Sweet Potato and Pak Choi Laksa

Adapted from Nigel Slater’s Tender (Vol.1)

 

This is a really flavourful and delicious soupy noodle dish, it looks complicated, but it is actually really easy and quick to make.

I made this with udon noodles, I love their slippery-slurpy-ness, but you could use whatever noodles you want. This is one of those meals where you cant really work out what cutlery or chopsticks you should be using, and you will inevitably get splashes of soup down your front. But it will be worth it.

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the spice paste:

1 fresh red chilli (seeds in)

2 cloves garlic

About an inch long lump of ginger

2 stalks lemongrass

Handful coriander leaves and stalks

2 tbsp sesame oil

For the soup:

1 very large or two smaller sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into large-ish chunks

2 clusters of pak choi, chop the stalks

2 spring onions, sliced

1 red pepper , sliced (optional)

600ml chicken or vegetable stock (cube or powder is fine – I used fake chicken powder)

400ml coconut milk

2tbsp Thai fish sauce (nam pla) – vegetarian/vegan option – ½ tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce (you may need a little more if you are not using fish sauce

Juice of 1 lime (throw the zest in too if you like it super lime-y)

2 portions noodles – egg, rice or udon, cooked if they need pre-cooking

Handful fresh coriander leaves

Method

Roughly chop all of the ingredients for the spice paste, and them blitz them to a paste using an immersion blender, food processor, or pestle and mortar.

Put a large saucepan on a medium heat and dry-fry the spice paste for a minute or two. Add the stock and coconut milk and bring to the boil. Add the sweet potato and simmer for 10-15 minutes, and then add the nam pla (if using), soy sauce, lime juice and pak choi stalks. Simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the sweet potato is cooked through, and then add the pak choi leaves and noodles. Stir together until the leaves are wilted and the noodles are warmed through, and serve in deep bowls with fresh coriander leaves scattered on the top.

Coriander and peanut pesto, for noodles

Noodle pesto!! This is definitely one of the most exciting things I have come across in a while. This recipe is my invention, but was inspired by Niki Segnit’s coriander pesto concept in the wonderful Flavour Thesaurus, under the paragraph on coriander/peanut. The Flavour Thesaurus is a truly wonderful book and I highly recommend it as gifts for creative foodie people.

This Vietnamese style pesto has the same wonderful consistency and richness of regular pesto, but with a flavour profile that works wonderfully with noodles. It would also be a good way of using up fresh coriander – it always seems to come in bunches that are just impossible to get through before they go soggy and soapy. Just make a load of pesto and freeze it.

When cold this pesto will be a little more solid than regular pesto because the coconut oil solidifies, but don’t fret - it will absolutely behave like pesto in all its wondrous ways once you introduce it to some hot noodles.

Ingredients

Makes enough for 2-4 portions of noodles (depending on how you like your noodle:pesto ratio)

1 handful roasted salted peanuts

2 cm lump fresh ginger, roughly chopped

1 medium sized fresh red chilli, roughly chopped – don’t remove the seeds

1 handful fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped

2 handfuls fresh coriander, roughly chopped (pick out particularly woody bits of stem)

3 tbsp coconut oil, melted.

Method

You could, I suppose, just put everything but the oil in a food processor, blitz to pesto consistency and then add the oil. But here is how I made mine:

Pound the peanuts in a mortar and pestle until they form a coarse crumb, then add the chilli and ginger and pound to a dry-ish paste. Add this to a large bowl with the herbs and blitz a bit with an immersion blender. Add 2 tbsp of oil and blitz again until it looks more or less like pesto. Stir in the rest of the oil, taste and see if it needs extra salt (depending on how salty the peanuts were). You might want to add a bit more oil too.

 

What I then did with it

I boiled up some soba noodles with frozen peas, and stirred in some of the noodle pesto, and a splash of lime juice. This was then mixed into a salad with quorn fake chicken pieces, shredded lettuce, some peanuts, chopped mint and coriander. And it was delicious.

Summer Rolls with Pineapple-Chilli Dipping Sauce

These Vietnamese/Thai-inspired summer rolls are much more than just a raw greaseless spring roll – fresh, healthy, crunchy, totally delicious and perfect for summer. There are a lot of different recipes for these, and this one is my own invention, based a little bit on a Nigella Recipe, and a little bit on a Nigel Slater recipe.

