Week 8: Nasi Goreng

The asian dishes are coming fairly frequently on the roulette wheel! This is something I've heard spoken about time and again, but never tried for myself. Never really know why, but I guess I always stick with the familiar, even though there's nothing in this that would put me off eating it.

Looks good to me! 

But why, upon looking at the recipe am I a little underwhelmed? I feel like there needs to be more flavour in this. Are we a little over the top with adding ingredients these days? But a sauce is not made of soy alone and I feel like this could let the dish down. I admit to drifting away from the stark nature of the recipe and adding some extra bits and pieces from 21st Century nasi goreng recipes to get this one up to speed. 

First off was the omelette.  Fairly easy to do. 

Reminded me of pancakes and anything that reminds me of pancakes is ok in my book. Also I love a good chinese omelette (again with lots of GRAVY/SAUCE!!) see we are obsessed with sauces these days! 

Ready to roll up and cut into strips. 

Sydney's weather last night was wild and crazy. It was also really humid in the kitchen last night so some of my photos became a little blurry and fuzzy from the humidity. You get the idea. Strips of omelette ready to put in the mix. 

Chopping up my carrot! No, its not a photographic trick, the pieces of carrot get larger near the end of the photo, I blame my short attention span and the job of cutting the carrot became a little tedious, so the pieces of carrot became larger. 

Onion and shallots ready to go. Love all these ingredients by the way. So fresh. 

Sautéing the onion, garlic and carrots. The carrot size was no big, they mixed in well with the chunks of onion I'd chopped. Consistent sizing in vegetables is important! 

Whilst I was doing this the sou chef made a return to Kitchen Chad and was chopping the meat and doing the dogsbody work, thats right, peeling prawns. 

We were a little freaked out by this guy, he had really big beady eyes. We skinned and ate him anyways. 

And he was tasty. 

Good job sous chef, the prawns look good, no poop or shells, excellent! 

The chicken went in first to brown. 

Then the prawns (see ? so steamy in the kitchen last night! ) 

While the prawns were cooking we chopped up the chinese cabbage, which was so lovely, I love the slight bitter edge the cabbage has. Well really, I just love cabbage regardless. 

This is where we got a little creative and added some extra bits and pieces. Also included ginger and shrimp paste. Love that shrimp paste! Reminds me of pad thai. 

Time to spoon the rice in. 

Suddenly this dish became massive and looked like I'd pulled it out of the "feed an army" category. 

Added the secret sauce, cabbage, shallots and egg slices. 

Once the cabbage had cooked a little bit it was time to dish up! 

I'm also crazy about fresh chilli, I pretty much put it on top of everything, sans my oatmeal in the morning. 

Nasi goreng was great, and really you could make this with whatever veggies and meat you had around the house, it's a really quick and easy dish. I recommend it, but don't forget to add extra SAUCE! 

Week Seven: Sate Beef

Ok a main that has some teeth in it!

And perfect considering we're in the midst of Chinese New Year! Look how festive the photo is! 

in case you're wondering, the Dixon restaurant still exists, but urbanspoon tells me that you shouldn't, under any circumstances, go there. Apparently their food is tasteless, served cold and they use old, chewy ingredients. Well, I can only hope that in the 70's that the Dixon was a more up and up establishment. 

The Dixon has expensive taste in meat cuts. That and our family doesn't do little bits of meat. We want a big satisfying slab of beef! So at $40 a kilo for the fillet steak, we went for a cheaper cut (rump) to ensure there was no uprising and cries of "Where's the beef!!" at serving time. 

My sou chef chopping the beef.

Looks nice and tender. The recipe said to flatten the beef but with the volume of meat that seemed a little tedious so we just went with the strips. 

Marinating the beef. Hoping that we picked at cut that won't be too chewy! The sesame oil is very strong smelling but that's not a bad thing, I think it smells good :) 

Looking nice and tender now, ready to go in the pan. 

Woo this was tricky! Put in a little at a time and whipped it in and out really quickly. Oil was splashing all over the place! Didn't want it to be overcooked so I was pulling it out when it was still slightly pink. 

