Peri Peri Prawns

In case you hadn't noticed (I'm sure you did), this little blog of mine has been sadly neglected over the last few months.  I could give you a dozen or more excuses for that - all of them valid, but all of them equally boring to anybody else but me.  So I'm going to dispense with the lame excuses, and cut straight to the chase - the blog is back, and I'm kicking things off this week with some fiery prawns ... just the thing to wake up the taste buds and a dormant blog.

I'm cooking along with my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs this week, where we are revisiting a cooking club favourite chef - Tessa Kiros.  I absolutely loved the time we spent cooking with Tessa a couple of years ago, and her book Falling Cloudberries became (hands down) the most used cookbook in my collection.

I had bookmarked Tessa's recipe for Prawns with Lemon, Peri Peri, Garlic & Feta ages ago, and a hot summer evening last night seemed like the perfect occasion to try it.  I made very little changes to the recipe, other than to adjust quantities (since I had no need to feed six people), substituted chilli flakes for peri peri seasoning which I didn't have, and I baked the dish in the oven instead of on the stovetop.

This dish was incredibly simple to prepare, absolutely bursting with the kind of flavours that I love, and served alongside a simple Greek salad, instantly transported me back to the Greek island holidays I've enjoyed so much in the past - if you want to travel without the hassle of packing a suitcase or renewing your passport, this is the dish that will take you there.

Peri Peri Prawns Recipe
Serves 2
Adapted from recipe by Tessa Kiros
from Falling Cloudberries
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

400g raw prawns
1-2 tablespoons butter
4x large cloves garlic, finely chopped
large handful flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
very generous pinch of chilli flakes
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1x lemon, finely grated zest & juice
150g feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (390 degrees F).

Choose an ovenproof baking dish that will be just large enough to hold all the prawns in three layers.

In a small bowl mix together the finely chopped garlic and parsley, chilli flakes, lemon zest, and a generous seasoning of flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Dot some of the butter liberally around the base of the baking dish and cover with a layer of prawns. Sprinkle over a third of the garlic mixture, and dot generously with more butter.  Cover with another layer of prawns, sprinkle over half of the remaining garlic mixture, and once again dot with more butter.  Finish with the final layer of prawns, sprinkle over the remaining garlic mixture, and dot with some more butter.

Cover dish and place into the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven, drizzle over the lemon juice, and crumble the feta over the top.  Baste with some of the buttery prawn juices which by now will have settled in the bottom of the dish.  Return to the oven and bake for a further 10 minutes (or longer as necessary), until the prawns are cooked through and the feta is just starting to melt and turn golden.

Remove from the oven and serve immediately, with a simple salad and some crusty bread to mop up the juices.

If you would like to get to know Tessa a little better, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and see what they've all cooked up ...

... or check out Falling Cloudberries and many of Tessa's other great titles available from Amazon or Fishpond NZ.

         

Burmese Chilli Prawns with Hot & Sour Asian Slaw - Salad Days # 8

This week at I Heart Cooking Clubs we're exploring the theme "East Meets West", choosing Diana Henry fusion dishes with a global influence.

Living here in New Zealand, I'm no stranger to fusion food - I'm sure the same can be said for most of my "neighbours" on the Pacific Rim.  It has always fascinated me, in just about any country, the influence that its immigrants has on the local food culture.  When I was growing up, Chicken Chop Suey at the local Chinese restaurant was about as exotic as it got.  In the last 20 years, however, increasing numbers of Asian immigrants has had a huge influence on the New Zealand culinary landscape.  Previously unheard of ingredients are now readily available;  Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Malaysian, Burmese, Bangladeshi, and Indonesian restaurants abound;  and even the pantries of this nation's most unadventurous cooks would boast a bottle of soy sauce at the very least.

Looking through Diana Henry'd book A Change of Appetite, I thought her Burmese Chilli Fish with Hot & Sour Salad was the perfect dish to fit the brief.  The hot and sour salad, which is essentially an Asian take on a classic cole slaw seemed like the epitome of fusion food to me.  I made quite a few changes to the recipe ... For a start I replaced the fish with prawns, and tweaked the curry paste a little.  And I rang a few changes to the salad as well - adding in some red cabbage along with the white, and adding carrot, green papaya, cherry tomatoes, mint and peanuts to the slaw, and as I did with the curry paste I tweaked the dressing a bit.

This dish definitely had the wow factor - an absolute explosion of flavours and textures, and just enough heat to leave my lips tingling at the end of it ... in a good way.  If you like Asian flavours, I urge you to give this a try the next time you have cole slaw on your mind.

