Jambalaya, kind of

This is a one pot wonder, it’s a rather kiwified (read bastardised) version of the original, good andouille is hard to find so resorting to a decent smoky hot chorizo will have to do. Should I call this something else, one pot rice with peppers and sausage, perhaps? This is pretty simple set and forget stuff, there are however a couple of important steps you can’t skimp out on, and you can’t do this without a heavy based pot. If you’re not a fan of prawns, use chicken or skip completely, this dish is pretty customisable.

Feeds 4 hungry people
250 g prawns, de-veined, if frozen do not defrost.
200 g chorizo, diced
100 g streaky bacon, diced
2 large capsicums, diced
1 large red onion, diced
3 garlic cloves crushed
2 cups of long grain rice
1 tin of crushed tomatoes + enough water to make 6 cups
1 tsp bay leaf powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp white pepper
Salt
Pepper

• Get a heavy based pot on a medium heat and add in a glug of olive oil. Add the bacon and the chorizo and slowly cook until the fat from the bacon has rendered out and the whole lot is beginning to crisp and fry.

• Toss in the capsicum, red onion and garlic. Cook down, and I mean it, you want the capsicum completely cooked, not mush, and the onions beginning to caramelize. This is your flavour base, the more effort and time you put in now the better the end result will be.
• Stir though the bay leaf, paprika, white pepper, add a good pinch of salt and grind of black pepper. Add the rice and stir to coat and cook a little. Add the prawns then the water with tomatoes. Stir it, make sure it’s all mixed, and everything is distributed nicely.

• Bring to a simmer, then turn the heat right down to low, put the lid on and leave it alone for 40 minutes. DO NOT stir or lift the lid, just keep the heat on low and have a little faith.
• Remove from the heat and let it stand for 10 minutes or so.
• Serve up in a bowl with some trusty hot sauce on the side.

Throw together

Not sure if this is really going to be a much of a recipe post. I have been doing a lot of stuff recently where I'm not sure if I should bother sharing it as it seems so simple, so expect a couple of easy ones coming up. I'm quite happy with a dry noodle stir fry I've been working on, lots of black pepper and Sichuan pepper, very moreish and not much too it. So to kick off these easy, kind of what my nights are like at the moment, throw together, haven't done much research, meals, here is pretty much my go to meal when I can't think of what to cook, items switch out here and there but the basis is pretty much the same, salad of some sort, protein, rice, greens, sauce.

The Rice:
Well don't take me as an expert on this, there are better written and researched cooking methods, this works for me and it's easy.

• Add jasmine rice to a pot, add cold water so it's covered by about an inch.
• Place on a high heat, when it has begun to boil place a lid on and reduce heat to low. 
• Time for 9 minutes.
• Drain quickly, don't be too fussy, and dump the rice back in the pot, put the lid back on.
• Leave to sit on a board until ready to serve.

The Pork:
This will of course depend on what kind of meat you have, I had some bone off sirloin that were about 20mm thick. The steaks were seasoned both sides with salt and cooked in a hot a cast iron pan with a little peanut oil for about 2 minutes a side, still pink in the middle, set aside on a board to rest. When ready to serve, slice and lay on a bed of odd flavour sauce and sprinkle with roasted peanuts.


The Bok Choy:
Prepare a little dressing first, 1 Tbsp sesame oil, 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp fish sauce, 1 garlic clove (crushed). Cooking this is dead simple, quarter and rinse the bok choy, after the meat has cooked place the greens in the pan cut side down and cook until browned, turn over and cook a little longer, transfer to a bowl and toss the sauce through.
 


Odd flavour sauce:
I've covered this recipe before.


Celery Salad:
Make up a batch of spicy dressing, cut up about 2 cups worth of celery and toss together.

Red rice salad

I must admit I don’t get to the Sunday markets as often as I’d like, maybe it’s living all the way in the back end of Karori, or just pure and simple laziness, but quite often best laid plans end up being a coffee and eggs on the couch, or if it’s a sunny day, the couch, who am I kidding! When I do manage to drag myself and better half out of the house at a halfway decent hour to hit the markets I always vow I must come every week and proclaim about how much we’re missing out on, which is completely and utterly true. Well we managed it last Sunday, and I managed to latch on to possibly one of my favourite greens, beet tops, unfortunately almost never seen on a supermarket vegetable shelf, well not in good nick anyway. Sautéed and mixed with ricotta and hazelnuts, they make a great ravioli filling, or as below a great addition to a salad.