Rice noodles, coriander and mint form the basis of the summer roll, and on top of that I chose to just use simple green and white things, but you can use whatever you want really. Other commonly used fillings include little lettuce leaves, shredded carrot, radish, or cooked prawns (so I hear). As the summer rolls are transparent, all I would advise is to make sure that you choose fillings that are pretty.

I bought the rice paper wrappers in Wing Yip on my epic trip with the wonderful Debbie and had been looking forward to making summer rolls ever since. They were so much fun to make – fiddly, but very satisfying.

Quantities are going to be a little hard for me to describe – it totally depends on how many you want to make. I made 14 summer rolls with this amount of filling, with enough veggies and dipping sauce left over to make a bowlful of salsa.

Ingredients:

Rice paper wrappers – you get millions of them in a packet.

Thin rice noodles (vermicelli). We used about half a big packet. Soak them in hot water until soft, refresh under cold water and drain. They will stick together, but it doesn’t matter.

Cucumber – take out the seeds and slice into thin batons.

Beansprouts – pick off any icky stringy tail bits.

4 spring onions, sliced into strips.

Half a bunch fresh coriander leaves – wash and dry thoroughly, and pick leaves from the stems.

Fresh mint leaves – wash and dry thoroughly, and pick leaves from the stems. We used 3 mint leaves per roll, so I can categorically say that we used 42 little leaves!

For the dipping sauce:

1 small can pineapple pieces, drained – I’m sure it would be better to use fresh pineapple, but I didn’t have any at the time.

1 red chilli – remove the seeds if you want and dice finely.

The juice of 1 lime.

2 tbsp fish sauce. (For vegans and vegetarians, use extra rice vinegar and 1tbsp miso)

½ tbsp rice vinegar.

½ tbsp sesame oil.

Freshly ground black pepper.

Make the dipping sauce first so that it has time to settle and mellow.

Put the pineapple in a bowl with the lime juice and use a hand/immersion blender to blend about half of it. You want to end up with some liquid, some lumps of fruit, and some goop that is halfway between the two. Then add the rest of the ingredients, stir well and set aside until ready to use. Don’t be scared of the quantities of fish sauce – it is a little stinky straight out of the bottle, but it really is perfect for this, and other Southeast Asian-style salad-y things. If like me you keep kosher, most brands of fish sauce are made exclusively from anchovies - just check the label.

Make sure that all of your vegetables, herbs and noodles are completely dry – the rice wrapper will disintegrate if it is soggy on the inside.

To make these summer rolls you will need to work quite quickly, so it is best to have a really well organised workspace. Arrange your workspace with your prepared veggies, a bowl wider than the wrappers full of hot (not boiling) water, a plate for rolling, and a plate to put the rolls on.

Soak the wrappers in the hot water for about 3 seconds, place on your rolling plate and start building. I started mine with 3 mint leaves in a line (facing outwards to be prettier), a clump of noodles and then a few shards of the other green and white things. Wrap carefully into a little parcel and carry on! The wrappers get very sticky and fiddly to use, but I promise, you will get the hang of it very fast.

(fake) duck, noodle and cabbage salad with spicy miso dressing

Here is another Southeast Asian style rainbow coloured salad - I can't seem to get enough of them. This one is much more substantial, a meal in itself.

Mock duck can be made of yuba (tofu skin) or wheat gluten, and it is actually pretty brilliant. The wheat gluten kind can be found in most health food shops. I used the yuba kind, and found it in the epic Chinese supermarket Wing Yip near Staples Corner. I had such a brilliant day out there with the fabulous Debbie, and I highly recommend a visit if you are a curious foodie like me.

serves 4-6

2 portions soba (buckwheat) noodles

pack or can of fake duck - or real duck, or chicken

half a red cabbage, shredded

Chinese leaves - about 5 big ones, shredded

1 large carrot, shredded - I used a julienne peeler

half a red onion, finely sliced

2 spring onions, white and greens, shredded

handful roasted, salted cashews, roughly chopped

Leaves from 2 stalks of fresh mint, shredded

small handful sugar snap peas or mangetout, thinly-ish sliced lengthways

dressing

1 level tbsp light miso

1 clove garlic, crushed

lump of fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 red chilli, finely chopped (I took the seeds out)

1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tsp rice vinegar

1/2 tbsp rice wine

1 tsp honey

Cook noodles for 1 minute less than packet instructions - stirring with a fork to make sure they don’t completely stick together. Drain and refresh in cold water. Work a little bit of sesame or flavourless oil through them to make sure they don’t try and stick together again (some still will).

