On Wednesday I made Callaloo, a dish from Trinidad & Tobago where one of my friends originates from. It is meant to be a soup but often eaten like a side dish with rice. It is named after a green leafy vegetable that is similar to spinach and can by replaced by spinach if you can’t get a hold of actual fresh callaloo.
My friend gave me some pointers but alas I could not get all of the vegetables I should have used in time. It still tasted great and we ate this over two days with the second day making the flavours stronger, as it happens so often. 👌🏻
I started with making Caribbean green seasoning (consisting of many fresh herbs and garlic and some other optional items like a deseeded Habanero pepper) as close to the original as I could. After that I cooked the callaloo (using crab meat, spinach, coconut milk and more). When that was almost done I made basmati rice and added some frozen king prawns to my callaloo on low to medium heat to get them to a perfect consistency.
We also added some of my friend‘s truly homemade hot sauce and everything worked so well together that I‘m sure this wasn’t my last callaloo. 😋
It’s that time again, I was craving deep fried something in beer batter. I decided to use tofu that had been frozen and it worked beautifully. With this we had a Napa cabbage salad, tonkatsu sauce, rice and furikake. I dealt with the tofu, my husband with everything else 😁
I tried something new today and my fellow eaters and I were very fond of it. We had Twice Cooked Pork from the thewoksoflife.com website. 😋🤩
You need a slab of pork belly and Pixian Doubanjiang (spicy fermented bean paste), a leek, hot green peppers, and some other seasonings. If you can’t get shaoxing wine, replace it with dry sherry.
It took me about an hour as the pork needs to boiled first but during that time you can prepare all the other ingredients and start cooking your rice. After that it’s basically some quick stir-frying and you are done. (I also deglazed the wok with some of the pork broth and added a little more seasoning to get some sauce, but that’s not part of the recipe. 😅)
Now I need to think about what to do with the two litres of pork broth still left over.
Two types of tofu, or better one type of real tofu made from soybean and the other one was made from chickpeas. Looking at this I would bet that 99% of people in Europe would not recognise which one is which unless they know their tofu well. The bland looking stuff is the soy tofu which was Koya Dofu that came as a meal kit from kokorocares.com. I rehydrated it in hot water with a concentrated soup base. It was juicy and tasted of fish and slightly sweet, very delicate and Japanese (my husband thought it tasted of cardboard 😅). The chickpea tofu came marinated in some kind of sweet chilli sauce and just needed cubing and frying. It had a slightly stronger taste, probably more suited to the Western tastebuds. I liked both, my guys preferred the chickpea version.
With this I served courgette in a Gochujang sauce, pickled beetroot, and rice with Furikake. Everything was in separate bowls as I wanted to really taste all items properly.
Curry udon. Perfect on a hot day like today. And easy to make too. You need dashi (fish or mushroom stock), Japanese curry cubes, breakfast bacon (I’m sure it would be great with tofu too), sake, soy sauce, and udon noodles. Some green toppings and shichimi togarashi go well with it.
These were very good again, Menchi Katsu, Japanese minced meat patties with panko. This time we used beef and pork to find out the difference in taste to lamb. I still prefer the latter, but it’s only a small difference. 😋😋😋
I was trying to recreate a Japanese tuna chilli oil product that I got from Kokorocares.com some years ago but while it tasted good, it did not look anything like the original. I think I need to use tuna in oil next time (this one was in brine) and also need to let everything steep for some time in the fridge, possibly several days, to get the miso to do its magic. Still, my mix was very edible and worked really well with takikomi rice (rice cooked with seasonings and vegetables), so I was happy.
The last days were a bit crazy. Yesterday we celebrated our son’s 18th birthday and had the local relatives over for coffee and cake and later the typical German Abendbrot, German bread with cold cuts, cheese, vegetables and also a Greek salsa salad. I spent lots of time on getting our apartment ready and the food preparations, so didn’t really cook any exciting at lunch time.
As always at such events there was way too much leftover food and today we ate lots of cake and used some of the cold cuts and the last of the salad to make yet another salad for lunch. I even found a recipe that matched what I had in mind and used that to guide me along.
Probably about 20 years ago in Dublin my then boyfriend and I made Puerco Pibil from the Robert Rodriguez movie “Once upon a time in Mexico” and never got around to making it again as you need some special ingredients (banana leaves, annato seeds, habañero chillies) that were hard to come by where we were living after we moved away from Ireland. The other day my now husband and I watched the movie with our son and decided it was time to eat this dish again. I did the shopping and my husband cooked. This turned out so well, it was well worth all the planning and effort. The meat had turned so soft! And the spices were absolutely mouth watering. 🤤
Mapo (or Mabo) Nasu. Minced meat with aubergine in a dark sauce. Good as always but noticeably darker than when I made this before. I was so annoyed with it being so pale last time and this time I didn’t really do anything different. Maybe it’s the new oyster sauce or a slightly bigger amount of Haccho Miso that did the trick. I also used more meat but that should not influence the colour. 🤔
I had bought some ready made cevapcici last week which I got out of the freezer last night. The name alone makes me think of 1970s style summer holidays in what used to be Yugoslavia. I never went there but Balkan style food got very popular with Germans and there used to be Yugoslav restaurants everywhere. Strangely we never went there either as far as I remember, so it took me until well into the 2020s to discover the delight they are.
