thepassionatecook

Couscous salad with mediterranean vegetables

The rainy season is officially over, which means two things... we no longer have to put on our "winter" clothes to go out in the evening (you wouldn't believe how cold 25C can feel after 6 months of living in a tropical climate!) and we get to enjoy BBQs again on a regular basis. Of course, our way of living here is completely different from back in London - which has its up- and its downsides. On the downside, we no longer can step outside into our own garden to fire up the Weber when we feel like a big juicy steak, as BBQs are not allowed on a condo balcony. But what we lose in spontaneity, we gain in company...

Booking one of the BBQ pits in our condo is such a palaver (filling in a form well in advance, incl. out your FIN number, paying a deposit, etc) that it's worth making a bigger thing out of it. So there you have the upside: we never barbecue alone anymore. It's usually a late-afternoon get-together with a number of families in our block of flats, the children splashing in the pool or riding their scooters, the ladies sipping a cocktail with their feet in the Fish Spa (yes, we have our own!) and the big boys manning the Teppanyaki grill. And we don't even have to worry about cleaning up after!

To minimise the effort involved, everybody chips in with supplying booze, some dips, a selection of side dishes or a dessert - and here is what I made last time. My friend Nina said she loves couscous and is always happy to get new ideas, so I decided on a refreshing couscous salad. You'd really be hard-pressed to find a salad that is easier to prepare - the couscous takes a bowl of stock and all but 15 minutes to soak, then your roast some chopped up vegetables in the oven, throw it all in a bowl, give it a generous glug of olive oil and lime juice and you're ready to rock and roll! If you want to spruce it up a bit, add some chopped herbs or toasted pinenuts, some olives or cubed scamorza, you could even add some left-over roast chicken if you want this to become a more substantial salad - the possibilities are endless.

Sesame prawns with sour mango & cucumber salad

So I might struggle to find some ingredients here, but prawns are something Singapore definitely has no shortage of and the quality is absolutely amazing! There are many seafood restaurants in town and for someone coming from a country/continent where seafood is rarely available fresh (meaning that it hasn't been frozen or transported on ice somewhere along the supply chain), this country certainly is prawn heaven. No matter where you go, you can be sure to be served the plumpest and juiciest prawns - fingerlickingly good.

Our first experience of eating prawns here was on Boat Quay - now, to even the most seasoned, but still undiscerning tourist, this might look like the tourist trap par excellence... in the middle of the Financial District and close to all the sights, a row of restaurants lined up along the river, right where the cruises depart. If it wasn't for two little boys (and the two adults lugging them around and cheering them on "come on, it's only 35C in the shade!") who happened to be utterly exhausted after what really was just a short walk, it wouldn't even have crossed our minds to enter one of the eateries there on the river. Where we come from, big, fat panels of glossy photos of, well, food (but not the kind of foodporn you find on blogs these days, just poorly photographed dishes of unidentifiable food objects) don't really scream "die, die, must try" or even "decent food at reasonable prices" at you... they holler "get out of here as fast as you can, this is a complete rip-off and you'll probably be hugging the toilet for days".

Not so here. After passing by the 15th restaurant and its seafront garden and fending off many a smooth-talking waiter, I let myself finally be lured into one of them (it was the "fish and chips available" that did it, you might remember that the day before, my son had said that he hated Chinese food and that was that) - and Chris and I had the most wonderful selection of top-quality prawns we had had in a very long time. The sheer variety on offer will bowl you over, but I will have to delve into the weird (cereal prawns, anyone?) and wonderful (drunken prawns, yessir!) ways of enjoying your crustaceans on another occasion.

Now that I call a (fantabulous!) kitchen my own and have a great wet market just around the corner, I obviously want to get my hand dirty and cook again... Vietnamese being one of my favourite cuisines on this continent, I finally embarked on getting my money's worth out of Lemongrass and Lime, a cookbook I bought ages ago - I had simply been struggling to find the ingredients. And what in London would have involved a car journey to the Asian supermarket and my tried and trusted fish monger, both in different parts of town, is now available right on my doorstep... you can see why I am loving it here, right?

