Power Salad

A little cafe up the road from where I work has this amazing energy salad on the menu. For a while there I would head over about 2-3 times a week and invariably end up ordering it. It is a very simple salad and incredibly easy to put together so I have started making it myself. 

The recipe below is for one serving and can easily be scaled up. I usually cook a cup of dry red quinoa and refrigerate it to use over 3-4 days. When I am ready to make the salad, I just measure out for as many servings as I am making. 

I find that just about any basic vinaigrette works well with this salad. The star of the show here is the hot smoked salmon. I am using peppered hot smoked salmon which gives it a bit more oomph but it is also very good with plain smoked salmon. 

Yield - 1 serving
Time - 20 minutes

Ingredients

1/2 Cup cooked Red Quinoa

1/2 Finely chopped Broccoli

1/2 Finely chopped Kale

2 Tablespoons toasted sunflower seeds

75 grams Hot smoked Salmon

1/3 cup Basic vinaigrette

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Salads, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Prawn Sukka

If you follow me on Intagram, you probably know that I was visiting India for a month (If you don't follow me on Intagram - why not?!) Apart from a quick stop over at Singapore, I was mostly in Mumbai. One of my Mumbai food highlights, apart from my mother's fantastic cooking, was the Crab Sukka from Mahesh Lunch Home. Mahesh Lunch Home specializes in Mangalorean seafood dishes and the flavors in the crab dish was off the charts. 

'Sukka' essentially means dry. Here I have tried to recreate the flavors in a dry prawn dish. While cooking this, our building's fire alarm went off - it wasn't me! But I had to evacuate while I was in the process of cooking the spices. Which was SO inconvenient! 1) Because I smelled like a spice drawer; and 2) Because I really wanted to finish cooking this delight and dig in!

Yield - Serves 2

Total Time - 1 Hour

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Thai Basil Shrimp Stir Fry with Dipping Sauce

Remember the Thai Basil Chicken recipe I posted a while back? Of course you do. It took 20 minutes to cook and saved you from ordering in on a crazy weeknight. It was pretty good, but authentic it was not! Which is why I timidly named it "Thai Inspired Basil Chicken". See what I did there? One of the main reasons was that I used regular sweet basil in that recipe, because Thai basil is not readily available in the supermarkets here.

Last winter I started some Thai basil seedlings indoors and they have grown into a nice little bush this summer. Look at it! It has had a few trims already but it is a source of much joy in our little apartment. This ingredient is NOT optional! It lifts the dish and gives it such a beautiful distinct flavor that you (or I) will never go back to using sweet basil in our Thai dishes. 

I have several stir fry recipes on the blog. They are true weeknight heroes - fast, easy and healthy. Don't let the word "fry" fool you, with just a couple of splashes of oil and high heat, the veggies and meat cook well and retain their crunchiness - the veggies that is! Which brings me to my ONLY rule about stir fries - quick cooking over very high heat. That is all.

Yield - Serves 2

Prep Time - 20 Minutes

Cook Time - 10 Minutes

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Asian, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Kai Time - Maori Food and Recipes

E Ihowa

Whakapaingia ēnei kai

Hei ōranga mo ōu mātou tinana

Whāngaia hoki ōu mātou wairua

Ki te taro o te ora

Ko Ihu Karaiti tōu mātou kaiwhakaora

Ake ake ake

Amine

-(Maori prayer before meals) 

Last week we celebrated Maori Language Week here in New Zealand. Maori- the indigenous people of New Zealand have rich culture and traditions. We had the opportunity to learn more about their language and culture. I learned to wield a taiaha - a traditional weapon, which was absolutely fantastic. Also, as part of the Maori Language week, I attended a cooking class and learned to cook Maori favorites - Boil Up, Ika Mata and Fried Bread. It was loud, it was fun and we cooked up a delicious feast!

Our teacher, Wepiha Melbourne, received his formal training as a chef in the NZ Navy for 20 years having earned his City and Guilds qualifications. It is not everyday you learn how to cook authentic Maori dishes from a Navy chef! Wepiha is one of the “children of the mist”, hails from Te Urewera and is of Tūhoe and Ngāti Porou descent. He is a bit camera shy, but I got him in the end ( and got his his lovely wife's permission to use his photo on the blog)

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4 comments LABELS: Seafood

Shrimp Diablo with Mexican Rice and Homemade Refried Beans

I am not in Florida anymore. I can't just drive down to El Jalesco #5 (I love saying the name) and order my favorite mexican meals for less than $15 and then proceed to to stuff myself on chips and salsa. You don't know what you're missing New Zealand! No, that stuff you get at Mexicali does not count. As a side note, the last time I went to Mexicali in Auckland for a quick bite, I counted 5 tortilla chips on my plate. Five. Cinco. Not cool, Mexicali. Not cool. So what do I do when I crave me a mexican fiesta? I cook some of course!

