Tamarind and Thyme

Chocolate and Zucchini have a post on Jo-Jo potatoes (or Deluxe potatoes at French McDonalds), those deep-fried, spiced potato wedges. I make similar potato wedges but utilising solely Spanish pimenton as a seasoning. I should get that recipe up here sometime.

On Serious Eats, the Pioneer Woman compares Scharffen Berger chocolate brownies, regular baking chocolate brownies, and brownies from a bag of mix. Which tasted best? Do we really have to ask?

There are recipes for homemade chili-garlic sauce over on Viet World Kitchen. I bring back bottles of this stuff from Vancouver but it’s nice to have a recipe just in case I run out. It adds a great pep to a lot of recipes.

Our Adventures in Japan explains how to make 0-musubi/o-nigiri. I bet they’d be great for picnics!

Corn fritters over at the Asian Grandmothers Cookbook! You know, they’re nice with a bit of Spam chopped up inside…

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Alright, once again, I’m disappearing for a couple of weeks. There should be posts when I come back, posts on food from the other side of the world!

Botifarra amb mongetes is a classic Catalan dish of sausage with white beans - though they are a particular kind of bean that is quite long and cylindrical. Not much to report in terms of a recipe: grill sausages of your choosing (I used a 97% pork sausage that was lovely and meaty and I think are most like Catalan sausages) and boil your beans. I found a jar of these boiled beans at a local shop; they were a Spanish brand and were definitely mongetes, as Blai confirmed, but any other white bean would be a good substitute. And eat the beans with lots of extra virgin olive oil drizzled on top!

We had bledes (Swiss chard) on the side, you know, for health reasons. Gotta eat our veggies! Anyway, I made them in a sort of Spanish style, using some of that lovely pimentón, the smoked paprika from La Vera. Now for this dish I can provide a recipe.

Spanish-Style Swiss Chard
adapted from Food and Wine magazine
serves 2.

a large bunch of Swiss chard
extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, sliced thinly
1/4 - 1/2 tsp Pimentón de la Vera
1/4 cup chopped canned tomatoes (optional)
1 tsp sherry vinegar
salt and pepper

Slice up the entire bunch of chard, both stalks and leaves, and clean it all thoroughly. In a pot of boiling water, blanch the chard until tender. Drain and press out excess water.

In a pan, heat up a good swirl of olive oil and fry the garlic slices until golden. Add the pimentón and tomatoes (if using) and cook for a few minutes (less time if just using the pimentón). Add the Swiss chard and stir thoroughly, adding a little water if it’s all looking too dry. When the chard has been heated through, add the sherry vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

As soon as I saw the call for entries for this event, I knew it was time for me to sit down and write this post. It’s now been almost exactly 6 months to the day that my mother passed away after a 2 year battle with cancer. I can’t say I’m over it yet - we lost her rather suddenly when she deteriorated at an extraordinary rate over her last two weeks. I still miss her and it’s been hard without her.

Foodwise, my mother was the greatest influence to me. Everything she cooked was delicious (I felt very sorry for the guy in my dorm my first year of university who said that the food there was better than anything he had at home). Everything. She was culinarily adventurous and never limited herself to just cooking Chinese and Peranakan food, the cuisine that she learned to cook from her mother. When we moved to Vancouver, she replicated many of the dishes we missed, from char kway teow to chai tow kueh, popiah to rojak, mee siam to mee rebus. Her fried rice was also spectacular - always better than the stuff in restaurants. She also embraced the foods from other cultures - pasta dishes were never a problem and I recall a seafood risotto she made at home after she had only tasted it once at a cafe. When I left for the UK, I found that cooking started to come quite naturally to me - all that time spent watching her cook had somehow caused my brain to absorb a number of lessons that came in quite handy.

My mother was also a terrific baker. While breads weren’t her thing, savoury pizzas weren’t too much trouble. Lots of sweet treats were also produced, a necessity when ravenous teenagers were about! Her repertoire was quite impressive, from chocolate chip cookies to all sorts of Malaysian kuehs. She also allowed me to bake quite a bit while I was still living at home, demonstrating the various steps to get through a recipe and showing me the shortcuts she learned. One particular recipe that we both baked quite often was lemon squares, something that I made recently during a bit of a nostalgic kick. They’ve got a crumbly base and an extremely lemony and not too sweet curd topping - delicious. It’s definitely a recipe that I always associate with my mother. Thank you, Mom.

