Sticky chicken with Coconut Rice and Choi Sum

Well the title's pretty much the recipe but anyway. I did it with drumsticks but the kids (being lazy of eating off the bone, I suspect) requested the same but with chicken kebabs next time. Well there you go.

For the marinade: 

• Hoi sin sauce (fair amount for six people, about a third of a cup) 
• Sweet chili sauce (a fair dollop) 
• Dollop of honey 
• A splatter of Sambal Oelek or however hot you want it 
• Sprinkle of Five Spice 

Mixy-mixy the chicken (OK I'll do cut up thighs next time, and kebab them later). Cook when appropriate.

For the rice: cook it with a tin of coconut cream and make up the rest with water. I chucked in a few Kaffir Lime leaves, whole. it turned out really nicely.

Once the chicken an rice are both pretty much cooked: 
Cut the choi sum into 5cm lengths, toss with a glug of Chinese cooking wine, and arrange artistically in and around the chicken in a nice fresh serving dish. Cover with foil and pop back in the oven for a further 5 minutes just to heat/wilt the greens. Serve fragrantly.

Pina Colada Cake

This was meant to be Russian Cherry Cake but we had no cherries. So we went all Puerto Rican instead.

You'll make three or four sausages of pastry filled with pineapple, sugar and coconut mix, roll them up into snakes inside a springform pan, and bake 'em at 170. I found the bottom baked less than the top because of the squidginess factor so it might be a good idea to foil up the top and put it slightly towards the bottom of the oven for longer.

For the pastry there's 3.75 cups of flour, 120g butter (melted), two teaspoons of baking powder, a cup of yoghurt and 0.5 cups of sugar combined. Yep, a lot of flour. I found I had to add a bit of milk into this mix because it didn't hold together well enough. Roll up, make yer stuffed snakes, curl 'em up. Cut as per normal cake. Rather nice, actually.

Coconut Broth Meatballs

Chop onions finely, fry with garlic. To your meatball mix add breadcrumbs and milk, chili, and ginger, together with the fried onions. Roll them, and fry them off. Add a bit of chicken stock, then a heap of coconut milk. More fresh ginger, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, turmeric and chili. Bubble for about ten minutes. Was very nice served on top of rice.

Coconut Macaroons

Four egg whites, 1 2/3 cups sugar, 2 cups desiccated coconut, vanilla essence.

Whip up the whites, meringue them up with the sugar, then fold in the vanilla and coconut. Dollop onto greased paper and bake at 150 for quite a while. Maybe 35 minutes or more? Makes tasty chewy biscuits and they're jolly easy. Good afternoon snack.

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.

 

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.