Recipes

Smoked Salmon with Soba Noodles and Ponzu

- Alex Leave a comment

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We eat quite a lot of salmon in our household: the toddler enjoys tinned salmon (Tasmanian, of course) as a snack/lunch/easy dinner, we all love fresh salmon (especially the crispy skin!) and smoked salmon is popular too. One thing we miss, which we used to eat a lot of in England, is hot smoked fish. ‘Normal’ smoked salmon is cold smoked, so the fish is effectively not cooked (it is cured beforehand). Hot smoking uses hot smoke, so the fish is both cooked and preserved by the smoking process. While smoked salmon is normally sold finely sliced, hot smoked salmon is sold in steaks. If you don’t like smoked salmon, give hot smoked a go, because it’s very different.

Anyway, when I spotted this recipe, using both hot smoked salmon AND soba noodles, I had to give it a go. It has very few ingredients, but you might struggle to find the frozen edamame unless you go to a specialist Asian food store. Soba are pretty easy to find although the ones I bought from the supermarket were about 75% wheat and only 25% buckwheat. If you have the time and inclination, seek out a higher proportion of buckwheat.

Begin by making the ponzu sauce. To the juice of one lemon add 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, ½ tsp caster sugar and 1 tsp of sesame oil. Mix to dissolve the sugar and set aside.

Take your hot smoked salmon (I used one 185g packet between the two of us) and, if the skin is still on, remove it. Straight from the packet it will be extremely tough and really quite unpleasant. You can always have a go frying it up if you wish! Flake the fish (equally!) into two bowls. Into each bowl add a finely sliced spring onion, some julienned carrot and some julienned cucumber. I used these in lieu of the edamame; I suggest you use whatever is in the fridge!

You could easily do all this in advance. At this point, cover your bowl(s) with cling film and pop in the fridge until you are ready. If you prefer the salmon at room temperature (like me) don’t forget to take them out half an hour or so before you want to eat.

When you’re ready to serve, cook some soba noodles in boiling water. Be careful not to overcook because they will become a bit soggy and claggy if you do. The ponzu will help separate the noodles and perk them up, but you’re much better off opting for al dente.

Top the salmon and vegetables with the soba, pour over the ponzu and sprinkle on a few sesame seeds (toasted if you can be bothered).

Not only does this taste really good, but it’s easy, quick and insanely healthy.

This alone did us for dinner (though we did wrap up the evening with a sneaky chocolate!). It would also serve well as a salad to serve as part of a more extravagant meal, or a light entrée. Aside from the salmon and noodles, it’s flexible and the ponzu is easily made from store cupboard ingredients. Andy did comment that he thought next time some finely sliced fresh chillis would be a welcome addition. If you do want to spice it up, you could also use chilli oil in lieu or (or as a part substitute for) the sesame oil.

Sesame Crusted Pork with Stir Fried Noodles

- Alex 1 Comment

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With the new year and no car, we’re back in the swing of doing proper meal planning again. While this sounds totally boring it has plenty of advantages. Principally, fewer trips to the shops means you spend less money. However, added bonuses are that I no longer hit 3pm and start to panic about the toddler’s dinner, I don’t have to rely on being able to get to the shops at a particular time and I make better use of both my cookbooks and bookmarked recipes.

Pork recipes are always popular on Eating Adelaide (if you missed Colin’s roast pork in a fry pan you should check it out!) and we all love pork so we tend to eat it once a week. It’s no surprise then that I would eventually get around to cooking this sesame crusted pork, which first appeared in Good Taste magazine many moons ago. As usual, I departed from the recipe …

Begin by taking your favourite Singapore/Hokkien egg noodles and prepping them. We use the ‘fresh’ packet ones (that you find in the refrigerated section of the supermarket), so I put them in a bowl and covered them with hot water.

