dinnerlastnight

Tom yum noodle soup

Soup can be such a great meal - made with lots of vegetables, good meat and a nice tasty broth. Soup is especially good when you have been having weather like we have been having here in Sydney. However, being early September we know there are only a couple of weeks until we have warm weather.

This soup is made up of all the good things above and is tangy and spicy. Although it is a store bought paste that makes up the broth it is very good quality. You can also whip this one up in 15 minutes too.

Ingredients: good quality tom yum ghoon paste, chicken breast, chinese spinach, small mushrooms, flat rice noodles (from any asian store), chicken stock spring onion and coriander.

Preparation:

Roughly chop the chinese spinach, spring onion and coriander. Cut the mushrooms into quarters. Slice the chicken into short strips. Heat a wok with a little peanut oil and fry the chicken until cooked through.

The flat rice noodles will most probably come as a tight roll or a number of rolls. Cut the rolls so that you get little rolls of about 1-2cms. Put these into a microwave vegetable steamer and cook for one minute while the chicken cooks. This will heat the noodles enough to separate in the hot soup.

Once the chicken is cooked through, add about a tablespoon of the tom yum paste to the wok and fry. Stir to coat the chicken, add the spinach until it starts to wilt. Add preboiled chicken stock to cover the chicken. Check taste and add more water if too strong or more paste if too weak. In a couple of deep bowls place some of the noodles on the bottom and pour over a couple of ladels of soup. Top with coriander, spring onion and mushrooms.

dinnerlastnight: 7/10

Quick tuna pasta

Rich was working late last night and I had to work at home as well... so dinnerlastnight had to be quick. Richard doesn't like tuna but considering he wasn't home to have dinner (I think he ended up having pizza or something at his desk) I could make what I like for dinner.

This is another one I used to make at Uni...it can be thrown together as quick as it takes to cook some pasta. The base tomato sauce can be kept in the fridge for a few days to whip up another quick meal.

Ingredients: italian canned tomatoes, good quality canned tuna, chilli, garlic, onion, fresh basil, dry oregano and spaghetti.

Preparation:

Throw some spaghetti into a saucepan of boiling water. In a frypan, add a little olive oil and fry some chopped garlic and chilli. When fragrant shake some dried oregano into the pan and add a can of italian tomatoes. They are better than ordinary canned tomatoes and have a much thicker sauce. Heat through until thick adding some pepper and salt if required.

Drain cooked spaghetti and add a portion to a deep bowl. Top with pasta sauce and fresh basil leaves. Have with a nice glass of red.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Spicy mixed vegetable and chicken salad

Crikey!

It has been a while since the last post - partly from being too busy with work but mostly from being overseas. I have been in Canada visiting family - Toronto and Vancover mostly with a short stopover in San Francisco. My advice in short, don't go to Canada if you are expecting a luscious array of good food and coffee. Rich and I looked long and hard for these and came up mostly lacking. In the next post I will do a quick rundown on what was on offer and some recommendations on what is worthwhile.

Part of the inspiration for this dinnerlastnight is the lack of vegetables we experienced overseas. The vegetable mainstay of North America seems to be the potato - for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everywhere in between. Our first dinner at home after the trip had to make up for our vegetable deficiency.

Ingredients for this dish were green beans, carrot, button mushrooms, rocket, garlic, birds eye chilli, broccoli, chicken breast, roma tomatoes, chilli oil, chat potatoes and spring onions.

Preparation:

Top and tail the a bit handful of green beans, slice a carrot and four or five broccoli flowerettes. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil and blanch the vegetables till tender but still crunchy. Plunge the blanched vegetables into iced water to halt the cooking process and set aside.

One of the best things you could buy is a microwave vegetable steamer. If you don't have one go out and buy one right now! You can use it to precook potatoes for the perfect baked/bbq potatoes or vegetables for salads as in this case. Throw three or four large chat potatoes into the steamer, add a little water, cover and microwave on high for five minutes. This should cook the potatoes enough to slice and still hold their shape. Slice the potatoes into discs

Marinate the cubed chicken breast in the chilli oil. Slice a clove of garlic and a birds eye chilli. Heat a little oil in a frypad and fry the garlic and chilli until fragrant. Add chicken and fry until cooked through. Once cooked throw in some sliced spring onion and toss.

In a large salad bowl place the cooked vegetables, torn rocket leaves, sliced tomato, quartered button mushrooms and chicken mixture. Toss salad with fresh cracked pepper and sea salt. Add more chilli oil if necessary and toss again. Serve with a slice of rye bread.

dinnerlastnight rating: 6/10

Chicken Burritos

dinnerlastnight fell on a Friday and after a couple of beers at work and then the pub I didn't feel like going to too much trouble with dinner - but I was ravenous. I jumped off the bus early to go to the local shopping centre to pick up some avocados, lemons and tomatoes because I had a bit of a Mexican feeling.

In the last couple of years I have really liked making Mexican. Richard says that there are no good Mexican resturants in Australia so we tend to do our own thing at home instead. Rich makes a great chicken mole (pronounced mo-lay) but is also called chocolate chicken as cocoa is one of the main ingredients. I might feature that one in a later post. We also really like huevos rancheros for breakfast.

Anyway if you are going to try this dish, make sure you use Old El Paso branded salsa (always the hot variety) and refried beans. These are the best I have tasted. I also used their large flat tortilla bread as you can keep in the cupboard to use when you need.

Ingredients for this dinnerlastnight were chicken breast, refried beans, cumin, hot salsa, tortilla bread, avocado, fresh lemon or lime, tomato, spanish onion, jalapenos, cheese and coriander. It takes about 10mins prep and 5mins to cook on the stove.

