Whipped cream and kedgeree

I’ve posted about kedgeree before, but this time I’ve tried something a little different, this time I added a little garnish of savoury whipped cream to the final dish, yes whipped cream, the heat from the curry-fishy-rice melts the cream into its crevices and makes a heavenly sauce. It is a little odd at first look to see a quenelle of cream perched upon a very savoury dish slowly melting and mingling flavours, fresh lemon zest and parsley folded into the salted whipped cream does a great job of brightening the whole dish, and it doesn’t take long for your brain to get over thinking cream equals sweet.

Serves 2, with a little leftover for lunch.

2 eggs
6-8 cherry tomatoes, sliced into quarters
1 cup of rice, Basmati is good
1 tbsp of good curry powder or paste
Half a red onion, finely diced
1 red chilli, seeds removed and finely sliced
500g smoked fish, flaked into large chunks
1 lemon, zest and juice
1 tbsp butter
100–150 ml cream
Parsley
Salt

Put the eggs in a pot and cover with cold water, bring the boil and cook for 5 minutes, drain and run over cold water, set aside. One egg is diced and tossed through the rice, the other is sliced into quarters for garnish.

Cook the rice until it’s just barely cooked, we don’t want it too well done as it will turn to mush when stirred later. When cooked, spread out on a sheet pan and leave to cool.


Take a bunch of parsley (leave some for garnish) and chiffonade. Whip the cream with a good pinch of salt to soft peaks and fold through the lemon zest and parsley, place in a container and let it sit in the fridge while the rest of the dish is made.

Sauté the onion and and chilli in the butter until softened and the onion is translucent. Add the curry and cook until fragrant, be careful not to burn it. Toss the rice into the pan and carefully stir through making sure to evenly coat the rice, add the fish, tomatoes, lemon juice and diced egg and gently mix until everything is heated through.

Serve a generous amount in a shallow bowl with a couple of the egg quarters and spoon on a quenelle of the cream.

Kai Kem Eggs

I’ve become a twitter addict, I have found so much inspiration from the tweets of others, chefs posting their latest menu ideas, or plates, fellow bloggers tweeting about their latest post, NPH bringing on the food-porn, or in this case @chezpim putting out a casual tweet about picking up some marvellous looking duck eggs at her local market—making me thoroughly jealous in the process—and her plans to make Kai Kem eggs. Having absolutely no idea what Kai Kem eggs were, I educated myself a little on Google, and shot a tweet back, asking her what one does with Kai Kem eggs.

Kai Kem eggs are traditionally made with duck eggs, taking advantage of their large rich yolks, but good free range organic chicken eggs will get the job done, and for a first try probably the cheaper easier option. But I will be keeping an eye out for some duck eggs for my second batch.

So, want something different for your next fiery hot green curry, or maybe something new to top off that congee? Well with a little preparation, and 3 weeks patience, you can have some lovely salted eggs (Kai Kem), a traditional Chinese dish adopted in Thailand as an accompaniment to spicy green curries, johk(similar to congee, a thick rice soup traditionally eaten at breakfast), or simply served as a side, sliced in half, scattered with sliced chilli and diced shallots, topped off with a good squeeze of lime juice.


The ingredients are pretty straightforward, eggs, coarse sea salt and water. The important thing is to completely saturate the water with salt—dissolve so much salt in the water that no more salt will dissolve (about 35 grams per 100 ml).

Ingredients
6 Large Chicken eggs (or duck eggs if you’re lucky enough to have them)
1 Litre Water
350 grams Coarse sea salt (not iodised)

There are two methods to dissolve the salt.
1. Bring the salt and water to a simmer until all of the salt has dissolved, and no more will dissolve (hot water can take more salt than cold), then let the water cool down to room temperature.
2. Or my preferred method, whisk the salt into the water in a bowl on the bench and keep whisking until no more salt dissolves. It’s a little more work, but you don’t have to wait for the water to cool down.

Carefully place the eggs in a large jar or container, and then cover with the cold salt-water, making sure all the eggs are submerged, I ended up cutting up a plastic plate that fit under the rim of the jar to keep them under water.


