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food + drink · posts · salads

Vietnamese Salad

Moya19 Comments

Recently some friends travelled to Vietnam and how I wished they could have packed me in their suitcase! However, they did bring back a little of Vietnam in the form of a cookbook, Vietnamese Food by Bobby Chinn (already a fan) from his restaurant in Saigon. Thank you dear friends… a wonderful foodies gift!

Having indulged recently (not just me) on some home-made bread and desserts it was time to scale down the calories in the household and this Vietnamese Salad made a welcoming change! Not wanting to spend as much time in the kitchen (needing a break), preparing food that is quick and easy without compromising on flavour and taste is first choice.

The taste of this simple salad relies on the freshest ingredients… so no limp herbs, dried out carrots and dry chicken please!

Using a julienne peeler for preparing the carrots for this salad came in very handy but of course you can use a good sharp knife instead!

The original recipe uses birds-eye chillies, but I opted to use medium chillies instead. Depending on your tolerance level to the spicy heat (Scoville scale) of different chillies you may want to de-seed them! You could also make this salad with prawns instead of chicken, replace the basil with mint and scatter over a few roasted peanuts on top, the choice is yours! Bursting with fresh clean flavours this salad makes you feel good after you’ve eaten it and the only shame would be… not to make it!

 Vietnamese Salad

The recipe below has been adapted from the cookbook Vietnamese Food by Bobby Chinn.

Ingredients:

  • 4 small skinless chicken fillets, poached (see note below)
  • 2 star anise
  • fresh chicken stock or make some using a stock cube
  • 4 lemon grass stalks, tough outer leaves removed and very finely sliced
  • 2 spring onions, finely chopped
  • 2 to 4 medium chillies de-seeded (or not), finely snipped using kitchen scissors
  • 2 small carrots, peeled and cut into very fine matchsticks (100g)
  • 50g thinly sliced white onions
  • 4 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
  • 100ml of freshly squeezed lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons freshly chopped basil (I used Thai basil from the garden)
  • 1/4 cup of freshly chopped coriander

Poaching the chicken: Place the chicken fillets in a single layer into a saucepan and pour in some chicken stock to cover, add the star anise. Bring the stock to a gently boil and immediately reduce the heat to a bare simmer and cook the chicken for about 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and cover the saucepan with a lid and allow the chicken to further cook in the hot stock for about 20 minutes. Test the thickest part of the chicken to make sure it is cooked through, if not, bring the stock back to a simmer and leave (removing from heat) to cook for a couple of minutes more. When done transfer the cooked chicken fillet onto a plate and cool.

Assembling the salad: Place the lemon grass, spring onion, chilli, carrots, onions and garlic into a mixing bowl. Shred the cooled chicken and add to the mixing bowl. Pour over the lime juice and gently toss all the ingredients together. Next throw in the basil and coriander and gently toss together. Divide the salad between four serving plates and serve immediately. Serves 4.

desserts · food + drink · posts

Sweet Date and Coconut Sauce

Moya9 Comments

Everyone gets their own little cup for dunking some fresh fruit into this easy dessert sauce, made from date syrup, fresh coconut cream, flavoured with pandan leaf and vanilla!  A sweet exotic sauce inspired by the cuisine of Bali, which use palm sugar, coconut and pandan leaf in many of their sweet and savoury dishes! Attending a cooking class some years back at Bumbu Bali and the many times we dinned at the restaurant gave me a deeper understanding of how authentic Balinese food is prepared and cooked using many wonderful aromatic spices!

Popular in the middle east where there is an abundance of date palms, date syrup is sweet without being overly cloying and can be used to replace other molasses wherever treacle and syrups are traditionally used… delicious drizzled over pancakes and waffles!

Brands of tinned coconut cream vary, some containing lots of additives, do check the label and buy the best quality you can find! If you are lucky enough to have a supermarket that grates fresh coconut (Lulu in Bahrain, saving you the trouble), why not make your own fresh coconut cream… which I will post with another recipe!

