Spicy chickpeas

This is a filling and warming recipe for a weekend lunch or a quick weeknight dinner. It can be made easily with a few canned ingredients from the pantry. I sometimes make this chickpea dish mid-morning, so when little hungry people come home from school, there is something hot, filling and nutritious ready to go.

What you'll need

Serves four for lunch

400g can chickpeas, drained
400g tinned chopped tomatoes
1 packet taco seasoning
1 medium onion, diced
Half a ripe avocado, diced
1 cup grated cheese
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Steamed rice and fresh lime to serve

What to do

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until transparent. Add the taco seasoning and mix well with the onion. Fry for 2 minutes. Add the chickpeas and the tomatoes and mix well. The mixture should be quite wet/runny and easy to stir. If not, add a cup of water and stir well.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer without a lid for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. If the mixture gets to dry and thick, add a bit more water. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If you'd like some more spice, you could also add some chilli powder or fresh chilli.

Serve hot over steamed rice. Sprinkle with some diced avocado, grated cheese and a squeeze of lime.

Gyoza (Japanese dumplings)

These little parcels are rather addictive. They are gyoza, or Japanese dumplings. I could sit down and eat a whole plate full and the little people are rather fond of them also. 

I prefer steamed gyoza but the 'pot-sticker' variety cooked in a frying pan and then steamed are also wonderful. The slippery wrappers are so yummy, and you can fill the gyoza with anything you like. The version above was made with minced prawns and some miso paste. But gyoza work really well with other seafoods such as scallops, minced chicken or pork and even vegetables such as sweet potato. 

The best part about this recipe is most of the hard work is done for you; the wrapper pastry is super cheap and can be found at any Asian shop or many supermarkets. All you have to do is whip up a bit of filling, squish the pastry together with a little water, then steam. Only problem is that you can never make enough; my family always want more!

This is an impressive dish to serve at a dinner party. You can prepare the gyoza beforehand and keep them in an air-tight container in the freezer until ready to cook. Your guests will think you are a super-chef! 

What you'll need

Serves six people as an entree, makes 30 gyoza

200g minced green prawn meat

1 tablespoon red miso paste, thinned with a teaspoon of warm water to make a thick paste

1 packet gow gee wrappers, containing 30 wrappers

What to do

Prepare the filling. Mix the miso paste with the prawn meat in a bowl.
Set aside. Place a clean tea towel on your work surface.

Open the packet of gow gee wrappers and peel off, one at a time. Be gentle, as the wrappers are fragile and can stretch and rip (which you don't want). Place the wrappers on your tea towel. (If you can't fit them all, place out half then do the rest later.)

Working quickly (or they will dry out), place 1 teaspoon of mixture into the centre of each wrapper. Once this is done, fill a small bowl with warm water. Dip your finger into the water and then run it around the edge of the wrapper.

Now fold the wrapper in half around the filling and seal it together (see picture right). It will seal where you have wet it. You can now cook the gyoza straight away or place them in an air tight container and put in the freezer until you are ready to cook. From experience, I think the gyoza stay together better if you put them in the freezer for at least an hour before cooking.


Cooking tips: You can steam the gyoza in a steamer basket (as below), but you MUST grease the basket with some vegetable oil first, or the gyoza will stick very well to the basket. Steam for five minutes and serve immediately while hot.

You could also fry the gyoza in a little vegetable oil in frying pan over medium heat. Once they are brown on one side, pour in a cup of warm water, replace the lid and remove from the heat. The gyoza will then steam in the heat of the pan. Leave for 3 minutes, drain, then serve immediately.

Storage tips: Layer the gyoza between layers of baking paper or greaseproof paper in an air tight container with a lid. When layering, make sure you leave a little space between each gyoza, or else they will stick together. I prefer to make and cook these on the same day, but you could keep them for up to a week.

Dipping sauce tips: Serve with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce with a squeeze of fresh lime juice and some wasabi.

