Oh, I know I should feel bad, over 5 months since my last post. If you make this dish though, I feel sure you'll forgive me. It is inexcusably bad for you but what the hell!
I first made this, gosh, around 10 years ago when I was given Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, which just goes to show that life, sometimes, imitates art. As always, I play it by ear now when I make it, but my favourite Discworld witch (Nanny is a hedonethicist too I think!) was definitely the inspiration for this filling brunch.
Ok, so the first thing you need is a big ole fillet of smoked fish. Tartrazine yellow is not a colour I associate with a tasty fish dinner, so I tend to buy the undyed variety. I understand that some fishmongers sell naturally yellowed fish (undyed but turned yellow from smoking in a certain way), if you find that then buy it for some colourful fun! Vegetarian? Try chickpeas or lentils instead, they work very nicely with the same accompaniments.
Cook a cup of rice, either the old fashioned way or using a ricebot, at the same time boil up a couple of eggs until hard boiled. When the rice is almost ready, put the fish into a deep frying pan with a half and half mix of water and milk; the liquid should come to halfway up the side of the fish.
Poach the fish, skin side down, until almost cooked through, then flip over and cook for a further couple of minutes to finish it off. The fish should be opaque, but still tender. Drain the fish and place it to one side - don't leave unattended in the presence of greedy cats.
Chop up an onion, I like purple in this because they are sweet but any will do, and a good handful of mushrooms if you have any. Aubergine or any leafy greens work with this too. Heat an obscene amount of butter, as much as you dare, in the frying pan (wiped clean) and gently fry the vegetables.
When cooked, sprinkled over a good tablespoon or more, to taste, of curry powder, plus seasoning and give it 30 seconds to heat up before adding all the rice and coating well in the aromatic buttery sauce. Finally, flake in the fish, taking care to remove any bones, and top with chopped egg.
If you can get hold of fresh wild mushrooms from somewhere, like Borough Market, during autumn and early winter then definitely make the most of it. Otherwise, a lot of shops sell them dried in little tubs or packets, which can be reconstituted in water prior to cooking.
All risottos start with the same basic essentials, or at least mine do: a diced onion and a couple of diced celery stalks, sauteed in butter and oil until soft.
Add 300g of risotto rice and stir it through, letting it get hot. From experience, it is worth forking out for the pricey arborio stuff, it cooks in half the time of the other, cheaper, short grain varieties I tried using. Slosh in a glass (or teacup) full of white wine and stir through the rice mixture until it's all been absorbed.
Keep 750ml of hot vegetable stock in a saucepan on the heat and pour the first ladleful into the rice. Keep the rice on a medium heat, at least enough to keep it at a low sizzle. Stir, stir, stir and stir again. Keep stirring. Even if your arm is about to drop off, keep gently stirring the rice.
Eventually the stock will be absorbed and you'll need to add another ladle of stock and do it all over again. I mean, don't beat it up or anything, but do keep stirring and adding stock and stirring.
After adding all the stock, the rice should be near cooked. At this stage I turn the heat down very low (or even off), put a lid on the pan and get on with the exciting part.
Pick over and clean your mushrooms, in this case we had a good few handfuls each of chanterelles, trompettes, girolles and ceps. Heat up a frying pan with a little oil and butter, with some crushed garlic. Saute the large mushrooms first, adding in the smaller ones after the chunky ones have had a bit of a start.
When the mushrooms are ready mix them into the hot rice mixture with tons of grated parmesan and chopped parsley.
If you can get hold of one (and I'm soooo lucky, my husband bought me one as a present!), grate in a lovely load of black truffle - also known as winter truffle.
Finish with some butter and freshly cracked pepper and some truffle shavings.
Teriyaki is, alongside katsu curry, one of my husband's favourite Japanese dishes. I think it's pretty popular although not many people cook it at home, perhaps because it sounds like it might be complicated, but it is really one of the simplest meals that I make.
This time I made it into bentos for lunch, but it makes a fabulous dinner as well.
