Seafood Feast

Weekend is here again and it’s time for our ritual butcher and market day. We do this every 2 weeks and purchase enough meat, chicken, veges and fruits to last us till the next trip. I was in mood for seafood and have few dishes in mind already; Chilli Crab, Grilled Fish and Steamed Cockles.

After a quick trip to the butcher, it’s off to Victoria Market for my fresh produce. We managed to get the fish easily but only 1 store sells the crab this time around & we are out of luck with cockles. I not even sure if this is readily accessible but I wasn’t overly disappointed. I was surprise that 4 sand crabs and 2 medium size trout cost us less than $20. It would have cost us a fortune to have this at the restaurant. Very happy indeed.

Cooking Time… First we need to clean the fish and cut the crab to pieces. It’s the first time that I’m gutting the fish myself and I did myself proud.  It wasn’t too bad actually and it helps that the fish was quite small. I’ve included some pictures of this.

That’s the hard part done. Now let’s grill the fish. This is a Greek style recipe which is very simple but oh so delicious. Here’s the ingredients and recipe:

Grilled Trout
Ingredients:

• 2 trout.
• 1 tablespoons fresh parsley.
• 2 tablespoons olive oil.
• Juice from 1 lemon.
• Salt & teaspoon black pepper to taste.
• Coriander to garnish.

Method:
Lightly salt the interior and exterior of whole fish. Mix together parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. Spread evenly on the inside of the fish. Cover and refrigerate to infuse the marinate. Preheat the grill. Sprinkle fish with salt and pepper for extra seasoning and grill for 4-5 minutes on each side over a medium heat. Carefully remove the fish from grill and serve. For the sauce, use the left-over from marinade and add few cloves of pounded garlic and heat it on stove for a minute and toss on top of the grill fish and that’s it. Yummy yum yum.

It's time for the chilli crab now. This recipe is from Alex Lee that was on SBS’s Food Safari (click here for the video). We’ve used sand crab instead of mud crab for this recipe but the rest was exactly the same. It terms of difficulty, I would rate it easy to medium as it does need a slight finesse to make sure the crab is nicely coated.

Chilli Crab
Ingredients:

• Crab, well washed and chopped into sections

• 2 brown onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 
8 red chillies
Belacan, thumb size piece

• ½ tbsp vinegar

• 6 tbsp oil

• 1 tbsp tomato paste

• 400ml tomato puree

• 2 tbsp tomato sauce

• 4 tbsp light soy sauce

• ½ tsp salt
4 tbsp sugar
• 
Water

• 1 egg
• 
Coriander leaves, to garnish

Method:

• Blend onions and chillies in a food processor for 30 seconds.
• Heat oil in a wok and add onion and chilli paste.
• Add belacan and continue to cook until most of the liquid from the onions evaporates.
• Add vinegar, tomato puree, tomato paste, sugar and salt.
• Add tomato sauce and light soy sauce.
• Add crab pieces and continue to cook over high heat until shell turns red.
Add egg and stir through gently.
Garnish with fresh coriander leaves.

The food is ready, what else to do but enjoy this sumptuous feast. Food taste better when you cook with joy and this is so true. 2 dishes eaten simply with a side of jasmine rice for less than $20 ; happy days indeed. Licking my finger clean and can't wait for the next time we do this again.

Sizzling Noodle

It’s raining outside and feeling the chill inside the house.  Something warm is in order for lunch. As we had bought Hokkien noodle and dried shitake mushroom during our day trip to South Melbourne and the city yesterday, Sizzling Noodle sounds very appetizing.

The recipe (attached below) is simple and the ingredients are easily accessible from Coles (with the exception of 1 or 2 items that you might need to get from Asian grocer). As we don’t have the sizzling plate to make it fully authentic meal, we only use the base recipe and serve it on a bowl. To the kitchen we go; with my wife cooking with me hovering behind taking some pictures. Well, hope you guys will enjoy this.

