Chickpea salad

This has proven to be a BBQ staple for me, as well as an easy meal to whip together when you have very little time but dinner guests so still need something which is semi presentable. There are so so many incarnations of it - this is one that I made last week for my firend Alex who lives in rural Laos and rarely gets western ingredients.

Ingredients

1 onion, diced
2 small japanese eggplants, cut in half lengthwise and then sliced
5 roma tomotoes, diced
handful of green beans, cut into 3cm pieces
2 cans chickpeas, rinsed
100g feta cheese
4 gourmet sausages, any nice sounding variety, although I think chorizo is hard to beat here, chopped into 1 cm pieces
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp chopped parsley

Method

In a large saucepan or wok, fry onions in a good lug of olive oil until transparent. Add eggplant and fry until cooked. Add sausage and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook until they collapse and are mushy. If the pan gets dry then add small amounts of water to moisten.

Add beans and cook for further 2 minutes. Add chickpeas, stir through. Take off heat. Add feta and red wine vinegar and mix through. Season with salt and pepper - it should have a little bite from the vinegar but it should not be overpowering. Add parsley, mix up and serve.

Variations

I have usually used the same onion, eggplant and tomato base but made many variations.

• Use brown lentils not chickpeas
• Add rocket or English spinach at at the end - just stir it through
  
• Vary the cheeses - a goat feta works well, as does ricotta
• If you have time, roast the tomatoes first for a stronger flavour

Suppli al telefono (Rice Balls)

I cannot remember when I first made these and whether or not it was because I had left over risotto or whether I was craving the delicious rice balls that I used to get from Iku wholefoods in Glebe. Anyway, they have been part of the repetoire for a while, getting various incarnations from main meal to drinks nibbly.

This time I decided to do some research before hand and found out that there are many kinds of rice ball. Arancini - which are fried or, less commonly, baked rice balls, having a diameter of 8-10 cm, filled usually with ragù (meat sauce), but also with tomato sauce, mozzarella, peas, and other things. On the outside they are simply breadcrumbs; and Suppli - which can be seen as a larger version of arancini, but with tomato sauce, or as a kind of croquette.

I thought I would try out a more authentic recipe for my recent rice ball craving. This one (from foodnetwork.com) worked out tasting very yummy indeed - making an excellent pre poker dinner and post poker eve snack the next day!

Ingregients

3/4 cup dried porcini mushrooms

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 cups beef stock

1 450g can peeled Italian tomatoes and their juices, crushed by hand

3 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon butter

1 2/3 cups Vialone, Avorio or Arborio rice

2 eggs

2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

1 onion, chopped

50g prosciutto, finely chopped

200g ground beef

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

150g mozzarella, cut into 1/4-inch dice

3/4 cup unseasoned bread crumbs

1 litre extra virgin olive oil - or other- for frying

Method

Soak the mushrooms in 1/2 cup water for 2 hours. Drain the mushrooms, reserving the mushroom water, and chop finely. Dissolve the tomato paste in the mushroom water and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, combine the beef stock, crushed tomatoes and 3 tablespoons butter, mix well and bring to a boil. Add the rice, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the rice is done, stirring throughout. Turn the rice mixture out into a serving bowl and gradually stir in the eggs and Parmigiano. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, in a frypan, melt the remaining tablespoon of butter over low heat. Add the onion and prosciutto and cook over high heat 3 minutes. Add the ground beef and cook until well browned. Add the mushrooms, mushroom water-tomato paste mixture, and salt and pepper to taste, and keep at a simmer.

Make egg-shaped portions of the rice, and make an indentation in the center of each one. Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each ball of rice, along with a few cubes of the cheese. Add some more rice to cover this and roll into a ball Roll each ball in the bread crumbs so that it is completely coated.

In a large, heavy bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over high heat until it is almost smoking. In batches, fry the balls in the hot oil until they are golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on paper towels while seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve with a nice homemade tomato sauce.

A Family Affair

I call this an old family recipe because it has such a personal history and so many stories that surround it, such as: when it almost blinded my Burmese-Italian cousin: “Darshan, I’m blind….IM BLIND!!”, or when it almost helped my sister lose her first boyfriend [we hoped], or when my dad [Pa], true master of the recipe, woke up the morning after the very same sister’s wedding to find a trail of rose petals leading from his bedroom directly to the szechuan chicken recipe [hint hint!].

