Thai Green Fish Curry
I planned to cook fish today, Thai Green Fish Curry. I looked through the internet to find a recipe for which I had all the ingredients. I disregarded many websites, most of which used the ready made Thai green curry paste and some which had additional ingredients that we could do without which I think after all is done would not add much to the taste as I was looking for a more 'kampung' flavour rather than exquisite dining.
Well, I came to this website, "thaigreencurryrecipe.com" which had listed 5 green curry recipes, one of them being the one I was looking for. Hmmm ... I had already seen this recipe being listed on another website, "foodreference.com'. Don't know where it originated from but it seems easy enough (meaning I had like, 90% of the ingredients).
Basically, like all curries, there is the usual:
1 onion (big, medium or small? I went for medium)
3 garlic cloves (no problem here)
6 small hot green chilli deseeded and sliced (for extra extra hot, I threw in more than was required, we are gonna be smoking for lunch - seeds included)
5 cm fresh ginger scraped and sliced (this was a problem ... 5 cm??? well, if I had a really fat ginger, how would that be measured??? anyway, to your discretion, don't want to have a ginger curry paste now, would we? I decided to go with a 2 by 4)
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
1 tsp shrimp paste (aka belacan. I had a chunk of belacan which I believe is a few years old 
.... and it has become quite hard to break up so I don't know if I want to break a small piece off, roast it and pound it to powder ... hmmm ... was planning to use the Sambal Belachan Powder by Singlong which had red chilli included ... let's be a bit more industrious and try the belacan)
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 stalk of lemon grass peeled and sliced thinly (I sliced up the bottom part and smashed the top half to add to the curry and just in case there wasn't enough, I added another stalk)
Blend the above ingredients together. I added in a little bit of coconut milk to help with the blending.
1 tbsp of peanut oil
400ml coconut milk
1 tbsp fresh coriander chopped (this is confusing ... I just did a search for fresh coriander and some funny things popped up ... well, in Wikipedia, 'Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae. It is also known as Chinese parsley or, particularly in the Americas, cilantro'. Surprisingly, some people think that they are different, or aren't they?)
Instructions weren't clear and arrangement of items were not right. You have to actually read the whole recipe and reconstruct it. Originally, fish, chopped coriander, coconut milk and peanut oil were placed under the spice paste heading and one would think, "why would I blend the fish along with the others??" I very nearly emptied all my coconut milk into it.
The next instructions were:
1. Put the oil in a wok and heat well. Add the spice paste and stir fry for a few seconds to release the aromas. Add the thick portion from the top of the coconut milk, stir well and boil to thicken a little.
2. Add the fish and turn the pieces over in the sauce until they are well coated. Reheat (reheat??? hasn't it been on the fire still?) to simmering point and cook until they start to become opaque for about two minutes.
4. Add the remaining coconut milk (seems like quite a lot) and chopped coriander and continue cooking until the fish is ready. Serve topped with Thai basil plus the halved limes and fragrant Thai rice or noodles.
Am now frying the blended ingredients in the wok. Hmmm ... smells good. I also put in the smashed top half of the lemon grass. It tastes hot!
I added in more fish sauce according to my taste at the end.
To Serve:
• sprigs of Thai basil
• 2 limes, quartered
• fragrant Thai rice or noodles
I didn't have any Thai basil or limes so had none of that.
Lunch is served ...
Limey Baked chicken
I had run out of ideas for what to do for chicken and decided to browse Ptitchef for any chicken recipe, namely those involving broiling. I found this one which looked rather inviting. There wasn't much of a measurement so you have to wing it. The recipe gave the ingredients as fresh lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Then bake it at 350 degrees for about 40 - 50 minutes. I didn't have any lemons around so I went with lime juice. I felt it was too limey so I added in some sugar instead and it worked fine for me. I baked it for about 45 mins and finished it up with broiling. Hubby absolutely loved it and because there was a lot of gravy, he had a field day!
Sushi – California Rolls
Hubby has always been the one in charge of sushi, that is until I found a video showing "How to Prepare Perfect Sushi Rice" with Chef John Mitzewich. It absolutely put me in the spirit of doing just that. I also love California Rolls so that was going to be my project. Hubby picked out an avocado for me and we bought some imitation crab from the T&T Supermarket.
