Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Pork Prawn Wonton Soup


Well-seasoned pork and prawn parcels are boiled in rich pork broth for a deliciously warming wonton soup, a favorite of locals and visitors alike in Singapore. The added green vegetables make this a full meal.

I’ve been traveling to Singapore rather regularly since 1981 when my father moved to Jakarta and it was a convenient stopover on a very long trip from the United States. (And if you've read my About me, you know I've had my own homes there as well.) One of my favorite childhood friends lived there with her parents and, if they were in residence when I was coming through, I was welcomed into their home like a second daughter. During our teenage years, her mother was at a loss to connect with her obstreperous daughter so I think my visits came as a relief, finally, a young person who would actually converse with her without raised voices and animosity. I’m pleased to say that my friend came around when she gave birth to her first daughter and her mother was once again raised to oracle status - Woman Who Knows All. Singapore was safe, even back then, and we were allowed to roam free, taking taxis and buses into all the seedy corners of the little city-state, eating at scruffy outdoor stalls, enjoying the spectacle on Bugis Street and drinking chilled Tiger beer.

One of my favorite breakfasts – yes, breakfasts, as folks in Southeast Asia tend to eat noodle soups for their morning meal as well as lunch or dinner – was wonton soup. The tender wonton skins are filled with a mixture of pork and prawns (or sometimes just pork) with seasonings and boiled in a rich pork stock, then topped with shredded vegetables. Sprinkle in some chili peppers and another dash of soy sauce and you’ve got yourself a filling bowl of savory goodness. To make the dish even more filling, often extra fresh egg noodles are added in addition to the wontons. This is a dish that turns up on our family table fairly often. Try it and you’ll see why.

This week, my Sunday Supper family are taking a virtual Asian foodie holiday and sharing Asian dishes.  This great event is hosted by Amy of kimchi MOM, whose photos cause me to drool every time I read her blog. Make sure you scroll down past my recipe to see all the great Asian-inspired dishes we have for you today.

Ingredients
For the wontons:
12 1/2 oz or 355g ground or minced pork (not too lean)
4 3/4 oz or 135g, peeled and clean, prawns or shrimp 
1 medium bunch green onions (Some will go in the soup.)
Generous 2 in or 5 cm piece fresh ginger (Some will go in the soup.)
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons sugar
1 egg white
1 teaspoon salt
1 red chili pepper (optional)
50 fresh wonton skins (These are sold in most Asian markets. If you can’t find them fresh in the refrigerated section, ask for help. If turnover isn’t great, they are often put in the freezer to extend their shelf life. Just thaw in the package and use as fresh.)

For the soup:
2 1/2 quarts or 2.4 liters pork broth or stock
Fresh ginger
Green onions
1 red chili pepper (optional)
Assorted green vegetables, thinly sliced or shredded – cabbage, lettuce, asparagus, snow peas, etc.
Soy sauce to taste

Method
Peel your ginger and slice half into thin sticks for the soup and mince the other half finely for the wonton filling. Chop your red chili peppers, if using, and divide the pile in three. Two bigger ones for the pork and broth, a little one for garnish. Cut half of the green onions into 1 inch or 2cm pieces for the soup and chop the rest finely for the wonton filling and set a couple of teaspoons aside for garnish.




Finely shred or thinly slice your extra vegetables for serving with the soup.



Put the stock on the stove and simmer slowly with the sticks of ginger, the long pieces of green onion and one of the bigger piles of chopped red chili pepper, if using.

Use a sharp knife to finely mince your peeled and cleaned prawns or shrimp. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine your ground pork and minced prawns with the minced green onions, ginger and minced red pepper, if using, along with the Chinese wine, sesame oil, sugar, egg white and salt.

Mix very thoroughly to combine.



Line a clean plate with cling film and set aside.

Take six wonton skins out of the pack at a time, keeping the rest covered with a damp cloth to keep them from drying out. Lay them out on a clean work surface and brush each a pastry brush dipped in cold water.

