The Accidental Vegetarian / Spiced Eggs

I like cooking Indonesian food, but when I moved to the UK last year I had some trouble finding the spices I would normally use for that type of food.
One ingredient I missed in particular was sambal, which I was used to buying in normal supermarkets. So I improvised - fundamentally, sambal is just a hot sauce made with chillies and salt, so I went to my corner supermarket for chillies and salt. Another two were (dried) djinten and laos, which I replaced with (fresh) ginger and lemongrass. They are not exactly the same, but in this way, I brought back the food to its essence. So, here's my version of Sambal Goreng Telor - made with fresh replacement ingredients.


Ingredients for 10 eggs
10 large free-range eggs
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger root
1 fresh stalk of lemongrass
As many chillies as you can handle (I would use 2 medium hot red chillies)
Salt
Sugar
1 tin of coconut milk
1 tbsp tomato paste
5 medium onions
5 cloves of garlic
Sunflower oil
Water

Put the eggs in a pan, add cold water and bring to a boil. From the moment of turning on the heat, cook the eggs for 7 minutes (they'll be quite soft boiled). Hold them under cold running water and peel them, taking care (they're soft!). Set aside. Finely chop the onions, the garlic, ginger and chillies (leave out the seeds if you want to make sure it's not too hot - the real heat is in the seeds). Fry in the sunflower oil until the onions are nice and transparent. Add the coconut milk, tomato paste, lemongrass, a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt and a cup of water. The sauce should be red and a bit runny. Stir and add the boiled eggs. Let this simmer on a very low heat as long as you have time for - I love them after they've been simmering for an entire afternoon. Plate the eggs with some of the sauce spooned over.

Serve with fried rice. If you don't want an overdose of eggs (but honestly, why woudn't you?) leave out the omelette in the fried rice recipe.

The Accidental Vegetarian / Fried Rice

For me, the worst type of vegetarian dish is a dish that tries too hard. On the one hand, there's dishes that try too hard to be meaty. You can buy all sorts of rubbish vegetarian 'meat', from 'chicken' and 'ham' schnitzels to 'mince', but potatoes, veg and a veggie schnitzel never quite do the trick for me. Or, on the other side of the spectrum, there's the dishes that try too hard to be vegetarian. They mostly involve pulses and are often a sad shade of grey. They seem to scream: disgusting food is good for you!

The best type of vegetarian food is food that ends up, almost by chance, not to have any meat in it. So, tip the fake schnitzels and grey pulses in the bin and make the following dish.

Ingredients for 6 people
450 g plain white rice
1 stalk of fresh lemongrass
1 stock cube (veg)
half a white cabbage
1 small leek
2 cloves of garlic
1 inch piece of fresh ginger
(sunflower) oil

6 eggs
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp sugar

6 tbsp peanuts

Cook the rice (use the package instructions, but put the lemongrass in with the rice). Finely chop the garlic and ginger. Roughly chop the leek and cabbage. Heat the oil in a wok on medium heat, put in the garlic and ginger and about a minute after, put in the leek and cabbage. Drain the rice (keep the lemon grass in!). Now add the rice to your wok to fry it. Turn down the heat, crumble over the stock cube and put on a lid (or a piece of aluminium foil). Before serving, make sure to fish out the lemongrass stalk.
While the rice is frying, crack your eggs in a small bowl, add the soy sauce and sugar, and whisk. Heat half an inch of oil in a frying pan, add the eggs. Wait until the outer part of the omelette is nice and bubbly, then tip the sides of the omelette inwards so it's folded in three. Flip the omelette, wait another minute then transfer to a plate. Slice into 1-inch pieces.
Add the omelette to the fried rice, sprinkle over the peanuts and serve.

I personally like to serve this dish with a cucumber salad. Just dress some thinly sliced, peeled cucumber in a vinaigrette of olive oil, vinegar, fresh pepper and some sugar.

If someone compliments you for putting up a meat-free dish, smugly smile and say this was your intention all along.

Winter Salad for the Challenged

As a first course for Christmas dinner, I made a salad with winter fruits, soft cheese and crunchy almonds. (The main course was a lemon, rosemary and thyme roast chicken.) The most challenging part of cooking dinner this time was making sure all the picky eaters liked the food. At the table were a conservative potatoes&veg-type, a gluten and (cow's) milk intolerant, a vegetarian and an I-only-like-five-types-of-veg (the worst!). It all worked out though: everyone finished their plate and seemed to enjoy it!


Ingredients
1 head of romaine lettuce (or 2 baby gems)
2 pears
3 hands of dried cranberries
2 hands of almonds
50 grams of soft goat's cheese
1 large lemon
1 tbsp French mustard
olive oil
2 tbsp poppyseeds

Heat a frying pan (don't add oil). Put in the almonds and toast them until they're hot. Put aside in a bowl with the dried cranberries. Chop the lettuce, wash it, dry it. Put in a large bowl. Peel the pears and slice them into bite-sized pieces. Add to the lettuce. Crumble the goat's cheese and put it in with the lettuce and pears. Add the cranberries and almonds. Mix. Now transfer to your guests' plates.

For the dressing, whisk together the juice of the lemon, the mustard, olive oil (use a ratio of about 1:2 for the lemon juice / olive oil) and poppy seeds. Spoon the dressing over your guest's salads, to taste.

My inspiration for this salad can be found here.

Tangy Bok Choi Salad

Yesterday, we had spicy Balinese duck and garlic noodles for our third day of Christmas dinner. To add some greens, I decided to make a tangy Asian-inspired salad as a side dish. The tangy lime and fresh mango of the salad balanced the fatty duck, while the Asian flavours complimented the spices of the rest of the meal.

This salad is extremely simple. It took me about 10 minutes to prepare.

Ingredients
2 bok choi
2 chillis
1 bunch of coriander
1 ripe mango
2 limes
olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
I'd say it's cheapest to buy these ingredients at a local delicatessen, but you can find them in most supermarkets nowadays. Make sure you wash all ingredients carefully.

Chop the bok choi, slicing the green leaves in long strips and the white bits in one inch cubes. (I used all of the leaves and just a few of the stalks, to make it a nice and leafy salad. Leftover bok choi stalks can be used as a veggie side dish, or in a stir fry.) Throw away any discoloured bits. Finely slice the chilis, leaving out the seeds. Chop the coriander, slicing the leaves in half and the stalks more finely. Now, chop up your mango. (This man apparently knows a lot about mangos. I like the bit from 1:28 onwards.) Now mix the bok choi, chillies, coriander and mango.

For your salad dressing, squeeze the limes and mix the lime juice and olive oil in a 1:2 ratio. Add the soy sauce. Dress the salad and serve.