A few days later, I tried it out. I followed the recipe showed. I wasn't too sure about the amount of water though so added a bit more to mine. Wow, the rice came out really well, not mashed up. I didn't cut up the imitation crab, just microwaved them for a bit. I used two seaweed wraps cut into 2 and had four rolls. I learned a really good thing from this video "How to Make a California Roll" with Sushi Chef Lin. He had wrapped up his bamboo mat with cling wrap so no messy bamboo mats to clean now 
So here are the California Rolls!
Dark sauce chicken drumsticks
This is a "play it by ear" dark sauce. I wanted something sweet, sticky and at the same time savory and it ended up tasting a bit like the barbecue pork sauce. I added in a mixture of dark sauce, some red colouring, oyster sauce and a few other stuff which I can't rightly remember now. When I find the recipe which I probably scribbled on some piece of paper hidden away, I'll post it up
Stuffed chicken leg
While browsing the internet, I came across a few videos of Chef Ramsey on youtube. One of them was his stuffed chicken leg. I stuffed the chicken leg with minced pork and then wrapped it with bacon. They worked out beautifully.
Bacon and onion pizza
This post is a bit delayed but we had this dish some time ago. Hubby was just a lil late in getting the pictures. We had bought some bacon at a good price (2 for CAD 4.00) and we had a field day, making stuff with them. One of them was the bacon onion pizza below, well, half of it anyway. Can't remember what the other half was now, was it minced pork? Yeah, we usually do go overboard with the cheese but Hubby loves cheese!
Paper Chicken
There is a food site that sends me a list of new recipes every day. It's called Ptitchef. A few days ago, I found this recipe there. Hubby remembered those days when his grandma used to bring these home every time she visited his family way back when he was a child. I asked him what they tasted like and he said he didn't know, only that it tasted really good. Anyway, I decided to give them a try.
Paper Chicken.
The recipe is here. I used 4 pieces of chicken legs and back cut into two pieces, marinated them and then wrapped them in parchment paper. Aaarghhh! My parchment paper ran out and I didn't want to use wax paper. Then I remembered I had some parchment paper somewhere, stashed with my other cake decorating stuff. Aaahhh! I managed to find some but there was still one more piece unwrapped. Eh? What was that peeping out from under the microwave oven?? Yayy! The last piece of parchment paper!! Yup, we are all done. Generally, I don't really like fried stuff but Hubby likes them so here we go, lots of oil in the wok and in go the wrapped up pieces three at a time. How do you know if it is cooked? I don't know, just use your cooking sense of how long it has been in the oil.
Finally they were all done and here is one of the pieces unwrapped!
The chicken mystery unraveled.
Lemon Chicken and Pork Pizza…
Wifey's version of Lemon Chicken.
Lemon Chicken wifey's style. Prepared on August 14, 2009.
Pork Pizza with Tomato Paste.
Pork Pizza with Tomato Paste. We ran out of minced beef, so wifey thought to substitute it with pork! It was equally delicious. Prepared on August 26, 2009.
Pork Pizza sans tomato paste.
Another version of the Pork Pizza without tomato paste. Another mouth-watering version. Prepared on August 26, 2009.
Putting on the calories… more foooood! :P
Cheese sticks by wifey!
Prepared on August 9. Cheesy sticks of bread.
Yummy pieces of smoked salmon.
Yummy piece of smoked salmon up-close.
Prepared on August 9 as well. I have always loved dried (jerky anyone?) and/or smoked meat, so wifey does spoil me from time to time.
Anderson’s Home-made Unagi Sushi Rolls… yummm :P
Yummy broiled eel and avocado encased in rice and seaweed.
Unagi is basically "broiled fresh water eel". I had prepared this delicacy on August 7, 2009. Yes, I am a big fan of Japanese food. Well I am a big fan of seafood in general, and an even bigger fan of anything roasted, broiled, fried, or barbequed! Yum! Anyway, the following is a quick list of ingredients used:
1 cup Sushi Rice (Kokuho Rose)
2 cups of water
2 Tbsp of Seasoned Rice Vinegar (Mitsukan)
6 sheets of roasted seaweed (Takaokaya Yakinori Tokusen)
1 Avocado
Broiled Fresh Water Eel
The Takaokaya roasted seaweed comes in an affordable pack of 50 sheets. I had bought it at T&T Supermarket in Metrotown awhile back.
