Vegetable-tofu bake crumble

I’m on a diet.

Well, at least I’m trying to be on a diet. But it’s not really working. Well, take last night for example. Having lots of carrots left over, I figured I’d make a low-fat vegetable bake.

So I started chopping away, carrots, a bit of broccoli, cherry tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I then lightly stir fried the vegetables to give them a little flavour.

I then decided I’d make it a curry vegetable-tofu bake. So I added curry power mix and about a cup-and-a-half of water to the baking dish. And then topped it all off with tofu. Only problem, I had only what was a sliver of tofu left! So the baking dish looked a little bare on the top.

Anyway, I decided to make a topping to make it look a little nicer. A crumble topping. I had wholemeal flour, butter and sesame seeds. I mixed the sesame seeds and flour, added a bit of salt and rubbed in the butter, then whacked the mixture onto the bake and stuck the whole thing into the oven. And there you have it: a vegetable-tofu curry crumble!

So much for my creativity as Hubs said it was just a curry that I stuck in the oven!
Taste-wise, it was yum although the crumble topping was a little weird. Sort of like eating pastry with your curry.

Calorie-wise, all that butter didn’t help my diet!

Ingredients:
Lots of vegetables!
Onions
Garlic
Salt

Curry Powder mix:
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tbs ground coriander
½ tsp chilli powder

Choc Heaven

They’ve finally done it.
Incredibly smooth dark chocolate that glides thickly down your throat with a hint of fire.

I couldn’t ask for more!

Super-quick-throw-everything-in-1-pot chickpea curry

Because I often nibble on snacks that I shouldn’t really be touching with a 10-metre pole (ie. Crisps/chips and chocolate!), most of the time, I feel like I should be eating something healthy when it comes to the main meals. Only problem, I just can’t eat a salad for a main meal. No matter how hard I try.

When I try, I start off eating a salad, then 30 minutes later, raid the kitchen eating everything in sight. So I figure, it’s better to eat something that appeals to me, and try to make that healthy, than have salad as “starters” to a huge meal of junk later.

So here’s another quick and lazy meal that I whipped up in less than 10 minutes with only very very basic spices (I have nothing left in the kitchen!). I added lots of broccoli so that I felt better about having eaten a big packet of chips 2 hours earlier!

This is what I put in:

• 1 tbs curry powder (mixed in ½ cup of water)
• 1 tbs ground coriander (mixed with the curry powder paste above)
• 1 ½ cups water
• ½ teaspoon salt (or to taste)
• 1 onion diced
• 1 tomato diced
• lots of garlic (minced)
• Sliver of ginger (minced)
• 400g can chickpeas
• broccoli
• mushrooms

I first mixed the curry powder and ground coriander in about ½ a cup of water.
I fried the onion till brown, and then added the garlic, ginger, tomato and curry paste. I then cooked the tomato until soft, added the water and threw everything else in.
10 minutes later – it’s all done.

Not exactly an extremely original or creative dish but at least it stopped me from having more chips as dessert!

Chickpea seeni sambal

A while ago, my mum was introduced to “seeni sambal” by a Sri Lankan friend and loved the spicy hot flavour. It has since been a family staple!

Having never been to Sri Lanka, I’m not really sure how it’s cooked over there but it’s basically a spice mix of maldive fish chips/flakes and chilli. A Sri Lankan ex-colleague said that his wife cooked it with diced potatoes. My mum and I cook it using a ready-made seeni sambal spice mix and add it to fried diced onions and tomatoes to make a hot and incredibly tasty sambal that we eat with rice.

Seeing as eating fried onions, chilli and rice is like eating oil, chilli and carbohydrates – not exactly nutritious (but very very tasty), I’ve modified the recipe to add some protein to make chickpea seeni sambal.

Here’s my recipe for chickpea seeni sambal. In Melbourne, we get the spice mix from an Asian grocery shop. I haven’t seen it sold in Paris, but then again, I probably haven’t been looking as Mum actually sends me packets from Melbourne!