These prawns are deep-fried just for a minute in order to retain all their succulent juices, the crispy coating of a light batter providing a lovely contrast of textures. I love the salad they come with it, its flavours being like a summation of what Vietnamese cooking is about: fresh, crunchy ingredients bursting with flavour - sweet, sour, salty all happening in one bite in perfect unison. It actually uses the same sauce you will serve for dipping, the ubiquitous Nuoc Cham. I have made a mental note to include coriander and mint leaves when I make it again, just because I am addicted to these herbs and they feature widely in Vietnamese cooking, so I think the food police has nothing on me.

Way better than cereal prawns, but that's just my personal opinion!!!

Fennel, apple & parma salad

My husband is sojourning in New York at the moment (however much he insists that he is there to work, I am still jealous - gone are the days when spouses, children and pets would be invited to travel with them to sweeten up their secondment to any given destination) and I find myself struggling to work up an appetite. This is not dissimilar to when I was studying for my A-levels (or equivalent) and lived on my own in my parents' farmhouse dating back to 1769 where the next shop was a 5 km walk uphill and there was only a wood-fired oven which I found incredibly hard to operate. After about 2 months of self-induced solitary confinement ended up weighing in at just 45kg... not that there's any danger of that right now (three kids later), but eating alone just isn't much fun, I find - I bet you agree.

But eat, I do. More often than not, it'll be a salad of sorts, with anything I can find in my slowly emptying fridge. Today, it spat out some parma ham, fennel and rocket (arugula), which I tossed up with a few slices of apple and a sprinkling of hazelnuts. And boy, despite it leaving nothing to wish for tastewise, I could have thought of nicer company than the latest issue of the Economist...

Potato & watercress salad with smoked salmon

I have a long-standing relationship with potato salad. It's very popular thing in Austria, though very different from how it is usually made here, and every house-hold has their preferred way of making it. When I went to High School, there was a small "Beis'l" across the street - I am lost for words now, as I am not sure what to call or how to describe this place: I guess it's more like a caff', an unassuming, slightly uninviting place that opens just before midday and stays open until midnight, is always full of semi-drunk, chain-smoking locals who seems to be jobless and in need of company, serves hearty, traditional food that isn't even trying to be chic or healthy or trendy - it's food, for Christ's sake, what more do you want?

When we were old enough to be allowed in without a teacher (the establishment also served as a make-shift canteen for the few pupils who couldn't go home at lunchtime), it was the coolest place on earth to be - not only did that show that you got enough pocket money to afford it, you also got to hang out with the older, cooler pupils who spent more time in the caff' than they did on the school bench. In my last two years, I recall a number of times when teachers sent one of us over to see if any of the kids who hadn't turned up in class were across the road enjoying a sneaky drink... and more often than not, we would score (or never return to the classroom ourselves, as it were!)

I never had much pocket money, so in order to be able to get in, I'd have to loyally share the cheapest item on the menu with a friend... (those were the days when nobody minded me poking around in their food ;-)) which happened to be a potato salad or sometimes even just a breadroll. If you happened to know anyone, and I swear: anyone!, who attended the high school in Peuerbachstrasse in Linz, and you'd ask them who makes the best potato salad (and Hascheeknoedel, might I add), they would say it was that place (Kastner). I once asked the chef cook (see, it's that kind of place where you'd rather swallow your tongue than call whoever mans the kitchen a "chef"... they're a cook. end of story.) how she made it and the secret lies in cooking the potatoes until they're softening, but still firm to the bite, peel them, cut them into thin slices, transfer to a bowl and cover with stock - leave to macerate for hours and only then dress it with lots of mayo, sour cream and sliced onions.

