Fish and Watercress Hotpot

• 8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• Some peeled daikon (recipe says ‘1 small daikon’ but I’ve never seen such a thing)
• 1 small carrot, peeled
• 3cm ginger, thinly sliced
• 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
• 80ml soy sauce
• 1 tbps sugar
• 300g firm tofu, cubed
• 1 red pepper, thick strips
• 500g white fish, cut into bite-sized chunks
• 100g watercress sprigs

(rice to serve)

  

Soak mushrooms, drain and slice, discarding stem. Cut daikon and carrot in half lengthways, and thinly slice.

  

Combine ginger, garlic, soy sauce and sugar in a large saucepan with 1.25l water. Add mushroom, daikon and carrot and bring to boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 10 minutes. Add tofu, pepper, and fish and simmer for another 10 minutes. Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

  

Spoon into four warm bowls and add the watercress. Serve at once with steamed rice.

Pumpkin and Spinach Curry

• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
•  
• red chilli
• crushed garlic
• 2 red onions, finely chopped
• 2 tomatoes, finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp ground tumeric
• 1kg pumpkin, peeled and cubed
• 25g dessicated coconut
• 1 bunch spinach, trimmed and rinsed

 

(rice and plain yoghurt to serve)

 

 

Fry mustard seeds in hot vegetable oil, add chiliad n garlic. Add onion, sauté. Add tomato, salt, ground coriander and turmeric. Stir. Add pumpkin, coconut and 250ml water. Mix, cover, simmer slowly for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

 

 

Just before serving, stir the spinach leave in and allow them to sit in the hot curry for a few minutes.

 

 

 

Serve with rice and plain yoghurt.

 

Red Lentil Soup

Simply boil a cupful of red lentils with some cumin and salt until they nearly fall apart.

This is great on its own but you can garnish it with some caramelised onion slices with grated ginger, crushed garlic and coriander (ground) and some fresh coriander leaves at the end, if you want to e shmancy. Wonderful soup starter or a great lunch.

Lamb and Quince Tagine with Preserved Lemon

• Large leek
• Crushed garlic
• Chopped ginger
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 0.5 tsp ground turmeric
• 700g diced lamb shoulder
• 10 green olives
• 1 quince, peeled, cored and sliced into wedges
• handful of coriander, roughly chopped
• 30g flaked almonds, toasted
• 1 tbsp finely chopped preserved lemon rind

Sautee leek in some butter, add spices, garlic and ginger, Add lamb, olives, quince, and enough water not to cover everything. Simmer for about 1.5 hours.

Combine coriander, almonds and lemon in a bowl, serve the tagine with couscous or rice and the almond garnish.

Baked Eggs for Two

Just one of those things that one forgets to make, it's so simple.

chopped ham
4 eggs
40g grated cheese
80ml cream

Grease a couple of ramekins and put the ham at the bottom. Combine the rest of the stuff, season, and pour on top of the ham. Bake at 150 for 25 minutes or until just cooked. Serve with toast fingers.

Braised silverbeet with chickpeas and fresh tomato

• Swiss chard (1 bunch)
• 60 ml olive oil
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 1tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 4 diced tomatoes
• 400g tin of chickpeas

Fry and bubble. Can add onion to this. The original says to discard the stems of the beet – that would be madness! Just leave enough cooking time. Yum. (You don't need the order things go in, do you.)

 Serve with rice.

Chunky Bean and Sausage Salad

• White beans
• A couple of sausages
• Salad stuff
• Noodles


This was meant to be ‘sausage and white bean salad’ but I chucked in a whole load of julienned veg like carrot and daikon, as well as beans, lettuce and a bunch of noodles. Squeeze the sausage out of its casing and fry like savoury mince, mix with the beans, flavour as you wish (we went Oriental on this one with chilli and coriander but depends what you feel like). Together with the noodles makes a great lunch.

Green Papaya Salad

• 6 mint leaves, finely chopped
• 1.5 tbs lime juice
• 1.5 tbs fish sauce
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp finely grated ginger
• 1 small red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 green papaya
• 2 tsp sesame seeds
• handful of coriander leaves


Mix mint with lime, fish sauce, sugar, ginger and chilli. Pell papaya and remove seeds. Finely julienne or grate the flesh. Mix with dressing and put in serving bowl. Lightly dry-fry the sesame seeds and toss over the salad together with the coriander. Serve.

Fennel, chickpea, parsley and green olive salad

• 2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and finely shaved
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 80ml olive oil
• 400g tin of chick peas
• 10 green olives , chopped a bit
• 2 tbs coarsely chopped parsley

Marinate the fennel in the liquids of ten minutes before adding the rest. Serve.

Simmered Chicken

Cold autumn night? Need to cosy up to something warm, but just don't have a wombat handy? Try this.

The original recipe for this was 'Chestnut Simmered Chicken' but the damn chestnuts just make the dish infinitely tedious, increase the price and add nothing to the flavour or texture. So won't be adding them again! This is fantastic comfort-food with no preparation time whatsoever, and we all really liked it. Definitely on the menu (minus the chestnuts).

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken (Let's stick to free range, shall we)
• 500ml chicken stock
• 4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 1 celery stalk, roughly sliced
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced
• 1.5cm fresh ginger, sliced
• 4 spring onions, thinly sliced
• Steamed rice to serve

Rinse out your chook and put it into a heavy saucepan. Cover with the stock, plus added water (frankly I used wine) to just cover it. Add all the veggies apart from the spring onions, season, and simmer slowly for over an hour.

To serve, put the whole thing into a a deep serving dish complete with juices (there'll be lots). Serve with steamed rice, the juices ladelled on top and furikake on the side. If you don't have furikake the recipe suggests merely pestle-and-mortaring some ground sea salt and toasted sesame seeds.

Coconut and Chili Seafood

This was meant to be just with prawns, but no prawns were on special so I just brought home some marinara mix. Now, not so sure about the mussles in this but fish, squid, scallops and prawns all worked beautifully, so any combination of those as ingredients would be acceptable.

Ingredients:

• Fishy stuff (as above) 700g for 3 people was loads
• Marinade: juice of a lime, salt, olive oil
• Grated fresh coconut (about 75g)
• chili (as you like it)
• some mint leaves
• coconut cream (a little)

Marinate your fishy stuff (reduced to chunks if not naturally so) for ten minutes or so, then grill or fry dryly (i.e. don't overcrowd). Arrange on plate. Mix the grated coconut with the chilli and the remaining marinade, fry briefly, put on top of the fishy stuff. Serve with a bit of coconut cream drizzled over the top and some shredded mint leaves.

I did this one with corn fritters on the side, which turned out quite nicely. Was really thinking green papaya salad but they didn't have any.