Ingredients:

·      200g Hokkien Noodle/egg noodles
·      200g boneless chicken pieces
·      Shitake Mushroom, soaked & cut into chunks
·      5/6 Dried Chillies
·      1 carrot, cut into medium pieces
·      Bok Choy
·      Seasoning:
        -   2 tbsp Ginger
        -   1 tbsp oyster sauce
        -   1 tbsp light soya sauce
        -   Salt to taste
        -   1/4 tsp sugar
        -   tsp pepper
        -   1/2 tsp chicken stock granules (optional flavouring)
·      2 tbsp  oil
·      1 tsp sesame oil
·      2 cups water or stock
·      Egg (optional)

Method

Scald the noodles in boiling water for few minutes. Remove once soft. Add 1/2 tsp sesame oil & mix thoroughly and leave aside.

Heat the pan with 2 tbsp oil, and sauté the ginger and the dried chilli until fragrance. Add the chicken to the pan and brown. Add the water and carrot. Cover to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Once the carrot is soften, add the mushrooms and Bak Choy; stir-fry well. Add seasoning, the rest of the sesame oil and stir. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 5-10 minutes to thicken the sauce.

This is what you would normally do if serving with hot plate:
Heat a hot plate over the stove until it is really hot. Remove from heat and place on a wooden base. Serve the noodles on hot plate and pour sauce over immediately. Noodles and sauce will start sizzling. Break the egg if you wish to add the extra touch. Garnish with sliced cut chillies or cilipadi if you like some extra heat.

Our tweak:
We add the noodle to pan and mix the sauce to coat . Serve on the plate or bowl with cut chilli as garnish.

The Ingridients

 The cook at work

 The End Result...Yumm Yumm

Craving for Food

At the office and lunch time was creeping closer. Was talking to my wife on messenger and discussing on what to cook for dinner later on. Out of nowhere, Beryani came up and long and behold we started to crave for it. INDIAN FOOD it is but herm ... where should we go?

As a very fussy person when it comes to food, I tend to go for the same thing on the menu most of the time and get very disappointed when it falls below my expectation. A quick googling session was in order and we found NAMASTE Indian Restaurant. A peek at the menu and that was all it took for my mouth to start salivating. To make it worst, dinner is hours away so back to work for now.

Tick Tock Tick Tock and few hours later it’s quitting time. Off to the city to meet wifey and straight to Lygon Street as we were famished from all the waiting. Hehe. Nestled in between few other Asian restaurants, Namaste is quite small but cozy enough for the two of us and as we were quite early for dinner, it was no problem for us to get a table.

                           
As we knew what we wanted from the menu it did take us long to decide and we ordered the following:

Mushroom 65
Mushroom marinated in spices and deep fried. Yummy start to the night and it was very tasty. The raw onion compliments the slightly crispy mushroom and the lemon gives it a tangy kick. I don’t think it’s too spicy and advise anyone to try it (even if you are not a fan of spicy food). Loved it.

Mushroom 65

Biryani Meal
A combination of lamb biryani, chicken biryani & vegetable biryani served with saalan, raita, onion salad, and gulab jamun. A perfect dish to share between the two of us. It was nice and tasty but I would have to say that I had better.

Beriyani (Chicken, Lamb, Vege)

Garlic Naan and Roti Chanai with Butter Chicken
What can I say. You can't go wrong with these sumptuous selection and we really enjoy both of them. The roti was crispy and flaky and the Naan was perfect. We had it with the creamy Butter Chicken as the dipping curry which completes the meal. Reminds me of the Mamak stall back home which I really miss.

Butter Chicken

Garlic Naan & Roti Canai

Not to forget the Mango Lassi to clean the palette.

Mango Lassi

Overall it was a great experience and was inexpensive. The service was OK but I would definitely go back for the Mushroom and the rotis. To finish of the night, we had a lovely stroll down Lygon Street while enjoying the sights and oh so wonderful smell. We shall try to do this more often :)