In the UK, a potato salad couldn't be more different if it tried. First of all, people seem to be too lazy to slice or even peel their potatoes. That was my initial thought, anyway. I have since discovered that it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to find the type of potato you need for our kind of salad: it needs to be waxy, firm and able to hold its shape when sliced after cooking. I have never, ever found such a potato in the UK, everything here is floury and will disintegrate if cooked without skin. If you're lucky, you might find Kipfler, which I believe are called "rattes" in French, somewhere on a market like the Borough here in London and you'll pay a hefty price for them.

So the solution is to use new potatoes, baby potatoes, Jersey Royals even for a nice, nutty taste. Cook them in their skins, halve the ones that need halving, and enjoy them without bothering to cut them. The recipe below adds a generous amount of watercress, something else I have first encountered here and have fallen in love with, smoked salmon and a dressing of home-made mayo (for which I must remember to post a recipe soon) and wholegrain mustard... I like to use wild Sockeye salmon which has a deep, red colour and contains the antioxidant astaxanthin which is great for your bladder, your immune system and for preventing Altzheimer, Parkinsons and other nervous system disorders... plus it's the most delicious around!

Here you have yourself a lovely spring salad, a great addition to any picnic spread and something that's maybe a tiny bit more sophisticated than what they used to serve at my high school caff' ;-)

Baba Ghanouj (Iraqi style)

For me, this recipe represents more than just a way of serving the probably most recognised of Middle Eastern dishes for me... I recently enjoyed my first visit to an Iraqi restaurant and the whole experience was an eye-opener. I was lucky enough not to jump into the cold water all by myself, I was actually guided and pampered by a very good friend of mine who hails from Iraq and therefore knows exactly what to order and can comment on the originality or authenticity of it all, something I would have completely missed had I gone alone.

The place we went to (Masgouf House in Knightsbridge) may be unassuming in terms of decor, the service could be friendlier and more forthcoming, but I enjoyed my visit there tremendously - and not just because of the wonderful spectacle that is the people-watching involved. I had expected the food to be much more exotic or foreign to what I know, but learnt that Iraqi cuisine is a mixed bag, leaning either to the Persian or the Turkish side - and what we enjoyed was decidedly the latter. Lots of grills, succulent pieces of chicken marinaded in saffron and yoghurt, the speciality of the house, Masgouf seabass, was a whole bass butterflied and seasoned with salt, pepper and tamarind, then skewered up and grilled in the wood-fired oven... very nice indeed. For starters we had kibbeh halab (rice balls filled with lamb mince - I am usually not too keen on lamb, but thoroughly enjoyed the taste of this), a "salad" which was basically a plate of big chunks of baby gem lettuce, spring onions, tomatoes and peppers, Khubz baked in the tannur, the most wonderful flatbeard I have ever eaten, and Baba Ghanouj.

Now, this Baba Ghanouj was very different from what I had enjoyed under the same name until then - for me, Baba Ghanouj was a paste of bland-tasting aubergines, seasoned with more or less garlic, always involving yoghurt and a drizzle of lemon juice but definitely nothing worth an entry in my diary, if I had one. The Baba Ghanouj at Masgouf House was an entirely different affair: it had such a wonderful smokiness and was so pleasantly creamy, as opposed to slimey, I also don't think it had much, if any, yoghurt. From what I could find in my internet research, the Iraqi way of making Baba Ghanouj is using tahini - an ingredient you don't find in Turkish Baba Ghanouj if my latest cookbook (turquoise) is to be believed.

So last week I tried my hand at Baba Ghanouj for the first time and boy, it was love at first sight (not sure the sentiment was returned, as I gobbled the whole pot up almost entirely on my own, getting really greedy with my fellow diners). I seriously charred those aubergines under the grill until the skin was hard and brittle, completely black, not just browned - I basically went as far as my smoke-detector would let me... then scooped the flesh out, chopped it up, mixed it with a good measure of tahini, just enough not to be overpowering or sticking to the palate, a good squeeze of lemon juice and just enough garlic. And I was rewarded with what I believe to be the best Baba Ghanouj ever. I could eat the whole pot for lunch without any help at all - Next time my friend Dabia comes over I will let her try my version to see if she, as an Iraqi, approves... if I can get myself to share, that is!

