Mackerel Fish Black in Bean Sauce

This one followed a mornings dallying around the vegetable markets whereby a local fish longer recommended mackerel to us, us being one half asian and one half eastern european we had never tasted this oily wonder, but we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be a preferred flavour the below recipe is a bit funky

Ingredients:
1 whole fresh mackerel fish - gutted and descaled 
3 whole lemons - sliced
10 garlic cloves - sliced
1 whole onion - sliced
5cm of ginger - sliced
Olive oil
Cracked Black pepper
200g black bean sauce (Can be sourced in Asian supermarkets)
Lettuce leaves
Spring onion - diced

Method:

Place the fish onto a foil laid into a baking tray. Cut slits in the fish on both side. Place the lemon, garlic, onion, and ginger slices inside the belly of the fish, and into each of the cut slits on both sides. Now coat the fish in some cracked black pepper and olive oil on both sides. Next coat the fish in black bean sauce inside the belly and on both sides until all of the sauce is used up. 

Place the fish into your oven set at 180degC. Cover the backing tray with foil and leave to bake for about 20 to 30 minutes. 

Serve on some lettuce leaves and garnish with spring onion. This is a fantastic dish that you can eat with your eyes. Be careful if you thinking of adding salt as the black bean sauce is already very salty, hence why I've left it out of the ingredients list. Also don't be stingy with the lemon as this is a very fishy. Unless you like it extremely fishy I would use heaps and heaps of lemon.

Honey and Soy Sauce Marinated Chicken with Spinach Salad

Honey and Soy Sauce Marinated Chicken

Ingredients:
500g free range chicken thighs
5 tbs Dark soy sauce
8 garlic cloves - roughly diced
1/5 onion - roughly diced
3 tbs of honey
1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper

Method:

Place the chicken into a tray. Rub all of the remainder ingredients onto the chicken. Cover and leave in the fridge to marinate for at least 12 hours. The longer you leave the better it'll taste!

After the marination is complete, bake the chicken in the oven at 180degC for 30 - 50 minutes. Make sure to check the juices run clear before eating it. Once you are satisfied that it is properly cooked, serve with some rice or mashed potatoes along with some crunchy salad. 

Spinach Salad

Ingredients:
4 cloves of fresh garlic - finely chopped
1/5 red onion - finely chopped
2 cups of spinach - soaked in boiled hot water for 5 minutes
1 cucumber - sliced thinly with a potato peeler
3 tbs olive oil
Salt & cracked black pepper to suit taste

Method:

Make sure you have a good potato peeler so that you can slice off nice cucumber strips. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a nice juicy piece of meat. Enjoy!

Pea and Tomato Salad

The fruits of our labour, S flew up to Auckland for work, so left me with the tomato harvest, they are delicious.

Ingredients:
Small tomatoes - as many as you like - quartered
Snap peas - as much as you like
Red onion - about 1/5 of a small onion - finely chopped
Olive oil - about 2 to 4 tbs
Salt & cracked black pepper to taste

Method:

First take out the peas out of their jackets and set aside. Don't discard the jackets. Dice each pea jacket into strips, make sure to remove the stringy edges as these don't taste very good though are bit rough to chew. 

Now in a large bowl mix together the red onion, peas, the peas jacket strips, the tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper. That's it! Have a taste and add some salt/cracked black pepper/olive oil to suit your taste if required. I can T=taste the hours of sunshine, warm and vibrant in my stomach.

Quick, and Easy Healthy Salmon Salad

I made up this recipe the other day as I was keen to eat something healthy, yet still delicious. Salmon is extremely good for you as it contains loads of vitamins and protein which help to reduce risk of heart disease and diabetes. This is super quick and easy to make, and you really just have to let the fresh ingredients speak for themselves.  

Ingredients:
Fresh salmon fillet - sliced in to chunks
Fresh lettuce leaves - torn
Bean sprouts - soaked in hot water for 2 minutes
Kalamata olives - sliced
Fresh bird's eye chili - sliced (you can leave the seeds in depending on how hot you want it)
Fresh spring onion - sliced
Olive oil - about 3 to 5 tbs.
Lemon Juice - about 1 - 2 tbs.
Salt & cracked black pepper to taste

Method:

You can use as much of the above major ingredients as you want, you simply can't go wrong here. Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, let it sit for 10 - 20 minutes to let the dressing absorb all of the awesome flavors.

Serve along with toasted bread. Turkish bread works perfect. 

Salmon with Lemon Sauce, and Potato with Mint Salad

Ingredients: 
Salmon and Lemon sauce:
3 Tbsp of lemon juice
1 Tbsp olive oil or any other vegetable oil
200g to 300g Salmon fillets
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 cup full-fat cream
Salt & cracked black pepper to suit taste
parsley - added in the end for garnish 

Potato Salad with Mint:
Small potatoes
1 cup fresh mint leaves
Lemon juice 
Olive oil
Salt & cracked black pepper to suit taste


Method:

Salmon with the Lemon Sauce

Add cream, chicken stock, and lemon juice to a pot on high heat. Bring to boil and reduce the heat to low. Cover the pot with lid and simmer for 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to suit taste.

Coat the salmon fillets in olive oil, salt, and cracked black pepper. Bring a frying pan to high heat. Fry the salmon on each side for 5 minutes. Serve the salmon and pour the lemon sauce over, and garnish with parsley.

I find this is a great dish as it is generally pretty healthy (the only thing that's not the best for your here is the full-fat cream), and take's almost no time to prepare.

Potato Salad with Mint

We ordered this at a local City Gallery cafe and were surprised at how well the mint complemented the potatoes. Add all the ingredients listed above together in a bowl. You can vary the amount of each of the ingredients depending on how much salad you want to make. It's hard to go wrong here. Mix well and serve. Sue's mum came over shortly after this and just missed out. Oh well 

Great dish for a dinner party.

Growing Experiment Continued

Our growing bug has caught on, and we have expanded. We've managed to obtain more plants for hardly any expenditure. Some of them as you can see from the photos are getting a bit sun burnt.We also finally have our first tomatoes. The pea plants have sadly been starved of all the nutrients as the huge tomato plant has stolen the show. We have also planted several capsicum, and runner bean plants seeds. The runner beans should hav been sowed Nov-Dec but we still can expect a successful harvest in the coming months as the weather continues to improve.