Burmese Chilli Prawns with Hot & Sour Asian Slaw Recipe
Inspired by recipe from Diana Henry
from A Change of Appetite
Serves 2 as a substantial meal

For the Burmese Chilli Prawns:
300g raw prawns, shells removed and deveined
1x clove garlic, roughly chopped
generous pinch of salt
piece of fresh ginger about the size of your thumb, grated
1/2 red chilli, roughly chopped (deseed if you like less heat)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon lime juice

For the Hot & Sour Asian Slaw:
1x cup finely shredded white cabbage
1x cup finely shredded red cabbage (plus extra leaves for serving)
1x carrot finely shredded (a julienne peeler is ideal)
1x cup finely shredded green papaya
2x radishes, thinly sliced (a mandoline works perfectly if you have one)
12x cherry tomatoes, halved (use different colours if you can)
generous handful of mint leaves, roughly chopped
large handful of roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
1/2 red chilli, roughly chopped (deseed if you like less heat)

For the dressing:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon lime juice

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Place garlic, salt, ginger, chilli, turmeric, olive oil, sesame oil and lime juice in a mortar and pestle, and grind to a paste.  Add paste to the prawns, and toss until all the prawns are well coated in the paste.  Put prawns in a single layer in an ovenproof dish, and bake in the preheated oven until cooked through - depending on the size of your prawns this will take between 5 and 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake vigorously until well combined.  Taste and then adjust to your liking - you want a good balance of sweet-sour-salty, so play around with the ingredients until you get the flavour just right.

Place all the slaw ingredients in a large bowl, drizzle liberally with the dressing, and toss gently until everything is well combined.

Serve immediately piled into red cabbage leaves, and arrange prawns on the side.

If you would like to get to know Diana Henry a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links (who knows, you might even want to join the journey and cook along with us) ...

... or check out A Change of Appetite and Diana's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

I'm also sharing this at Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays, hosted by my very lovely friend Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, and at Weekend Cooking, hosted by the lovely Beth at Beth Fish Reads.

This is salad number 8 in my Salad Days, 28 days of salad project.   What's that you ask?  Well,  I've said it here a dozen times or more ... I love salads.  A big bowl, substantial salad is hands down my favourite meal any time of the year.  Such is my love of salad, that I'm challenging myself to come up with a different salad every day for the month of February - that's 28 days of salads - and I plan to share as many of them as I can with you.  I'll also be doing some flashbacks to some of my favourite salads I've shared in the past.

What's more, I'm giving you the opportunity to share some of your favourite salads with me too.  Have a favourite salad you'd like to share?  Simply link up your salad recipe using the linky tool at the bottom of this post.  The linky will be open all month, and you can join in any day or every day, and link as many recipes as you like.  Feel free to grab the Salad Days badge from the sidebar to include in your post if you'd like to.  There's really no rules around linking up, other than please, use your manners and link your post back to this one.  Linking old posts is fine too, just please edit them to include the back link.  Thanks for sharing your favourite salad with us.

Sicilian Artichoke & Broad Bean Salad with Saffron Dressing - Salad Days # 1

This week at I Heart Cooking Clubs our theme is Veggie Variations - our mission to choose any one of Diana Henry's meat-free, veggie filled dishes, of which I can tell you she has many.  I've had her Sicilian Artichoke & Broad Bean Salad with Saffron Dressing recipe, from A Change of Appetite, bookmarked for ages and, since artichokes and broad beans are two of my favourite vegetables, this seemed like the perfect time to make it.

The fact that this "veggieccentric" meal (though I did sneak in some anchovies) is also a salad, that salad of any description just happens to be my favourite meal of any kind, that it offered a riot of colour on a grey and gloomy day, and that it delivered a sublime combination of flavours and textures (which is always the benchmark of a great dish for me), meant that this dish ticked every conceivable box for me.

In fact, I love salad so much that I've decided that I am going to make a different salad (and I'll try to post as many of them as I can) every day for the whole month of February - that's 28 days of salad.  I'm pretty excited about that, and because there can never be too many salads, I'm also giving you the opportunity to share some salads of your own.  I'll be posting more details tomorrow and I'll also be putting up a linky which will stay open for the whole month, so if you have a salad that you'd like to share (on any day or every day) feel free to join in.