Add a scant teaspoon of the meat mixture and start folding the wonton skins in, first from the bottom corner to the top, then the sides and finally fold the top down, to create a little package.



Place your wontons on the lined plate and repeat the process until all the pork/prawn mixture is finished or you run out of wonton skins. If you need a second layer on your plate, cover the first with cling film.


(If you have extra wonton skins, you can cut them into pieces and boil with the wontons and serve. If you have a little extra filling mixture, it can be added to the simmering broth and whisked to break it up into little flavorful bits.)

If you are serving everyone at the same time and won’t have any leftovers, you can now put all the wontons in your broth and turn the heat up to a gentle boil. Add the vegetables just before serving so that they are just cooked but still crunchy.

If you know that you will have leftovers, you don’t want to add the wontons to the broth because they will continued to suck up your broth as they sit overnight in the refrigerator, getting mushy in the process. So, use a metal strainer submerged in the broth to cook several at a time.

Add a few shredded vegetables when the wontons are cooked through and you are almost ready to serve up that bowl. Cook them for just a couple of minutes.



Pour the contents of the strainer into a bowl and top with more broth. Garnish the soup with some green onions, sticks of ginger and red chili peppers. Serve with soy sauce, allowing each person to add a drizzle to suit his or her taste.



Enjoy!



Here's the whole round up of Sunday Supper's Asian recipes!

Small Bites
Soupy Goodness
Big Plates
On the Lighter Side
Cheers!
Oodles of Noodles


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Posted by at 3:22:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, August 6, 2015

Saving Summer Harvest

Farmer’s markets, overproducing gardens, neighbors who surreptitiously leave zucchini on your front porch, herb beds out of control! If you are so blessed, how do you deal with a bounteous summer harvest? Come this Sunday, #SundaySupper is here to help!

On Sunday I am cohosting Sunday Supper with my friend and fellow blogger, Heather from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks because the theme is one we are rather fond of, Saving Summer Harvest. If you’ve been reading along for at least a year, you might recall that I cohosted the same event last summer. And if you've been around even longer, you'll remember that Heather hosted it in 2013 when I shared my spicy sweet tomato chutney recipe (photo above) and she made Mixed Berry Rhubarb Jam! If you are scared of preserving your own produce, or think it is just too hard, this is the Sunday Supper for you!

Heather's Spring Conserve with strawberries, rhubarb, pineapple, raisins, and nuts from 2014


While I was growing up, my grandmothers and all of their contemporaries canned and froze and made preserves all summer long, usually fruit or vegetables from their own gardens. I’ll be honest, it looked like a lot of hard work (because it was!) so I avoided it for many years, until it occurred to me that I could do small batches, what my friend Kelli of Kelli’s Kitchen calls nano-canning. Well, I didn’t have a name for it back then, but two or three or five jars instead of 20 seemed do-able. Another turning point for me was learning how to vacuum seal my jars without actually using the hot water bath. I know this technique has its naysayers but for anything with a high sugar content and/or some acid like lemon juice or vinegar, it works just fine. Especially since, if you are making it on a small scale, it will get eaten relatively quickly.

How do you Save Summer Harvest?
There are myriad ways of preserving produce: salting (think capers and anchovies), smoking (red peppers ground into paprika), infusing (chili oils or fruit vinegars) not to mention canning (which could include sugar, salt and vinegar, all of which are great preservatives), dehydrating (for herbs and fruit), freezing (for most anything!) and the ever popular pickling, whether by fermentation or the addition of an acidic liquid like lemon juice or vinegar. And let’s not forget straight fermentation without which we would have no blue cheese or Camembert, wine or beer!  Last but not least, some ingredients can be preserved by enclosing or covering them in fat, for instance, potted shrimp, duck confit, compound butters, pestos and roasted peppers.

And while I’m sure that list seems long, I’ve left a few out, some which are ancient, like burying ingredients, for instance century eggs which are enclosed in mud which causes them to ferment rather than spoil, or more modern techniques like vacuum packing.