I used pork fillet (or tenderloin) which I cut into three pieces. I pressed each piece into some sesame seeds, so just the one side had them on and then fried them, sesame side down, in a hot, oven proof fry pan. I could have left them a little longer: my sesame seeds have just the hint of tan, when really a bit more golden would have both tasted and looked better.

While the pork is cooking (after it’s browned up, pop it into an oven heated to 180°C to finish), heat some oil in a wok and add a finely sliced red onion, along with garlic, ginger and chilli to taste. Once the onion has softened, add one carrot, peeled and julienned, followed by the drained noodles and stir fry for a couple of minutes before adding 2 tbsp soy sauce and 2 tbsp of oyster sauce*. Make sure you cut your carrot finely – you want it to soften a little while still retaining some bite and texture. If you wish, mix the remainder of your sesame seeds through the stir fry (or, if you can be bothered/have time, lightly toast some!).

Roughly chop a generous handful of coriander and stir this through noodles, before serving in hot bowls. Slice the pork fillet on the diagonal and serve on top of the noodles, with a garnish of extra coriander.

The verdict?

Using chunks of pork fillet adds to the cooking time, so if you’re in a rush, use a different cut, such as loin steaks, or even finely slice the meat and stir fry it with the sesame seeds before doing the noodles. We really rated the use of the sesame seeds though – both on the meat and in the stir fry. Definitely something we’ll do again.

The noodles were OK. They needed beefing up with the chilli and garlic (neither of which was specified in the original recipe) but they were very quick and easy to do and would serve as a great base for a more flavour rich protein component.

So while we rated both pork and noodles individually, together they were both just a touch too bland. Bland feels like too harsh a word, because it almost makes the meal sound unenjoyable – which it definitely wasn’t. I guess that in this case I’d say the sum of the parts was actually greater than the whole.

* I always imagined oyster sauce to be ‘oyster flavoured’ but most oyster sauces contain either oyster or fish (or both) and hence are not suitable for vegetarians. If you are catering for vegetarians/vegans then make sure you source some which is vegetarian.

Roast Eggplant Salad

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I made this lovely, colourful eggplant salad to go with Sunday night’s baked falafels. We have falafel quite a bit but I confess we buy packet mixes and we always fry them. We’ve been meaning to make our own for quite a while but never managed to do so. I found this recipe on taste and decided to give it a go.

The falafels weren’t such a hit: easy to make and quite good flavour, but baking them is just ridiculous. I can’t help but wonder if the person who came up with the recipe had some healthy eating brief to follow. In addition to baking being most unsatisfactory for the falafels, there is no way this serves four people. Well, I suppose it might if they weren’t that hungry and shared our low opinion of the baked falafels!

However, this roast vegetable salad was definitely a hit. You can’t choose to make it on the hottest summer day, because you do need to have the oven on, but cool changes always come around eventually!

Heat your oven to 200°C, and line two trays with baking paper. You may also wish to give them a quick dab of oil. Take some Roma tomatoes (for the two of us, I used 2), quarter them, put them on one tray, and drizzle with olive oil (I actually used an oil spray – whatever works for you). You could always season them here, and the addition of some thyme leaves would work well too. Take one large eggplant, cut into chunks about an inch square and spread out over the other tray. Again, drizzle with oil and season if you wish. Place the trays in the oven for a good 20 minutes – half an hour. You want the eggplant in particular to cook and soften and take up a bit of colour.

While the vegetables are cooking, finely slice half a red onion into your serving bowl. When the vegetables come out of the oven, pop them straight into the bowl, onto the onion. The warmth will help soften the onion a little, both in terms of texture and flavour. Sprinkle over some sumac (to taste, I love the stuff so I use loads!) and add plenty of torn mint. You can see how much I used! Gently toss the salad and you’re ready to serve.

You could gussy this up even further by adding some pomegranate seeds (how gorgeous would that look?), and you could serve it with a lemony yoghurt dressing. I just served it with some plain yoghurt with some more sumac sprinkled over the top for colour. Really delicious and incredibly healthy.

Now I just need to find a great falafel recipe!