skud

Mirrored from The OEconomist. You can comment there or here.

This was a bit of an experiment, but I think it worked out pretty well. In winter I really enjoy baking things in the oven, so I decided to do that with these vegies instead of the more obvious stir-frying option.

All quantities are wildly approximate, and are what I used to make three parcels. Adjust as you see fit!

• 18 small brussels sprouts, cleaned and halved
• small packet of fried tofu, sliced
• 6 shiitake mushrooms, sliced (I used dry ones that I’d soaked beforehand)
• 1″ piece of ginger, cut into thin slices or matchsticks
• 3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

If you’re soaking your mushrooms like I did, make sure you give them long enough, and there’s no need to squeeze them too hard to get the excess juice out; a bit of liquid won’t hurt at all and might help. (My version was a bit too dry from getting this wrong.)

I divided the ingredients into three little parchment-paper parcels. Then to each one I added a slosh each of:

• oyster sauce
• light soy sauce
• sesame oil

I folded the parchment parcels closed and bunged them in the oven at about 200C for half an hour.

Parcels, folded and ready to bake. Crimp lengthwise, then fold in the ends.

They’re done when you can stick a fork in the brussels sprouts. To serve, just up-end the parcel over some rice — we used black (“forbidden”) rice because we’re really into that lately.

Served over black rice.

It was great to have almost no cleanup (except the rice cooker, which isn’t as non-stick as it used to be and needed a good soak). I’ll definitely be doing this again, if I can think of other good combinations to go in the parcels.

Mirrored from The OEconomist. You can comment there or here.

I’ve been thinking a bit about why I have this blog and what I want from it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really have any pretentions to being a Food Blogger per se. I don’t think most of what I make is very original or special, and the quality of my recipes and my photos is nowhere near many of the food blogs I read. So I guess the reason I have this blog, and post to it, is because I want to keep a record of the food I’m cooking and eating. It’s good for me to have something to refer to when I’m trying to remember what I cooked in the past, or to be able to point people at when they ask me for a recipe for something they ate at my house, or whatever. Plus, having recently moved into a share house, I’ve had a few discussions lately about what sort of food I cook, and it’s nice to be able to point people here and say, “like this.”

Writing about what I’m cooking is also good for my mental health, I think. I’m a bit screwed up around food, sometimes, and sometimes I just… forget how much I actually enjoy cooking and eating good food. So this helps reinforce it for me. I’m really pleased at the moment that I have a great kitchen, in a house that’s close to good markets and not too close to cheap takeaway food, and with housemates that I can cook and eat with. I’m in a pretty good place, food-wise, and I want to make a record of it.

Anyway! My point here — and I do have one — is that since I’m making a record of what I’m eating, rather than trying to be pretentious and perfect, you’re about to get a recipe for what I cooked the other day when I was dying of menstrual cramps and, for some reason, craving curry. There was no curry to be had, but I did have curry powder in the cupboard, and so, this… a sort of curry fried rice thing that’s not quite kedgeree but is closely related to it.

I first cooked kedgeree after reading about it in Connie Willis’s “To Say Nothing of the Dog”. I mean, I’d read about it before that, but the particular scene in that book — where Ned, a time traveller, comes down to breakfast in a Victorian country house and is disgusted by the devilled kidneys and kedgeree on offer — is what prompted me to actually look up a recipe. Kedgeree’s usually made with smoked fish and hard boiled eggs, but I didn’t have any smoked fish on hand and couldn’t be bothered boiling eggs, so here’s what I did instead.

• 1 cup basmati rice
• 1/2 onion, diced (I didn’t have any, so used spring onions, but would have preferred ordinary onion)
• 1 generous tblsp ghee OR half and half oil and butter (oil for high-heat cooking, butter for flavour)
• 1 heaped teaspoon mild, English-style curry powder (Keen’s, or similar)
• 2 eggs, whisked with a little water, fried as a thin omelette, then cut into small pieces
• 1 small can tinned salmon, drained and roughly broken up
• chopped parsley
• salt and pepper

Cook the rice (or you could also use 2 cups leftover, pre-cooked rice). Make the omelette — I did this in the wok I was about to use to fry the rice — then cut it up into small pieces. Saute the onions in the oil and butter until translucent and just starting to brown. Throw in the curry powder and stir until fragrant, then add the rice and toss it until the curry powder is evenly distributed throughout. Add in the eggs, salmon, and chopped parsley and stir it through. Season with salt and pepper.

It was tasty enough, and it hit the spot, but to be honest the tinned salmon was nowhere near as good as the smoked fish this should really be made with. So I strongly recommend you use smoked fish (I’ve done smoked cod and smoked trout in the past), as well as using chopped hard boiled eggs rather than the quick omelette I made. On the other hand, if you don’t want to go to much trouble, this is quick and easy and only messes up the one pan.

I often crave fish and tomatoes, together, when I’m premenstrual, so when I sat down to eat this, I realised that what I really wanted was a big glass of tomato juice on the side. I didn’t have any, but I wound up spooning a big dollop of tomato kasundi into my bowl and mixing it through the not-quite-kedgeree, and it was pretty damn tasty, so if you have anything of that nature kicking around, you might like to try it.

Related rice recipes:

• Fried rice with kale