But as experts in Chinese geography might have guessed, and as you can see from the scan below, the recipe is not Sri Lankan. Its ripped from Charmaine Solomon’s Asian Cookbook [a must have] and I still follow her pretty much to the letter. It may look slack [and sorry about the sm. type] but I’ve included a scanned version of our original family copy below to show the amount of use it has had over the years [notice the ‘tick’ up the top which must have been the first time Pa chose to cook it].


A word in favour of deep-frying: This is not a cooking technique to be derided or looked down on but a fine art of precision, texture and fish & chip shop sound effects. A few of the other contributors to Family Pies are responsible for purchasing my deep-fryer and well, its been a hot, crispy, slightly salty, 3rd degree burning love affair ever since. In short: don’t try shallow frying this chicken – Pa and Charmaine just won’t have it.

WARNING: Szechuan chicken is extremely tasty before you put it in the sauce [kinda like KFC] and will be snapped up by any kitchen hangers in the vicinity. It is also one of those slow-melding, burning dishes that pack extra punch and flavour on day two: often devoured with toast or in a Brewell in front of the Sega Mega Drive. So make extra – perhaps triple the current recipe?

In the cal-zone

After a busy months end (hmmmm too many holidays), I am cheating a little here and using some of an old post for ingredients and method. You may remember the very first entry for pizza,
and that the amount of dough is quite substantial. Well the great news is the dough freezes well and can be used for other tasty treats such as this calzone. You can also use some of the sauce in the filling too. Love a meal with pre-prepared yet homemade ingredients......

Dough
See method for pizza entry

Filling
This is the fun and creative part! This can be totally up to your taste, or even what you may have in the house! Here are just two of the standard combos we use in our place/

Veg- Mix spinach, fetta, parmesan, mushrooms, black olives and a splash of tommy sauce also on pizza page

Meaty- Any ham, prosciutto, (ground or thinly sliced)lamb or beef, mixed with spinach, cheeses, mushrooms, olives and of course the splash of tommy sauce

Putting it all together

* So you roll out your dough on a large floured surface.
* Then get a small(ish) dinner plate and cut out as many dough circles as you need.
* Once the rounds are made, you spoon about two tablespoons of the filling mixture into the middle of each round.
* Fold the rounds in half and pinch and fold round edges together.
* Brush top with egg or even just a little olive oil

* Place onto baking tray and put in 180- 200 degree oven for about 15-20 mins until each calzone in a lovely golden colour.
* When you take them out drizzle with a bit of yum e.v.o.o especially in the crease, and enjoy as a snack on its own or with a crispy rocket based salad for a main meal.
Enjoy

Smoked Fish with Vegetables, Matapha and Gari

The food from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique has some similarities. The use of peanuts. Coconuts. Dried and smoked fish. Leaves from cassava and other plants as a primary ingredient. Combine all these ingredients with some onions, chillies, palm oil, and garlic and you have a fusion of Mozambican Matapha and Congolese Pondu. Served with some pap, rice or gari and you have a delicious and filling dish. We prefer to add another dish, like smoked chicken with peanut sauce (DRC), or (very) spicy fried okra with prawns (Mozambique). Since I’ve made these dishes many times before, I opted for a new addition: fried smoked fish with vegetables.
So here they are.

Fried Smoked Fish with Vegetables

Found in Dorinda Hafner's A Taste of Africa, purchased at Borders for $10!

Ingredients

500g smoked herring or mackerel

3 tbs peeled and finely grated ginger

½ cup vegetable or peanut oil

2 onions, minced

4 tomatoes, blanched, peeled and puréed

1 tbs tomato paste blended with ¼ cup water

2 red chillies, minced

250g green beans
½ teaspoon garlic salt (or salt and garlic)

Directions
Season the fish with salt and ginger. Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan, and sauté the fish (I used mackerel) until crisp and brown. Remove from the oil, drain, and set aside. In the remaining oil, add the onions and sauté until they are almost brown. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, chillies, green beans, and garlic salt. Return the fish to the pan, cover, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.

