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Tonight was my first attempt at cooking chicken ramen.  And my first experience of actually using oyster mushrooms in cooking (not that they are hard to cook, it was just the first time we had purchased them and cooked with them at home).

I think I might have my cooking mojo back, though it’s coming back slowly… Some chutney last weekend, a Thai curry the week before… And yep that’s about my cooking spurt lately!  Other than that I have been summoned to help Mike with prepping or watching most nights to help here and there. So to Mike’s delight he is secretly excited that I might be keen to get back in the kitchen.  However, he might like to note that it was the weekend and when I get home during the week after work I just can’t be bothered (and the fact that he is quite happy to cook most of the time – who am I to fight with that. Hmmm, “dinner is served, my lady”. Sounds good!)

Anyway, how was the chicken ramen?  I would cook it again, it was nice for a change.  What would I do differently?

• Not overcook the chicken, by flattening the breast to make it more even
• Try to have more soup mix with a less salty stock
• Not sure it needs the egg (perhaps Jo you can tell us if this is a normal Japanese thing in ramen?)

You might be thinking we didn’t like it, but I think we did, well I did anyway.  And I am sure Mike did just for the fact that I could actually be bothered cooking.

Now all that is left, is for Mike to do the dishes.  And if you know him you will know how he loves to do dishes,  NOT!

The local Asian food place we found the other day has some fantastic sea bass and sea bream for less than half the price of our usual supermarket, so we’ll be making some use of that as we like both fish. We’ve been getting a bit stuck in a rut though and normally have it baked whole with something like chilli,  ginger and lemon grass stuffed inside, with some lime juice in a paper parcel.

But last night we decided to try to do something different, and opted for sea bream fillets with warm salsa verde potatoes. Great! Except we had whole sea bream, not fillets.  Gulp! I can’t remember the last time I even had to fillet a fish!  I’m sure there must have been one.  I think. Maybe?…

With the help of a couple of video clips on the net, and a pull out guide we’d saved  from an old Olive mag I don’t think I did too badly! By the forth one I was definitely getting the hang of it. Nowhere near as good as the guys in the videos, but ok!  Helped having a really sharp, flexible knife on hand though. We’ll just have to keep buying fish so we* can practice.

(* I say we, but I think it’s going to take a lot  to get Bec to have a go. She was “eeew”ing a “blech”ing all over the place…)

Megan seems to think that we’ve thrown down the oven-glove, and we’re now in a battle of the preserves. Let the battle begin!

Our effort  today  was a chilli and tomato jam.

It was a bit of a fluke that we had this on hand ready made though. I’d actually pulled the page out of our massive folder of recipes as it told me what type of spinach that we could plant his late in the year. A few hours later Bec pointed out that it had a chilli jam recipe on it. I have no idea how I missed that! Good job we had all the ingredients on hand…

Over to you Megan, beat that!

We refuse to let Megan try to score any bonus blogging brownie points by documenting the making of jam.

So today we managed to use up all the courgettes that we would otherwise have thrown out in a few days by making another batch of courgette chutney.The fact that we had to go and buy a whole lot of apples that we’ll probably end up throwing out in a few days in order to get the one apple we needed for the recipe  is beside the point!
Actually, I’ve just  looked back and found out that it was at exactly the same time last year that we made the last batch. I guess we are as boring as we think we are! No puzzles were done this year though, so maybe we’re slightly more exciting than last year.

Or maybe it’s just that the  weather’s been a bit better this year!

Whatever. Anyway, this batch of chutney has turned out a heap darker than last year’s, but I swear we did nothing different. I guess we’ll just have to wait a few weeks to see how it’s going to taste!

As we’d gone to all the trouble to get the steamers yesterday we thought we’d better use them!

We’ve passed what we worked out was another Asian supermarket close to here many times on our local bike trips, but never gone in to see what they had.  Today we did, and got a few dim sum type dishes for our Sunday brunch along with a few other bits and pieces. Most of which needed to be steamed. Perfect!

Yum! And now we know it’s there, we might be making more use of the local Asian supermarket….

Here it is.   The first home grown chilli eaten this season. One of the Jalapenos gave it’s goodness for the sake of last night’s yellow yoghurt gloop like we made a while ago.

May there be many more lining up soon…

Every now and then for some reason I stand in the kitchen and go though recipe books and on some rare occasions something catches my eye/brain just enough that I decide I’m prepared to put in the effort to cook it.  This Sunday’s effort was “Hungarian Potato Bread”.

Cramming potato through a seive was a bit of work I wasn’t really mentally prepared for in making bread, but with a little help (insert form Bec – a lot of help pushing it through the seive, but if I confess probably my only help though) we got through that process.

Once it was finally ready it was actually a lot, lot lighter and fluffier than in looks in the pihoto (apart from the very edge bits that were a bit crusty), and there really wasn’t anything left and we still wanted just a little bit more…

Would I make it again, even with all the hassle?  You know what, I think I would.  And I think Bec would like me to, too!

