Green tea and fish = delish!

I dabbled a little in the kitchen tonight. Ben wanted something seafood-y. I obliged. It's quick and easy to cook and generally quite tasty. The only downside is the price of seafood in Australia; but that is a completely different story. Anyway, I thought that I might as well share the little recipe tweak I came up with so that other fish-om-nom lovers can enjoy too.

Green tea-infused honey-soy salmon

You will need:

2x 160g salmon (I like skin-on for the crispness)

1/4cup soy sauce

2Tbs sake

3Tbs honey

1tsp sesame oil

1tsp green tea powder

What you need to do:

First off, you are going to want to consider the proximity of your smoke detector to your stove-top. If you think that this may be too close, I hope you have the fire department and police on speed-dial so you can continuously inform them about your "faulty" detector. OR!! You can get some rice-bran oil for cooking because is creates less smoke while cooking at high temperatures... I'd choose the latter. I speak from experience... Our smoke detector enjoys telling my neighbourhood that I am, indeed, cooking with oil.

1. So, add some rice-bran oil into a pan and turn on the heat. Get the oil to cover the base of the pan nicely before you place anything in there. When you tilt the pan to coat the surface, the oil will "run a little like water" - that's when you know its hot enough, that and the ssssSSSSSSSSsssssssssss noise you may start hearing. Add the salmon, skin-side down. Cook on high-medium heat for 1 minute. Turn the heat to medium.

 

2. In the meantime, combine the other ingredients into a small pouring jug. Mix well to combine and keep nearby. Turn the salmon over and cook on medium-low heat. I prefer my salmon to be really pink to near-raw when I cook. If you prefer it well and truly dead, cook for longer than 2 minutes. This will all depend on the thickness of the salmon you have but if you get the 160g cutlets then 2 minutes is plenty.

Green tea powder

Nothing to look at, but it'll taste really good!

3. Take salmon off the pan, onto a plate and cover to keep warm. Pour or wipe (carefully) some of the oil out of the pan then add the green tea mixture. It'll bubble and sizzle for a little, keep stirring it and it should thicken just a little. Add your salmon to the pan and coat it in the sauce. Plate up the salmon and pour the remaining green tea sauce over the salmon and any accompaniments you're having with it (I have some cooked ramen noodles and steamed greens).

It's messy. I don't care. I'm hungry!

Itadakimasu!

Enjoy!

Sunshine, cuppycakes and RAINBOWS

I forgot what brought this on, but I had a hankering for the happiness only a child can experience with colours and food... so I brainstormed and concluded "anything that looks like its packed with sparkles, unicorns, rainbows, sugar and tartrazine is generally what children want their happiness made from". Combining cupcakes and rainbows had the desired effect. So... another recipe to try out that's fun and tasty and has the tooth-rotting equivalence of a sugary Chernobyl!

Rainbow vanilla cupcakes

Ingredients (~ 24 cupcakes OR 12 muffin-sized cupcakes ;P)

150g softened butter
300g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
400g self raising flour
250ml milk
4 eggs
food colouring... however many you like (I limit it to 5 at the most: red, yellow, green, blue and purple)

1) Lay out a cupcake/muffin tin and line 12 or 24 of the moulds with paper cupcake cups and set aside. Combine sugar and butter in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Add vanilla extract and eggs. Mix well.
2) Add the flour and gently mix, adding the milk gradually to the mixture. Make sure that there are no flour or butter lumps... (those are gross in any cake/baked good).

3) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

4) Separate batter evenly into 5 (or however many) bowls for each individual colour you wish to make your rainbows with. In each batter bowl add a few drops of the colour you desire and stir it in with a teaspoon (each bowl will need its own teaspoon). Divide each coloured batter bowl amongst the cupcake cups, approx. 2 teaspoons of each colour -layered- per cupcake cup.
5) Place the tray in the oven for 25mins or until cupcakes are cooked through - poking a wooden skewer or toothpick in the centre of the cupcake should come out clean when the cupcake is cooked. Place on a cooling rack for 5 minutes before removing from the tin.

Enjoy eating Sunshine and Happiness!!

Sadistic streak

It may be a little sadistic, but I rather enjoy torturing gingerbread men by dunking their heads in a mug of coffee or hot chocolate, then watching their icing faces melt away as they realise the true horror of their predicament. It is probably on par with lining up gummi bears and tearing the head off one while the others watch on. Playing with your food is acceptable!

Ok, so the compliments I received for my gingerbread cookies have spurred me to pop the recipe up for everyone to try out.


You will need the following for ~50 cookies

• 250g butter, at room temperature
• 200g sugar
• 1/2 - 1 cup golden syrup
• 2 eggs, separated
• 4 cups plain flour
• 2 tbs ground ginger
• 1-2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
  
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• additional flour for rolling dough

(1) Beat butter and sugar together with an electric mixer (easier, trust me - unless you have really sturdy wrists). This mixture should be creamy; add the syrup and egg yolks. Mix well.
(2) In a separate bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and bicarb. Gradually add to the syrup mixture, stirring with a wooden spoon. The mixture should become dough-like and will leave the bowl easily without sticking.
(3) Lightly flour a clean surface and place dough, knead it until it's smooth (don't clean the floured surface, you'll use it again). Roll into a ball, flatten to make a disc and wrap in clingwrap. Place in fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Icing ingredients

• 200g icing sugar
• food colouring (red and green)
• egg whites left from gingerbread recipe
  

(4) In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180°C. Get the egg whites and combine with 200g icing sugar. Separate icing sugar into however many colours your are wanting - one white, one green and one red etc. Leave one aside. In the others, add the desired food colours (8 drops) for a vibrant red or green. Cover each container with clingwrap and refrigerate.
(5) Collect the dough from fridge, and add more flour to surface if necessary. Roll dough to .5cm (5mm) thickness and use shaped cookie cutters for desired effect. (I found that taking 1/4 of the dough at a time and rolling it was easier and less messy).
(6) Place cut-out cookies on baking paper in 2 trays (I had to use 3), spacing them about 2-3cm apart (otherwise you end up with a MONSTROSITY). Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until they're browned considerably. Take them out at 10 mins and they'll be soft cookies, leave them in a little longer and they'll be a little softer than gingersnaps. Leave on a rack to cool.
(7) Spoon icing into a piping bag (or if you're a genious, get a ziplock bag, spoon into a corner, twist the bag to seal the icing in and carefully snip the corner). Decorate!!