Preparation:

Start with the guacamole - scoop the flesh from two avocados into a bowl and squeeze some lemon juice over them to stop them going brown. Chop a tomato and half an onion roughly and add to the bowl. Mash the avocado mixture so you end up with a chunky consistency. Stir through chopped jalapenos to your own taste. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Slice the chicken into long thin strips and place in a bowl. Add cumin, a little oil and stir to combine. In a frypan, add half a can of refried beans and stir on low heat until thick and hot. Transfer the beans to a bowl and rinse the pan. Add some oil to the pan and when hot add the chicken. Fry until cooked through.

Now we just assembled the burritos. Lightly dry toast the bread in a frypan until hot and lay on a plate. In a strip on the bread add an amount of refried beans, chicken, guacamole, cheese, salsa and chopped coriander. Wrap the bread by first turning in one of the sides at the end of the strip of filling. Turn in one of the longer sides and keep rolling to finish your burrito - one of the ends should be open. Keep making the burritos until the mixture or the bread is all used. Serve with extra salsa if you like. The burritos will keep a couple of days if you have leftovers - a quick microwave is ok to reheat.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10

Tandoori Lamb and Greens

Sometimes you find something that is really good even though some would think it was a cop out. I don't mind a shortcut or two - a microwave, a stock cube, an ingredient from a jar...you know what I mean - I don't have the time to spend mincing spices and grinding in a mortar and pestle. This is why I want to tell you about a great spice mix in a jar which I use every now and then for a tasty Indian meal.

Sharwoods Tandoori paste is a great, quick and tasty way to create a Indian meal. You can use Chicken or Lamb with the paste - either is really tasty.

For dinnerlastnight, lamb was the meat and it was cooked on the BBQ. When we built our house we made sure that there was a gas mainline in the backyard for a BBQ. We have been at friendss houses many times when the gas has run out of the bottle it just made sense to get a constant supply for a BBQ. We can now cook anytime and not have to worry about running out of gas.

Ingredients were really simple: half a deboned leg of lamb, natural yoghurt, Sharwoods Tandoori Paste, Gai Lan (Chinese Broccoli) and garlic. I use basmati rice instead of jasmine rice all the time. If you cook it in a rice cooker it comes out the same as white rice but is low GI - or so I am told. The dish takes about 10mins prep, a 1/2 hour marination time and 1/2 hour on the BBQ.

Preparation:

Cut the half leg of lamb into 3cm slices. Cut shallow scores in the meat to let the marinade in and let it cook faster. In a bowl, mix two tablespoons of yoghurt and two of tandoori paste. Coat the lamb in the mixture and leave for a 1/2 hour. Make sure you have a hot BBQ and place the meat on the grill area.

Chop the Chinese broccoli into stalks and leaves, slice two segments of garlic and ready a small saucepan with some peanut oil. When the lamb is almost ready heat the saucepan and fry the garlic until fragrant. Add the stalks and leaves, toss in oil quickly, add a small amount of water and place lid on the saucepan. Keep on low heat until the broccoli is steamed but still crispy.

Slice lamb into strips and serve with steamed rice and vegetables.

dinnerlastnight rating: 5/10

Basil and Chilli Chicken Stir Fry

As I have mentioned in previous posts I really love chilli. Fried chilli, minced chilli, sambal, chilli flakes, hot pepper paste….any type. I like food really spicy. However, surprisingly even with three types of chilli this dish was not hot. We did get runny noses though so something must have been happening.

Now I think about it, it was because it was all of the long variety. The longer a chilli the more likely it is to be milder. Although this is not always the case which does confuse me when at my local veggie shop as I sometimes bring home fiery long chilli. Check out this guy for more info on chilli.

I used to find that the fresh chilli I purchased sat at the bottom of the crisper and went bad. I now get around this by putting the chilli in a bag in a plastic container in the freezer. The bag stops the chilli getting freezer burn and the container is convenient to keep in the door. This way you can use the chilli when you need it and it lasts for ages. Kaffir lime leaves go in this container as well as I found they had the same problem.

Ingredients for this dinnerlastnight were fresh basil, chilli oil, fresh long chilli, dried long chilli, chicken, capsicum, long beans, onion, ginger, garlic, choy sum, rice noodles (vermicelli), fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce. It is an easy wok stir fry dish which took about 5mins prep and 10mins cooking.

Preparation:

Cut half a kilo of chicken breast into chunks. Soak 4 dried long chillies in hot water until soft (about 5mins) and soak about ¼ of a 250gm pack of vermicelli in cold water for 10mins. Slice 2 long red chillies (more if you like it spicy or try birds eye chilli instead), 2 segments of garlic and a thumb of ginger. Cut a red capsicum into about 1cm by 3cm pieces, one onion into slim segments like a mandarin and half a bunch of choy sum and a handful of long beans into about the same size as the capsicum. Keep the leaves and the stalks of the choy sum separate as the leaves cook faster. Tear up about a loose cupful of fresh basic leaves.

Add about a tablespoon of peanut oil and the same of chilli oil to a hot wok. Once smoking add half the garlic and ginger till fragrant, then stir fry chicken till brown. Add the rest of the vegetables, basil, chilli, garlic, ginger and half the basil but save the choy sum leaves. Cook until the vegetables are cooked but still crispy and the chicken is cooked through. Stir in a squirt of fish sauce, a couple of lugs of oyster sauce and soy sauce. Add drained vermicelli and the choy sum leaves and stir till wilted.

Serve the stir fry in deep bowls topped with basil leaves and fried shallots. I didn't serve with rice as I had run out.

dinnerlastnight rating: 7/10