Fried Rice with Tuna Fish and Scallions

Leftover rice from my Tahdig dish comes to life again in the pan with canned tuna.

A scallion oil starts the dish. I used a cooking hack from "Cooking with Mikey". He made fried rice and separated the egg and dropped the egg yolk in the cold rice and mixed it. The egg white is cooked in the pan and and broken up in to the finished rice. 

That is a great hack. I will use it again.

The fried rice stays crispy and has separated well. The egg yolk just helps to enriche tge rice and adds more color.

Recipe for 1:

1 cup leftover crispy cold rice, 1 egg

1 tbsp rapeseed oil, 1 tsp sesame oil

2 scallions, 1 can tuna fish, parsley

Salt, pepper, Kewpie mayo  Gochugaru hot pepper flakes

Separate the egg and stir the egg yolk in the cold rice. Start with the scallion oil. Now in with the rice. That will take a couple of minutes. Make a clear spot in the middle and put the tuna flaked in. Let it get hot and season well. 

Push everything to the side and fry the egg white. Break it up and stir it with the rice.

Finish with parsley and top the bowls with Kewpie mayo.

 

Pork Roast Provence Style

 Sunday is a day for a pork roast. The following days are for leftovers.

Recipe:

650 g pork neck without bones

6 cloves of garlic, 5 sage leaves, 1 rosemary sprig, 3 stalks of oregano, 1 tbsp medium hot mustard, 4 tbsp rapeseed oil, salt and pepper

1 large onion, 200 g tomatoes, 1 red bell pepper, 10 green pitted olives, 40 g capers, 400 ml tomato passata, 1 tsp smoked paprika

Preheat the oven 170 C fan.

Cut the garlic in strips. Take a knife and cut slits in the pork neck. Stick garlic strips in. 

Heat up an oven proof pan and add some oil. Brown the meat on all for sides and take it out. 

Cut all other veggies and start with onion and the leftover garlic in the pan. After a couple of minutes, add all other veggies and give them 3 min. Season and add smoked paprika.

Pour the passata in and add 100 ml water.

In a high bowl, blend fresh herbs with mzstard, oil and salt and pepper. Brush the pork on all sides with it and set it on the veggie sauce.

Stick in the oven for 90 min.

Serve with ever kind of side you like. I used bread dumplings from a jar. A start-up presented them at the German version of the British Dragons Den - Höhle der Löwen.

They buy up the bread from bakeries, that was unsold.

Tahdig or Iranian crispy Rice

A challenge for a cold and foggy November day. 

My expectations were high. A couple of years ago my friend and I made this in a special rice cooker for Persian rice. The rice cooker did the work and the rice crust came out well. Put I wanted to make it in a pot the traditional way.

As always, lot of different recipe options to choose from. Some just prepare the rice with a crust. Some cover the bottom of the pot with Lavash bread. Others use potato slices. Some mix a bit of the rice with yogurt and saffron water. 

I choose a bit of two options and waited for the fail or the success.

10 saffron pieces, crushed with a pestle and mortar, with 4 tbsp boiling water in a small cup. Cover and let it sit for 1 hour.

Cut the potatoes in 3 mm thick slices. 

Wash the Basmati at least 3 times. Put it with a good tsp of salt into a lot of boiling water and cook it for 8 min. Drain.  Take away 1/4 of the rice and mix it with 2 tbsp Greek yogurt and 3 tsp saffron water. 

Put enough rapeseed oil in thr pot to cover the bottom. Lay out the potato slices and start to fry them. When one sid3 is brown, turn them and pour a bit more saffron water on top. Place the yellow rice on top. Press down a bit. Place the other rice on top. With a spoon, make 5 holes. Sprinkle more saffron water over the rice and a good dash of oil.reduce the heat to low and cover the pot with a lid. After 30 min, take a kitchen towel and stick it under the lid. Cook 10 more minutes. Take it off the heat and let it rest 5 min.

With a knife, cut around the edge of the pot. Take a plate and turn the pot over.

I would call it a success. The potatoes wete crispy, the top layer of the rice too. Tge shite rice was very fluffy.

I ate mine with leftover Chorizo and smoked pumpkin stew.

I am looking forward to 2 stir fried rice dishes this week.

Ingredients list:

2 rice cooker cups Basmati rice

Salt, 10 Saffron strings, 4 tbsp boiling water

2 potatoes, 2 - 3 tbsp Greek yogurt,

4 tbsp rapeseed oil

Chorizo in smokey Pumpkin Stew

Add a little bit of liquid Hickory smoke to a dish and it changes into the next level.

I wanted a vegetable stew with the main part of a Hokkaido pumpkin. But lots of other vegetables should play a part too. 

The protein was a Spanish Chorizo sausage. There came the idea of smoked paprika and the step up with liquid Hickory smoke.   

