Zucchini, Prawns and Glass Noodles

A lot of Asian food is characterized but big bold flavours – spicy, hot, sweet and sour but sometimes I just want to consume simple home cooked dishes which use a few ingredients to create a dish with clean flavours in that the dish emphasizes the natural taste of the ingredients used. This is a home style dish that I really enjoy eating, it’s very easy and quick to cook, something that I can put together under 30 minutes after work to enjoy a simple but tasty meal. This dish is all about the sweetness of cooked zucchini and prawns uniting together and balanced with a little salt/pepper and oyster sauce, with the addition of glass noodles to provide some texture and soak up the sauce.


Ingredients


• 1 zucchini
• 7-8 prawns, shelled/deveined and diced
• handful of glass noodles
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• salt
• ground white pepper
• oyster sauce

(grabbing a handful of glass noodles)

(diced prawns)

Method
Soak the glass noodles in a bowl of lukewarm water until they are soft (15-20 minutes). Drain.

Peel the zucchini and chop into chips. Soak the zucchini in a bowl of water for 10 minutes (when you peel the zucchini it has a little bit of a slimey texture on the outside, by soaking the chopped pieces of zucchini first before cooking, it clears away the slim and also some of the bitterness). Drain.


Heat up a little oil in wok and fry the garlic for a few seconds until fragrant, than add in the prawns and cook until it starts to turn pink. 

Add in the zucchini and add in about 1 cup of water. Cover and cook for around 2 minutes for the zucchini to soften. 

Then add in a pinch of salt and white pepper, and a little oyster sauce (about 1 ½ tablespoons). Fry everything together and then add in the glass noodles and stir fry for 1 minute for the noodles to cook through and soak up the sauce. 

Serve with rice.

Note: Don’t overcook the zucchini! You want the zucchini to be cooked but still have a bite and not be all mushy which is what will happen if you overcook it.

Vietnamese Nem - ham gelatinise treat

[Blog update 6 May 2011 - Thanks to a blog comment from Chuynh of lovingpho I now know the actual name for this dish - it's called "nem" not "nam". I always have trouble finding the correct English translation for the pronunciation of dishes]


I remember my mum and aunty making these morsels of pork goodness all the time when I was a kid. I loved eating them on their own or sliced in a sandwich or roll. We call it ‘nam’ in Vietnamese, I’m not sure what that translates into English or if there is an English name for this dish. It’s basically chopped up ham with a gelatinise texture containing a balance of sweet and sour tastes, hits of garlic, and heat from peppercorns and chilli. The method of preparation allows the pork to be preserved and consumed over a week or two so I think that this puts in the vein of charcuterie except that store bought ham is used, the kind used for sandwiches in your school lunchbox. So it’s not very fancy, I think that buying this ham is a cheats way of preparing a quick snack and this is what mums do. Mums are good at finding shortcuts to preparing delicious food.


I think that you could prepare this in a different way from scratch where you cure your own ham instead of getting the store bought variety. After my Mondo cooking class on charcuterie I would be keen to try this one day. But here I present to you how I my mum makes it and how I have always consumed it.


Ingredients


• 1 kg ham shoulder, finely diced

• ½ kg shredded pork skin, washed and finely diced 

The only place that I know of where you can buy shredded pork skin is at Ton Sian Groceries (155 Palmerston Street, North Perth). This shredded pork is used to prepare bì (mixture of thinly shredded pork and thinly shredded pork skin tossed with powdered toasted rice/garlic) which is usually served with the dish Cơm tấm, a popular Vietnamese broken rice dish with grilled pork. The pork skin won’t be on display to buy, you’ll have to ask the shop owner and he’ll get you some from out the back.

• ~ 1.5 whole garlic bulbs (around 20 cloves), finely diced

  (can add more garlic if desired)

• ~ ¾ cup sugar
• 1 ¼ cup rice vinegar
• ~ 1-2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
• slices of fresh chilli
(amount of peppercorns and chilli added depends on desired hotness)

Method


Combine the rice vinegar and sugar together into a large pot and simmer together until the sugar dissolves. Add in garlic and pork skin, stir together to combine, then add in ham.