Now back to the salad at hand.  This was everything I dreamed it was going to be.  The saffron plays a lovely earthy background note to the sweetness of the honey and orange in the dressing, and its flavour infuses the artichokes beautifully.  The textures of the artichoke and broad beans, provide a great base to the little flavour explosions that come from the oranges and raisins, chilli, capers and anchovies.  No two mouthfuls are the same.  The orange was my own addition to things here, as were the capers and anchovies, but they are the very first things that come to mind when I think of Sicily so in they went.  I left out mint and pine nuts because I didn't have them on hand, and honestly I didn't miss them, but all manner of herbs and nuts would be great add-ins.

I ate the whole thing on my own as a substantial meal, though you could probably stretch it to feed a couple of people for a lighter meal such as lunch.  Of course, this would also be great as an accompaniment to a larger meal, especially something that would sit comfortably with big bold flavours;  personally, I found it didn't need anything more than a good pinot noir.

Sicilian Artichoke & Broad Bean Salad with Saffron Dressing Recipe
Adapted from recipe by Diana Henry
from A Change of Appetite
Serves 1 as a substantial main meal or
Serves 2 as a light lunch or
Serves 4 as an accompaniment to a larger meal
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
generous pinch of saffron stamens
1 teaspoon runny honey
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
3 to 5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
zest and juice of half an orange

generous handful of raisins
1 cup frozen broad beans
6x large artichoke hearts, bottled or canned
olive oil
1x garlic clove, roughly chopped
1x green chilli, finely sliced, deseeded if you prefer
generous handful of capers
6x anchovies, roughly chopped
zest and segments of fruit from the other half of the orange

Put lemon juice, red wine vinegar and saffron threads into a very small saucepan, and heat gently until the saffron begins to release its colour and fragrance.  Remove from the heat and cool slightly.  Pour into a small jug and whisk in the honey, salt, pepper, orange juice and zest, then whisking constantly slowly drizzle in the extra virgin oil until you reach a nicely emulsified dressing consistency.  Taste and adjust to your liking.  This should have a good balance of sweet and savoury.

Cut artichoke hearts into quarters, place them in a bowl and pour over the dressing.  Set aside for at least an hour if you can manage it for the flavours to infuse.

Put raisins in a small bowl, and cover with boiling water.  Set aside for about 30 minutes until the raisins have plumped up.

Put frozen broad beans into another small bowl, and cover them too with boiling water.  Leave to stand for 5 minutes, drain, then remove and discard the tough greyish skins.

Heat a slosh of olive oil in a small saute pan over medium heat.  Add the garlic, chilli, and capers to the pan, and saute until fragrant and the capers are slightly crispy.

Arrange artichoke hearts on a serving platter.  Scatter around the broad beans, raisins, orange segments and anchovies.  Sprinkle over the sauteed garlic, chilli and capers.  Drizzle liberally with the dressing from the artichokes, and finish with a final sprinkling of grated orange zest.

If you would like to get to know Diana Henry a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links (who knows, you might even want to join the journey and cook along with us) ...

... or check out A Change of Appetite and Diana's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

I'm also sharing this at Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays, hosted by my very lovely friend Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, and at Weekend Cooking, hosted by the lovely Beth at Beth Fish Reads.

Jerk Salmon Salad with Spicy Pineapple Dressing

It's been a little while since I shared a Secret Recipe Club (**) post with you.  We've been on a brief hiatus over Christmas, but I'm excited that my group is back to posting this week.

*  So what's this Secret Recipe Club you may ask?  The club has over a hundred members, divided into four groups, and each month one member is assigned (in secret) to another member from their group.  That person then selects a recipe (or more) to make, photograph, and prepare a blog post - all in secret.  Then everyone in the group posts their recipe on the same day, and of course the secret is then out.  It's a always a thrill to find out who has posted something from your own blog, and to meet and discover some new blogs.   If you are a food blogger and interested in joining the Secret Recipe Club, be sure to check out the Join SRC page.

Because we've been on a bit of a break, I've had an extra long time to explore and get to know my assigned blog, which this month is Sew You Think You Can Cook, hosted by Lauren who lives in Ohio with her husband and son.  Lauren is an aerospace engineer, and hopes to one day realise her food dream and become a caterer.  As well as her obvious passion for food and blogging, Lauren also loves quilting and cross stitching, which is evident in the quilt-block tutorials you will find on her blog along with all her great recipes.

There were several recipes from Lauren's blog I bookmarked to try:  Cranberry Cinnamon Rolls, Cinnamon Raisin Energy Balls, Coconut Shrimp with Bloody Mary Dip, and Lemony Shrimp Scampy with Orzo.  In the end, I decided Lauren's Spinach Salad with Spicy Pineapple Dressing was the best fit with the healthy eating plan I'm trying to follow this month.

