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By clare, January 26, 2012

Spiced pumpkin salad

This is a great salad with vibrant, contrasting flavours and textures. I’m not strict with the exact mix of herbs I use as it’s a matter of picking what’s in the garden, but I certainly always use a generous amount. Rice paddy herb would also go well with this salad. The little puffs of slightly crunchy tofu, salty from the soy sauce, are a great counterpoint to the spicy sweetness and soft texture of the pumpkin. Serves 4.

INGREDIENTS

1/2 Jap/Kent pumpkin (about 800-900g)
500g firm tofu
1-2 tablespoons peanut oil (or rice bran oil)
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 teaspoon star anise powder
1/4 teaspoon allspice powder
1/2+ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
2-3 tablespoons kitul palm or coconut palm syrup*
1 tablespoon cooking or rock salt
1/3 cup 1st extract coconut milk (or 60% content canned coconut milk/cream)
4 bunches Brazilian spinach (Alternanthera sissoo), about 12 branches, OR two bunches amaranth, leaves picked from stems and rinsed
2 large sprigs Asian basil varieties (Thai, Tulsi), rinsed and leaves stripped from stems
large bunch (16+ leaves) garlic chives, rinsed and roughly chopped (2-3cm lengths)
4 stems Vietnamese mint, rinsed and leaves stripped from stems
8 leaves long leaf (Mexican, Thai, sawtooth) coriander, rinsed and roughly chopped (2-3cm lengths)
1/4 to 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds

* Kitul palm syrup or coconut palm syrup are available from Asian grocers and some gourmet stores. Use coconut palm sugar instead if you can’t access palm syrup.

METHOD

Skin and deseed the pumpkin. Cut into (roughly) 1.5cm cubes.

Cut tofu into small (1cm) cubes. Heat heavy based pan on medium-high heat and add peanut oil, just enough to form a good (2mm) layer. Once shimmering, add diced tofu (may need to do two batches). Make sure heat is not too high as they need to brown to golden at a gentle pace. Turn tofu once or twice and once golden on two sides, remove to a plate and drizzle with soy sauce.

While tofu is cooking, mix the pumpkin dressing. Mix star anise powder, allspice powder, black pepper, lime juice and 1 1/2 tablespoons of the syrup in a jar, replace lid and shake. Taste, then add any extra palm syrup needed, to taste. Dressing should have some sharpness as it will become milder once coconut milk is added, and the pumpkin itself is sweet.

Boil 1.5 to 2 litres of water and pour over Brazilian spinach leaves in a heatproof bowl ( eg. pyrex or similar).

In a wok or large based saucepan, bring about 1 to 1.5 litres of water to the boil. Add a good amount of salt (about 1 tablespoon rock salt) then add the cubed pumpkin, replace lid and cook on high for 3-4 minutes or until pumpkin is almost cooked (al dente, pumpkin style).

Drain off the water, return wok/pan to heat and add dressing and coconut milk and cook for another 1+ minutes to reduce the sauce slightly, stirring as needed to prevent sticking. Remove from heat.

Assemble salad. Drain the Brazilian spinach well, mix the chopped herbs together then mix through the wilted Brazilian spinach. Pour the tofu and any soy sauce marinade into the spinach mix and toss together. Divide across 4 plates, spread in a circle. Top with the pumpkin, then sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and serve.

© Clare Richards 2012

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By clare, January 18, 2012

ebook version coming soon......!

I will soon be announcing the launch date of the electronic book versions of tropical cuisine: cooking in clare’s kitchen.  I’m very excited as they will be available internationally, so all those passionate cooks living outside Australia who have enquired over the last year will now be able to purchase your copy.  There will be versions readable on all electronic reading devices.

So keep an eye on these pages over the next few weeks for more news….

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By clare, January 18, 2012

Butter, butter, butter (C) Clare Richards

I’ve just had a fabulous time making butter from the voluptuous Jersey cream from Misty Mountain Farms (sister company of the biodynamic producer, Mungalli).  Made two batches from their two litre bottles – one was normal salted butter, the other I cultured gently with the addition of two teaspoons of their yoghurt and left it to mature for 3 days in the fridge.

Both batches made about 900g of butter each from the 2 litres of cream, with about 900ml of buttermilk left for pancake making.  That makes it the same price to make homemade butter from this exquisite cream as buying the plain brand Tasmanian butter from the supermarket.  So if you see their cream in stock, look at the massive two litre bottle with a butter maker’s eye, as it is great value.