Simmer for around 10-15 minutes, stirring continuously to combine all the ingredients together (the pork skin will liquefy). While stirring, taste for flavour, there should be a balance of sweet and sour, can add more sugar or rice vinegar as desired. 


Then transfer the ham mixture into a large bowl to cool for around15-20 minutes. Add in whole black peppercorns and stir to combine into ham mixture.

Place spoonfuls of the ham mixture onto pieces of foil, top with slices of fresh cut chilli, wrap up and refrigerate for 2-3 hours until set (the pork skin will solidify the pieces of ham). *Alternatively, the ham mixture can be spooned into a container to 1inch thickness, topped with chilli, refrigerated and then cut into slices.

Eat pieces whole or cut into thinner slices.

Savoury Cupcakes for Ladies Picnic

Every year my friends and I get together with all our lady friends for a picnic at Hyde Park (North Perth).


This year the third annual ladies picnic was held on Good Friday 22 April. The picnic is generally held earlier on in the year in February or March but so much stuff has been happening that the date kept getting pushed back and with the never ending hot and dry spell in Perth at the moment, there was still some fine picnicking weather coming into April. The weather last Friday was perfectly nice and sunny, in the low thirties.


The picnics are usually filled with so many sweet baked goods that I think I use up my quota of sugar intake for the month within one afternoon. With the ladies picnic coinciding with Easter this year as well, I was wary of the potential for people to lapse into a sugar coma with a five day long Easter weekend of sugar intake to account for.


I wanted to bring something non-sweet to the picnic this time and found a recipe for a savoury cupcake from the Globe and Mail – a recipe for a rosemary and roasted-pepper cornbread cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I liked the fact that these looked deceptively like real cupcakes complete with frosting and all, but when you bite into them you get a mouthful of herbs, roasted capsicum and corn, rounded off with cheese. It’s a surprising and really tasty combination of ingredients and everyone at the picnic really enjoyed these cupcakes. Here is the recipe.


Ingredients


Cupcakes:
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup creamed corn
• 200g  sour cream
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• ½ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup yellow cornmeal
• ¼ cups granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon coarse black peppercorn
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
• 1 bunch chopped chive (approximately ¼ cup)
• ½ cup roasted red peppers, patted dry and coarsely chopped

Icing:
• 1 cup cream cheese
• ½ cup chevre
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped red bell pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped chives

The cornmeal was quite hard to find. I went to the usual suspects – Woolworths, Coles, IGA and none of them sold cornmeal, and when I asked Fresh Provisions if they had any cornmeal I was taken to the polenta section and told that this is what I was looking for. I have never used cornmeal before but I was sure that polenta and cornmeal were not the same thing. My last stop was Antonio’s Continental Store and I finally found some cornmeal. The interesting thing was that when I told people at the picnic that I had used cornmeal in the cupcakes, people would respond with “oh you mean polenta”. It appeared that some people mistake polenta for cornmeal and had used polenta in the place of cornmeal in recipes. Is this a common mistake? Is there a difference? Cornmeal is much finer than polenta.

Method


Preheat oven to 350 F (about 176.67 degrees celsius). In a large bowl combine eggs, creamed corn, sour cream and oil. In separate bowl combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add dry mixture to wet mixture and blend evenly. Stir in the parsley, green onions, rosemary and the roasted red peppers.

(Was a bit concerned about the addition of a whole tablespoon of black pepper as generally I’d be adding a pinch here and here, but it was the right amount for the cupcakes and not overwhelming.)

Pour batter into greased muffin tins and bake until tops are golden brown, approximately 12 -14 minutes (use a skewer to test if the cupcakes are cooked). Remove from oven and let rest before removing from tin.

To make the icing, blend cream cheese and chevre together until smooth. Gently spread a little icing on each cooled cupcake. Garnish with red peppers and chives.

There were lots of baked goods at the picnic including a prototype wedding cake my friend was developing for her sister’s wedding that we got to sample and the classic flourless orange almond cake.

The sugar intake was very high for the afternoon but we managed to balance it with a few physical games including Duck Duck Goose, Wink Murderer…and What’s the time Mr Wolf?  

What’s the time Mr Wolf?  

What’s the time Mr Wolf?  

What’s the time Mr Wolf?  

Dinnertime!