Infusing date syrup and coconut cream with pandan leaf releases its earthy fragrance (which needs heat or bruising), adding a subtle unique grassy flavour to this sweet sauce!

A sweet sauce that is easily adaptable by infusing the sauce with other spices, like star anise or cinnamon. Replace the coconut cream with fresh cream or simply serve this sweet sauce drizzled over some vanilla or mango ice cream for another quick dessert!

Sweet Date and Coconut Sauce with Fresh Fruit

Ingredients:

  • 125g date syrup
  • 300g coconut cream
  • 1 pandan leaf (screwpine), tied in a knot
  • pinch of sea salt
  • 2 teaspoons rice flour or cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons of water
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (home-made) or store bought
  • for garnish, freshly grated coconut ( or moisten dried coconut with a little coconut cream)
  • for serving, fresh pineapple, banana and apple, cut into cubes (squeeze a little lemon juice over the cut fruit to keep its colour)

How to make:  Pour the date syrup and coconut cream into a small saucepan, add the pandan leaf. Bring the contents of the saucepan to a boil, reduce the heat and gently simmer for about 3 minutes. Stir in the rice or cornflour mixture and cook for about two minutes, remove from heat and discard the pandan leaf. Stir in the vanilla extract and let the sauce cool before storing in the refrigerator.

To serve: Pour the chilled sauce into small cups or dishes and sprinkle over some fresh coconut, serve with freshly prepared fruit! Serves 6.

This post is part of the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop hosted by the The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader check out all the other delicious entries here!

appetizers · food + drink · posts · store cupboard

Feta Cheese with Preserved Lemon and Vanilla Infused Olive Oil and A Photography Challenge

Moya8 Comments

One of the food blogs that I follow, Jennifer from Delicieux  had recently taken part in a food photography challenge, set by another food blogger Simone from Jungle Frog Cooking! Hopping over to Simone’s blog I noticed another photography challenge for September… a dominant  white theme…  a little colour allowed, but only to highlight the white! With everything around me that I needed… why not give it a try!

I have purposely posted other photographs to show how the lighting and camera settings posed a challenge and affected how some of the images looked. The first and last photographs are the images I am happiest with and I was very undecided which one to put at the top of this post!

With some vanilla olive oil, preserved lemons, feta cheese and props, I set about creating a photograph and recipe around the theme. I used props with different tones of white, some with texture and composed them in a way that appealed to me for this photo shoot… also paying attention to the available natural light and camera settings as I took the photographs!

Placed a fresh white frangipani flower from the garden into the small vase brought in another element of colour, with its yellow center!

Placed the prepared recipe of feta cheese, preserved lemons (adding more colour) coated with a little vanilla infused olive oil into the dishes and again some exposure compensations needed adjusting, as I was using aperture setting on the camera!

I stayed away from manual setting on the camera this time and as it was already late in the afternoon, daylight in Bahrain disappears right before your eyes! Trying (which I would have been) to use manual setting and a race against the setting sun would have probably left me in the dark!

You know when you say to yourself “let me try just one more photograph,” stuck a yellow cocktail stick into the feta cheese, removed some props… and it’s a wrap!

A very simple and delicious appetizer that is very easy to prepare! Although I recommend the preserved lemons for their salty lemony flavour and vanilla infused olive oil for its subtle sweetness, fresh lemon zest and a walnut infused olive oil is another alternative! I used a creamy feta cheese which was not so salty, bearing in mind the saltiness of preserved lemons!

Feta Cheese with Preserved Lemon and Vanilla Infused Olive Oil

Ingredients:

How to make: Pace the feta cheese and preserved lemon into a bowl, drizzle over some vanilla olive oil, you just want the oil to coat the feta cheese. Gently mix together, cover with some cling film and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours for the flavours to mingle. Place the feta cheese into small bowls and stick some cocktail sticks into cubes of feta cheese for easy serving!

Would like to know your views and tips when shooting white?