Lemon Squares
adapted from The Joy of Cooking
makes 16 2″ squares

Crust
113g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
25g (1/4 cup) powdered sugar
140g (1 cup) plain flour
1/8 tsp salt

Curd Topping
200g (1 cup) sugar
2 large eggs
80mL (1/3 cup) lemon juice, from about 2 lemons
1 tbsp lemon zest, from about 1.5 lemons
2 tbsps flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

Crust
Preheat the over to 180 degrees Celsius. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together and then stir in the flour and salt just until it all comes together. Grease an 8″ square baking pan and then press in the dough to cover the entire base of the pan in an even layer. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Topping
While the crust is baking, whisk together the sugar and eggs until well combined and then add the rest of the ingredients and then whisk again. After the crust has baked, give the mixture a final whisking and then pour the mixture on top of the crust. Return to the oven and bake until the top is set, about 20 minutes.

Let the pan cool (if you can!) and dust the top generously with powdered sugar. Cut into 16 squares. Serve. Eat.

This post has been submitted to Apples & Thyme.

If you’ve ever been to London, chances are you’ve walked by Minamoto Kitchoan as it’s well-situated on Piccadilly Road, not far from Piccadilly Circus and across the street from Fortnum & Mason. A cursory glance inside might have you think that it’s jewels or expensive cosmetics they’re selling but walking inside, you’ll see that there are little cakes in the display cabinets. A closer look (or perhaps a double take) will reveal that those cakes are plastic and that the actual products sit on top of the counter and are all elaborately packaged. Welcome to the world of wagashi (Japanese sweets)!

I brought Blai there for the first time last Saturday afternoon. He watched and waited patiently     as I wandered back and forth along the shop, hmm-ing and haw-ing at every little dainty. I finally made a selection and asked to have them there and then. Do you know, if you have your little treats at one of the exceptionally tiny tables in the shop, they’ll be brought to you on little plates along with a small cup of green tea?

I had chosen three wagashi. The first was a tsuya, a mixture of sweet red beans between two pancakes, a very Western-influenced cake. Does anyone know how this differs from dorayaki?

We also had a mochi and a tiny plum jelly. Their mochi is the best I’ve had in London, outstripping those sad refrigerated versions from the shops in Chinatown. They’re so wonderfully chewy! The jelly was new to me and though tiny, it was very aromatic. It’s like a grownup jelly cup.

And here’s the setup of a tea I had there many months ago. Isn’t it cute?

Our little teatime treat came to under £6 altogether. Of course, if these Japanese flavours aren’t for you, La Maison du Chocolat is right next door!

Minamoto Kitchoan
44 Picadilly
London W1J ODS

Shops also in Tokyo, New York, and Singapore.

More and more dark cruciferous greens have been showing up lately at my farmers’ market. It’s harvest time for kale, cabbages and the like and these large leafy bunches are finding their way into my canvas bag. I love green leafy vegetables so in terms of eating seasonally, this is my favourite season! Here are a couple of very simple recipes that I’ve been using to add their goodness to our weekday dinners.

Kale with Sesame and Soy

1 large bunch kale
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsps light soy sauce
sunflower oil (or another vegetable oil but not olive oil)

Boil your trimmed kale until as tender as you wish. Drain well (squeeze out all that water).  Heat the oil over a low heat and gently fry the sliced garlic. Add the sesame oil and soy sauce and then mix in the kale. Toss well and serve. Toasted sesame seeds would make a terrific addition but I was too late to toast some - they would have improved its looks! And I honestly cannot remember what I served with this!

Garlicky Cavolo Nero

1 large bunch cavolo nero
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
a good pinch dried chili flakes
olive oil
extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

Boil the trimmed cavolo nero until it’s tender and once again, drain well. Saute the garlic and chili flakes in olive oil slowly until the garlic is golden and then toss in the cavolo nero and add salt to taste. Give it a final good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil at the end. We piled this onto little toasts cut from a baguette and when those ran out, we shovelled it directly into our mouths.