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Tiger Prawn Cous Cous Salad

Ingredients

• 150g Wholemeal Cous Cous
• tiger prawns (enough for 3 people)
• 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• half a cucumber, finely chopped
• 4 spring onions, finely chopped (including green leaves)
• 2 tomatos, finely chopped
• 1 yellow pepper, finely chopped
• half a lemon
• virgin olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• white pepper

Method

1. Place cous cous in a glass bowl and add 200 ml of boiling water. Cover and leave for 5 minutes.
2. Season the prawns with the white pepper then fry with a little olive oil and the garlic for a few minutes
3. Once the cous cous is ready, add 2 tsp of olive oil, 3 tsp of balsamic vinegar and the juice of half a lemon and stir with a fork
4. Add all the remaining ingredients including the prawns and garlic to the bowl and mix thoroughly. Additional balsamic vinegar can be added to taste.

This is a really quick and easy meal that I made last night. After clearing my plate I suddenly thought that I should have taken a photo for my blog... oh well, I'll have to cook it again soon :)

Prawn Fried Rice

Ingredients

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
• ginger, finely chopped
• 5 spring onions, thinly sliced
• red pepper, chopped
• frozen peas
• 1 egg
• 2 slices of unsmoked bacon, finely chopped
• 1 stick of celery, finely chopped
• soy sauce
• white pepper
• cooked and peeled prawns
• cooked rice (refrigerated)

Method

1. In a large wok heat a tablespoon of olive oil and stir fry the onions, spring onions, garlic and ginger
2. add the bacon, peppers, peas and celery. Continue stir frying until bacon is lightly cooked
3. lightly beat the egg and make a thin omelette in a small fry pan
4. add the prawns to the wok continuing to stir fry
5. chop up the omelette and add to the wok
6. add the rice gradually to the wok, breaking down any large clumps and continuing to stir fry
7. add a generous dash of soy sauce and sprinkle of white pepper
8. ensure all ingredients are mixed well then serve

I've made lots of variations of this usually as a way to use up the left over rice that we always seem to have in our fridge or freezer. The best thing is that you can add almost anything to it depending on what is in your cupboard. Recently, far from being a left overs dish, I've specifically decided to cook this as a main meal which is actually a bit of a pain as it is better to fry cooked rice that has been cooled and refrigerated first. This means that I need to remember to cook the rice in the morning so that it is ready to use in the afternoon...

If I had remembered I would normally drizzle a small amount of sesame oil over the cooked ingredients in the wok before serving. For some reason I completely forgot this today but it tasted fine without.

Oriental pork ball soup

Pork balls

• Pork mince
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 spring onions (both the leaves and white part)
• 1 onion
• ginger
• white pepper

Soup

• 1/2 litre of water
• chicken stock powder
• 3 spring onions cut into 1" peices (both the leaves and white part)

Method

1. Finely chop the onions, garlic and ginger in a food processor.
2. Thoroughly mix the chopped ingredients by hand with the mince adding a good sprinkle of pepper.
3. Form small balls from the mixed ingredients and cook in a steamer for 10 minutes
4. Bring 1/2 a litre of water mixed with the other soup ingredients to the boil in a saucepan
5. Add the pork balls and simmer the soup for a further couple of minutes.
6. Serve an enjoy!

I think this is a first for my blog. I love cooking and yesterday I came up with this simple but tasty recipie for a light soup. I decided to steam the pork balls first so that I could make a large batch of them to either freeze or, as it happened, eat again the following day. I thought that they would keep better cooked.

The stock powder I used is one that I buy every time I visit Japan called "Tori Gara Suupu" by a company called Ajinomoto. It's a chinese style stock powder made from chicken skin and makes a very light and clear soup.

I served this soup with bowls of rice and a green salad, keeping plenty of sweet chilli dipping sauce to hand to spice things up a little.

Packed Lunches

I came across this moblog today during some idle surfing at work. Those lunches look great! Definately beats my ham salad sandwich, bag of crisps, carrot cake and bottle of Dr Pepper.

Yum!?

It's a rare occurance but the other night we ran out of snacks to go with my evening beer.... or so I thought. My wife reminded me that there were still some things left in the box of goodies her mother had brought over from Japan at Christmas.

So I opened up a bag of what resembled some kind of Japanese "Bombay mix" consisting, amongst other things, of pumpkin and sunflower seeds, almonds, pine kernels and very small dried fish (eeeek!).

(Click image for a close up)

A spoonful of umami

No I didn't know what it was either when I came across the word today... but it is a Japanese word (adopted by many other languages) to describe one of the five basic tastes that can be experienced salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami or, as it is often translated, savouriness.

My wife didn't quite see anything special about the idea of umami (link to wikipedia) when I asked her about it and described it as the flavour/effect of using ingredients such as shitake mushrooms or kombu seaweed in a recipie.  I can almost understand that...they're pretty savoury.

The Chinese supermarket we shop at in Milton Keynes sells bags of MSG (the natural ingredient found in seaweeds etc. that creates the unami taste but produced in a concentrated form as a cheap way to enhance the flavour of food such as instant noodles, crisps and chinese takeout) perhaps when we go there tomorrow I can pick some up to try a spoonful of purest umami....

Breakfast

In the past I have always felt that pastries (and croissants especially) were not really suitable breakfast material. They just seemed too 'Continental', too 'Yuppie' and no match to the staple British breakfast of Sausage, Bacon, Eggs, Black Pudding, Fried Bread, Beans, Tomatoes and Toast all washed down with several cups of tea.

For the last year I have been trying to watch what I eat and so the Great British Breakfast has become a rare treat. So instead I have found myself enjoying a warm croissant on a Saturday morning with a cup of rosehip tea but I still feel a little uncomfortable about eating something that I'm just not 100% sure I'm pronouncing correctly...

Ready Steady Cook

I love to cook, so as a friend is visiting this evening I have decided to cook dinner tonight. This is a good opportunity to show him that there is more to Japanese food than sushi. During the week we went shopping in New Malden where there is a large Korean community. One of the local supermarkets sells both Korean and Japanese foodstuffs so we stocked up on various things that are hard to find nearer home.

So what's on the menu tonight...

Yaki Niku (Thinly sliced beef cooked on a skillet)
Yakitori style Chicken and leek
Yakitori style Asparagus and bacon
Yakitori style Cherry Tomato and bacon
Grilled Sweet Potato
Baechu Kimchi (Pickled Chinese cabbage)
Oi Kimchi (Pickled cucumber)
Kaltugi Kimchi (Pickled daikon radish)
Lotus root Kinpira
Miso Soup (Homemade with carrot, potato and onion)
Rice

Ok, the Kimchi is Korean rather than Japanese but they do make excellent spicy side dishes. I'm hungry already...