smokey pumpkin zuppa zuppa

Pumpkin soup is awesome.  Soup, in general, is awesome - pea and ham, vege, chicken, chicken noodle, chicken and corn, minestrone, leek and potato (oh yum, one of my all time favs, especially with some bacon in it!!), chicken-peanut-blackbean (now that's got to be an upcoming post, it's amazing)...  But pumpkin soup is a personal fav - my grandma, Fran, would make it every time we went there for lunch.  Or dinner.  Sometimes for afternoon tea...  For years it was her thing - there was always some freshly-made pumpkin soup and toast in the offing.  Now, ordinarily I like to make a fairly traditional pumpkin soup as my base, and then add some curry paste (usually green, or laksa) and coconut cream.  Yum!  However, I've been on a bit of a paprika kick lately, so when I saw an Annabel Langbein recipe for a smokey pumpkin soup I thought I'd give it a go (with a few amendments, to suit what I had in the kitchen).  Buon appetito!!  

1.5 kg pumpkin/kumara (I about 1.2 pumpkin and two medium orange kumara)

1 - 2 onions

12 button mushrooms (they were desperate to be eaten!!)

olive oil

1 tbsp each paprika, ground cumin, fennel seeds

1.5 L chicken stock (this made for quite a thin soup, so perhaps 1 L if you want it thicker)

2 tbsp harissa (I like Julie Le Clerc's for Sabato - can buy this is kitchen stores, some supys)

salt and pepper, to taste  

1. Cut pumpkin and kumara into chunks.  Cut onions in half and remove paper.  remove ends of mushroom stems.  Place all on roasting tray, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with spices.  Roast for about 40 minutes at 200 degrees celcius (until cooked through and starting to go golden).  
2. Put veges and stock in large stock pot.  Heat through gently.  Add harissa and salt and pepper.  Blitz with wand, or in food processor.  Heat again until hot enough to eat.  
3. Serve with dinner rolls, toast with butter, little garlic breads...or refried leftover yorkshire puddings (oh yeah!!!!).   

Bang bang!!

Satay would be one of my favourite flavours.  Love it with skewered kebabs, as a pizza base sauce, as a curry sauce, on a burger...  The list probably would go on indefinitely.  If it's savoury and can have sauce with it, it'll probably taste awesome with some satay.  However, one more or less key ingredient of the traditional satay are peanuts.  All well and good, unless you're allergic to peanuts.  My stepson is one such, no peanut butter for him.  Luckily for Harry tho, we live in a world today of seemingly endless flavours, products and semi-traditional fusions.  Enter cashew butter (or try almond butter, or hazlenut, walnut...).  We wanted to try a recipe for bang bang chicken (a popular street-food dish in China, apparantly so-named for the manner in which the meat is tenderised, using a stick or hammer to hit/bang it), so decided to give it a go with cashew butter.  It worked, the satay had a fantastic flavour.  This was such a good mid-week dish 'cause it didn't take long to make.  And in fact, I poached the chicken earlier in the day, so there was even one step less.  So, if you enjoy satay, this is for you!!  

Serves 3 

1 cup jasmine rice

1.5 cups water (boiling)

1 tsp sesame oil 

 

300 g chicken breasts

1.5 cups cold water

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp finely grated ginger (I used microplane)

2 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp nut butter (peanut, cashew, whatever)

2 tbsp sweet chili sauce

1 tbsp honey

1/4 cup water

2 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted (on low, slow but steady, in a dry pan)