Red Rice Salad
1 cup red rice
½ cup hazelnuts
capers (in salt)
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
1 large purple carrot
1 celery stalk
1 large bunch of beet greens
1 clove of garlic
Handful of parsley and celery greens

Place the rice in a pot and pour in 3 cups of water, bring to a boil, put on a lid, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes. Strain and toss in some good oil (olive or hazelnut), season with a salt, mustard and cider vinegar. I like to dress the rice now so I know the base is well seasoned and will only need tweaking at the end.


Get a pan on a medium high heat, slice up the beet greens, crush the garlic. Heat a dash of oil in the pan, sauté the garlic but don’t brown, toss in the beet greens and cover. Cook until tender. Toss the greens through the rice.

The rest is pretty straight forward. Roughly chop the hazelnuts and toast in a dry pan. Slice and dice the fennel, onion and celery. Soak the capers. Either grate or use a mandolin on the carrot. Finely chop the parsley and celery greens.

Toss all the ingredients together, taste and season with salt (smoked salt is really good with these earthy flavours), adjust the acid with some cider vinegar, and a little heat doesn’t go amiss add a dash of hot sauce if you like.

Creamy rice with pork sausage and thyme

Well I should start with a slight disclaimer, the idea of this dish is completely and utterly ripped off, or humble homage to the original, from Loretta on Cuba St. It makes a hearty dinner or a filling warming lunch it can be tweaked and tinkered with to your hearts content. It's a little less labour intensive than risotto, and a little more forgiving, as we're not aiming for al dente but well cooked rice, not falling apart though.

1 Cup arborio rice
1 Litre chicken stock
2 Good pork sausages, removed from casings
1 Medium fennel bulb, finely diced
1 Medium onion, finely diced
3 Cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tsp black pepper
1 Tsp chilli flakes
1/2 Tsp bay leaf powder
6 Sprigs of thyme, leaves stripped off
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 Anchovy fillets

If you feel like being a little more indulgent, add 3 tbsp of cream or butter and a third of a cup of grated parmesan to the ingredient list.

Place a pan over a medium heat and add a slug of good olive oil. Soften the onion, garlic and fennel, add the pepper, chilli, thyme, bay leaf powder and cook through.

Add the sausage and anchovy fillets, sauté, breaking the sausage apart, try not to colour too much.

When the sausage has given up its fat, but not browned too much, tip the rice in and stir through. Give it a chance to get coated in the fat and cook a little.

Pour in the vinegar and cook it off.

Tip in a third of the stock and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, cook until almost absorbed, about 5-7 minutes, add another third and cook for a further 5-7 minutes.

Repeat with the last third, you don't want it too thick, the rice should of given up a lot of starch so the liquid should be lush and glossy, while the rice is still loose stir vigorously to release more starch from rice and make the liquid more creamy and homogeneous. Taste and season.

To really gild the lily, beat in the cream and parmesan cheese.

Serve a generous ladleful in a bowl and drizzle over a little peppery olive oil.

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.

Pork and Fennel Meatballs

I love meatballs, versatile great little flavour carriers, great on rice, pasta or even in a bread roll, but I’m not talking about those abominations stuffed full of breadcrumbs and egg, no a decent meatball shouldn’t need any binders, get your hands dirty and knead the meat, that's all it should take for the minced protein to bind itself together.

Meatballs
Pork mince (500g)
Fennel bulb, finely diced and frilly fronds added too
Garlic, crushed
Paprika, salt and pepper

Sauce
Passata
Chorizo
Red Onion
Cannellini Beans

Knead the pork, fennel, garlic, paprika and salt together for a couple of minutes and then form meatballs, brown in pan and cook until about 50% done, remove and set aside. In the same pan, saute diced chorizo and red onion until the sausage has given up its fat and the onion has softened, season with some salt pepper and paprika, deglaze with a touch of vinegar and add passata, cook until quite thick and then add the meatballs to the pan, along with any resting juices, as well as a handful of cooked cannellini beans, cover the pan and cook until the meatballs are done. Really nice served on some steamed rice.