Draining the juices from the beef. Now it's time for the sauce. 

Pete Evans might not approve, but its what the recipe says to add! 

Didn't have sherry so I used this instead. Smells the same to me! 

Onions chopped and ready.

The sou chef makes an appearance again, putting in one clove of garlic. 

Mmmm nothing like the smell of cooked onions in garlic! Smells delicious! 

Adding the shameful jar of satay sauce. 

Giving it a bit of a mix. I didn't think there was enough sauce so I added more water, and I also added more of the jar of satay, to balance out the curry power taste. I wasn't too much of a fan of the curry power as it tends to overpower everything else. 

Stirring in the beef. 

Ok that looks about done! 

Plated up and ready to eat. I added some chopped shallots, ginger and chilli on top to add some aesthetic greenery to the plate. Served with basmati rice and steamed veggies. 

This was a really tasty dish, but a little bit on the overwhelming side with the preparation. It was handy having the sou chef in the kitchen with me, she did the veggies, chopping and measuring while I watched the meat and the sauce. 

And from what I've read on urbanspoon, I think my Dixon dish is better than what they are serving up there at the moment, maybe I should send them the recipe? ;) 

Week Six: Toffee Strawberries

I shouldn't have laughed when I was watching "My Kitchen Rules" this week when the QLD contestants were getting their toffee terribly wrong, time after time.

I should have known that I was tempting fate!

They certainly look good.

Water? Check! Sugar? Check! All I need to get this week is strawberries. Unlucky for me they now seem to be out of season and cost an arm and a leg. Hrmm. 

But they look good! I picked a punnet with some smallish strawberries, so there was more to go around. 

Washed and ready to go. 

Now we get into the fun part, making the toffee. I was really nervous about this because I've heard horror stories of burning saucepans, blistered fingers, and setting off smoke detectors with a charred, hickory tasting mess. Apparently the "golden brown" colour specified in the recipe can very quickly turn into "THROW OUT THE SAUCEPAN YOU IDIOT YOU BURNT EVERYTHING". Surely it can't be that bad? I remember my mum making me toffees for school fete's etc and I remember them being fine, although she did admit to a few toffee disasters, and even she was nervous about my toffee attempts today.

With this in mind, I was prepared to be vigilant with the toffee. When it started boiling 5 minutes after putting it on the heat,  I was over the moon! Yes! My toffee is ready! But why isn't it golden brown? I called in the toffee expert, and apparently I was a long way from the home stretch with the toffee. So I waited. And watched. 

And watched some more. Actually I did a lot of meditating whilst watching this toffee, the bubbles were hypnotic and 30 mins flew past. After this amount of time I finally saw some colour in the syrupy mix! 

Time to start dipping! The instructions said use tongs but I didn't want the hassle of trying to clean hard toffee off our stainless steel tongs, and the ones with silicone on them, well it seemed a little stupid to dip those in boiling hot sugar (a lesson some of the masterchef contestants should have known!) 

Its true, its amazing how quickly it turned from light golden to this colour. Even though I had turned off the heat, it very quickly started to turn into a burnt mess. Any longer and I would have been in trouble. I actually like the toffee that's just on the edge and this one was fine by my standards. 

So the strawberries were dipped and placed on baking paper to dry. The dipping was so much fun, and the smell was amazing. But then I had all this toffee left over, so it was time to get creative! 

Attempted toffee bananas. Tasted good but the toffee had difficulty sticking to the banana and wasn't as firm as the toffee on the strawberries. 

By this time the toffee was getting pretty thick, and we tried to make some spun toffee but it was too firm for that. A quick look in the cupboard and we rustled up some nuts and made a quick praline! 

Going to crush it, maybe put it on icecream or just eat it as is. 

So the toffee wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't as quick as I had expected it to be, it actually took quite a while for the mix to turn to toffee. And you have to be careful, as even when you take it off the heat it is still super hot and cooking away, so you really want to pull it off just as it starts to go brown. Toffee is good for all sorts of things and so I'm glad I practiced it, might come in handy one day should I have to make the good ol' toffees for a school fete!