Scallops on chicory, dolcelatte and walnut salad - a contribution to WTSIM

Oh how I regret not being able to blog more at the moment, but I am knee-deep in revisions for my first big exam at uni (well, at least the first in almost ten years!)... what I regret even more is the fact that I am unable to cook as much as I'd like to. Tonight, though, after hours of being buried in my books, I indulged in a few hours of me-time and prepared a little number for "Waiter, there's something in my...", this month hosted by Andrew of spittoonextra and with the theme of "seasonal salads".

Making a salad when winter is drawing his last breaths is not really the obvious choice, but googling "seasonal food" I got chicory as a result - and remotely remembered a salad of Skye Gyngell (one of my food heroes for making simple dishes shine through perfect ingredients and great, bold flavour combinations) that I had seen in a food mag a few months back and set about to recreate what was left of it in my memory (not much, it appears, now that I have found the recipe...).

It was one of those moments where you put something together and are not really sure it'll work, probably a result of not being entirely with it as you recite pathophysiology of the nervous system while you are cooking (Alzheimer, Parkinson, mengingitis... why, that's never happened to you?) and then you sit down and you eat one bite and then another and all of a sudden your focus is where it should be: your tastebuds (or shall I say, papillae circumvallate?). And with every mouthful you enjoy your dinner more and you almost wipe away a tear as you eat your last bite... I never thought scallops, blue cheese and thyme could form such a perfect union and the chicory is not nearly as bitter as they make you believe, now that it is at the height of its season - a wonderful dish that I will certainly serve as a starter at the next dinner party, if ever I should get my life back ;-)

Cannellini bean bruschette with capers and slow-roast tomatoes

I feel a bit like a dog chasing its tail at the moment... and here was me thinking that I'd have a lot of time on my hand with my husband enjoying four weeks of gardening leave! Wrong. Him being at home means that there's even more work as we tackle those "little" projects that we've been meaning to take care of for months... converting the baby's room into something that feels like a nursery, rather than a laundry room cum dumping ground with a cot stuck in its centre like a bit of an afterthought. Or finally taking the courage to throw a lot of what we boxed up in our last move into the garbage so we can use that room in the attic as what it was meant to be: a bedroom. With a bed in it. Not tons of boxes, empty cardboard, a pile of suitcases and anything that doesn't really have a place in this household.

Add to that the fact that my youngest is growing up at a pace that I cannot keep up with and is crawling up the stairs and cruising along the furniture at barely eight months when other babies think they deserve a round of applause when they finally manage to sit upright for 2 seconds... so I am pretty much spending the day on my knees seeing the house at a new (and not very attractive) angle - it's like doing exercise after years of being a couch potato or having a few children and discovering muscles you never knew existed! Spend a day on all fours and suddenly there are problem areas you'd never notice otherwise: I am not talking about my physique here, I am talking about cleaning in places I've been ignoring (because the minute your tiny tod is pulling his hand out from under the cupboard and does what babies do best, namely stick said hand straight into his mouth before you can reach for a wetwipe and clean 3 cm of grime off his chubby fingers, you suddenly realise that sweeping under the furniture does have its advantages, no matter how hard you're trying to resist) and of course, there's a lot of child-proofing and thinking ahead to do. You'd never have thought that an umbrella leaning against a radiator could be a potential hazard, but as soon as a baby that can barely crawl insists on pulling himself up on it, you know you've got some work to do.