Matapha / Pondu

This is an amalgamation of many internet recipes that I no longer have because I wrote them in Rakas departing present, the cook's companion recipe journal.

Ingredients
6 handfuls Cassava (or Matapha) leaves
3 tbs palm oil
2 onions
8 cloves garlic
one piece of dried, salted or smoked fish, broken up
3 chillies (or more if they’re not very hot)
salt to taste

For Matapha add:
1 can coconut cream
1 cup roasted peanuts

NB: I’ve guessed the quantities as I normally make it by taste, so you may need to adjust.

Equivalent ingredients
Cassava or Matapha leaves have a distinct chlorophyll fragrance and taste, which is difficult to replace. If you can’t find them in Footscray or some other suburb of Melbourne which I don’t know about which has African grocers (sorry Melly, but I have no idea if you’ll have an option at all here), use 8 handfuls of spinach.

Palm oil is thick, red and sticky. Again, if you can’t find an equivalent, use peanut or ground nut oil.

For the smoked fish I tend to use half a small smoked fish (see picture), but you can also use a bunch of those tiny dried fish you get at Asian grocers (although not as fragrant).

Directions
If using fresh leaves, grind leaves in mortar and pestle with the garlic and chillies. Otherwise grind garlic and chillies then add frozen leaves. Place in a saucepan, cover with water and cook until almost dry (approximately ½ hour). Add all remaining ingredients and cook for one hour, adding water if necessary. For Matapha, once cooked, blend until almost smooth (it should be the consistency of a pumpkin soup). The dish should be nutty and smoky, but not spicy despite the inclusion of chillies.

Gari

Again, taken from Dorinda's cookbook

Gari is a new addition to my African recipes, and is delicious. It is actually a Portuguese and/or French dish which has been adopted by the Ivory Coast (I think it might be a Portuguese dish adopted by French colonies). It is almost like a cross between polenta and bread, and is very simple to make. If you can’t find it in African or Portuguese / Spanish grocers, use polenta, rice or mashed potato instead (I’ll explain pap another day).

Ingredients
Farine de Manioca (in French, or Farinhe de Mandioca in Brazil, or Farinha de Mandioca in Portugal, or dried ground cassava)
Water
Salt

Directions
Put 2 cups gari in a bowl and add enough lightly salted water to cover it completely (I also give it a little stir). Let is stand for 10 minutes, or until the gari absorbes the liquid and swells (it will swell to about twice its original size). Fluff the gari with a fork and serve with the fish and the Matapha poured over it.

Serves 4

bean around the block....

I'm torn between these breakfast beans and another recipe i have adapted from Stephanie Alexander's A Cook's Companion. I guess this dish is a more 'hearty' one than Stephanie's, which uses cannellini beans and artichokes. It has more of an antipasto vibe.

Although there is breakfast in the title these beans can be eaten any time of day. A bowl of these for dinner with some fresh soft bread and some shavings of parmesan is a staple at our house.

This is a mega serve..you can halve all measurements and it will serve approx. 4 peeps. But i like to make this amount, eat a bit and freeze the rest [omitting the olives and parsley and stirring them in once reheated]. Frozen in single serves they are ready for those hangover mornings when you need the beans but could not stomach the cooking process...And if used for that purpose i suggest a poached egg and a salty hashbrown!!

Breakfast Beans

inspired by jamie oliver's humble beans recipe and 'henry's beans' served at a minor place cafe in brunswick.

500gms white beans -haricot, cannellini, lima...your choice
6 cloves of garlic -unpeeled
6 sprigs of thyme
2 sprigs of rosemary
6 bay leaves
2 small-medium potatoes -peeled and halved
4 cherry tomatoes or 2 large ones
extra virgin olive oil
red wine vinegar
parsley
olives -kalamata/black
slices of sour dough -for toast