I did make a couple of changes to fit my current food habits and available ingredients.  Firstly I replaced chicken with salmon, since I'm not eating any meat at the moment and, as a clean out of my fridge revealed a jar of jerk paste needing to be used up, I marinated my salmon with some of that instead of the ancho chilli powder which is not readily available here.  I couldn't get any spinach at the market this week, so I've used cos lettuce instead;  I replaced coriander (cilantro) with mint because that's what I had in the garden;  and I replaced apple cider vinegar with fresh lime juice, again because that's what I had on hand.  I increased the amount of chilli in the dressing as well, and let me tell you that this dressing is so good I could just drink it on it's own.  The combination of sweet pineapple, hot chilli, fresh mint and sour lime is positively irresistible, and was the perfect foil to the oily, spicy salmon.  Thanks for a great recipe, Lauren - this is definitely one I will be repeating.

Jerk Salmon Salad with Spicy Pineapple Dressing Recipe
adapted from this recipe
at Sew You Think You Can Cook
Serves 2 as a main meal

2x fillets of salmon, pin bones removed
2 teaspoons of jerk paste
olive oil

1/2 a fresh pineapple, core & skin removed and discarded
generous handful of fresh mint leaves
1x clove garlic
1x green chilli, roughly chopped (remove seeds if you prefer)
juice of 1/2 an orange
2 tablespoons lime juice
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
extra virgin olive oil

salad leaves of your choice
thinly sliced red & yellow peppers

Rub jerk paste all over salmon fillets, and set aside in the fridge to marinate for at least two hours.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Meanwhile, make the spicy pineapple dressing.  Cut the fresh pineapple into chunks, and put half of the chunks into a blender - reserve the rest of the pineapple chunks for the salad.  Add the mint leaves, garlic, chilli, orange juice, lime juice, salt and pepper to the blender and blitz until smooth.  Then with the blender running, add extra virgin olive oil in a thin stream, until dressing is smooth and emulsified.  Taste and adjust seasoning to your liking.

Place salmon in a lightly greased ovenproof dish, drizzle with a little olive oil, and place in the preheated oven until cooked through - about 8 to 10 minutes depending on the size of your fillets.

While the salmon is cooking, toss salad leaves, red & yellow peppers, and chunks of pineapple together.  Arrange on a serving platter, and drizzle over the dressing.   Remove salmon from the oven, place on top of the salad and drizzle with a little more dressing.  Serve immediately.

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I did, and visit the links below to check out all the other great dishes my Secret Recipe Club friends made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Pink Grapefruit, Prawn & Toasted Coconut Salad

I've spent a lot of my time over the last few weeks decluttering.  Like a woman possessed, I have bit by bit gone through every room and cupboard in the house, having a major clean-out of all that stuff I've been hanging onto "just in case" it's ever needed one day.

I have spoken to my yoga students often about staying in the present, living in the moment, and yet despite that I have managed to surround myself with a whole lot of stuff because of some attachment to a time long past, or possible need in some uncertain future.  It's ridiculous, it doesn't amount to staying present, and it's all been suffocating me.

I have to say I'm surprised how long it's taken to work my way through the house, and I'm not finished yet (there's still the bathroom and kitchen cupboards) to go, but I guess I'm not going to deal with 40 years of accumulated clap-trap in five minutes.  Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I would have made an ideal candidate for "World's Greatest Hoarders", but there was a lot of stuff.

There's no doubt this is an incredibly freeing process - it's given me a real sense of lightening the load, and allowing space for change.

So what does all of this have to do with this dish?  Well, part of my decluttering process has extended to trying to give the freezer a bit of a clean-out, wherein I found a bag of prawns that needed to be used up.  Since we have another Mystery Box Challenge this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs, which requires us to make a dish from anyone of our IHCC chefs using at least three of these ingredients: potatoes, buttermilk, flour, paprika, onion, leafy greens, lemon, honey, prawns, and feta - it seemed like the ideal time to use those prawns.

I'd had Diana Henry's recipe in A Change of Appetite for A Warm Salad of Pink Grapefruit, Prawns, and Toasted Coconut bookmarked for quite a while, and since with a little adaptation the recipe enabled me to use prawns, leafy greens and honey, this looked like the perfect dish to meet the mystery box challenge.

I made only very minimal changes to the recipe, briefly oven-roasting the prawns instead of pan frying them, since I always look for any opportunity I can to avoid standing over a frying pan, and for a bit of extra kick I added some red pepper flakes to the prawns while the roasted.  I also replaced sugar in the dressing with honey, and replaced groundnut oil with a combination of olive oil and sesame oil.