Scrambled eggs

For a quick and super-yummy weekend breakfast, try these delicious scrambled eggs. Treat your eggs very gently when preparing and cooking and you'll be rewarded with a deliciously soft and scrumptious meal. The sour cream or natural yoghurt makes the eggs just that little more rich in this recipe.

What you'll need

Serves 3 - 4 people

6 large eggs
100g bacon or prosciutto, finely diced
1/2 cup sour cream or natural yoghurt
Salt and pepper

Fresh basil, grated cheese and toast to serve

What to do

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat.

Crack the eggs into a bowl, add the sour cream/yoghurt and chopped meat and gently whisk. Season well with salt and pepper. I leave my egg mix a little lumpy; I do not incorporate all the yolk into the whites. This makes for better colour and texture when serving I think.

Pour the mixture into the pan and reduce the heat to low. Using an egg flip or straight-edged wooden spoon, gently scrape the cooked egg from the bottom of the pan and move to the side of the frying pan. The uncooked egg mixture will then run into the bottom of the pan. Repeat a few times until the cooked egg is to the side and the uncooked egg fills in the holes. Cook for approximately 3 to 4 minutes.

While the eggs are still quite runny and wet-looking, remove from the heat and set aside. The eggs will keep cooking. Removing the eggs from the heat before they are fully cooked will ensure they are not too dry.

Gently spoon onto prepared plates with buttered toast. Sprinkle with grated cheese of your choice and some fresh basil. Serve while warm.

Steamed jam pudding

For me, a steamed pudding is a real 'comfort food' recipe. I remember eating steamed puddings as a kid, but I can't remember who it was that made it for me - perhaps Great Grandmother or Grandmother or Auntie.

I think there is nothing quite like sitting down to a warm, sweet pudding that's been steaming on the stove all afternoon. The texture of the sponge is very different to a baked pudding and the hot topping makes everything sticky and sweet. And served with some custard, cream or icecream makes this so luscious.

This recipe is also a great way to use up those half-used bottles of jams and preserves at the back of the fridge. Mix them all together for a lovely flavour combination. Or if you like, add some tinned fruit to the jam mix for some extra texture and flavour.

The recipe I used for this pudding came from BBC Good Food Magazine (UK edition), November edition pp121. This is an excellent magazine, with lots of creative and delicious recipes. The Australian edition of this magazine is excellent as well.

I found the recipe to be spot on, apart from the cooking time. My pudding only took 90 minutes to cook. The sponge part of the pudding was wonderfully moist, and the jam on top was lovely, sticky and sweet.
I served ours with some marscapone cream and a small dallop of lemon curd - what I had in the fridge basically.

On the first night we ate this, the pudding was still warm from cooking. On the subsequent nights, I heated it for 20 seconds or so in the microwave oven, then spooned over the cream. Delish!!

What you'll need

Serves 6 - 8 people

For the topping:
4 heaped tablespoons of whatever jam/conserve you have. I used a homemade strawberry jam. You could also use golden syrup or treacle. If you want to use tinned fruit, you'll need about 200g, drained and roughly chopped.

For the pudding:
175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
3 large eggs
2 tbls milk
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used beans from a quarter dried vanilla pod)

           

What to do

1. Grease a pudding basin with butter and pour the jam (or whatever you are using as the topping) into the bottom. I don't have a pudding basin, so I used a small ceramic salad bowl instead. It will need to have a capacity of 1 - 1.5L.

2. Boil a kettle full of water. In the bottom of a large and deep saucepan place a upturned bowl. The bowl should fit well into the bottom of the saucepan and also should be big enough to hold the pudding basin.  

3. Place all the pudding ingredients into a bowl and mix for 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Scrape the mixture into the pudding basin.

4. Make a lid for the pudding basin from a piece of baking paper and foil. Place a large piece of baking paper over a large piece of foil, approximately 60cm x 40cm. Grease the baking paper. Then make a pleat (fold, then fold back, see picture above) through both sheets. Use about 5cm of the paper for the pleat. This will give the lid some room to move if the pudding rises over the edge of the basin. Use some kitchen string to tie the lid tightly to the basin (see picture above).