Drain the soaked beans and give them a good rinse.
Place them in a large, deep pot and cover them with cold water.
Add the garlic, sprigs of thyme and rosemary, bay leaves, potato and tomatoes.
Put the pot on the stove and at med-high heat slowly bring to the boil. Once at boil turn the heat to med-low, cover with a lid and simmer very gently for 45 minutes to an hour. This will depend on whether you are using fresh or dried. You want the beans to be soft and cooked through. It could take longer -so be patient.
Skim off the top when necessary, topping up with boiling water if you need to. Do not use cold water as this will stop the cooking process...Have the kettle boiled and ready to go!
When the beans are cooked drain them in a colander, reserving the cooking water.
Remove the garlic, herbs, potato and tomatoes from the beans. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and in a separate bowl mash them with the tomatoes and potatoes.
Return the beans to the pot, pour the cooking water to cover them halfway up and add the mash. Season well with salt and pepper and a few generous glugs of extra virgin olive oil and a few splashes of vinegar. Stir in the olives and parsley.
Serve on some toasted bread with cracked pepper and a decent drizzle of e.v.o.o ...... yum!

Frango Piri-Piri

When visiting Southern Africa you invariably end up in Maputo. When in Maputo you may meet Lulu [pictured centre inset]. When you meet Lulu he will introduce you to the frango - portuguese 4 dead Chicken – call them galinhas when they’re running around – which reminds me – when you' re in a country where the chickens are running around: order the chicken– aint no better way to ensure you’ve got free range.

Less than a recipe, this is more a combination of techniques and preferences borrowed from friends (mostly Lulu) for a hot chicken that beats the pants off Nando’s and still has your unrehabilitated chicken addicts (e.g. Sar/Lambert) screaming for more. Feel free to adapt so long as you are cooking on charcoal/bbq and as long as you give the marinade its time.

As for the piri-piri, it’s a chilli. Get on the net - hold on, you already are - and you’re gonna find all types of goateed wankers waxing lyrical about what a REAL piri-piri is or isn’t. For those of us without conquistadorial roots, just get some small red hot chillies. Bite one, that should let you know if its got the punch.

Serves: 4 persons
Preparation time: 3 weeks!!!!!

Ingredients for Piri-piri
2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon paprika
3 tablespoons ground piri-piris or substitute piquin or Thai chillies
1 clove garlic, minced, or more to tasted
1 cup olive oil

Grind the ingredients, dry to wet. Put in a jar. Shake like crazy. Leave in fridge for 3 weeks.

Ingredients for Chicken
1 Whole Chicken (preferably organic or free range)
8-10 Cloves garlic, ground
6-8 Limes
OR
3-4 Lemons
Salt

24-48 hours before you plan to serve, butter-fly the chicken. This is easy as long as you have shearing scissors, a sharp knife and you follow this dude on video – he’s the master.

Trim off excess fat and reserve with the bones for stock - with a sharp knife, make deep slashes into the flesh of the bird wherever possible trying to keep the skin in tact. Apply some salt to each slash, then shove garlic into cavities, and pour over lemon/lime so, quoting Lulu ‘that the frango will suck the marinade??? hehehe...’ Leave for 30 minutes then apply your piri-piri in the same way – remember to save some for the grill.

An option which I like because its fun and probably adds punch, is to give the chicken a good 'jerk' while applying the marinade – I know which of our friends are sniggering right now. This is a Jamaican technique that I do with a chop-stick, stabbing and bashing at al the fleshy parts of the meat at will – feel free to puncture and tear a little.

Cover and leave overnight or longer in the fridge.

Tuck the wings in as shown on the video. Charcoal grill the bird flat on a bbq at medium heat for about 1 hour. Some prefer to use a brick or something heavy to keep the chook flat. On your final two turns baste with remaining piri-piri. You may like to add some brown sugar or honey to the marinade if you want a glaze. Chook is ready when you skewer and juices run clear not pink.

Serve with fries, cool crisp salad and Laurentina or some other easy drinking beer.

Cha Ca - Fish with dill, turmeric and white noodles

Adapted from Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen

I have wanted to eat this again ever since we visited Hanoi last year. There you cook it at your table with a rustic charcoal burner, but luckily you can achieve a similar effect in a frypan. We cooked this for 10 people recently - it’s one of those things that is quite easy to do for many.

This recipe is enough for 6 people.