I researched what to eat with the cevapcici and settled on tomato rice and a Greek style farmers’ salad with lots of feta cheese. I also made sure to have Ajvar in the house, another specialty from that region, a dip made from bell peppers and it’s supposed to be spicy.
What can I say, the family was very satisfied, my son said this felt like summer on a plate and made him happy. 🤩
The only letdown were both versions of Ajvar, neither of them were spicy, not even what Germans call “pikant”, despite both jars claiming to be just that. Next time I buy Ajvar from a Turkish supermarket. 🔥
I wanted to make an udon soup dish and when I read that I need dashi I thought, don’t I still have some instant soup packages from one of my kokorocares.com deliveries left in the shelf? I pulled out the pack of Kyushu Dashi Hot Pot Soup from my winter box and when I red the ingredients list (flying fish, bonito flakes, shrimp and obviously more) I instantly changed my mind. No more simple udon soup but hot pot it was!
I got my induction cooker for the table out, put the four packs of concentrated soup base in a saucepan with the right amount of water and heated that up.
Of course I also got out a range of things to put in there and had prepared them:
🥢 Napa cabbage, the top of the head in one piece 😅
🥢 May turnip, sliced thinly
🥢 Carrot, cut into “flowers”
🥢 Spring onion, in 4 cm pieces
🥢 Spinach, chiffoned, to be used like a topping
🥢 Shimeji mushrooms, roughly separated
🥢 Smoked tofu with almonds, sliced
🥢 Thin pork meat rolls (from Spain!)
🥢 Chinese dumplings with tasty fillings
Yes, there were also udon noodles, and I decided to make this a little more Chinese by adding a punchy dipping sauce with sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar and chilli pul biber.
I think the whole affair cooked for about ten minutes and by that time it was perfect so I turned the temperature down and called the family.
I don’t know how but this was sooooo good and so perfect on a cold almost wintery day! I really think it was the absolutely delicious soup base that made this, we finished it all in one setting. (I remember having a flying fish based soup product from Kokorocares before and I loved that too.) But I also have to give a honorary mention to the May turnip which was exquisite and the Spanish pork that had a great taste.
The last two days we had Indian style fried chicken breast and spinach in tomato sauce with basmati rice. Actually, todays version was with May turnip greens and and also aloo chaat. 😋
As for the Eat-30-Plants-A-Week plan: with 70 different types of plants in total we have far surpassed the target this week. I guess it was simply a really varied vegetable week, I can’t really see us eating that many plants all the time. But 30 should be possible. Especially when you find a display like on photo 2, loads of different aubergines in our local supermarket - I’m seriously impressed!
The last two photos show a small but pretty bowl that somebody discarded. I found it in our building’s refuse area and just had to pick it up.
Being curious, I even found an app to help with counting all the different plants I’ve been eating since Monday morning and can report back that it took me only two days to go over the limit of 30. The app is not quite as strict as the method described in the first article but I think I’m probably on a good track in feeding my family. looking smug
Today was the more interesting day, we had pan fried lemon marinated salmon fillets with a Greek salsa paired with (maybe not quite so Greek) goose fat roasted potatoes. The goose fat aroma from the potatoes was possibly not the perfect thing to add to a fish dish but everything was still very tasty. The salsa with feta cheese, lemon juice and honey was the secret star of it all.
Yesterday we had our “normal” Greek style meal with gyros, tomato rice and various delicacies from our local Mediterranean food stall.
Quite a while ago I bought a pack of three takuans (Japanese pickled radish) on a whim and couldn’t quite think what to do with it. Today I looked it up and yes, it’s just eaten like a pickle at the side. The taste reminds me of very mild and ever so slightly sweet sauerkraut. My husband liked them a lot, so I think we’ll have no problem finishing them off. The look of the half slices reminds me of candied lemons but of course those taste totally different.
With the takuan we had rice, mackerel in XO sauce, oven baked pak choi, miso soup and homemade red cabbage kimchi which turned really nice.
I cooked this pasta with lamb ragù dish from a recipe recommended yesterday by @xvf17 and what can I say, yet another good meal was enjoyed in this house. 😋 All the different tastes (fennel, mint, harissa, lamb mince, etc.) worked really well together and there was a nice kick to it.