Risotto

There is something therapeutic about making risotto, taking very simple ingredients, rice and stock, and turning them into a velvety pile of soul warming goodness. The more attention you give, the better the results, taking time to finely dice and slowly soften the onion or even better shallots, then toasting the rice, slowly stirring in stock one ladleful at a time, patiently waiting for each dose to be absorbed, helping release the starch from the grains making a smooth sauce.

Risotto is best simple with uncomplicated flavours, but it can be embellished to your hearts desire. I have two favourites I like to make at home, extra cheesy with a good squeeze of lemon, or like the one I’ve made recently, mushroom. I don’t always finely mince the mushrooms, as I have in this recipe, if I had something other than field mushroom I would make a simple lemon risotto and top it with mushrooms sautéed in butter. However, it was the ever so common field mushroom I had my hands on, so they got minced.

I don’t have any real quantities to give you for the recipe, but the ratio is simply 1 part rice to 3-4 parts of stock, plus whatever else you’re flavouring the dish with, in this case a handful of mushrooms. So, get a pot on the heat and pour in some stock, my stock comes from the freezer and I like to ‘refresh’ it by simmering with the stems and peelings of the mushrooms, maybe a handful of herbs and let it steep for a while.

While the stock warms up, finely dice an onion or a couple of shallots. Peel the mushrooms and remove the stems (putting them in the stock), place the mushrooms in a food processor and pulse until very finely minced, tip into a bowl and stir in a spoonful or two of crème fraîche.

Add a knob of butter to a sauté pan over a medium heat, add the diced onion and sweat until translucent, make sure not to brown the onions. Next stir in the rice, gently toast the grains, they will become translucent, but still have a solid white core. Deglaze the pan with a splash of white wine, when evaporated add a ladle of stock and stir, when the stock has been absorbed repeat with another ladle of stock. The rice will take 15-20 minutes to cook, it should still have a bite and not be mushy. Stir through the mushroom mixture and heat through.

Serve in warm bowls, I topped mine with some thin slices of cacciatore sausage, but served plain is good too, or topped with some chopped herbs, or a few sautéed mushrooms.

Smoked Mackerel

I've been a bit slack on getting my blog posts done, there's a folder on my computer full of images and ideas ready to be written up and sent into the ether, in fact twenty four sub folders. Just this weekend, well Friday night, I've managed to add another three. I need to put on my blogger cap a little more often. Last night I started an endeavour of duck prosciutto spiced with prickly Szechuan pepper, a cure of pork cheek to be smoked and turned into bacon (a few weeks off, due to curing and hanging), and what my dinner will be tonight, confit of pork cheek cooked for 12 hours at 90°C. But I'm not writing about the porky goodness that always seems to grab my attention on this blog, no for that you'll have to wait. Today it's all about fish, Mackerel to be precise.

These are two easy, sub thirty minute meals, well sub 30 minutes if you own a pressure cooker, and if you don't, go buy one. Firstly congee, I've posted about it before, it's a simple and versatile base for any flavour you wish to add, and it's filling. You could do it traditionally if you wish, but that takes a lot of time, what you need is a pressure cooker, one cup of rice and six cups of water, cook on high pressure for 22 minutes and let the pressure drop naturally, then stir like crazy to get a nice porridge texture.


While the rice is doing it's thing and you're not standing at a stove having to stir and make sure it's not sticking etc, get your accompaniments ready. Smoked mackerel; carrot, garlic, and fennel, all sliced paper thin and pickled in mirin and cider vinegar; toasted sesame seeds; sliced chilli, scallions and herbs; sambal oelek; and to gild the lily, an egg yolk, it's going to be raw so go organic or at least free range.

Spoon out your beaten cooked rice into a bowl and make a small well in the centre for the yolk, garnish with the accompaniments, drizzle a few drops of sesame oil over and finish with a splash of soy sauce.


If like me, you made the congee for one, chances are there is a bit of left over smoked mackerel in the fridge, but fear not, it wont go to waste, just whip up a quick niçoise inspired salad. It's a bit of a one pot wonder. Get a pot of salted water on to boil, drop in a few new potatoes, cook for about 8 minutes, scoop them out with a slotted spoon and set aside. In the same water drop in a handful of green beans and cook for about 3 minutes, then pluck out and drop into ice water. Again in the recycled water drop in an egg and cook for 5 minutes, then transfer to the ice water. That's the cooking done.

