Mmm, I'm dribbling just thinking about this Indonesian / Malaysian delight. I made tons of the spice paste and we've had it twice this week without any complaints at the repetition. Whoever gave this dish to the world was a culinary genius and great pie philanthropist. Sadly, as that hero's name is lost to history, I will instead thank Rick Stein for his version of it, which forms the basis of this dinner.
It does take a little while to do all the chopping for the paste, and shallots always make me cry, so it's well worth making up a big batch and either freezing it for long term storage or popping it in the fridge and using it up over a month.
The paste
Heaped teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 nutmeg (grated)
Handful of peanuts
1 tsp sesame seeds
60g chopped shallots
25g chopped fresh ginger
40g chopped fresh galangal
1 tsp turmeric
3 lemongrass stalks, chopped up finely
20g chopped garlic
2 ordinary red chillies
2 really hot chillies (like birds eye, I used dried)
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp palm sugar
Juice of half a lime
1 tsp salt and 3 tbsp oil
I ended up having to add a tiny little bit of water just to get the mini-processor going, but it smoothed up perfectly after that. This is enough paste for 8 portions so, if you're cooking for two then use 1/4 of the paste, for four then 1/2 and so on.
The amounts below feed two people.
The dinner
Get a cup of rice on to cook, it doesn't really matter what kind you use. I used brown jasmine rice and it worked well.
Blanch a large handful of green beans by boiling them for a few minutes until cooked but still pretty firm, then holding them under cold water until cool. Also hard-boil a couple of eggs, to use as a topping later on.
Prepare a carrot cut into batons, a few sliced shallots, some garlic cloves and a couple of chillies. You'll also need a pack of prawns and/or a couple of peices of chicken, cut up into bitesized peices (thigh, breast, leg... it doesn't matter). Leftovers from a roast is fine too.
Get a spash of oil on to heat up and, if the prawns and/or chicken are raw, cook them through and put to one side. Add the carrots, shallots, garlic and chillies to the pan and cook for a few minutes before adding 1/4 of the spice paste. Cook for a couple more minutes then add the green beans, a big squeeze of tomato puree, a tbsp palm sugar and 2 tbsp soy sauce.
Lastly add the rice, prawns and/or chicken and make sure everything is well coated with the spicy mixture before adding a good handful of sliced spring onion. Serve up in bowls, topped with chopped egg, sliced cucumber and crushed peanuts.
Mmm, gravy. You could use granules. You could use a pot or sachet from the supermarket. You could rely on deglazing the pan with stock made from a cube. But this is christmas and the absolute best thing to have on the table is lots and lots of rich, deeply flavoured, piping hot gravy, made from scratch (and from happy birds).
Hopefully, you've got some giblets from your goose / chicken / turkey / other christmas birdie. Take the liver out and put aside, you can eat it separately pan fried on toast but it makes gravy bitter so don't include it (it looks like this).
Along with the giblets, put a few chicken wings, necks or even just old carcasses, into a large saucepan. Most butchers will sell you wings and necks for gravy, abel and cole also sells them, I also keep a load of bones in the freezer for use in stocks.
To these, add a quartered onion, a couple of bay leaves, some parsley stalks, a couple of broken carrots, a couple of broken celery sticks and about 10 peppercorns. Cover with cold water (a couple of pints / a litre) and pop on the hob. Bring to the boil then turn down and simmer for a good couple of hours. Keep tasting it, and don't take it off the heat until it has reduced down and has a good flavour (remembering that there's no salt in it yet though, so don't expect it to taste "finished").
Strain it into a jug and either skim off the fat or use a fat separator jug - I found one in the kleeneze catalogue and found it really useful. Leave it to cool and pop in the fridge, covered with clingfilm, until ready to make your gravy.
When you get your bird out of the oven and put it aside to rest, pop the roasting tray on the hob and add the stock to it (if it's been in the fridge it will be jellified, that's a good thing!). To this add a slosh of wine (red or white, your choice) and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly. Get it bubbling and burn off the booze, scraping the bottom of the tin to get all the caramelised bird juices into the mix. Result = awesome gravy.
Serve piping hot in a really twee gravy boat.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
This is a great use of leftover roast pork but you could easily use a fresh cut if you wanted, just pre-cook it in a frying pan. The inspiration for this came from Rick Stein's Eastern Odyssey.
First get together, in a large saucepan, heaped tablespoons of dried shrimp, palm sugar, chopped ginger, a load of garlic and one star anise.
Add a pint of hot vegetable or chicken stock and bring up to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently while you pre-cook the noodles and prepare the vegetables.
Boil the kettle and get your chosen noodles on to cook; I used standard flat noodles that you can pick up at Asian supermarkets and some mainstream ones. When they are cooked, drain them and run cold water over them to stop them overcooking. Portion them out into the bottom of a deep bowl or bowls.
Slice up your vegetables, use whatever you have to hand. I had the following knocking about which were perfect for this: a red pepper, a chinese cabbage, a carrot and some chestnut mushrooms. You can also chop your leftover pork into strips at this point.
Season the soup mixture with light and dark soy sauce and nam pla (fish sauce), then drop the vegetables in to cook, along with the pork to heat through. When they are cooked to your liking, add a finely diced red chilli, sliced spring onion and some chopped coriander. Ladle into the bowls, on top of the noodles, and enjoy.
I've seen a lot of these saboro recipes but this is the first time I've ever attempted to make one, again this is from the "Just Bento" cookbook. It tasted really good, I think the only thing that could have made it better is if I had one of those rice machines on a timer, so that the rice was fresh that morning instead of having sat in the fridge overnight.
There are four toppings to this one - the flavoured carrot batons are used as separators between the other three, which are basically vegetable, egg and meat.
First, cook up your rice so that it has time to cool before you come to pack the bento. All of the items below are enough for two portions.
Carrot Soboro
Cut two fresh carrots into little batons and simmer until cooked in 8 tbsp of dashi (or ordinary fish stock), 2 teaspoons of mirin, 2 teaspoons of shoyu (Japanese soy sauce), plus a sprinkle of sugar and a pinch of salt to taste. Put to one side to cool down.
Green Vegetable Soboro
I had peas, the book suggests green beans, I suspect pretty much any green veg would work. I simmered them in the same liquid mixture as for the carrots.
Egg Soboro
Beat two eggs with a teaspoon of sugar, 2 teaspoons of sake and salt to taste. Cook just like scrambled egg, except make sure that it is completely cooked through and dry - you don't want any under cooked egg going in tomorrow's lunchbox.
Chicken Soboro
I took the meat off a chicken leg to make this, which was sufficient for two people. You just need to poach the little peices of chicken with a tablespoon of chopped ginger in a liquid mix of: 2 tbsp sake, 2 tbsp mirin, 4 tbsp dashi (or fish stock), 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sugar and salt to taste.
When everything is cooked through, put each dish to one side and leave until cold. Then you can layer each bento box first with a quarter of the rice, then a quarter each of the peas, chicken and egg, separated with the carrot batons. Repeat for a second layer.
In order to make sure that the pretty layers didn't get all mixed up on the way to work, I used old egg boxes laid on top of greaseproof paper to keep everything in place.