It didn’t take me quite as long as advised in the recipe (2 hrs 15 mins) but I only made half the amount and didn’t have to wait for that much liquid to evaporate, so everything was done after 90 minutes. It was really worth every minute. 👌🏻
As pasta I used a type of Rigatone as that works really well with ragù, and I like this one despite being wholemeal.
I had defrosted 500 g of lamb mince over night and was contemplating what to do with it. Looking for something suitable I stumbled over a JustOneCookbook.com recipe for menchi katsu (a kind of breaded burger with beef and pork mince) and it sounded doable with lamb. I added homemade tonkatsu sauce, rice, shredded Napa cabbage, and a cucumber salad with shio konbu and a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and red vinegar. Sooooo good!
My husband commented that he was disappointed that I didn’t make this one earlier… 😅
Meatless Monday was about eating up leftovers and stray items from the fridge. I made rice with stir fried vegetables, and garlic and coriander tempeh. I tried to use up a leftover tomato sauce by turning it into sweet and sour sauce but somehow I didn’t add enough vinegar. It was still nice. That reminds me, I need to get some chinkiang vinegar, I’ve heard it’s the go to vinegar in Chinese cooking. 🤔
Today was an easy food day, we had the much loved pierogi from our once weekly Silesian food stall and a mixed salad.
I made a very intense tomato sauce from tomato purée, seasoned mainly with Harissa to eat with the meat filled pierogi. We also had some mushroom and sauerkraut filled ones for which I prepared a bread sauce.
I had seen an inspiration for the second sauce on social media and they claimed you don’t need milk or cream to make a creamy sauce, just use bread. I was intrigued. Incredulously I fried onions in olive oil and plenty of butter, put those in a blender with onion bread pieces, garlic purée and some water. Then I put all of that back in the frying pan to reheat. In the end I decided I needed a little lactose free crème fraîche to make it fresher tasting, pepper and salt - and some mustard. It was fine and suited the mushroom sauerkraut pierogi really well.
Plant-heavy ‘flexitarian’ diets could help limit global heating, study finds
“It’s important to stress that #flexitarian is not vegetarian and not vegan,” Humpenöder says. “It’s less livestock products, especially in high-income regions, and the diet is based on what would be the best diet for human health.”
Yesterday there was a juicy pork neck steak with potato mash and caramelised onions made by my husband. I had planned to have green beans with this but a last minute change of heart resulted in a mixed salad with three different dressings. The reason for this was that I had found radishes with healthy looking leaves and I wanted to see what they taste like. They were absolutely fine (I should have used more) and the different kinds of dressings (with the last of the chopped nuts from the other day) were appreciated too:
🥗 mayonnaise with a special spicy soy sauce that contains habanero pepper
🥗 walnut oil with apple cider vinegar, garlic granules, pepper & salt
🥗 olive oil, apple cider vinegar, red bell pepper flakes, garlic granules, pepper & salt
The mayonnaise one ended up being the most popular one but they were all fine really.
The other week I bought a whole tray of tinned Fried Mackerel in XO Sauce. Today we had two tins between the three of us; it’s such a powerhouse tastewise, you don’t need a lot at all to spice up your rice. The rice was takikomi gohan, rice cooked with seasoning and vegetables. I used carrot and kohlrabi. The latter still had leaves that looked edible so I put them on top of the other vegetables in the saucepan to steam them.
There was more green stuff to garnish the meal, the always required spring onion and on top of that I had foraged wild garlic this morning. I’m on a mission with greens, I want to try even more. A lot of them are full of vitamins, so why do we disrespect them so much?
Oh and I bought a little plate to grate ginger on, it’s perfect. 😍
First of all, so many new followers over the last week, that’s a bit scary, but welcome to my cooking adventures! 😅 My tastebuds like Japanese, Indian and East Asian cuisine and after falling in love with food at a Bangladeshi friend’s house I simply started cooking from recipes at some point and this opened up a new world for me. I hope I can inspire at least a few of you to try out either some of the recipes I keep trying myself, or to simply sample something completely new should you stumble across something that you have never tasted before in your supermarkets or even better on a market. I usually attempt to find a suitable recipe online. I’m also not afraid to substitute hard to get ingredients with local ones, reading up on what might be a good match. You have to work with what you can get or find in your fridge. 😄 I think most of my cooking is fusion food, where you combine products and ideas from different food cultures to make them your own.
The meal in the photo was a typical “what you find in the fridge” affair. There were many fresh vegetables that needed to go: okra, pak choi, napa and red cabbage, carrots, spring onion, half a jar of shiitake mushrooms, and also some soy mince based niku soboro (seasoned minced meat to eat with ramen or whatever you fancy). With this my son and I prepared the meal:
🥢 okra with ginger/soy sauce
🥢 Asian coleslaw with a sesame dressing
🥢 freestyle mixed fried vegetables with gochujang
🥢 niku soboro
🥢 Japanese rice
🥢 chopped peanuts and pine nuts were added as well