This made a wonderful light meal, absolutely bursting with flavour and interesting texture - soft, velvety leaves provide a cooling background to spicy prawns and the citrusy, sweet-tart burst of the grapefruit, accompanied by the crunch of the coconut, peanuts and sesame seeds.  This is definitely a dish I can see myself repeating often over the remainder of summer - I can even see it inspiring a few variations.

Pink Grapefruit, Prawn & Toasted Coconut Salad Recipe
Adapted (barely) from recipe by Diana Henry
from A Change of Appetite
Serves 2 as a light meal

for the dressing:
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil

for the salad:
2x pink grapefruit
1 cup shaved coconut from a fresh coconut
1 tablespoon olive oil
350g (12 oz) fresh prawns, shelled & deveined
red pepper flakes
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
leafy salad greens
bunch of fresh mint leaves
1x red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
large handful roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (360 degrees F).

Begin by making the dressing.  Place all the ingredients in a small jug, whisk to combine, and set aside.

Prepare the grapefruit - remove the peel and all the white pith from the grapefruit, then, working over a bowl, remove the segments by running a sharp knife between the membrane and the flesh on each side of the segment to release the segment.  Discard the membrane, set the flesh aside.

Using a hammer or the back of a heavy knife, break the coconut shell open and prise out the flesh.  Using a vegetable peeler, shave the coconut into thin slices.  Dry fry the shaved coconut in a pan over medium heat until golden.  This happens quickly, so don't leave the kitchen.

In a bowl toss together the prawns, olive oil, generous pinch of red pepper flakes, flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Spread prawns in a single layer in an ovenproof dish and roast in the preheated oven until cooked through - this only takes a few minutes.

Remove from the oven and immediately toss with the grapefruit segments, red chilli and half the dressing.

Arrange salad greens and mint on serving plates, and arrange prawns and grapefruit amongst the salad leaves.  Scatter toasted coconut, peanuts, and sesame seeds over the top, and drizzle with the remaining dressing.

Serve immediately.

If you would like to get to know Diana Henry a little better, and to see what everyone else has cooked up this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links (who knows, you might even want to join the journey and cook along with us) ...

... or check out A Change of Appetite and Diana's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

Bang Bang Cauliflower

You might remember that last month I told you about my introduction to the Secret Recipe Club.  In case you missed that, the Secret Recipe Club is a cooking group where each month we are assigned another blog from which we will choose a recipe to make and write a post about.  This is done in secret (hence Secret Recipe Club), so no one knows who is cooking from which blog until everyone puts up their post on reveal day.

My expectations were running high going into last month's reveal, and I can happily say I was not disappointed.  The warmth of the welcome to the group that I received from so many lovely bloggers was simply overwhelming.  Needless to say then, I could scarcely contain my excitement waiting to find out whose blog I would be cooking from this month.  Now I can safely tell you that my assigned blog is Life and Kitchen.

Lindsay is a young mum living in Pittsburgh, and I love that first and foremost she writes her blog for her small daughter, in the hope that one day "Lily will be able to read back over old posts to get recipe ideas and see a small slice of what our life was like when she was too little to remember".  Like me, Lindsay has never been much of a meat-eater, and then in January 2012 she decided to try a meat-free month.  That month turned into a year, that year turned into two, and with each passing month her awareness of the various "injustices" involved in meat production have grown stronger.  This really resonated with me.  I've flirted on numerous occasions with having meat-free months, and in the long-term I dream of potentially becoming a vegetarian, but I seem to invariably get tripped up by a pork chop or strip of bacon!  I think I would struggle to also live without salmon.  Still, like Lindsay, an awareness of both the ethical and environmental issues surrounding the food we eat is important to me.

Lindsay had so many great dishes I was tempted by - Spinach Artichoke Tarts, Baked Lemon Pasta, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Nutella Fudge with Sea Salt, Lemon Poppy Seed Baked Donuts, and many more, but you all know how much I love a good cauliflower recipe, so as soon as I stumbled across her Bang Bang Cauliflower it was a no-brainer.

