Rice and Mushrooms

Wednesday, 7th May 2014

My first vegetarian meal for longer than I can remember. Steamed rice, miso broth, spring onions and sliced shiitake mushrooms fried with a little salt and lemon juice. Very enjoyable.

Chicken Zurbian Rice

Sunday, 24th November 2013

I was looking for an opportunity to use a Zhug spice mix that I had in the cupboard and chose this Yemeni recipe.
Most of what I googled for Zhug suggested it should be a green sauce, but my spice mix was brown, probably due to being a little old. So instead of trying to make up a sauce by mixing it with water or oil, I used it instead of the spice mix indicated in the recipe. Served with turkish flat bread and a salad of lamb's lettuce and mushrooms.
Judging the amount of liquid needed when the rice was added was tricky, but I got it about right and the rice was nicely cooked at the end. The spices tasted quite Indian to us, rather than Arabic, but the mix is very similar to what I might use for a Curry, so that was no surprise. It was quite rich and pretty hot, so good for me, but a little too spicy for Monika I think.

Paella

Saturday, 13th April 2013

Book of Tapas and Spanish Cooking - Hilaire Walden p93. I think Paella is one of those dishes where you can vary the ingredients in the basic recipe quite a bit, so this was my variation.
I cut up a poussin into small pieces, browned these in oil for 10 minutes and removed them from the pan. The added onions and garlic, chopped red pepper and diced chorizo and bacon. Then I added 250 grammes of risotto rice (not really the best substitute, but OK), some paprika, and a small amount of red chili.
Then stock, where I had to guess the amount, since I wasn't following the recipe closely. For 350 grammes rice the recipe said 1.75 litres of stock, which seems a huge amount to me. I added a bit less than a litre, and that turned out to be more than enough.
I put the chicken back in and added 8 cherry tomatoes halved, rosemary and seasoning, and boiled for 10 minutes.
Then came the seafood. I used 6 small squid cut up, some mussels, 6 prawns in their shells, a red mullet fillet cut up into small pieces and two red king prawns. This was all scattered over the top and not stirred in (as in the photo).
This was then supposed to simmer for 10 minutes and then steam, off the heat with the lid on, for 10 more minutes. However, the pan I used was large and, although it bubbled fairly well in the middle the edges were not hot enough. It was soon obvious that neither the fish nor the rice was going to be cooked through in that time, and there was still too much liquid. In the end I let it simmer for about a half hour and then steam for 10 minutes.
In the end everything came out very nicely, with a delicious flavour. Both the fish and the rice were cooked about right, although the squid got a bit lost and there were too many mussels. The red mullet was particularly good.

Chicken and peppers in rice.

Friday, 23rd November 2012

Brown the chicken and quickly fry the slice peppers then set aside. Fry the rice with onion and then add wine, stock and tomatoes, bring to the boil and return the chicken a peppers. Simmer until the liquid has mostly gone.
I server this with a salad of leeks, sliced red pepper and olives, and anchovy stuffed mushrooms. The salad was delicious and definitely the best part.

Grilled Tuna and Rice

Wednesday, 1st August 2012

An old favourite for a quick evening meal.
In this case, I had prepared some Japanese grill sauce by reducing a mix or soya, sake, mirin and sugar to a thickish black sauce. This was used to coat the tuna before frying it hot for a few minutes on each side, so it was still a little pink in the middle.
The spring onions are just fried in sesame oil and served with a little ponzu sauce and some pickles. Delicious.

BBQ Fish and Rice

Tuesday, 19th June 2012

Nothing fancy, I just coated a piece of fish in some Koeran BBQ sauce and fried it quick and hot with ginger and spring onions. Turns out the sauce was much spicier than I expected, but great with a beer.

Lamb Kebabs in Spicy Tomato Sauce

Friday, 3rd February 2012

I have just finished an enjoyable novel called Arab Jazz, about an Arabic family in America, which included several tasty sounding food references, so I was inspired to try something vaguely arabic.
I tried and failed to get minced lamb (why on earth it is so hard to get lamb in a city with so many Turkish people, I have no idea), but managed to find a small leg joint and cut it into cubes (sort of). Marinate the meat in oil, garlic, onion, coriander and allspice, and then simply grill it on skewers. Soaking the skewers first is supposed to prevent them from burning, but it didn't work for me.
For the tomato sauce soften onions and garlic in oil, then add tinned cherry tomatoes, sugar and hot pepper sauce and cooked until thick. Spread the sauce on a dish and add greek yoghurt and mint, and then the kebabs.
I served them with basmati rice with toasted almond flakes, and olives, stuffed vine leaves and white beans, from the deli. Also some cauliflower florets stir fried in cumin, turmeric and more allspice, then a little water then added so it could cook through for 10 minutes.
It all came out very well, although some leaner meat would have been better. The spicy tomato sauce was particular good.

Chicken Alexa

Thursday 12th January 2012

This is something I haven't cooked for ages. The chicken is roasted and then served with a creamy sauce with mild spices. Fry onions in butter and then added flour and garam masala and cook for a minute or two. Gradually add half a pint of chicken stock and cook for 10 minutes, then add lemon juice, cream and honey and heat through. In this case served with basmati rice and a spoon of bulgar wheat salad.

Chicken and Shitake on rice

Wednesday, 27th April

This should be Oyakodon (Chicken and Egg Rice - literally "parent and child rice bowl"), but I didn't have any eggs, and I don't really like egg anyway. So I improvised with mushroom, but used the basic recipe from Traditional Japanese Recipe Book, p22. Gently sautee onion, add chicken that had been previously quickly blanched in boiling water, add stock, mirin, and soy. Cook through, add shitake and cook for a couple of minutes, top with sliced spring onion and serve over rice. I wonder if the Japanese use a much paler sort of soy sauce than we get here, because my sauces always turn out much darker than the ones shown in the pictures with the recipes.
Anyway this was very good and the chicken and mushroom combination was excellent.