easy

San Choy Bow

- Alex Leave a comment

Untitled

It’s all hot, hot, hot here in Adelaide (for a few days, at least). We’re expecting 37°C today, and 39 tomorrow so Saturday’s 31°C is looking like a cool change.

With this in mind (and probably a long hot summer ahead), meals need to be light, fresh and quick and easy to prepare. No one wants to heat up the kitchen or spend hours at the stove or even the BBQ.

Andy announced that we should have san choy bow one night this week so we picked up some pork mince on the weekend and I was left to my own devices (the internet) to come up with a meal.

You’ll have noticed that we don’t eat a ton of Chinese food. I’m not a huge fan and the only style that gets me excited for eating out is Sichuan. We have an underused copy of Fuschia Dunlop’s Sichuan Cookery and we frequently eat a spicy chicken stir fry. But that’s it.

I did a bit of googling, searching for an appropriate san choy bow recipe and found that they were mostly unbelievably bland sounding. I found an Anna Gare recipe that sounded like I was onto a winner. Although the list of ingredients looked a little intimidating, I could tell that it was going to provide me with a great base dish.

As always, I used her recipe as a guide and unfortunately the original recipe is no longer on line.

I began by finely chopping 1 and half onions and frying them, in the wok, with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic and a generous teaspoonful of ginger*. When the onion had started to soften I added 500g of pork mince and stir fried until that was cooked through.

I then added a generous few splashes of fish sauce, the juice of half a lemon and a good glug of soy sauce. Finally, I mixed through 1 scant teaspoon of palm sugar. I raised the temperature to ensure that the palm sugar was melted through and to boil off some of the sauces. San choy bow isn’t meant to be saucy!

That was my work done for the day. The cooled mince mixture was put in the fridge overnight, ready to be pulled out for a quick after work dinner.

When we were ready to eat, Andy julienned some carrot and finely chopped a green capsicum and hese were stir fried with the pork mixture. To finish, we mixed through some chilli flakes and some sliced spring onion and served in lettuce cups.

A little bit messy to eat, perhaps, but a perfect meal on a hot day!

* We’ve given up buying fresh ginger (which is invariably imported). You can buy Australian ginger paste in small jars from most supermarkets.

Donna Hay’s Beef with Cannellini Beans

- Alex 2 Comments

Untitled

Another insanely easy, quick mid week dinner for you. This recipe comes from Donna Hay’s Fast, Fresh, Simple, via the Good Food Channel.

You may have noticed that I am a huge fan of cannellini beans. Indeed, I’m a big fan of beans in general and I’d urge everyone to have a good collection of tinned beans in their cupboards. They’re cheap, nutritious and can solve a variety of food related problems.

Anyway, while Andy was dealing with the barbecue and two generous porterhouse steaks (that’s sirloin if you’re reading from the UK) I was opening the tin of cannellini beans.

ALWAYS rinse (and drain) the beans when they come out of the tin. Firstly, they always smell horrible and secondly, often tinned things are very salty and a good rinse helps to reduce that.

In a small saucepan I had some olive oil heating up into which I put a some crushed, minced garlic and some finely chopped fresh rosemary. In went the beans to heat through along with a good squeeze of lemon juice.

At this point I decided to mash the beans coarsely with the back of a fork. This, I think, was a mistake. It would have been much nicer to have the beans whole.

I thought the mixture tasted good and was really tempted not to add the horseradish. Andy tasted it and thought it needed the horseradish, otherwise it was just like “that dip you make“. I think the horseradish is really up to you – you may prefer to serve it on the side so you can slather your beef in it.

Of course, steak and a few beans does not a whole meal make.  We served with salad and some roasted potato wedges.

Another big win for meal planning and quick, easy, midweek dinners.

Easy Pork Fillet Recipe

- Alex Leave a comment

Untitled

Pork fillet is one of my favourite cuts of pork. That is despite the fact that it has no rind. It’s easy and quick to prepare and usually retains a degree of moisture that will disappear in other cuts with sloppy cooking (although see my recent pork chop post for a way of avoiding that problem!).

I’ve previously blogged a pork fillet recipe, where the meat is served with a white wine and cream sauce. This time I give you something which is very much a one pot meal – it’s both easy and easy on the washing up.

This Rose Prince recipe comes from the Telegraph where it’s called “peppered pork fillet”. That’s because in the UK what we in Australia call a “capsicum” is called a “pepper” – not because this is a spicy dish.

Begin by preheating your oven to 180°C (fan, 200°C convention).

In an oven safe frying pan, heat some light olive oil and fry up about 500g of pork fillet. The original recipe says to cut the fillet into small dice but I cut it into discs a cm or so thick. I think this way you run less risk of the meat overcooking and you get satisfying pieces of meat on your plate. I also note that in the photo that accompanies the original article the pork hardly looks like small dice!

When the fillet is browned nicely, add half a red capsicum, finely chopped, a clove of garlic (chopped) and a pinch or two each of paprika, ground coriander and allspice. Give this all a stir around, then add 5 tbsp of risotto rice (the recipe specifies Carnaroli, but I always use Arborio because that’s what I have in the cupboard). Then add stock to the pan – I use one of the little pots of stock jelly and top up with water. You need add enough water to cover the rice by a cm or so.

Bring this all to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook on the stove top for 8 minutes (and yes, I do actually time this!).

When the 8 minutes is up, cut a cartouche from baking paper (that means “cut a circle of baking paper to cover your pan”) and cover the pan with it (no lid required) before putting it in the oven.

Cook in the oven until the rice is done and the stock has been absorbed. The recipe says 10 minutes, but I never find that quite long enough (more like 25!) – but I do like to make sure plenty of the stock has been absorbed so that the finished product isn’t too soupy.

Serve straight away, with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil.

I love this dish – it uses so few ingredients, it tastes fantastic (which suggests to me that allspice is underused in my kitchen) and it takes very little time to put together. I have used other cuts of pork – such as pork loin steaks – and while they will do in a pinch they do end up a bit tougher and drier than fillet.

A perfect mid week supper.