Thursday, May 31, 2012

Everyday stir fried vegetables in wraps

This is simple and can be made with a variety of vegetables. Here is a version I made yesterday:

Serves 2.5

Ingredients

3 carrots, sliced thinly
1 red onion, chopped
2cm piece of ginger, peeled and chopped finely
Chunk of broccoli stem and a few of the florets (about half the head is fine)
Half a head of cabbage shredded - you can include most of the stem as long as its not too woody
About 8 mushrooms chopped roughly
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Rapeseed oil and sesame oil
4 flour tortillas
Natural yogurt and sweet chilli sauce.

Heat the about a tablespoon of the oil in a wok. Next add the chopped vegetables one type at a time allowing them to heat up before you add the next batch. This prevents the whole lot getting steamed as the temperature of the wok gets reduced too much when you overload it. Toss the vegetables to prevent them sticking. Tossing them is also less likely to break them up than using a wooden spoon to stir.
Keep the heat high and toss the vegetables every few seconds for about 10 minutes or until all of the vegetables are cooked.
Turn the heat off. Add some soy sauce and mix the whole lot up.
Serve with flour tortillas - 2 per person is plenty.
Place a tortilla on your plate, spread a line of natural yogurt across the diameter. Do the same with the sweet chilli sauce. Wrap the whole lot up and enjoy.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Bread salad and Hake

I got a big loaf of nice white bread a couple of days ago and we ended up with too much. It's still nice for toasting, but this salad is a far better use. I served it with some steamed hake. Nice summery food for the first good weather we have had in ages.

Hake cooked in foil

Ingredients:


Enough hake fillet to feed yourselves - make sure its properly defrosted
Juice of a lemon
Salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Wash and pin bone the hake. Give it a good drying with kitchen paper. Put a large sheet of foil on a baking tray. Place the hake on top of this. Juice the lemon on top and remove any pips. Discard the lemon skin. Close over the foil to seal the package up. Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes. Check the fish is cooked correctly before you serve. While the fish is cooking you can make the salad.

Bread salad

Ingredients:

White bread (stale)
About 10 good olives - stoned and cut up
A handful of chopped basil with stalks removed
6 ripe tomatoes - chopped with the calyxes removed
olive oil and red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
About a tablespoon of capers, drained

Cut the crusts off a big chunk of stale white bread. I used a block about 10cm on a side, but use what you think you need to feed yourselves and up or down the rest of the ingredients in proportion. That said, this is not an exact recipe. Just through in rough amounts and you will be fine.
Put all of the ingredients in a large salad bowl. Make up a dressing of 4 tablespoons of vinegar and 8 tablespoons of olive oil. Pour this over the mixture and squish it all up with your hands.
Bring to the table.