Shrimp Diablo roughly translates to 'happiness'. Ok fine, it translates to 'devil shrimp'. But it is pretty close to happiness. It is super spicy. The kind that makes you sweat. The kind that makes tears flow freely from the eyes of grown men. If you are not too hot on spicy food (see what I did there?), I'd suggest checking out other recipes on this blog.This one is not for you my friend. There is no shame in admitting it.

If you are still here, you will be richly rewarded. I cooked everything at home, including the refried beans so this post has three recipes. What a bonanza! You do have to multitask a bit so give yourself about an hour or maybe an hour and a half - you know...to avoid kitchen fires. 

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8 comments LABELS: Latin, Seafood

Bengali Shorshe Bata Maach - Mustard Fish

Here is a bit of advice. Don't ever come between a Bengali and his fish. In fact, just to be safe, don't ever come between a Bengali and his food. They take it very seriously. Afternoon naps are the only other thing that are as dear to a Bengali as his fish. 

A Bengali meal is incomplete without some kind of fish curry in it. When I went back to visit my grandmother this past December, at some point I counted two types of fish curry, fried fish along with two other vegetable preparations on my plate. Yes, we take our fish very seriously indeed! 

"Shorshe bata maach", or fish cooked in a mustard sauce is a quintessentially Bengali dish. It is a very simple dish as far as Indian curries go. There's no long list of spices to draw your attention away from what this dish is really about. 

This dish works with any kind of firm fleshed fish. I have used snapper. Ideally, they should be cut in half inch thick steaks. Fillets work too, in a pinch.

Yield - Serves 4
Prep Time - 15 Minutes + Overnight Soak
Cook Time - 30 Minutes

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Indian, Seafood

Indo-Chinese Shrimp Chow Mein

Indian Chinese Shrimp Chow Mein Noodle Bowl

When Chinese food arrived in India more than a couple of centuries ago, it incorporated the influences of Indian flavors and resulted in the most delicious marriage of cuisines - The Indo-Chinese cuisine. The Chinese community in India settled in the eastern part of the country, mainly around Kolkata - formerly known as Calcutta, the birthplace of Indo-Chinese food. Chow mein is standard Indian Chinese fare. You can swap the shrimp out for any protein of your choice - chicken, beef, pork, tofu and even paneer. Now on to the fried spicy garlicky goodness!

Yield - Serves 4

Prep Time - 20 Minutes

Cook Time - 15 Minutes

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2 comments LABELS: Asian, Indian, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Tim's Homemade Wood Fire Pizza with Step by Step Dough Recipe

There are very few things better than getting together with wonderful people and creating wonderful food. One of my work colleagues, Tim, is an IT manager by day and pizza chef extraordinaire by night! He has a wood fire pizza oven in his front yard and graciously invited a few of us over to his lovely home for a wood fire pizza making crash course. He didn't even mind me following him around like the paparazzi with my camera and even provided me with an SD card when I realized that I had forgotten to bring one along (D-oh)! 

The happy chef with his pizza oven 

Before I get into the pizza making extravaganza, can I just quickly draw your attention to the little baking dish full of tomatoes next to him?

Yep, that one! Tim's lovely wife, Tracy, picked some beautiful vine ripe cherry tomatoes from their garden, drizzled some extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and tossed it all together and cooked it in the pizza oven for just a few minutes. I can honestly say that I haven't known tomatoes to be more delicious! 

Now moving on to one of the most important part of pizza making - the dough. We cooked thin crust pizzas and here is Tim's recipe for the perfect pizza dough.

Tim's Pizza Dough Recipe

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Mediterranean, Pork, Seafood

Char Kway Teow

I have been really enjoying the flavors of Southeast Asian cuisine lately. The flavors are intense but the cooking process is quick and not too complicated. "Char Kway Teow" is a Malaysian stir fry made with fresh flat rice noodles, very common on the streets of Penang . It can be described as Pad Thai's Malaysian cousin to the uninitiated (like me!). I recently ordered "Char Kway Teow" at a restaurant in Auckland called Mix Moon (very close to a certain infamous sculpture) . It was fantastic. Though traditionally it is cooked with shrimp, Chinese sausages, blood cockles and cooked in lard, the recipe I am sharing with you today is closer to what I ate at Mix Moon. I am just not sophisticated enough to cook with lard. Rasa Malaysia has a really good step by step recipe for authentic Penang Char Kway Teow that came in handy while I was trying to deconstruct this dish. 