To assemble this quick and tasty lunch, dinner, or large snack, grab a bunch of your favourite herbs, tear, chop or shred. Pit some olives, please don't use jarred pitted olives, they taste awful. Whip up a vinaigrette, I like 2 parts cider vinegar, 3 parts oil, spoon of dijon mustard, salt and a mashed anchovy. Slice the potatoes in half or thirds and then toss all of the ingredients together, sans the egg. Serve, topping each salad with the boiled egg, shelled and cut in half.

Dosa

It was Shrove Tuesday not too long ago and I had a great and rather obvious idea to have pancakes for dinner (as is the tradition). But I wasn't content with stuffed crêpes, no, I was going to make Dosa (a crispy Indian pancake), not that I had any idea how to make them, or actually what they were made of, so the research began.

I read a lot of recipes, and methods and realised that I wasn't going to be eating Dosa for dinner that night, in fact not the next night either, you have to soak lentils and rice, then grind and ferment them. I came up with what I thought was a good set of quantities from reading multiple recipes, and then I came across a page called The Perfect Dosa Recipe, I didn't end up following the recipe from that site, but it was an invaluable source of information.


In a bowl put one and a half cups of rice and one teaspoon of fenugreek seeds, fill with water and cover. In another bowl place half a cup of urid dal, fill with water and cover. It's important to soak them separately as you want to grind them separately. Leave the rice and dal to soak overnight, or eight hours.




Drain the rice, retaining the soaking liquid. Transfer the rice to a blender and blend until completely smooth, it'll take a while, you may need to add some of the soaking liquid to the blender, but try not to add too much. Once blended pour the puréed rice in to a bowl. Repeat the process with the urid dal and then pour in to the puréed rice.


Add about one teaspoon of salt and mix together with your fingers, it's very important to use your hands (clean) as apparently the warmth of the hands will kick start the fermenting process. Once thoroughly combined cover and leave to ferment overnight.


The mix should have increased in volume and the texture should almost resemble marshmallow.

Now I defer completely to The Perfect Dosa Recipe for the method of cooking them, it looks simple, but I struggled, there were a lot of 'practice' dosa made. The gist of it is, thin the batter down with some water, you need to be able to pour it, but it shouldn't be runny. Then in a hot pan with a few drops of oil in it, ladle in about quarter of a cup of the batter and using the back of the ladle spread it around the pan in a circular motion (the bit I struggled with), and then drizzle a little oil around the edge of the Dosa. Cook until the bottom of the Dosa is golden brown.


I stuffed the Dosa with a aloo masala (dry potato curry) and served with some coconut masala on the side for dipping.

Kedgeree

With plenty of leftover mackerel needing to be used (from the congee), I decided to whip up some kedgeree.

Firstly rinse the rice and get 2 pots of water on to boil. When the water is boiling, pour the rice into one pot and place 1 egg per portion in the other pot. Cook for 10 minutes (or until the rice is done), immediately get the eggs under running cold water, and rinse the rice.

While the rice and eggs are cooking; dice up some shallots; de-seed and dice a couple of tomatoes; finely chop parsley; grate garlic and ginger; and flake the smoked mackerel.

In a frying pan melt some butter and sauté the shallots, ginger and garlic until soft, then add a tablespoon of good curry powder and a teaspoon or so of mustard seeds. When the spices are aromatic add a dash of vinegar (I find this adds some much needed acid to cut through the oily fish). Add the diced tomato and a splash of water and cook until almost dry. Finally add the cooked rice, parsley and fish. Stir through, taste and adjust seasoning.


Plate up with a few extra flakes of fish and quartered eggs.

Congee

Congee with pickled ginger, chilli, carrot, garlic, onion; crispy black pudding, smoked mackerel and scallions, finished with a few drops of sesame oil.

I made the congee in the pressure cooker, as it was quite late and I didn't have the time to simmer rice for hours on end. I used 1 cup of rice and 6 cups of water with a bit of seasoning and cooked on high pressure for 22 minutes. Most recipes I've seen use a higher ratio of water, but I figured as the pressure cooker is a closed system I wouldn't loose any liquid to evaporation so should use less liquid.


Very thin slices of ginger, carrot, garlic and onion, pickling in cider vinegar with a sprinkle of sugar.


Crispy salty chunks of fried black pudding.