Waste not, want not
The one goal all these methods have in common is to make the best use of what we can grow or buy when it’s in season and make it edible into the next, so we don’t have to waste anything. And that’s what we are going to help you do on Sunday.

Please check back then when the links to these great Saving Summer Harvest recipes will go live and I’ll be sharing my own cherry lemon jam.

Canning
Dehydrating
Fermentation
Freezing
Infusing
Pickling
Preserving in oil or butter

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Posted by at 3:14:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Camel Milk Caramel Basbousa #CreativeCookieExchange


Basbousa are little squares or diamonds made with semolina dough that are traditionally topped with almonds and then soaked with rose flavored syrup when hot. For a twist to the typical recipe, I’ve soaked mine in caramel syrup made out of camel milk. 

Sometimes for these Creative Cookie Exchange posts I have a recipe in mind – sometimes even baked - weeks ahead of time because our organizer, Laura from The Spiced Life reveals the theme several months in advance, to help us plan. But this month, with the delicious theme of caramel, I just wasn’t finding inspiration anywhere. Until my fellow CCE member, co-creator of Bread Bakers and friend, Renee from Magnolia Days asked the following question in the group: “Does dulce de leche count as caramel or is it strictly caramel for the May event?” This set off a flurry of comments where several of us defended dulce as absolutely a caramel and got me thinking about the camel milk cajeta or dulce de leche sitting in my refrigerator. It does keep for months, but why not use some of it in a cookie? So the wheels started turning.

Camel milk caramel can certainly be put in any cookie. But wouldn’t it be fun to find an Arabic one to use it in? Hence, the basbousa. With their traditional sugar syrup, I’ve always found basbousa too sweet – and I’m not a fan of rose water and rose essence, which taste like eating soap to me – but with the addition of the sweet and slightly salty camel milk caramel, they are perfect. Another treat entirely.

So, with my apologies to the Arabic world in general, and Egypt in particular, I've adapted from this recipe from SBS.com.au.  Do watch the video if you are making the original, because the instructions differ from the written recipe. I’ve written mine to include the half hour rest, for instance.

Ingredients
1 1/8 cups or 215g coarse semolina
3/4 cup or 50g freshly grated coconut
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1/4 cup or 30g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup or 100g thick yogurt or crème fraîche
7 tablespoons or 100g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
16-30 whole almonds, depending on how small you cut your basbousa.

For the caramel syrup:
1/2 cup or 120ml dulce de leche, cajeta or thick caramel. I used a camel milk version, instructions here.
1-2 teaspoons milk

Method
Grease an 8x8 in or 20x20cm baking pan and set it aside.

Mix the semolina, coconut, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl.



Add in the yogurt and melted, cooled butter and mix well.



Your dough should be fairly stiff but pliable.



Spread the mixture with your hands into your greased baking pan. Make sure to get it right up to the sides and nice and even.



Cover with a towel and let rest for half an hour. When the time is almost up, preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Cut the dough into diamond shapes then press an almond into each one. I chose to cut mine pretty small, but you can certainly cut yours larger. You just won’t need as many almonds then.



Bake in your preheated oven for 20–25 minutes or until golden brown. While it's baking make the caramel syrup.

Put the stiff caramel in the microwave in a microwave safe bowl and warm it slightly, just to loosen it. Add a little milk to make it even more runny and stir well till the milk is completely incorporated. You are looking for the consistency of maple or chocolate syrup.

Right when the hot cake comes out of the oven, pour the caramel syrup over it.


It sits there for a few short minutes.

Then it sinks in, leaving the almonds with a lovely shine.

Cool to serve and use a sharp knife to cut through again and lift them out.



Enjoy! Basbousa is a term of endearment in Arabic meaning something like "little sweet," so make these for your basbousa.



Are you looking for more caramel cookie goodness? Here you go!



If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links.

You can also use us as a great resource for cookie recipes - be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts. You can find all of them on our home page at The Spiced Life. We post all together on the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!