Recipe for 3:

200 g Chorizo

1,2 kg Hokkaido pumpkin

1 thick celeriac slice, 1 carrot, 1 shallot onion, 3 spring onions, 5 cloves of garlic, 1 green chili, 1 red bell pepper, parsley

1 small can pimiento rojo, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 2 tbsp smoked paprika, 4 drops liquid Hickory smoke

Salt, pepper, 1 beef stock cube, 800 ml water

Get rid of the Chorizo skin. Cut the sausage in bite size chunks.

Cut up the pumpkin and take the seeds out. Since this one is edible with the skin, season it with salt and pepper and brush it with olive oil. The same with the carrot and celeriac. 

Put them in the ovem at 170 C fan for 30 min

Chop the remaining veggies. In a soup pot start with the Chorizo. You will need no additional oil. Browing the sausage releases red oil. Take the sausage out.

In the red oil sweat the fresh veggies until soft. Add tomato paste and pimiento rojo and drizzle Smoke and smoked paprika in. Add salt and pepper.

Add water and stock cube and bring to a boil. Now chop the oven veggies and aff them to the soup. Place the sausage chunks back in and bring again to a boil. Check the seasoning and the smoke amount. Finish with parsley.

Enoki and Shimeji Mushrooms with short Pasta

Fresh Mushrooms are an often used ingredient in my kitchen. A combination with pasta is easy to cook on a midweek meal.

I used Kritharaki pasta. But the pasta was made in a Pasta factory in the Odenwald. About 100 km south east of where I live. I visited the factory with my friend a while ago. I stocked up on all kinds of pasta. The Kritharaki was one of them. 

The mushrooms this time were from the large Asian supermarket in town. Very fresh and tasty. I bought some good quality Japanese style soy sauce too. And stocked up on my Korean ingredients.

recipe for 2:

100 g Enoki and 100 g Shimeji Mushrooms

225 g Kritharaki Pasta

1 onion, 1 spring onion, 1 Chinese bulb garlic, 1 green chili, salt and pepper

4 tbsp butter, 4 tbsp Japanese shoyu (soy sauce), parsley

Cook the pasta in salted water. It will take a bit longer than regular pasta. Keep an eye on tthem

In a bit of butter saute onions, garlic and chili. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the mushrooms and cook them a couple of minutes. Add the remaining buttter and soy sauce.

Drain the pasta and add some pasta water to the sauce. Mix well and finish with parsley.

 

Pea Soup with Blue Cheese Cream

A package of French Rondele cream blue cheese d'Aveyron was sitting in my fridge from my last grocery haul in France. It was near its expiration date. 

That was a good call for an idea for a pea soup that was on one of the many newspaper clippings my friend gave me. But that recipe just gave me a push to develop something out 

Frozen peas are a staple, the other veggies came from my fridge drawer. I used a beef stock cube to add some more flavour in the soup. And I had some frozen dill, that was ready to be used.

Fresh grated nutmeg boosted the taste. 

Recipe for 3:

1 1/2 cup frozen peas

1 large carrot, 1 parsley root, 1 piece of leek, 2 spring onions, 1 Chinese garlic bulb

750 ml water, 1 beef stock cube, 1 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp milk, 1 tbsp cream,

150 g blue cheese  cream, dill

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice

Defrost the peas and take 50 g away for later.

Chop the veggies and start them in s pot with oil. Season with salt and pepper. After 6 min, add water and beef stock cube. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat and simmer for 10 min.

Add the peas and cook 5 min more. Put the soup in a blender and mix it. Back in the pot, add the whole peas and reheat and add nutmeg and lemon.

Mix the cream cheese with milk and cream and spoon it on top of the soup in the individual bowls. Add dill and serve.

 

 

Taco's

It is a mess to eat them!

I bought a package of hard taco shells. It included a bag of spicemix with lots of cumin and a bag of tomato sauce. Preparing it like the directions of the backside of the package said, sounded boring. Just add 2 tomatoes and some iceberg lettuce.

The dish needed a little more veggies.

Ingredients:

500 g mixed beef and pork mince, Taco shells

2 spring onions, 2 garlic cloves, 1 carrot, 1/2 red bell pepper, 2 tomatoes

Taco seasoning pack, Taco tomato sauce, 1 tsp oil

Salt, pepper, shredded cheese, 1 avocado, 1 chicory, 5 tsp Greek yogurt

Chop the veggies and start with the mince. When the mince has got a good color, toss in the veggies and give them 6 more minutes. Now in with the seasoning package. Stir well and add the tomato sauce.

Put the taco shells in the oven to warm up. Peel the avocado, put some salad leaves in the shells on the bottom. Spoon the mince meat mix in, add avo, yogurt und cheese.

Have lots of napkins on the table and were an apron or a bib :-)