with Butter Beans and Chorizo

Had a super-busy day cycling around Perth buying yet more things for the house. We needed something a bit more protein-rich than usual and this really fit the bill! Vaguely Spanish in inspiration but really, just something I threw together because I felt like all the flavours involved. Worked out really well!

Ingredients:

• 2 mackerel steaks
• a small bunch of coriander, finely chopped
• juice of half a lime
• half an inch of fresh red chilli, finely chopped
• one red pepper
• one green pepper
• one small white onion
• a small chorizo sausage
• a 340g tin of butter beans
• cooked brown rice, to serve

Set your brown rice cooking. Pop the steaks in a glass bowl and mix in the coriander, lime juice and red chilli; leave to marinade while you prepare the rest. Halve the peppers, brush lightly with olive oil and place underneath a hot grill for 15-20 minutes, until at least half of their skin has blackened. Drop into a bowl and cover with a plate, allowing them to steam in their own juices.

Finely slice the white onion into rings and the sausage into rounds. Fry together over a moderate-low heat for ten minutes, until the onion is golden and falling apart, and the sausage has taken on tinges of golden colour. Tip in the butter beans, turn off the heat, and stir together to warm through. Grill the mackerel 2-3 minutes each side, until cooked. Meanwhile, peel the skins from the peppers and tear into rough strips, adding to the butter bean mix. Serve!

Grated Asian-style Salad

This is a quick, fresh salad that works at any time of year, but is particularly useful in the slow winter and early spring months before the new wave of shoots and leaves are available. The fresh herbs are really important; don't be tempted to substitute dried herbs! Our local Asian store is brilliant for last-minute purchases.

I like to use kohlrabi but I've only found it in my local market, so it might be hard to find in supermarkets. If you have trouble locating one, you could use finely shredded white cabbage or grated cucumber instead. I've scaled this to use one medium-sized kohlrabi, since they don't keep well so I tend to grate one all at once. This should serve two people generously, if you serve with some braised mushrooms or even just some dry-roasted peanuts. Plain white rice is also great as you can mop up some of the nice salad dressing.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium kohlrabi, peeled
• 2 carrots, scrubbed or peeled
• 1 small bunch of radishes, with leaves if possible
• 1 small bunch of fresh mint
• 1 small bunch of fresh coriander
• half of a red chilli (or more if you like it hot!)
• 4 tbsp extra-virgin rapeseed or refined sunflower oil
• 1 tsp toasted sesame soil
• juice of 1-2 limes
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp soy sauce

Using a tower grater, grate the kohlrabi and carrots, holding them at an angle so that long strips are produced. Rinse the herbs if they are gritty, remove the leaves from the mint, and roughly chop. Rinse the radishes and their leaves, which tend to be very gritty. Remove the radish roots and the connection between the root and the stems. Slice the radishes into thin circles and roughly chop the leaves.

To make the dressing, finely chop the chilli, and shake with the rest of the ingredients in a jar. Taste and adjust the lime juice if needed; it should be a pleasantly sharp dressing, with a smoky umami from the fish sauce. Toss the salad ingredients thoroughly together. If you wish to keep some aside for later, do so now: it will keep undressed in an airtight container in the fridge for a day or two. When ready to serve, dress and toss thoroughly.