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Posted by at 5:03:00 AM 0 comments
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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Carrot-Cumin Soup #EatRightforYourSight


This thick aromatic carrot soup, finished with creamy yogurt, will not only satisfy your hunger, but will also provide a substantial dose of vitamin A, minerals and antioxidants, all essential for healthy eyes.

When I was asked if I’d like to a receive and review a copy of Eat Right for Your Sight*, I jumped at the chance. Not just because it is a cookbook with tasty recipes from the likes of Jacques Pépin, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, Ina Garten and Alice Waters, but because it would give me the chance to raise awareness about macular degeneration and to reminisce about my grandfather, a member of the Great Generation, a self-made man who worked hard, relaxed by gardening – which looked like a whole different kind of hard work to me – and who suffered from the disease the recipes in this book aim to prevent. He loved to grow and pick fresh vegetables as much as he loved to eat them so I am pretty sure Paw would have been a fan of this book. And if, by writing this, I can make even one person follow a link and learn something about preventing macular degeneration, or how to live well even following that diagnosis, then I will sleep well tonight.

My grandfather grew up on a farm, out “in the country” as we called it, in southern Louisiana. One day, many years ago, I was chatting with him on the phone and he began to speak about his first job, working for a furrier, after he left school. It was Paw’s responsibility to collect pelts from hunters and trappers that the furrier would use to make coats and hats. If I remember correctly, he earned $1 for every pelt, which was a substantial (if sporadic) payment in a time when a chuck roast could be bought for 15 cents a pound and the big can of Heinz beans was only 13 cents. He went on to discuss how he and my grandmother had started their major appliance business and how he built their shop himself, welding together large steel beams that would become the framework for the building. And how he had learned to weld when workers were needed to build supply ships at a new shipyard in New Orleans during World War II. He was rightfully proud of his contribution to the war effort and he gained a skill in the process. Everyone thought he was crazy since steel was an expensive building material but it meant that he could do most of the work himself, saving on labor costs and a steel frame building would last forever. This was key to my grandfather’s philosophy that a person should choose carefully when he or she buys something, making sure that it is worth the expense, and then should care for that something so that it might never have to be replaced. As owner-operator of the first Maytag appliance center in their town, he would have preferred to repair a customer’s old machine and keep it working rather than sell them a new one. Perhaps it was not the most lucrative business model but he lived a life of integrity and his customers appreciated that, always returning to buy the next appliance out of loyalty, knowing they’d be treated fairly. My grandfather’s handshake was better than a written contract and if he told you he’d do something, you could damn well bet he would.

I realized part way into the conversation that if I didn’t write all this down, I would never remember it so I began to take notes, as fast as I could. Later I transcribed the notes and saved them to my computer. Unfortunately, that computer became obsolete and I didn’t remember to print or save the file to the new one. So we are back to my faulty memory again, trying to recall what my grandfather shared with impressive accuracy, despite the half century between the living and the telling.

His memory for details was phenomenal and he was an avid reader, reading anything and everything to educate himself, making up for his early departure from formal education. The ever-growing stack of reading material next to his chair was a testament to all he'd like to accomplish, given the time. My whole childhood I remember both he and my grandmother reading two newspapers a day, cover to cover, The Times Picayune, published in New Orleans and The Daily Iberian, an afternoon paper from their hometown. As they both aged, he became a regular subscriber to Prevention magazine and each issue was covered in his scrawling almost illegible handwriting, with passages of particular interest underlined, as he tried to figure out how to live the healthiest life. My grandfather’s mailbox was regularly filled with packages of vitamins that he ordered in bulk from catalogs and swallowed faithfully, especially once he had been diagnosed with macular degeneration, that eye disease that steals one’s sight, from a central point of the retina, leaving only peripheral vision near the end.