In short this is cauliflower, dipped in a batter and fried until golden and crispy, then smothered in a delicious chilli sauce.  I made a couple of small changes to the batter recipe, replacing some of the regular flour with rice flour and adding some smoky paprika and ground cumin to give it an extra hit of flavour.  I also made my own mayonnaise for the bang bang sauce, and replaced hot sriracha sauce with cayenne pepper because I didn't have any hot sauce on hand.  Store bought mayonnaise is absolutely fine by the way, but if you feel inclined to make your own, it's dead easy ... In a small bowl whisk together one egg yolk with a teaspoon of water, then start to add sunflower oil to the egg yolk mixture a few drops at a time, stirring constantly until each addition of oil is fully amalgamated.  Once the yolk starts to thicken a little, you can begin to add the oil in a slow steady stream, until you end up with a very thick emulsion.  Finally, thin to the consistency you want with a little lemon juice or warm water - just add the liquid one teaspoon at a time and whisk it in well.  Season to taste with salt.  And voila - mayonnaise!

In short this dish was wonderful. Let's face it, what's not to love about a pile of batter-dipped, deep-fried vegetables, smothered in a punchy chilli sauce.?!  I happily made a meal of this - it's the perfect dish for a lazy Saturday night dinner (along with a good movie and a bottle of wine) and I will definitely be making this again.   

Bang Bang Cauliflower Recipe
Adapted (slightly) from recipe by Lindsay
at Life and Kitchen
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

Bang bang sauce
1/2 cup whole egg mayonnaise
1/2 cup Thai sweet chilli sauce
cayenne pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 teaspoon)

Batter
1 cup plain flour
3/4 cup rice flour
1 teaspoon smokey paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
2x egg yolks
1-1/2 cups cold water

1x head cauliflower, cut into florets
sunflower (or other flavourless) oil
flaky sea salt
large bunch chives, roughly chopped

Begin by making the bang bang sauce.  Whisk mayonnaise and sweet chilli sauce together in a small bowl, and add cayenne pepper to your taste - cayenne can pack a bit of a punch, so begin by adding 1/4 teaspoon, taste and add more as you like.  Set aside.  (This can be made well in advance, and in fact this will make more than you need, but it will keep for ages and would make a great accompaniment to just about anything.)

Pour sunflower oil, to a depth of about 1 cm (1/2 in), into a large deep sided saute pan.  Set over medium-high heat until the surface is rippling, but not quite smoking.

Meanwhile make the batter.  Sift together the flours, paprika and ground cumin into a large bowl.  Add flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, mix lightly, and make a well in the centre.  Whisk egg yolks and water together and pour into the dry ingredients.  Stir until just combined.

Dip the cauliflower pieces into the batter, and immediately drop carefully into the hot oil.  Cook for several minutes, turning regularly until golden all over.  (You will need to do this in batches.)  As cooked, remove from oil, drain on a paper towel, and sprinkle lightly with flaky sea salt as each batch is cooked.

Arrange cauliflower pieces on a large platter, smother with the bang bang sauce, and sprinkle over the snipped chives.  Serve immediately.

Hope you enjoy this dish as much as I did, and visit the links below to check out all the other great dishes my Secret Recipe Club friends made.

An InLinkz Link-up

Mushroom, Basil & Lemon Salad

Who doesn't love a picnic?  Ok, so maybe just as there are a few Scrooges out there who don't love Christmas, I'm sure there are also a few ne'er sayers when it comes to picnicing, but for the most part a good picnic seems to be universally popular.  Whether you're six or sixty, whether you'd rather hike for several hours to some remote destination or simply throw a rug on the living room floor, there's something about the informality of a picnic which transports most of us to that "happy place".  Of course, like all good things, timing is everything.  Unless you're planning your feast on a rug in front of a blazing fire, winter time when the wind is howling and the snow is six inches deep is probably not ideal.  Likewise, I personally think that summer is not great for a picnic either - it can generally be too hot, all the ideal spots are usually completely overcrowded, and here in New Zealand at least you will spend the whole time fighting with the ants who want to eat your food and the sandflies who want to have a feast on you.  Spring and autumn though always seem to me like the perfect time to pack up the basket and head outdoors for a little alfresco dining.

In my part of the world, right now is absolutely perfect picnic time.  The weather is glorious.  It's still plenty warm enough to be outside in something sleeveless, but without the harsh intensity of summer's heat.  There's scarcely a breath of wind, and the light has that beautiful golden quality that is unique to autumn.  Doesn't hurt also that here in New Zealand we can experience breathtaking scenery at just about every turn - sounds braggy I know, but it's actually true.  I only have to look out my front windows for a vista which sweeps from the sea to The Grampians.  Everything is so lushly green, after last week's heavy rain, punctuated by a blaze of gold and russet as leaves turn and trees begin to shed their autumn cloaks.  If ever there was a siren call to the great outdoors, this is it, and so it couldn't be better timing that this week our I Heart Cooking Clubs' theme is "What's in your picnic basket?".