· Oil for frying
· 1 big onion
· 400g can chickpeas
· 2 ripe tomatoes (diced)
· 2 tablespoons (or more if you like it HOT!) seeni sambal spice mix
· Salt to taste
· A squirt of tomato ketchup (it sounds weird but it makes a difference)

Fry onions until soft and brown in a pan.
Add the diced tomatoes and cook till soft.
Add the seeni sambal spice mix to the pan and stir.
Add a squirt of tomato ketchup.
Drain the chickpeas and add to the pan.
Serve hot with rice.

Hubs tends to complain when I cook this, as it’s too spicy for his delicate French tastebuds! Hehe!

Char Kuay Teow

One of my most favourite foods in the world is char kuay teow. This is basically a super mouth-watering greasy tasty Malaysian hawker-style wok fried rice noodles (Penang, my mum’s home town in Malaysia, has the best char kuay teow!).

In Melbourne, fresh rice noodles (and I mean the ultra fresh slimy noodles, not just your dried variety) can be found in any local Asian store (most suburbs have at least 1 Asian grocery store) or even the local supermarket, making it easy to just whip up some char kuay teow when I feel like it.

Over here, Asian grocery stores are only found in the Quartier Chinois (China Town) in the 13th arrondissement. This is a pain as it means at least a precious weekend morning spent elbowing little old Chinese ladies out of the way in the overcrowded Tang Frères grocery store every time (which is pretty often) I get a craving for char kuay teow.

Last weekend, we braved the little old Chinese ladies in the Quartier Chinois.
Look what I made! Mmmmmmmm.

When it comes to cooking char kuay teow, I have to say that I don’t stick to any particular recipe and I use the “agak-agak” (in Malay, this means “approximate” or “rough estimation”) rule when it comes to ingredients.

Anyway, here’s a basic recipe (for about 4 people). Feel free to add more or less of the ingredients that tickle your fancy. (I tend to add LOADS of garlic and chilli).

· Oil for cooking (hawker stalls in Malaysia tend to use lard)
· Garlic (roughly 1 teaspoon)
· Prawns
· 500g bean sprouts (I love bean sprouts so I tend to add more)
· 400-500g fresh flat white rice noodles (kuay teow)
· A good handful of chinese garlic chives (ku chai), chopped to 2cm bits
· 3 – 4 eggs
· Dark soy sauce
· Light soy sauce (Optional. I find that adding the dark soy sauce gives it enough flavour)
· Dark thick sweet soy sauce (or a pinch of sugar)
· Dried chilli flakes, chilli powder or fresh chilli paste
· Lap cheong (chinese sausage. Optional)
· See ham (cockles. Optional)

Start off by heating the oil in the wok or large frying pan.
Once the oil is heated, add eggs and fry till cooked.
Remove the eggs (I get lazy sometimes and just leave the eggs in, adding all other ingredients to the wok).
Add garlic and prawns.
Add lap cheong and see ham (Optional).
Add the rice noodles. (Remember to separate the rice noodles before adding into the wok.)
Add the bean sprouts.
Add the eggs back in.
Add dark soy sauce for colour and the light soy sauce for taste.
Add the dark thick sweet soy sauce or a pinch of sugar to taste.
Add chilli according to taste.

Tip 1: I tend to use kuay teow (bought fresh), which has been kept in the fridge for a day or two. I find that frying ultra-fresh kuay teow makes the char kuay teow slightly sticky. After a day or two in the fridge, the rice noodles stiffen up a little, making it ideal for frying.

Tip 2: Keep the heat high when frying ingredients.

Tip 3: Divide the ingredients into 2 batches and fry batches separately. I find that it makes it easier to handle in the wok, plus the ingredients cook faster. Having small batches therefore avoids overcooking.

Tip 4: Most of all, experiment with the portions of ingredients to create your own version of char kuay teow.