I had a taste for more Chinese food this week, so I made beef with oyster sauce on Thursday which I paired with some pickled orange pepper and carrots, thinking the vinegar would compliment the rich, salty sauce well. It did and along with some unusual salad ingredients like beets and radishes, (unusual for a Chinese accompaniment), with a soy and sesame dressing, it was somewhat of a hybrid dinner but tasty never the less.
Whenever I think of the Chinese meals my mum or dad would cook from our trusty recipe book back home, I am always transported back to the scent of the kitchen. The overwhelming aroma would be sweet and exotic, like soy sauce or oyster, but there would always be a faint whiff of vinegar drifting through the heavier smells. I can remember the tastes so vividly too. The magic alchemy that occurs between sugar and vinegar creating that sweet and sour taste which satiates many taste buds at once. A pickle of some kind seemed just right for this meal, cutting across the rich salty flavours with a tangy edge.
Once again, the beautiful beets entice me. Sliced as thinly as possible, they add an earthy, sweet dimension to the salad.
I saw a recipe for pickled carrots in two of my new books. Canal House cooking volume 5 and Canning for a new generation by Liana Krissof, both excellent books, chock full of inspirational things to make. In Canal cooking they were sliced into rounds and contrasted so beautifully against some smoked haddock and dill leaves. In 'Canning', they were sliced length ways and pickled with robust Indian spices. Either way, I was eager to try a quick pickle method of one hour soaking in red wine vinegar, a little salt and sugar and some black pepper. The shredded mint as a last minute addition was due to finding some lurking in the fridge. It added a real freshness as it so often does with carrots.
Note the bamboo shoots, the love of which I proclaimed in a previous post.
Preserved lemons
After being a little over zealous with the purchase of too many lemons for the pancakes last week, (I bought 8, how many pancakes did I expect to make)? I found myself again with the quandary of watching them possibly decay. I have some tricks to use up lemons such as squidging one into the garborator to re freshen the sink and keeping a cut lemon in the fridge to deodorize it, but I was a little worried about the inevitable wastage. 'Canning for the new generation' again offered me a solution: preserved lemons. Packed into salt they are left for weeks to soften the skin which is used rather than the flesh, in many North African and Middle Eastern dishes such as tagine, stews and curries. Just how often I will use these I can't say, but they can be stored for up to 6 months which seems a better life expectancy than the lemons molding away in the fruit bowl.
The recipe is so simple, just lemons and salt stuffed into a jar, about 1 cup for 6 lemons. Time is the real essence, allowing the lemon peel to soften over a couple of weeks. It adds a sour, tangy element to many rich, hearty stews and braises, a citrusy lift to brighten.
Breakfast tortilla
Having received a shipment of low carb goodies from Toronto, I tore open the bag of tortillas with ferocious excitement. The versatility of these flat breads are so wonderful for someone who is generally denying herself any baked goods. Here they were topped with a tomato, broccoli and zucchini sauce and then........
Bacon! The proper back bacon, not that streaky stuff found here with about as much meat on it as a piece of tofu. The idea was to pile everything that would usually be eaten as brunch into layers on top of the toasted tortilla and then, sprinkled with cheese, grilled until golden brown and bubbly under the grill. Of course, even though it looked pretty, everything had to be deconstructed to eat and the tower came tumbling down.
Breakfast tortillas
2 tortillas
tomato sauce
1/2 tin plum tomatoes
1/2 zucchini, sliced
6 sprigs of broccolini
1 handful spinach
1 tsp paprika
salt and pepper
oil and 1 tsp butter
Melt the butter and oil over a medium heat in a heavy pan and saute the zucchini and broccoli until tender. Add the other ingredients and turn down the heat to low. Cook until thick.
6 sausages, grilled and then halved
6 slices back bacon, grilled
2 eggs, fried in some oil until cooked
1 large potabella mushroom, roasted for 20 minutes in a 400oF oven
1 cup grated cheese
Grill the tortillas on one side until crisp. Spread half the tomato sauce over, top with half the bacon, 3 of the sausages, half the mushrooms and 1 egg and then sprinkle over the cheese. Repeat with the other tortilla. Grill until golden brown.
Pickled carrots
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1/2 orange pepper, sliced
1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp each of sugar and salt
a few grinds of black pepper
a few mint leaves, shredded finely
Mix everything together except the mint and let stand for one hour before serving as an accompaniment. (Sprinkle the mint over the pickle at the last moment).
Beef with oyster sauce
1 strip loin steak, about 1/2 lb, sliced thinly
1/2 onion, sliced thinly
4 spring onions (scallions) sliced finely
4 sprigs broccolini
1 handful spinach
1 tin bamboo shoots
1 tbsp oyster sauce
3/4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp brown rice vinegar
1 tbsp peanut oil
Heat the oil over high heat in a wok or heavy based pan until really hot and add the beef.
Stir fry for a few minutes to cook but don't overdo it, you want them to retain some bite and crispness.
Add the sauce ingredients and return the meat to the pan. Stir fry until all is mixed well and serve.
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