Mix up the dressing ingredients in a small bowl or glass (or mug).

Cook, warm or crisp your chosen form of 'duck' in the oven.

If you wanted to be fancy you could have the noodles surrounded by a ring of veggies, topped with the 'duck' and cashews and drizzled with the dressing - on individual plates or a tasteful large plate, or a roofing tile or something. Or you could just mix it all together in a big bowl, which was what I did. And then eat pretty much half of it standing in the kitchen, contemplating your own brilliance. As I also did.

Cold Soba Noodles with Chilli and Peaches

Adapted from Plenty. This salad is one of the nicest things I have made in a while. It is sweet, refreshing, sharp and spicy. Multi-coloured, and pretty easy to put together too.

One of the things I love about my community is the pot-lucks.  When I first moved in just over two years ago, the concept terrified me. As some of you may know, sometimes, I can be a little tightly-wound – the thought of coming together for a meal comprising of unknown food was too much to cope with. What if the balance of carb/ veg/ protein was off? What if there was too much humous? What if there was Indian and Chinese food? But of course, I was wrong.

The unknown is the best part. Debbie D says this much better than me:

“[Communities] such as Wandering Jews, Carlebach Minyan and Grassroots Jews are fuelled by vast pot-luck dinners. Alongside shop-bought goods, guests can showcase their signature dishes to a chorus of ‘Mmm, who made this?’ The quality and quantity of food may vary, but the symbolism of each guest contributing to a communal meal is not lost on the convenors of these transient communities.” (http://cartoonkippah.com/come-lchaim-with-me-a-new-dining-experience/)

At this year’s Grassroots Jews New Year, I was privileged to be part of a pot-luck with about 200 amazing people. ‘Mmm, who made this’ went round a lot. This dish came to me through a rumour – someone said, I can’t remember who, that there was a noodle salad with mangoes and aubergine that I just had to try. When I saw it I recognised it immediately as being from the vegetarian cookbook Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. And it was delicious. I’m still not sure who made it, but they kindly left the recipe, which is now taped to the fridge in the Moishe House.

Cold noodles is one of my favourite things to eat, and so a week ago I decided to try out this recipe for myself. When I got to the supermarket though, the new-in-season peaches looked so fantastic that I knew I needed to use them. I had also just spent what felt a week of my life grilling aubergines and didn’t really want to cook with them either (you can have too much of a good thing). So here is my variation of the soba noodles in Plenty, with peaches and a few other tweaks.

Serves 3-5, as a salad.

Ingredients

100ml rice vinegar

1-2 tsp honey* (more or less, depending on your tastes)

2 tsp soy sauce (likewise)

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 medium sized fresh red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced

1-2 tsp toasted sesame oil

grated zest and juice of 1 lime

250g soba (buckwheat) noodles

2 ripe peaches, stoned and sliced (I like to leave the skin on for the colour, it also prevents the fruit from disintegrating into the salad)

1 large handful beansprouts

Toasted broken-up cashews, about ½ a cup

2 spring onions, whites and greens sliced on the diagonal

½ a bunch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped

To make the dressing, warm the rice vinegar with the honey – I used a microwave. When the honey has melted in and everything is warm, remove from the heat and add the garlic, chilli, sesame oil and soy sauce.

Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions (my packet said to cook for 4-6 minutes and I boiled them for 4, but in hindsight I should have taken them out at 3). Drain them and rinse them under cold water to halt the cooking process. Shake off the excess water and leave them to dry a little on a tea towel.

In a large bowl mix the noodles with the dressing and the rest of the ingredients. If not serving immediately, leave out the coriander until you are ready to serve, otherwise it will wilt.

*I have labelled this vegan despite the honey, so feel free to use some sugar or agave syrup if you would like to

Satay noodles for drunken nights

Peanut butter noodles for when you come home too drunk to function, and too hungry to sleep. Needless to say, this dish was one of my staples when I was at university. They are also very good for hangovers.