I got the ratios for teriyaki sauce from Harumi Kurihara's book "Japanese Home Cooking", but as there's only two of us and this is just lunch, this is half the amount from her recipe. Pop 100ml mirin into a saucepan and heat up for a few minutes, then add 50ml shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) and 1 tbsp of caster sugar and simmer for a couple more minutes. That's it - teriyaki sauce.
De-bone a couple of chicken thighs and pan fry with just a suggestion of oil wiped around the pan. Do the skin side first and cook without moving until the skin is really nice and crispy, then flip them and cook for a few more minutes before pouring the teriyaki sauce into the pan and leaving them to gently bubble away for five or so minutes.
Put the chicken to one side to rest and keep the remaining sauce to drizzle over the chicken and rice, once they're in the bento.
Cook some rice (good instructions for stove-top steamed rice here) and a couple of vegetable sides to go with it. I've done sesame chard leaves and steamed chard stems. In the box I added a couple of cherry tomatoes and a small handful of grapes for variety and extra vitamins.
This could definitely be a bento lunch, in fact the recipe came from "The Just Bento Cookbook", but we had it for a Saturday brunch and it was perfect. The following amounts serve two people. For a vegetarian version just leave the salmon out from the salad.
First of all, get your rice on to cook (instructions for perfect short-grain rice are here) and toast up some sesame seeds. Also immerse some wakame seaweed in cold water to rehydrate.
Now mix 4 eggs, 4 tsp sugar, 2 tsp sake, 4 tsp corn flour and a large pinch of salt together in a bowl with a fork. Heat up a small frying pan over a low heat and wipe it with oil, when it's hot pour in a small amount of the egg mixture - about a quarter. Keep these omelettes fairly thin.
When the egg has set, flip the omelette over and cook for a minute on the other side before turning out onto a plate. Repeat until you have at least 4 omelettes, but you'll probably get 5 which means one to eat hot right out of the pan!
When your rice is done, turn it out into a glass bowl with a tbsp of rice vinegar. Fan the rice with one hand while turning and stirring it and the vinegar with a spatula in the other. The rice should go very sticky. Add the toasted sesame seeds and mix through, then leave to one side to cool down.
The salad is very easy to put together. Peel a cucumber and rub salt into the surface, massage it for a few minutes over the sink to firm up the flesh and season it. Then slice it into half moons.
Mix the cucumber with the drained seaweed and the smoked salmon, if using. Whisk up a splash of rice vinegar, a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, a pinch of sugar, black pepper and some shoyu (Japanese soy sauce) to taste.
When the seasoned sesame rice is relatively cool, place a large spoonful in the center of each omelette and fold around into a square. Lay down with the folds on the bottom and sprinkle over some furikake or pickled ginger. Serve with the salad.
I ripped this recipe out of some food magazine ages ago; it was on an advert for Cauldron (the tofu brand) and had been stuffed between the pages of my Malaysian cookery book. I omitted their dessicated coconut but was otherwise reasonably true to the recipe: it was really tasty.
First of all assemble the "paste" ingredients: a couple of sliced lemongrass stalks, 2 chopped red chillies, a generous tablespoon of chopped ginger, a heaped teaspoon of turmeric, one of palm sugar and a pinch of salt. Also once sliced purple onion and a few cloves of garlic.
Heat up a pan with some oil and cook the garlic and onion until translucent, then add all of the other ingredients which you've already prepared. Cook for a minute or two before adding a can of coconut milk, 125ml water, 1 tsp tamarind paste (or more if, like me, you love the stuff), 4 star anise and a cinnamon stick. I also added a load of halved chestnut mushrooms and trimmed green beans.
Simmer on a low heat while you cook the rice. Then, while the rice is on the side having its final steam, pop the tofu in to cook through. I used plain tofu and I think it would have been even better if I'd drained it and fried it first, but it was still lovely au naturel. Serve over the rice and top with fresh coriander.
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.