Seal or cover the jar, and leave it in a cool dark place for 3 weeks, make sure to label the jar with the date.

After the long wait, and possibly forgetting all about the eggy goodness tucked away in the back of the pantry, drain the eggs and carefully remove from the jar.


You can now either put them in a very well labelled egg carton in the fridge, and they’ll keep pretty much indefinitely (but I’ll say 3 months), or you can cook them and then keep them in the fridge.

When you are ready to eat the salty egg, simply fill a pot of water, place in however many eggs you need, bring it to the boil, and simmer for about 15 minutes, yep really 15 minutes, I tried to be a smart-arse on my first go and cooked it like a regular hard boiled egg, didn’t turn out so well. When cooked run the pot under a cold tap until the water is cool and let the eggs sit for a while.

My favourite way to have them (so far) is as a side to a hot green curry, sliced in half, scattered with sliced chilli and spring onions, topped off with a good squeeze of lime juice and maybe a few coriander leaves.

P.S. Yes those are some twin eggs, so were the other five in the carton of six, I must be due some crazy luck!

Urad Dal, Flat Bread and Bhaji

Urid Dal Curry
Get a pot of water on to the stove with a couple of cups of Urid Dal lentils, an onion cut in half and a couple of bay leaves (do not add any salt as this will toughen the lentils and inhibit their cooking). Bring the water to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender, but not mushy.

While the lentils are cooking get the rest of the curry ready. Toast in a dry frying pan some cinnamon, cloves, nigella (onion seeds), a dry chilli or two, fenugreek seeds, coriander seeds, and cumin seeds. When all the spices are fragrant and toasted transfer to a blender with some fresh chilli, garlic, grated ginger and an onion peeled and quartered. Pulse the blender to form a rough paste.

Fry the paste in a little oil until the onion has softened and it has started to caramelise, tip in the drained lentils and stir through, add a couple of chopped de-seeded tomatoes, half a cup of water, and half a cup of coconut milk, simmer until thick, season with salt. Stir through some chopped coriander and serve with bread or rice, or both.

Flat Bread
I just use my basic bread dough, find the recipe here, and follow the pita bread instructions at the bottom of the post.

Onion Bhaji
Peel and slice a couple of onions in half and then in to thinnish slices, place in a bowl and cover with milk, let the onion slices soak for about half an hour.

Drain the onions. I cheat here and use a pre-made masala mix, but you could make your own, add a generous spoon of the masala to the onions and enough chickpea flour (gram flour) to coat the onions, you may need to add a little water to form a batter, but there should be enough liquid left on the onions.

In a heavy based pan add about a centimetre of neutral flavoured oil (I use grape seed oil), when the oil is up to temperature (you can test with a cube of bread) add a spoonful of the onion mixture to the oil and fry for about 2 minutes per side, take care when turning the bhaji not to splash yourself with oil.

Past couple of days in the kitchen

Burgers for dinner




Plaited bread


Steak with sautéed mushrooms and pepper sauce served with endive and roast potatoes


Steak marinating with bit of olive oil, paprika and garlic


Chicken vindaloo

24 hour bread

Butter chicken was the plan for dinner the other night, we had the thighs defrosting in the fridge and when we got home from work and pulled them out, they we're still frozen, bugger. And we had already whipped up a batch of dough to make flat breads with too.

So like all resourceful cooks, I suggested making a dal or vege curry, the other half insisted in ordering in curry, I lost.

At the end of the night cleaning up the take-away mess, we realised that we hadn't used our bread dough sitting on the bench. So there it sat for a full 24 hours, bubbling and fermenting away.

It finally got cooked last night, turned into a focaccia style bread, with thyme, salt and olive oil drizzled over it. turned out light, and tasty with a nice sour bite from the extra long fermentation.

Pumpkin Curry?!

Well, I don't know if I should call this a curry, it may not be, perhaps I should call it a aromatic spicy pumpkin stew. It's pretty quick and easy to whip together, and is great comfort food.