1kg fish fillets (we used Paa nyin which is farmed river fish, I think any reasonably mild white fleshed fish would do)
8 spring onions
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp tumeric powder
2 tsp curry powder
2 tbsp plain yoghurt
125ml fish sauce
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp veggie oil
1 bunch dill
125g white rice noodles –preferably fresh, or dried and cooked according to directions (we used thin round fresh ones, called Khao pun noodles if you are cooking in Laos – about 2mm diameter – which were really sticky. They came in clumps so we cut them up with scissors to make more manageable)
250ml fish stock (see recipe below if you want to make your own)
1 lime or lemon
300g bean sprouts

Cut the fish into bite sized pieces and put in a bowl. Put the white parts of the spring onions (keep the stalks for later) and garlic in mortar and pestle and pound to make a paste. Add paste to fish bowl along with turmeric, curry powder, yoghurt, fish sauce, sugar, 2 tbsp of oil and a third of the dill, roughly chopped. Cover and marinate in the fridge for at least 1 hr.

Slice spring onion stalks. Reserve a small handful of them and also some dill for later. Mix bean sprouts, noodles, sliced spring onions and remaining dill. Place in individual bowls.

Heat remaining 1 tbsp oil in frypan and fry fish (do not add excess marinade or it will be too salty) on one side for 30 sec. Turn over and add fish stock and reserved handful of spring onion and dill and simmer for 3-5 min until cooked. Remove. Spoon evenly into bowls on top of the noodles and add remaining sauce. Serve with lime or lemon wedges. Yum!

Fish stock

2kg fish bones (get your fish freshly filleted and you should have these)
1 large leek or 1 onion
4 cm piece of ginger
4 garlic cloves
2 kaffir lime leaves
1 bunch coriander, stems and roots only

Put bones in large saucepan with 4L of water and bring to boil. Skim off any scum and then add remaining ingredients. Return to boil, reduce heat and then simmer for 30min. Strain through sieve and allow to cool.

Yummy Pizza

Not really sure of how this will go kiddies, first cab off the rank and all. At least it will be down the page very soon. But we have to move house over the next couple of weeks so thought I should post a tried and tasty Friday night favourite of ours. The pizza base is a hybrid of a few different recipes that has evolved after some trial and error (oh and a wicked dining holiday in Italy). The sauce is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe that I saw on one of his TV shows once.....
The base can be made with gluten free flour.

Pizza Dough
1000g of plain flour
550mls tepid water
1 sachet of yeast
4 tbs olive oil
Pinch of salt
Optional 1tbs sugar (castor)
* this makes a huge amount of dough but it freezes well and can be used for calzone too. Another recipe for that will follow (sometime soon)

Process
Sift flour, salt and sugar if used onto a clean bench surface.
Make well in the middle and add a small amount of H2O, yeast and olive oil
Mix slowly with fork then start bringing in flour from the sides of well , keep adding water slowly
When it becomes too hard to mix with fork use your hands.
You may not need to use all the water
Kneed dough for about 5-6 minutes until it is elasticy
Place in large bowl, cover with damp cloth and place in warm place for about 45 minutes so it can rise to about double its size.


When you are ready to build your pizza you can flatten the base any way you like, tossing it in the air, stretching it into shape. But I am not a big stickler for shape and like my pizza base pretty thin so I use a rolling pin and it ends up in all kinds of shapes.

Pizza (tommy) sauce
1 large onion (2 small)
3 cloves of garlic
Fresh basil
2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste

Process
Roughly chop onion and garlic
Sweat onion in pan, then add garlic, basil and tomatoes
Roughly mash tomatoes and let simmer for about 10 minutes
Push mixture through sieve so there is a fragrant tomato sauce left (throw chunks away)

Put this sauce back into pan and simmer (maybe another 10 minutes) until reduced to a nice thick sauce.

Topping
Whatever you like!!
A great veggie pizza is sauteed zucchini in garlic, mushrooms, roasted capsicum, onion, olives and mozzarella, Artichoke is always another tasty topping too.

Our fav (this month) is topping the base with tommy sauce and mozzarella, putting it in a really hot oven (250° C) as is. When it is beautiful and golden take it out of the oven, it is topped with prosciutto and rocket (dressed with fresh lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper).
Bellissimo!