5. Carefully place the pudding basin into the saucepan, centering it on the bowl at the bottom. Using the hot water from the kettle, pour the water into the saucepan until it comes half way up the pudding basin.

6. Set over medium heat and bring to the boil. Cover the saucepan with a lid and reduce the heat to low so that the water is gently simmering. Check the water periodically during the cooking time and top up with more water if needed.

7. Cook for approximately 90 minutes. Check if cooked by inserting a wooden skewer through the paper/foil lid and into the pudding. If it comes out cleanly, it is ready. If not, cook for another 20 minutes and check again.

8. Once cooked, remove the pudding from the heat, remove the lid of the saucepan and the lid of the pudding basin. Leave to sit for at least 30 minutes so that the jam sets a little.

9. Remove the pudding basin from the saucepan and turn the pudding out onto a plate.

10. Serve immediately with cream, custard or ice cream.

Japanese soy chicken

I've been a bit sick this week. And this dish is, without fail, what I want to eat when I get sick. I don't know why this is, but I just crave a huge feed of this chicken with rice or noodles.

Might be the salt or the protein in the chicken. I don't what it is, but this is what I'm looking for when I'm sick. And again, I gobbled it up and felt much better afterwards.

This was a recipe inspired from the wonderful Donna Hay. I ordered two of Ms Hay's cookbooks online and they were delivered this week. Talk about cooking inspiration! Some beautiful recipes which I'll be borrowing much from soon.

The inspiration for this chicken recipe came from the book 'Fast, Fresh, Simple'. Ms Hay's recipe was for Chinese soy chicken, but I only had Japanese-style ingredients in my cupboard, so I changed it around a little. The result was beautiful, silky chicken with slippery udon noodles. Just what I felt like.

What you'll need

Serves two, or one hungry sick person

2 medium chicken breasts
2 tbls Mirin
1 tbls dark soy sauce
1 tbls fish sauce
1 small red chilli, chopped plus extra for serving
2 eschallots, roughly chopped
2 cups chicken stock (low salt variety if possible) or just use water
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped

Noodles or steamed rice and vegetables to serve
Fresh chopped mint to serve

What to do

Place all ingredients, apart from the chicken, in a large saucepan. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer and cook for five minutes, reducing it slightly.

Add the whole chicken breasts and cook for approximately 5 minutes, then turn and cook for 5 minutes on the other side. Keep the lid on the pot during this time.

Remove once cooked and served immediately. You can drizzle some of the cooking broth onto your rice or vegetables for flavour. Serve sprinkled with some fresh chopped chilli and mint.

If you'd like, cook some noodles, or vegetables such as snow peas, beans or brocoli in the same broth. Simmer these gently until cooked, drain, then serve with the chicken. I cooked my udon noodles in the broth beside the chicken and they were beautifully flavoured.

Easy pizza fingers

Super-quick lunch idea for the blog today. 

These pizza fingers went down a treat, were quick to make and super yummy.

I made the base with focaccia, so it was just a matter of loading the topping on and putting it in the oven.

Easy and quick. Just the thing for lunch on a cold day. 

After I made this I remembered that many years ago, I worked in a restaurant that had pizza fingers on the menu. I think that it was the most popular thing on the menu and they were so great. Memories of long ago......

What you'll need

* Serves three or four for lunch with a side salad.

Two loaves of focaccia, approx 30cm x 20cm. You can use plain or buy with flavours such as garlic or herbs.
4 tbls tomato paste or pizza sauce
200g sliced meat, I used salami
Handful of seedless olives
200mg fresh mozzarella (or two cups grated cheese of your choice)

What to do

Place two tablespoons of the tomato sauce onto each piece of focaccia, spreading it right to the edge.

Next put the cheese, then sliced meat, then press the olives into the top.

Place into a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees. Bake for 15 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the other toppings are slightly browned.

Once cooked, removed from the oven and let sit for a few minutes to let the cheese cool down a little. Then slice with a sharp knife into 5cm wide fingers.

Serve immediately with a big napkin for your fingers! No knives and forks required here people.