We continue to cook with Nigel Slater, and I found that he had loads of great dishes which were either suitable for, or easily adaptable to, picnic fare.  I happened to have a pile of mushrooms on hand, so when I stumbled upon his recipe for "Mushrooms with Basil and Lemon" in a Marie Claire cookbook written by Nigel I knew I'd found just the thing.  I love a raw mushroom salad - it's the kind of thing that doesn't need to be refrigerated, and only gets better the longer it sits around, which makes it positively ideal for taking to a picnic.  Layer it up in a big Agee jar, as I have done, and you have something which transports well and looks like you've done something really special.  If you want to be even more fancy schmancy, you could actually put this into several smaller jars for individual servings - just remember though that, whilst that might look cool, all that extra glass weighs something and, unless you have a party of Sherpas available to help out, you are probably going to be the one who has to carry it!

This salad gets plenty of flavour from loads of basil, parsley, and lemon, a nice bit of extra texture from crunchy coriander seeds, and a good kick of heat from some chilli.  I used a small, hot chilli with the seeds left in, but if you prefer just a whisper of heat choose a milder chilli and remove the seeds - it's totally up to you.  This would be a great salad alongside some cold chicken or smoked salmon, or something as simple as a crusty baguette to mop up all the salad juices.  It would also be great to take along to a barbeque - it won't mind sitting around, and would be delicious with grilled meats, vegetables or fish.

Mushroom, Basil & Lemon Salad Recipe
Adapted from recipe by Nigel Slater
from Marie Claire Cookbook
Serves 2-4 depending on what else you have to go with it
Click here for a printable copy of this recipe

250g (9 oz) mushrooms
1x lemon
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
large handful of basil leaves
large handful of flat leaf parsley
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 red chilli, finely chopped
flaky sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Grate the zest of the lemon into a small bowl and set aside.

Wipe the mushrooms clean with a barely damp paper towel (do not wash them) and cut into quarters, or wedges if they are large.  Place mushrooms in a medium sized bowl, add the red wine vinegar and juice of the lemon.  Mix gently together and leave aside for about an hour to marinate.

Roughly chop the herbs and add to the bowl containing the lemon zest, adding also the coriander seeds, chilli, salt, pepper and olive oil.  Mix together well.

Spoon alternating layers of mushrooms and herb mixture into a clean preserving jar, pour over any vinegar or oil remaining in your bowls, seal the jar and head for the great outdoors.

If you would like to get to know Nigel Slater a little better, and to see what everyone else has in their picnic basket this week, then do go and visit my friends at I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links ...

... or check out Marie Claire Cookbook by Nigel Slater and Nigel's many other great titles available from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, or Fishpond NZ.

I'll also be sharing this post this week at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the delightful Michelle at Ms. enPlace, at Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays hosted by my lovely friend Deb at Kahakai Kitchen, at Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads, at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollum, and at Cook Your Books hosted by the lovely Joyce at Kitchen Flavours.

               

Lastly, I'm also sharing this post at a new to me event - Cooking with Herbs hosted by the very lovely Karen at Lavender and Lovage.  Thanks, Karen, for the invitation to participate.  Check out the links below to see all the other lovely "herby" dishes.

An InLinkz Link-up

Prawn & Chilli Pot-Sticker Dumplings

I may have mentioned here before that, in my real life … that is the one that pays the bills and keeps a roof over my head, I work in a kitchenware shop.  This can be dangerous territory for the avid cook, surrounded on a daily basis by beautiful crockery, cutlery, glassware, pots and pans, and a gadget for just about any purpose you might care to mention - many of them useful, others … well, maybe not so much.  To be perfectly honest (and in saying this I mean no disrespect to my employer whatsoever), I don't personally see the point of accumulating an egg slicer, a strawberry slicer, a mushroom slicer and a banana slicer, when one good chef's knife will do the job of all four gadgets and a whole lot more besides.  But there are people out there who clearly have bigger drawers and deeper pockets than I do, as these are all popular products, and who am I to knock it?!

You can imagine that, working in this environment, it would be easy to be splashing out on a whole lot of unnecessary gadgets, and who amongst can say (no matter how discerning) that we don't have at least one such item gathering dust in the deepest recess of a kitchen drawer.  So generally my rule of thumb for purchasing a new gadget is that its primary function has to be something that I would use a lot, or that it should be capable of performing a variety of tasks.