For a man who loved to read, who was used to being independent and doing for himself, the diagnosis was nothing sort of devastating. A broken magnet on the old brown double-wide refrigerator held a grid that he was supposed to check to gauge the progression of the disease. (Check your own eyes on the grid here.) To prolong the inevitable, my mom bought him two large lighted magnifying lenses that could be c-clamped to both his kitchen table and his comfy chair, allowing him to continue reading, until he just couldn’t really much anymore. And the loss of his driver's license was a huge blow.

My grandfather with his passel of great grandchildren, on the occasion of his 91st birthday.


While there still isn’t a cure for macular degeneration, we know much more about its risk factors which include exposure to UV rays from the sun and welder’s flash(!), so the proper protective lenses are key. And smoking is a big no-no. We also know much more about how to prevent it through diet and supplementary vitamins. The eventual goal of the American Macular Degeneration Foundation is, of course, finding a cure. But meanwhile, get your eyes checked regularly and let's eat right for our sight as well.

Carrot-Cumin Soup - from Eat Right For Your Sight: Simple Tasty Recipes That Help Reduce the Risk of Vision Loss from Macular Degeneration*,  © American Macular Degeneration Foundation, 2014. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Experiment. Available wherever books are sold. *Amazon affiliate link

Ingredients for four 1 cup or 240ml servings
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound or 450g carrots
2 1/2 cups or 590ml vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup or 125g plain Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon sea salt or as needed

For garnish:
2 tablespoons toasted cumin seeds (I used way less.)
I also added a little more yogurt and some green onions.

Method
Peel your onion, garlic and carrots. Chop the onions, mince the garlic and, after cutting the ends off of the carrots, cut them into 1 inch or 2 cm pieces.



In a heavy pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the chopped onion for two minutes, then add the garlic and sauté an additional minute.



Add the carrots, broth, cumin, coriander and a few good grinds of black pepper. (The recipe says to add the salt here as well but I suggest you wait till the end of cooking to see how much salt is needed after the soup cooks down. Vegetable broths come in varying degrees of saltiness.)



Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.

Purée the soup with an immersion blender or, working in batches, purée in a blender or food processor until smooth.

Return the soup to the pot, if necessary, and stir in the yogurt and lemon juice. Add salt and and more black pepper to taste.



Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with the toasted cumin seeds. (And a small dollop of yogurt and a few chopped green onions, if desired.)



Enjoy! If you’d like to learn more about how to prevent macular degeneration, please visit the American Macular Degeneration Foundation website.  If you'd like to buy the cookbook or read further reviews, check out Amazon.com or any of the major booksellers.



And since it was provided in the book, as it is for all of the recipes, I'll share the nutritional information for the soup:
Nutritional Profile for Carrot-Cumin Soup.
Serving size: 1 cup
Calories: 178
Protein: 4 g
Fiber: 4 g
Fat: 11 g
Saturated fat: 3 g
Sodium: 1,031 mg
Vitamin A: 19,312 IU
Vitamin C: 10 mg
Vitamin E: 3 IU
Beta-carotene: 9,420 μg
Lutein and zeaxanthin: 307 μg
Lycopene: 1 μg


I received a copy of Eat Right for Your Sight free of charge from the non-profit American Macular Degeneration Foundation. It seems ridiculous to have to say it, here goes: As with every post I write, all opinions contained herein are my own alone.


Posted by at 9:01:00 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, November 13, 2014

On the Hunt

Braised rabbit or bunny haunches, as we call like to call them in our family.
This Sunday I’m hosting Sunday Supper again with my partner in the perfect time zone, Tara of Noshing with the Nolands. Our theme is On the Hunt and we’ll be sharing recipes for dishes made with ingredients you hunt for, so that will include game like venison and rabbit as well as foraged wild mushrooms or pick-your-own veggies and fruit or perhaps even some exotic spice you have to travel to a distance shore or ethnic market to source.

Here’s a preview of the recipes to come this Sunday!

Spread it on Thick

Nibbles and Sides

The Main Event

Sweet Treats


Posted by at 4:02:00 AM 0 comments
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