The key to a good stir fry is a hot wok (or pan) and prepping your ingredients before hand. Quick cooking on high heat ensures that the vegetables are crisp and flavorful rather than soggy and wilty (yes that's a word). Don't overcrowd the pan while cooking. This effectively reduces the cooking temperature. Stir fry in batches. Use the freshest possible ingredients you can find. I found fresh flat rice noodles at the Asian market. Fresh rice noodles can get clumpy so loosen them up at room temperature by hand. Don't soak it in water. In fact, there should be no water added anywhere in this dish. Water is the enemy of stir fries. The noodles I got were coated in a bit of oil, which helped with the unclumping (yes that's a word too). I have used mild dried red chilies in this dish to control the amount of heat but still have the flavor of chilies. 

Yield - Serves 4

Prep Time - 15 Minutes

Total Time - 30 Minutes

Char Kway Teow - Malayasian Stir Fried Rice Noodles with Shrimp and Garlic Chives

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2 comments LABELS: Asian, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Pipi - Tuatua Masala

If you are planning to visit the most loved beach in New Zealand - Ohope , make sure you take a bucket with you and collect some Tuatuas during low tide. There is something very satisfying about foraging and harvesting your own food. Tuatuas are a species of clams. They are closely related to Pipis and the names are often used interchangeably (though incorrectly!). They are plentiful around this time of the year and are absolutely delicious. 

So last weekend, we headed to the beach armed with a bucket. Of course we didn't get our act together until 2 hours after low tide. The water was pretty high and we didn't actually get any Tuatuas. Not to be discouraged by our lack of luck, we had a great time splashing around in the water anyway. After heading out of the water we decided to visit some friends that live by the beach. And they had a bucket of Tuatuas which they were only too happy to share with us. Thank god for wonderful friends that have much better foraging and harvesting skills! I decided to cook a Tuatua masala and have a lunch party with our wonderful friends (Hot dogs for their kids, just in case!)

I have posted a recipe for Malvani Pipi Curry before. This recipe is drier and slightly different. 

Like other mollusks, Pipis and Tuatuas should be be live when you collect them. Store them in clean seawater overnight to let them purge all the sand, otherwise they will be quite gritty. Now, if you are like me you will probably bond with your pipis and don't want to torture them while cooking them. It is often recommended to freeze live shellfish for about 20 minutes before cooking them. I did the same with the tuatuas. I am not sure if it helped ease their discomfort but it sure helped ease mine. 

This recipe also works well for mussels and crabs.

Yield - Serves 6

Prep Time - 45 Minutes

Cook Time - 30 Minutes

Clam Masala

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Chingri Machher Malai Curry

Chingri Machher Malai Curry is one of those iconic Bengali dishes that needs no introduction. But to the uninitiated, it is a dish of prawns or shrimp cooked in a rich coconut curry. 

It is an absolute favorite and a sinfully indulgent dish. Ideally cooked using the largest possible shrimp you can find in the market, cleaned but with the heads and tails on.  When my grandmom, mom and aunts cook it, they spend an eternity coring the coconut and squeezing the milk out. The flavor of the dish when cooked this way is off the charts. Sometimes in life though, we settle for second best. This is an easier version of the dish, still with enough flavor to trigger a healthy episode of nostalgia. My cheater's way to cook this curry is to use store bought canned coconut cream and to add about half a cup of frozen shredded coconut. This adds a bit of texture to the curry and gives it a more authentic feel. And in 30 minutes, this is a weeknight lifesaver for sure!

Be careful though, this is not the healthiest of dishes, so indulge in moderation!

Yield - Serves 3

Prep Time - 10 Minutes
Cook Time - 20 Minutes

Prawn Malai Curry

               

Ingredients

1 LB Prawns (Shrimp)

1 Onion, chopped

0.5 inch Ginger, crushed

5-6 cloves Garlic, crushed

1 can Coconut Cream

0.5 cup shredded coconut, frozen

2 Bay Leaves

0.5 inch Cinnamon

4 cardamom

4 cloves

1 teaspoon Garam Masala Powder

2 Teaspoons Coriander Powder

1 teaspoon Turmeric

1 teaspoon Kashmiri Red Chili Powder

Salt, to Taste

Cilantro, a few sprigs

2 Tablespoons, Oil

Method

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2 comments LABELS: Indian, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Adventures in Whitebaiting with a side of Whitebait fritters

About a week ago, we had the "Great Whitebait Hunt" challenge at work. Since I had never gone whitebaiting before, I was very keen to try my hand at it. I tagged along with 4 other co-workers and we called ourselves "Team Awesome". We got up at a ridiculously early hour in the morning and headed down to the river with a whitebait net and a strange contraption of white pvc tube and empty milk can that's supposed to help spot the whitebait.