Both butters are so more-ish they’re (mostly) stacked away in the freezer.  I was surprised that it remains quite spreadable in the fridge.  Apparently this is due to having worked the butter in VERY cold water.  If you work it in warmer water, the butter ends up harder – a contrary result.

I worked with the butter making method given by Darina Allen whose cookbook Forgotten Skills of Cooking is on my wish list

Next batch I buy I’ll be making some ghee to see how that goes…

(C) Clare Richards 2012

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By clare, January 10, 2012

tropical cuisine: cooking in clare's kitchen Image © Catseye Productions

I’ve had so much wonderful feedback from people when talking at events and other places about their experience of using tropical cuisine: cooking in clare’s kitchen but have never whipped out the pen and written down what you’ve said at the time.

Having gone through so much hard slog to get the book out to readers it means an enormous amount to me, and has been a very big part of helping me to keep on keeping on.

I am about to put up a page of formal reviews of tropical cuisine: cooking in clare’s kitchen, and would love to also put customer reviews and feedback up there as well.

So if you have anything to say about what makes tropical cuisine enjoyable for you, I would love to hear from you. Send your quotable quotes to info@tropicalcuisine.com

Thanks!

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By clare, January 10, 2012

Well it wasn’t broken rice, just cooked (deliberately) until the grains burst into little soft pillows.

Along with brown stew, the ‘chicken legs’ that the butcher made (more about them later), and a weekly glorious roast beef, one of mum’s staple foods of our childhood was  brown rice, cooked such that each grain remained packed away in its little skin.  Didn’t absorb any sauces or juices on the plate, and was not a favourite.  So it took me a while to approach brown rice again.  The obvious finally dawned on me when I’d got to the stage of being able to overcome childhood prejudices – that it might be fine if just cooked a bit more.  And, voila, so it is.

Back to the chicken legs for a moment.  I wish we had a photo of them, as the butcher who made them, Mr King at Kings Butchers in Sea Lake, the little wheat farming town in which I grew up, has passed on.  They were culinary works of art, in the arts and crafts tradition perhaps, but nonetheless.  Sausage meat, plain, crafted around sturdy circular wooden skewers about the length of a real chicken drumstick.  The sausage meat was shaped into the form of a drumstick, complete with the skinny section which kicked out slightly at the base, just as the ankle joint of a drumstick does.

I’m providing this detail because it meant that when cooked, having also been dusted in breadcrumbs, they contained a wonderful variety of textures from plump and juicy up in the drum of the drumstick down to crunchy and satisfyingly dry at the stick end.  I don’t eat standard sausages these days, and I’m off wheat for a while, but if I found them again I’d indulge, definitely.

So back to the salad, which is in none of the traditions described above, being full of fresh summery flavours.  Here it is:

Busted rice salad

1 1/2 cups brown rice, preferably soaked overnight prior to cooking

2 teaspoons flaky (kosher) salt

1 cup finely diced jicama (2 small or 1 medium jicama)

1/2 medium sized red onion, finely diced

1 cup shelled pistachios, roughly broken

1 tablespoon coconut, rice bran or peanut oil

150g tempeh, cut into small squares & marinated overnight in 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce

2 – 3 tablespoons finely julienned young ginger (about 5cm long knob)

6 sprigs Italian parsley, leaves finely chopped

4 leaves Cuban oregano (Plectranthus amboinicus), finely diced

1 mild red chilli, finely sliced

Dressing

1 – 2 tablespoons honey

1/4 – 1/3 cup lime juice (2 to 4 limes)

1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce

In a saucepan, cover the rice with about 10 times its volume in water.  Bring to the boil then reduce to the lowest possible heat and cook very gently, lid off, for up to an hour or until the grains are completely busted open.  At about the 1/2 to 3/4 hour mark, when the grains are starting to pop open, add two teaspoons of salt to the water.

While rice is cooking, dice all the other salad ingredients.  Mix the dressing ingredients and taste for balance of tart, salty and sweet, adjust as needed.

Drain the tempeh and keep the soy marinade, heat the oil in a pan over a medium to hot heat and quickly cook the small tempeh sqares until crisp on one side, toss over briefly then place back into the soy marinade.

Once cooked drain rice into a colander, then transfer into a bowl while still warm and mix through all other ingredients and dressing.  This salad is great warm or cold and keeps well for a day or two in the fridge (although it’s hard to make it last that long).

Substitute the parsley and Cuban oregano for whatever herbs you prefer or have in abundance in the garden at the time.  The chilli can be left out and replaced by cracked pepper, or not.  Can make a lunch just on its own, serve with other salads for a heartier meal, or as a side with fish or poultry.

© Clare Richards 2010