And after cooking three different types of veg and fruit for the baby and another dish fit for a ravenous school boy at every mealtime, all intentions of whipping up a five-course meal for the grown-ups in the family have vanished in the haze. No wonder, then, that there's an awful lot of fast food being consumed in this household lately - but not of the kind you think... no matter how much we have adapted to life here in England, I still can't stomach the typical dinner options from your local chippie or the Chinese take-away around the corner - I'd rather eat a fried shoesole (mind you, last time I checked, that's exactly what the guy coming out of "Melbourne Chinese Food Take-Away" must have ordered) than resort to that! No, when I say fast food, I mean something that doesn't involve hitting the shops late at night, but throwing a meal together from whatever your kitchen cupboard spits out. This sort of pantry cooking can be done at any time of the day, of course, but I bet you're also at it late at night when you've come home from a long day at the office or on after a Sunday spent pottering about without regard for supermarket opening hours...

More often than not, in this house such meals are likely to consist of spaghetti with oil and garlic, a quick omelette with truffle salt or, if I'm lucky, a portion of lasagne that I had frozen because I always make enough to feed an army! The only thing about quick fixes is that no matter how fast they must be to throw together, they also must satisfy you on more than just one level: you want them to be tasty, but also aesthetically pleasing so that they cleverly hide the fact that they are, well, not much more than an afterthought... or they'll have you running off with the next Häagen-Dazs that crosses your path.

Last week, I found some cannellini beans and a jar of capers, luckily I had some shallots at home and some over-ripe tomatoes which I slow-roasted while I was finally doing my tax return... and with a piece of sourdough bread that was maybe a little past its prime but still tasted great toasted, I had myself a tasty snack! What is it that you throw together on such occasions?

Other tasty quick fixes on thepassionatecook:
Three-bean salad with spicy salsa verde (October 2005)
Cannellini bean, salmon & caviar canapés (May 2007)
Pear & camembert bruschette with rocket, fennel & hazelnut salad (April 2005)
Goats cheese and tomato bake with garlic crostini (January 2005)
Ham & shitake oeufs cocotte (April 2007)

Caramelised fennel & red onion salad with raisins & pistachios

The venue: an end-of-terrace house in East London
The occasion: an end-of-summer braai at the Cook Sister!'s
The first act: an I-wish-this-would-never-end dish of slowly caramelised fennel and red onion.

When I arrived at the house I thought I had made a big mistake. Oh no, Jeanne was her usual lovely self, the other invitees two friends of her whom I adore, master-of-the-braai Nick preparing the bacon-wrapped venison which I had "ordered"... but somehow, the briefing Jeanne had given me when she asked me to bring a starter failed to mention that Olwen and Cecil would ALSO be bringing salad - one each! Clearly a break-down in communications and I feared that we would  all be leaving with salad hanging out of our ears. Luckily, the company at the table was very forgiving and my "salad" a stunner.

Fennel is always a tricky one to serve - it's a vegetable you either love or hate, just like beetroot and celery, I guess. I was never a big fan as a kid, but then fennel is very much an adult taste, don't you think? Its flavour is often referred to as resembling aniseed or liquorice, both of which I used to hate - but then the comparison doesn't really work for me, as I don't really like liquorice even now and I do adore my fennel. Aniseed, maybe.

Anyway - this version is probably one of the least controversial ones, you can even risk serving it to people who are known as being picky. Anything caramelised tastes just miles better than plainly cooked and with the sweet-and-sour tinge this dish has to it, there's a flavour component for everyone. And if that won't win them over, then the sherry-soaked raisins will surely produce smiles all round... if you have very picky guests, just double the amount!