So what is whitebait?

Whitebait are little baby fish of mainly 5 species. They are usually about an inch or an inch and a half long and swim in large schools. It is considered a delicacy in NZ. It is not an ecologically viable source of food and is therefore monitored and closely regulated by the Department of Conservation. Click here for more information on Whitebaiting.

Back to our merry band of amateur whitebaiters. 

After 3 hours of standing barefoot, knee deep in fairly cold water, I have learnt 3 things about whitebaiting:

1. Googling about whitebaiting the night before is a fairly futile exercise and doesn't really help 
2. The term "Whitebait Hunt" is a gross misnomer. There is no hunting, mostly just standing around.
3. Spotting the whitebait in the net is as important as catching them.

And yet it was so much fun! Mostly because at some point we realized we were no good at it and decided to just have a good laugh at ourselves. Between the five of us, we caught 6 whitebait. Actually, it was 7. But we gave the first one back to the river as an offering, but I don't think the river was too impressed with it.

Any who, back at the office, we had a weigh in to determine the winner. Others had had better luck than us. The whitebait was divvied up and raffled off and we raised $350 to donate to Alzheimer's New Zealand. 

Team Awesome collectively decided that if any of us won the raffle, we'd share the spoils and have a traditional whitebait fritter feast. And guess what? We were a lot luckier in the raffle than we were at the river. Three of us won the raffle and a feast was had!

Whitebait Fritters are a classic NZ favorite and we decided to stick to the traditional recipe. Our instructions from veteran whitebaiters were simple : Eggs, Whitebait, Salt and Pepper and lots of butter with a squeeze of lemon on top.

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Seafood

Yaki Udon : Udon Stir Fry Recipe

I will be honest with you. This is the first time I have cooked Japanese food. After spending two fantastic weeks in Japan a couple of months ago, and gorging on the most mouth watering food, I have made it my mission to learn to cook authentic Japanese food. I would definitely call my first attempt a success!

Before I get to the recipe, I want to share some photos I took in beautiful, vibrant Kyoto - a city of ten thousand shrines.

Omusoba at the Toji Temple Market, Kyoto

(The stunning beauty of Fushimi Inari)

(Street food, Shijo Dori, Kyoto)

Now for today's recipe: Yaki Udon. Stir fried udon noodles with vegetables and shrimp seasoned with dashi and sprinkled with a generous amount of bonito flakes. This took me right back to Kyoto with the first bite.

Ingredients

Udon Noodles - 4, 200g Packets 
Shrimp/ Prawns, shelled and cooked - 500g
Dashi Seasoning - 1-2 Teaspoons
Bonito Flakes - 1 cup
Nori Sheet - 1
Soy Sauce - to taste**
Cabbage, roughly chopped - Quarter head
Carrots, Sliced - 2
Dehydrated Assorted Mushrooms - 2 cups
Spring Onions/ Scallions, sliced - 2
Vegetable Oil - 3-4 Tablespoons

**Use good quality dark thick soy sauce, because the nasty stuff will ruin this dish.

Method

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3 comments LABELS: Asian, Japanese, Seafood, Weeknight Lifesavers

Clam Curry Recipe

Collecting tuatuas or pipis is what summers are all about here in sunny Bay of Plenty. Fresh pipis or tuatuas are delicious if you let them purge in seawater for a while ( if you can wait that long) and then put them on the grill. No seasoning needed.

But that's not what this recipe is about.


This recipe is inspired by Malvani Cuisine from the Konkan Coast of India.

Ingredients

Clams ~ 100
1 Onion, diced
2 - 3 Tomatoes
1 Whole head of Garlic, finely chopped
1/2 inch Cinnamon stick
1 Tablespoon Coriander seeds
1 Teaspoon Peppercorns
5-6 Cloves
2-3 Dry red chilies
2 dried kokum fruit *
1 Can Coconut milk
Few sprigs of Cilantro (optional)
1 Tablespoon Oil
Salt

* Dried Kokum fruit can be found in most Indian grocery stores. This is optional if you can't find it.

Method

Since I used fresh live tuatuas (clams), I washed them and cleaned them thoroughly before putting them in the freezer for about half an hour. This supposedly numbs their nervous system so they don't feel as much pain. I have never been a clam, so I can't confirm this.

While my clams were having their nervous systems numbed in the freezer, I prepped the spices.

• Dry roast the coriander seeds, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns and dry red chillies.

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Leave a Comment | LABELS: Indian, Seafood