We have been quite busy since Wednesday evening, so we grabbed a pizza (spinach and ricotta) from Sainsbury's on Friday before heading over to a house party (and I thought we were too old for such shenanigans) at Mr. B's. It turns out that I am too old for it, and got over excited - by which I mean had toothache, not GDFO - and had to be sent home to bed. I let the youngster bat on, though and the party drifted on into the night. According to FH, a jolly fine time was had by all.
Today was the first cooking I've done since Wednesday, so I rustled up the vegetable laksa that had been on the menu for Friday night. I have adapted this recipe from a chicken one I've done a couple of times. I'm not usually one to follow a recipe, but this does owe a debt to a Ching-He Huang recipe that was in the Good Food magazine back in 2012.
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| Vegetable laksa |
Vegetable laksa with carrot and courgette noodles
Feeds four
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For the laksa paste
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A good glug of sesame seed oil
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2 peppers
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3 garlic cloves
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1 carrot
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2 stalks of lemongrass
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1 courgette
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A thumb of ginger
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300g beansprouts
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2-3 chilies
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2 tsp chopped coriander
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1 tsp shrimp paste
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25g dried mixed mushrooms
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1 tsp each turmeric, ground coriander and
cumin
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225g can of water chestnuts
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A squeeze of honey
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100ml vegetable stock
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1 tbsp of coconut milk taken from can
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Juice of 1 lime
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400ml can of coconut milk
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1 tbsp fish sauce
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Thai basil, if available
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Chop the ingredients for the laksa paste
roughly and pulse together in a mini-blender.
[If you do not have a mini-blender and think
“huh, what a waste of cupboard space”, you could not be more wrong. They are amazingly useful. Buy one today!]
Another handy tip is to peel ginger using a
teaspoon. The skin is papery thin,
but tricky to get off using a normal peeler because of the irregular shape of
the ginger, and if you use a knife you end up losing quite a bit of the ginger.
Anyway, the paste should turn out a beautiful
yellow colour because of the turmeric.
Prep the veg for the soup by finely slicing
the peppers, soaking the mushrooms in warm water, ribbonning the courgette and
carrots with a vegetable peeler then slicing the ribbons so that you have
something resembling wide colourful noodles.
Heat a wok or high-sided pan, and add the
laksa paste and fry for about a minute on a medium high heat.
It should give off a fantastic smell, but
make sure that you don’t have your washing hanging in the same room; what
smells good in food, doesn’t smell so great on laundry.
Add the peppers to the pan and give them a
stir to coat with the paste and fry for a few minutes more.
Add the liquid ingredients, the mushrooms and
the mushroom-soaking water. Fish sauce often smells a little funky just after you
add it to things, but it soon mellows out, so don't worry too much. I tend to use less than recipes generally call for, but it does make a difference in the end, so stick with it.
Bring to a simmer and add the rest of the
ingredients.
The broth should be enough to just about
cover the other ingredients. Add a
little more water if necessary, or some light soy sauce. Taste as you go to see what’s needed;
if you need to add a lot more water, another stock cube probably won’t go
amiss.
As the vegetable noodles are only thin, they
should only need a minute or so in the broth.
Dish up and sprinkle over the garnish
ingredients.
I served this with some thai crackers and it
was delicious.
You can use pretty much any veg you have
knocking about for this recipe. It
also works well with chicken and prawns.
This fortified us for a trip to the pub to watch the Irish spanking the Italians, and the wretched French team somehow beating Scotland at the death. As things stand, it would still be possible, I believe, for France to win the Six Nations. Let's hope that doesn't happen, because it would be a travesty; Huget would have won all by himself.
Anyhow, after the rugby, we came home for a spot of pasta.
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| Rocket and blue cheese pasta
Rocket and blue cheese pasta
Feeds two
Pop your pasta on to boil according to packet
instructions.
Dice the onion, mushrooms and courgette and
fry in olive oil with the crushed garlic until the onion is translucent.
Add the tomato pastes and stir. If the sauce is too thick, add a little
water to loosen it.
When the pasta is done, drain it badly so
some of the cooking water is transferred when you add the pasta to the sauce.
Stir until the pasta is well coated, and take
off the heat.
Stir through the rocket and the blue cheese
(you’ll want to break it up before you put it in).
Dish up and top with the parmesan, chili oil
and plenty of black pepper.
FH will be up on Monday with a Mexican feast. Tomorrow we are going for a Sunday lunch at FH's brother's girlfriend's mum's house. We decided when we began this veggie nonsense, that we will eat whatever we're given when we go round to other people's houses, so we may well be back on the meat tomorrow. I can't tell you how much I'm hoping that it's going to be pork...
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