Tofu Balls and Chinese Vegetables with Ginger Sauce

Ingredients:

One pack fried tofu balls

one hand full of dried mixed Chinese mushrooms

2 small bok choy

1 large carrot

1 tbsp vegetable oil

one can of baby corn

1 tsp corn flour

1 tbsp soy sauce

salt and pepper to taste

half tsp freshly grated ginger

Serves 4

I like fried tofu balls, I get them form the Chinese shop and they are very versatile. If you find them too greasy (usually they are not) you can rinse them under water and then pat them dry with kitchen paper.

Place the dried Chinese mushrooms in a bowl and soak with water for 1 hour.

Drain and keep the water aside to make the sauce later.

Wash well two small bok choy and one large carrot. Slice the carrot into stick, and cut the bock choy, putting the green leaves aside. Remember that you want to cook the vegetables very quickly, so that they stay crispy and colourful.

I don't have a wok, so I used my favourite pot, it gets very hot. Heat a tbsp of vegetable oil, add the mushrooms (be careful, they have a lot of water and they will pop in the hot oil), stir for a few minutes, then add the carrots and the white part of the bok choy. Stir and cook for two minutes.

Add the tofu balls and stir.

Add the content of the can of baby corn (including water) then add the bok choy leaves and cover for a couple of minutes. The leaves will steam nicely!

In the meantime make a thickening sauce. Add one tsp of cornflour to the water of mushrooms, a tbsp of say sauce, salt and pepper to taste, and half a tsp of freshly grated ginger. Personally I don't like to have too much sauce, if you do just add more water and cornflour.

Pour the sauce in the pot and stir until the sauce thickens. Serve immediately, with rice or noodles.

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book Sweet As... where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content ...

Crema Bruciata, or Crème brûlée, with nectarines, plums and cherries

The original recipes comes from my book Sweet As... , my own recipe which doesn't require steam baking in the oven and includes nectarine slices. Plum slices and cherries were also added here, and the result was delicious! In Italy we also call this crema bruciata , but crème brûlée is most commonly used now as it sounds sophisticated :-). To make the crème you will need one egg yolk for each 100ml of cream and 1 tbsp of sugar, for this recipes I used 5 egg yolks (thus 500ml cream and 5 tbsp of sugar) and I filled 8 ramekins, plus I had a little left to fill three miniature ones. Of course if you don't put any fruit on the bottom you will need more crème. It is up to you how much fruit you put in, generally I just line the bottom of the ramekins with 4-5 think slices, this time I think I overdid it (thus the leftover crème) sicne stone fruit season is not long in NZ, and I wanted to use more fruit than crème! Don't use watery fruit and remo...

Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Search This Blog