To be precise it was Kadhai Paneer  – stir fry of Paneer cheese with peppers.

This is one of those dishes that needs a fair but of effort in constructing a sauce, and then you chuck the final dish together at the end. So this morning I was feeling a bit bored and got stuck into the sauce early. I’m really glad I did, and the prep seemed to go on for far too long when you compare it to the list of ingredients, and then the cooking of it took even longer! If we’d started cooking at our normal time I think we might have expired with hunger by now!

Anyway, on to the checklist…

1. It was a stir fry of Paneer cheese with peppers, as I think I’ve mentioned.
2. The ingredients we didn’t have were dried fenugreek leaves, so we skipped them.  I also went a bit easier on the chillis than the recipe suggested, as I didn’t want Bec accusing me of trying to knock her block off!….
3. The only thing that confused me about the recipe was… Well, not really confused me, but it was one of those recipes where a whole lot of things are in weights, not volumes.  How many cloves is 30g garlic anyway?!  I’m glad we had scales handy!
4. But on the whole the recipe was pretty clear, as usual. It just would have been more helpful to have some idea how long it would take, especially if you were looking through the book later at night and thought it sounded good for a quick dinner… It ain’t!
5. If I made it again what I’d do differently is get someone else to help with the prep!  I was really sick of “finely chopping” stuff by the end of it!
6. We had it with nothing else, other than a glass of Chardonnay, and it really didn’t need anything else.
7. If we had it again I’d have it with nothing else again!
8. On a scale of 1-10 we’d give it a 9 (only to give for something amazing still to come…)
9. see yesterday.
10. see yesterday
11. I’d definitely make it again! Well, Bec is saying “I’d definitely have Mike make it again!”.  Which is just as well, as I decided right at the start that I would make enough sauce for 2 meals and shove one lot in the fridge.  So we have another really quick and easy meal coming up one night soon.  Yay!

1. It was a this kinda weird yogurt and chickpea flour dumpling dish. Pitod ka saag, apparently!
2. The only ingredient that you might have trouble finding in the cupboard was asafoetida, but luckily we seemed to have some in the spice drawer from some previous dish that we can’t now remember….
3. The only thing that confused me about the recipe was that the whole concept seemed really weird!  You basically cook yoghurt and gram flour (chickpea flour) until it gets to the state where it makes a kind of cake, let that set and make a sauce.
4. But on the whole the recipe itself was pretty clear and easy.
5. If I made it again what I’d do differently is to add a bit more ginger at the end to counter the lingering sweetness of all the yoghurt in it. And maybe have a few more green chillies on the side to add a bit more bite to some mouthfuls.
6. We had it with plain rice, and a chenin blanc.
7. If we had it again I’d have it with plain rice, definitely. It really seemed to need a mouthful of dumpling, sauce and rice to provide a really nice balance.
8. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give it a…. you know, I’m still not sure! We’ll try to decide on that a bit later…
9. Who’s Michael?!
10. WHAT KIDS?!
11. I’d probably would make it again, if only for the fun of stirring the cake thing!

See Megan, it’s easy! Tee hee hee…

But honestly we’re really not sure what to make of it as a meal.  It tasted fine (in fact more than fine, it was really quite nice), but the texture was a bit odd.  The best we can come up with is a cross between polenta, paneer and icecream (without the ice cream sweetness).  Try imagining that!

Worth a try though, if only for the fun of stirring this weird gloop around the pot for while.

We know our friend Megan in Houston likes to cook, and likes a nice curry as much as I do.  Well, maybe not quite as much as I do, but she likes them.  So I was telling her about the curry book I talked about earlier the other week, and we even bought her a copy. Before our copy arrived she borrowed it from the library and was going to give a recipe a go. And promised to write a blog about it.

Apparently she did cook it. But as she thinks it’s fun not to post it just to wind me up we’re still missing the blog bit, so I have no idea how it went and what she thought of it.

So I’ve decided to help her out, even though I’m not sure she deserves it.

So here’s a recipe review template, just for her. Let’s see if it helps… Although she might have to change the “tonight” to “last month” soon…

Tonight, Mike, We Made [Insert recipe title here…]

1. It was a [insert small description here for those without the book]…
2. The ingredients we couldn’t find/had to substitute/don’t like anyway so skipped were…
3. The only thing that confused me about the recipe was…
4. But on the whole the recipe was clear/easy/a bit fussy/totally and utterly confusing [delete as appropriate].
5. If I made it again what I’d do differently is…
6. We had it with…
7. If we had it again I’d have it with…
8. On a scale of 1-10 I’d give it a…
9. On a scale of 1-10 Michael would give it a…
10. On a scale of blech-yum the kids would give it a…
11. I’d definitely/maybe/never [delete as appropriate] make it again.