iceberg lettuce/bok choi/spinach, shredded

1/2 carrot, cut into matchsticks

1/2 small cucumber, cut into sticks 

50 g mung bean sprouts

1. Put chicken into pot with cold water, soy and sesame oil (as grouped above).  Cover with a lid and bring to a gentle boil on medium heat.  Once boiling, turn off the heat and leave, still covered, for 15 minutes.  After that remove chicken from pot and set aside to cool (once cool, shred it!).  Save the liquid, as you'll almost certainly need more than 1/4 cup liquid for the satay sauce.  
2. Combine rice and oil in pot and place on high heat.  Add boiling water and stir well.  Once water level is more or less the same as the rice, reduce heat to low, cover pot with a paper towel and snug-fitting lid.  Leave for 20 minutes, then remove from heat.  Do not take the lid off until you are ready to serve (the rice will keep nice and warm for at least another 20 minutes after you remove from heat).  
3. Combine all satay ingredients in a pot.  Keep mixing them until you have a nice, smooth sauce.  I like my sauces to be fairly runny, so I added about another 1/2 cup of liquid from my chicken poaching.  
4. To serve - you can serve the chicken, the rice, and the veges up on separate platters and people can help themselves (remember the sesame seeds!!), or as we did, in individual bowls.  I did rice, veges, chicken, sauce, seeds and sprouts.  Delicious!!!!

Sayadiah (Arabian fish with rice)

Yesterday we decided that fish was on the menu for dinner.  So then I got to thinking, well what will we have with it?  Chips and salad is always a good go to.  But yesterday I just didn't fancy it.  I felt like a curry, but not a thai-style curry, with lots of sauce.  I felt like rice.  So, I turned to Dr Google and gave it 'fish + rice + harissa' (we had a fresh jar of Sabato harissa in the fridge), and a number of links came up for various middle-eastern/north African dishes.  This one, on a blog called The Spice Adventuress, was for a dish (typical to coastal Yemen) called Sayadiah - fish with rice.  Perfect!  We made a few alterations to the Spice Adventuress' dish - fennel seeds in place of cardamom, added shredded spinach leaves and toasted sliced almonds to the rice, doubled the tomatoes used - but wow, what a fantastically flavoured dish.  I wasn't too sure how it was going to turn out, but it ended being an incredibly moreish plate, which we both looked forward to for lunch the following day.  Besseha!!

Serves 4 

400 g firm white fish (I used 4 fillets of gurnard, so would use probably 2 large tarakihi or snapper)

2 tbsp harissa paste (it's straight-forward to make your own, of buy a good-qual one like above)

salt 

butter - 3 lots, one for fish, one for sauce, one for rice

1 red onion, finely diced

2 cloves garlic (or 1 large clove), finely diced

1 tbsp grated fresh ginger

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp cumin powder

2 tsp turmeric powder

1 chili, chopped (hot or not, up to you)

4 tomatoes, skin removed and chopped (or we used 2 tomatoes and a couple handfuls cherry toms) 

1 zucchini, chopped into small pieces (optional, depending on season)

1 cup long-grain rice (basmati or jasmine)

2 cups boiling water

paper towel

handful spinach leave, shredded (or baby leaves)

1/4 cup toasted sliced almonds

1. Cut fish into bite-sized pieces.  Coat with harissa and stir through some salt.  Cover and place in the fridge for at least an hour, to marinate.  
2. Saute onion, garlic, ginger and fennel in some melted butter.  Add other spices to pan and stir before adding in the tomatoes and zucchini.  Let whole lot burble away until liquid is reduced.  We did not reduce it down completely, but left some liquid in the sauce, as we prefer a runnier sauce with rice.  Up to you though.  Set aside.  
3. Melt butter in pot you'll use for rice.  Coat rice in melted butter and stir through some salt and pepper.  With element on high, add boiling water and stir.  Continue to stir until water has reduced down as far as the level of the rice.  Once the water and rice are at same level in the pot, reduce heat to low, place paper towel over pot and put pot lid on.  Leave for 20 minutes then remove from heat.  This rice can sit for a good 20 minutes with the lid on, without needing reheating or anything.  Stir through the spinach and almond just prior to serving.  
4. Return sauce to low heat, to warm back through (depending on whether you've cooked the sauce at same time as the rice, or done that step earlier in the day, as I did).  
5. Fry fish in butter.  
6. Serve fish on sauce on rice, sprinkled with coriander.