For the sauce

1 heaped tbsp peanut butter

1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

½ tbsp soy sauce (more can be added later to season)

½ tbsp rice vinegar

1 tsp honey

juice of at least ¼ a lime

Noodles –

I would go for medium egg noodles here, but rice noodles work well too. This dish isn’t refined enough for soba or buckwheat, and it would be a little ‘much’ with udon. Spaghetti does not count, under any circumstances.

Additions –

If you are too drunk to be handling sharp objects, go for some frozen veggies – peas, corn or edamame. Asda does a very handy frozen stir-fry mix, which is perfect for drunken cooking. A packet of fresh mangetout/ sugarsnap peas or baby corn would also do nicely. If you feel that you could handle a knife safely, some sliced spring onions, a little sliced carrot, and a wedge of fresh coriander would be good too.

Method –

It couldn’t be simpler. Cook the noodles in boiling water according to the packet instructions. Remember to use a fork to break the block up, so that you don’t get a big solid lump of noodle.

While they are cooking, mix/melt the sauce ingredients together in a mug or bowl, using a little boiling water to melt the peanut butter into a smooth sauce.

If using any veggie additions, add them to the water with the noodles a minute or two before the end of the cooking time.

Drain the noodles, mix with the sauce and serve with extra lime juice, and fresh coriander if you have any. At this point I will usually then write my name on the noodles in siracha. And make sure you drink plenty of water.

Yasai Itameru

Stir fried tofu with mixed vegetables, noodles and coconut ginger sauce

This recipe comes from the Wagamama Cookbook.  It’s a really great book, with all the greats from the restaurant as well as many others.  I have cooked a few things from this book and they always turn out just right – with the Amai Udon (udon noodles with peanuts and leeks in a tamarind sauce - without prawns) turns out exactly as it does in the restaurant. 

For Hannah’s birthday at the beginning of the summer I said that I would make her dinner, and she picked this recipe.  It did seem much more involved than stir fries that I usually make, but it really was worth it.  I was lucky enough to have the wonderful Alli helping out in the kitchen – especially when I grated off my fingertip with the microplane. 

Serves 2.

150g rice noodles (we used udon noodles, as well as being squishy and delicious, they also come in handy serving-sized packets)

approx. 3 tbsp vegetable oil (or other flavourless oil)

1 tbsp garlic paste (homemade or bought)

1 red chilli, trimmed, deseeded and finely chopped

200g firm tofu, cut into 1 inch cubes

3 pak choi, halved lengthways

1 red onion, peeled and thickly sliced

5 spring onions, trimmed and cut into 1 inch lengths

1 small sweet potato, peeled and julienned

2 handfuls of beansprouts

1 tsp salt (we did not use anywhere near this much)

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

250ml coconut ginger sauce (see below)

handful fresh coriander, roughly chopped

1 lime, cut into wedges

Cook the noodles in a large pan of water for 2-3 minutes (if necessary), drain and refresh under cold running water to prevent them from overcooking.  Leave them in cold water until you are ready for them.

Heat a wok (or medium frying pan, or like us in one which was way too small, leading to stir frying being done in batches) over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes or until completely hot and almost smoking, and then add the vegetable oil.  Stir in the garlic paste and chilli, cook for 10 seconds and then add the tofu, pak choi, red onion, spring onions, sweet potato and beansprouts and stir fry for about 5 minutes.

Add the salt, sugar and soy sauce and stir fry for 4-5 minutes until tender.  Remove the pan from the heat and drizzle over the sesame oil, stirring to combine.

In a separate pan, mix the coconut ginger sauce into the noodles and warm through on a low heat.  Divide between 2 bowls (or however many you are using) and top with the stir fry, coriander and lime wedges.

Coconut ginger sauce

Makes about 500ml

2 tbsp vegetable oil

3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 inch piece of fresh galangal, peeled and grated

4 lemongrass sticks, outer leaves removed and finely chopped

500ml hot water

½ tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

200g can coconut milk

3 tbsp roughly chopped fresh coriander

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over a low heat.  Add the ginger, garlic, galangal and lemongrass.  Sauté over a moderate heat for 6-8 minutes, until softened and fragrant but not coloured.  Add the hot water, bring to the boil, add the sugar and salt.  Turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes, until reduced by about half.  Then stir in the coconut milk, heat for a further 2 minutes, remove from the heat and add the coriander.  Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Can't cook without a decent sunset over the sea right?

The finished dish - delicious!