One gadget that I've had my eye on, since it came into stock a month or so ago, is this Chef'n Pocket Maker.  This little gadget is used for making little pies, empanadas, gyozas, etc, and the minute I saw this my mind was abuzz with possible fillings and uses.  As luck would have it, I got to trial one yesterday, and I'm so in love with this product I can't wait to get back to work tomorrow to buy one.  Yes, really, and no one has paid me to tell you this!!

The Chef'n Pocket Maker is available in New Zealand from Stevens Homewares stores nationwide, elsewhere from Amazon.  Want to see it in action?  Check out this video.

Aside from the little pot-sticker dumplings I'm sharing with you today, you could also use this gadget for these Fig & Blue Cheese Wontons, these Spicy Vegetable Samosas, individual versions of this Greek Spinach & Feta Pie or this Broccoli, Leek & Blue Cheese Pie, even a variation on these Lemon & Goat Cheese Ravioli.

As luck would have it our theme this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs is tarts and pies, and I have liberally interpreted this to include anything enclosed in some kind of pastry.  Leafing through my collection of Donna Hay books, there was all manner of delicious tarts and pies to tantalise the tastebuds, but it was the Prawn & Chilli Pot-Sticker Dumplings from marie claire dining (which I believe has now been republished as Donna Hay Entertaining) that really took my fancy, as well as providing the perfect opportunity for test driving this great little "gizmo".

I made only a couple of small changes to the recipe, really just adjusting a few quantities to suit what I had on hand and my tastes, and also leaving out shallots as I didn't feel they were necessary and really there is more than enough flavour comes through from the coriander and chilli jam.  I think the addition of shallot would completely kill the delicate flavour of the prawns.  Speaking of the chilli jam, I used my own homemade chilli jam which you can find here, but I have also used this chilli paste in soy oil before which is readily available in most Asian shops and which I think would work well.

These dumplings were incredibly delicious, and although we ate them as a meal accompanied by an Asian-style slaw, they would also be great to serve as an appetiser or party-pass-around, or even to take for a picnic.  Served with a dish of chilli jam, your favourite Asian-style dipping sauce, or even sweet chilli sauce, these make a truly delightful snack or light meal.

Prawn & Chilli Pot-Sticker Dumplings Recipe

Adapted slightly from recipe by Donna Hay

from marie claire dining

Note:  using the pocket maker this quantity of filling made 30 dumplings, but if you were making them by hand I imagine you would probably get a few less

300g (10-1/2 oz) raw prawn meat

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

small bunch coriander, leaves & stems, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon chilli jam

2 tablespoons cooking sake

1 tablespoon soy sauce

30 wonton wrappers

1 tablespoon cornflour *

2 tablespoons water *

* Note:  the cornflour and water are not necessary to seal the dumplings

if you are using the pocket maker

1 tablespoon oil

1 cup vegetable stock

Place prawn meat, ginger, coriander, chilli jam, sake and soy sauce in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse a few times until everything is coarsely chopped.  Take care not to overdo it - you don't want to end up with fish paste - your filling should still have a little bit of texture to it.

If making dumplings by hand, place a small spoonful of filling on each wonton wrapper.  Mix the cornflour and water together to make a paste, and brush paste around the edges of the wrapper.  Fold the wrapper in half, and then pleat the edges into form a fan shape, pinching the edges firmly to seal in the filling.

If using the pocket maker, proceed according to the following illustrations:  Place wonton wrapper on the pocket maker and press down gently in the centre to create the pocket for the filling;  place a scant teaspoon of filling in the cavity, taking care not to overfill;  bring the sides of the pocket maker together to enclose the filling, squeeze firmly, and peel off the excess dough;  open the pocket maker and remove the filled dumpling.

Set aside until you have filled all the wrappers.  (If desired, you could actually freeze completed dumplings at this stage)

Set a large frypan over high heat, and add oil to the pan.  Once oil is hot, add the dumplings to the pan, in a single layer, and cook until the bases are golden brown.  Carefully pour the stock into the pan and cover.  Steam the dumplings in the stock until the dough is tender and cooked through - about 5 minutes.  Remove lid from the pan and continue to cook for a couple more moments until all the stock has evaporated.  Remove from the pan and serve immediately.

If you would like to get to know Donna Hay a little better, and to see all the scrumptious pies and tarts and pies my friends have cooked up, then visit I Heart Cooking Clubs and check out the links.

I'll also be sharing this post this week at See Ya In the Gumbo hosted by the lovely Michelle at Ms. enPlace, Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth at Beth Fish Reads, at Cook Your Books hosted by the lovely Joyce at Kitchen Flavours, and at Foodie Fridays hosted by Designs by Gollam.