How to make Pad Thai

Hello friends, long time no hear, I'm sorry I have been away for so long.

We are doing great although it is winter again in Wellington, this weekend, we decided to experiment with Thai ingredients, by making a "Pad Thai." Although not authentic, my version was speedy and delicious. You will see in the video that I left out the soy sauce, as I mistakenly forgot to include this item on my shopping list earlier this morning, that feeling that I missed something was nagging at the back of my brain earlier, which I was aware of at the time but left behind in the depths of lost memory, in other words, life after 30.  Nevertheless, I think I did a good job. Enjoy this video:


By the way, I promised a budget for this dish, so you may replicate this at home. Here it is:

500g of tiger prawns ($23.99/kg) - $11.99
1 white onion - $1.99
4 cloves garlic - $0.99
1 Pak choy - $2.99
2 packets of 200g Chef's World Pad Thai noodles, 99% fat free - $2.30
1 green chilli - $1.99

Pantry items:
vegetable oil - 30ml
Salt - 1 tpsp
Raw sugar - 1/2 tpsp
1 lemon
1 size 6 free range egg

Total cost for 2 people: $22.25 or $11.13 each!

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.

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.

Marinated Chilli Cod Fish with Avocado Sauce

Here is what you will need:

Ingredients:

500g of Cod fish fillet (or any other fish you like)

3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

2 teaspoons of chili powder

1 teaspoon of salt

2 teaspoons of minced garlic
2 teaspoons of ground peppercorns

2 ripe avocados

3 table spoons of sour cream

First take the fish fillet and mix in a bowl with the olive oil, chilli powder, salt, garlic, lemon juice, and ground peppercorns. After mixing together well let it sit for 20 minutes to allow the fish to absorb the marinade.

While you wait you can make the avocado cream to go with the fish. Mix the avocado with the sour cream in a bowl thoroughly until the mixture becomes creamy.

Now start frying the marinated fish. Be careful when over turning the fish pieces as they may crumble. Fry each fillet piece for about 10-20 minutes on each side. Add a touch of olive oil to help cook if you like.

Done! This is a very simple and yummy dish, which will impress your guests. The avocado cream complements the fish perfectly, but you can also serve with rice. You might want to add extra salt and lemon juice to suit your taste. To add a touch of class sprinkle a bit of parsley on top of the fish after it is done. Enjoy :)

Italian Salmon Salad

This will serve 4 people or 2 really hungry adults like me and my partner.I'm not completely sure why we decided to call it Italian. The only reason the name fit was due to the olives and olive oil.

Ingredients
3 Tomatoes - chopped into small cubes
1/2 large cucumber - thinly sliced
1/2 can of corn - drained
1 whole lettuce bunch - diced
1 jar of olives - sliced into halves
100-200 g of salmon - diced into thin and narrow slices
1 whole red onion - diced
Dill - about 3 branches finely chopped
Salt - to taste
Cracked pepper - to taste

Salad Dressing
1 part olive oil : 2 part vinegar, and a dash of lime juice.

Combine all the ingredients together in a large bowl and pour in the salad dressing. You can vary the mount of dressing to suit. You just need enough to coat all of the salad. The vinegar will actually slightly cook the salmon, giving it a tingly, vinegary taste. The salad is best eaten instantly after it is made while it is fresh. However if you keep it in a fridge over night you will find that all of the flavours have fused together and everything taste even better. I would not let it sit in the fridge for more than 1 day because all the ingredients will completely loose all their crunchiness. 

Sesame Roasted Snapper Recipe with Oriental Sauce

We had watched an Asian fish recipe and developed a tremendous urge to cook up a whole fish. After some bargaining at the market, we managed to get a whole snapper fish monster for only $32! (See left - look at its teeth!). Though we didn't really bargain, its all we had on us in cash and the fish-munger reluctantly knocked $13 off the price to our delight.

We decided to prepare the fish whole, seeing it was such a beautiful specimen (like me). To make this you will need to following ingredients:

Whole fish - can be snapper or cod any size you like. We used a 3kg snapper.

Olive oil

Vegetable oil

4 medium size red chillies 

75g of ginger

5 cloves of garlic

A handful of sesame seeds

1/4 bottle Tsao-sing rice wine/sherry

2 whole limes

1/2 cup soy sauce

White vinegar - 2 tbs

Fresh coriander

Sesame oil - 1 tsp.

Sugar - 1tsp.

Salt 

Cracked pepper

Step 1

Cover large oven tray with tin foil. Cut little slots on both sides of the body to ensure flavour gets through - the reason will become apparent later. Place the whole fish onto the tray and  pour the Tsao-sing rice wine and some olive oil after the wine on both sides of the fish. The rice wine will help to get rid of that fishy taste. Coat the fish in sesame seeds, again on both sides. Dice up some garlic and place randomly inside the slots that has been cut into the fish. Place several slices of lime inside the fish body cavity. Place the fish inside an oven set to 170 degree C for about 45 minutes. For a smaller fish you will only need 20-30 minutes. 

Step 2

Now we can prepare the sauce that will go on top of the fish once it is roasted. Pre-heat a sauce pan on medium heat with some vegetable oil. Dice up the chillies, the garlic, and the ginger into thin and long strips and place into the sauce pan. Gentry stir-fry for about 30 seconds. Now add the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and the sugar. Cook the mixture on medium heat for another 30 seconds and the sauce is done. 

Step 3

Once the 45 minutes are up, take the fish out of the oven and place on to a large plate. Take the sauce we prepared in step 2 and pour it over the fish. Spread the sauce evenly over the fish and decorate with some fresh coriander leaves and lime wedges. Viola! Take a minute to stand over the finished meal and marvel at your delicious creation. This will surely impress your dinner guests!