Broad bean, asparagus, feta & parma crisp salad with lemon & mint dressing

Joanna's Food is hosting this round of heart of the matter now in its 4th instalment - it's an event calling all food bloggers to submit heart-friendly recipes, which I take to mean healthy, but hearty and tasty at the same time. This is the first time I participate, as I am terrible at keeping track of things at the moment... but I made the deadline for once! Yay! (Must just remember to send Joanna and email to let her know, so it's not all in vain!)
It's summer time and I find salads to be a perfect starter. Or main course, for that matter. On a hot day, nothing yells summer  at you more than a fresh, crisp salad. Somehow, when I host a dinner party, I don't necessarily thing of serving salad - do I find it too simple a dish or is it just that it doesn't really lend itself to beautiful plating? This one here, though, is quite easy to assemble and the various ingredients will hold their own. The crispy parma ham slices (baked in the oven!) add quite a bit of drama and the dressing is another eye-opener: mint leaves add a crisp, fresh taste and so does lemon zest, an ingredient I am only recently discovering after years of absolutely loathing it. I still can't get myself to eat candied peel, but ever since I bought a proper zester, I get all the goodness and stunning visual effects of the lemon skin without the bitterness of the pith.
You can make this salad in an endless variation of seasonal vegetables, I should think, at the moment, asparagus and broad beans were just perfect and with a bunch of mixed leaves bought fresh at the market, here you have yourself a salad that will satisfy even a bigger appetite for a nutritious lunch. So who said healthy couldn't be tasty?

Green & white asparagus salad with red pepper and tarragon

It's National Vegetarian Week this week and Abby of Eat the Right Stuff is asking us for veggie recipes that will even have the carnivores among us drooling...
Apart from beetroot in all shapes and formats (which is really my pet hate), I have yet to come across a vegetable I don't like. I can even stomach okra when it's prepared well. And there couldn't be a better time to celebrate the humble vegetable, either, as the market shelves are overflowing with seasonal produce - you're really spoilt for choice these days. Cauliflower? Peas? Broad beans? But best of all: asparagus. I said a few weeks ago that I am quite partial to white asparagus and I am sticking by it. But I also love green asparagus very much. Over the last weekend, we've consumed what most likely is somebody else's yearly ration of asparagus and for the first time, I steamed the stalks, rather than cooking them in water, which resulted in much more taste, especially in the white asparagus. I will never, ever, go back to cooking it now that I've done that, that's for sure! Luckily, I am in the process of buying the best kitchen appliance ever invented (more on which when I am back from holidaying in Southern Tuscany) and it steams the asparagus just perfectly.
See, that's what I love about vegetables: they're so incredibly easy to prepare, being just perfect in themselves. They need no slow-cooking with millions of condiments... just put the peeled stalks in, sprinkle with some coarse, unbleached sea salt (sel gris) and no more than 15 mins later (I had very thick stalks), make a fantastic dressing using lime juice, rice vinegar and honey and you've got yourself an impressive salad for a starter or as a healthy lunch/dinner. A perfect way to eat your leeks as well, by the way, as I first discovered at a great dinner I had at Mon Vieil Ami, a modern bistro by Antoine Westermann on the Île St. Louis in Paris.
Having been a vegetarian myself for a period in my life, I know how creative one can be with vegetables. I wouldn't want to miss my occasional meat and fish fixes these days, but unlike other people who don't venture further than peas and carrots, I am happily experimenting with lots of different vegetables, be it as sides or main dishes. It's a love that will never fade.

Other favourite vegetarian recipes (90 of them to date and counting) on thepassionatecook (a full list can be found here):
Red onion, fennel & hazelnut tarte (February 2007)
Winter salad with fennel, pear, orange and pecan (January 2007)
Zucchini (courgette), sage & scamorza terrine (October 2006)
Mini corncakes with avocado & lime salsa (September 2006)
Aubergine (eggplant) parmigiana (July 2006)
Jerusalem artichoke risotto (January 2006)
Parsnip & honey soup shots with spiced sweet potato crisp (November 2005)
Stuffed squash blossoms (courgette flowers) with honey drizzle (September 2005)
Onions roasted in their skins stuffed with cheesy polenta (April 2005)
Wild garlic leaf gnocci (April 2005)
Caramelised aubergine tartare with curried nuts (April 2005)
Salad of caramelised fennel on celeriac purée (January 2005)