Snake Soup

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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Snake Soup" journal:

July 9th, 2009
08:18 pm [klwalton] [Link]	My favorite local Japanese place, Semo Sushi, has the world's greatest Oyster Shooter: 2 Miyagi oysters, some oyster liquor, plum wine, green onion and a raw quail egg, all served up in a small champagne flute. OMG good! (Leave a comment)
June 25th, 2009
05:35 pm [pippaalice] [Link]	I bought some of this: http://www.vit-shop.co.uk/store/p/1906/1/Dr-Karg-Organic-Emmental-Cheese-and-Pumpkin-Seed-crispbread-200g.html yesterday and it was lush but rather expensive. Was wondering if anyone has any nice crispbread recipies that are tried and tested. There doesn't seem to be a lot on the web. Or I am lacking in google-fu! Tags: crispbread, pippaalice (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
June 20th, 2009
06:46 pm [lizw] [Link]	Giles's purple curry This was devised by aegidian to use up some red cabbage and is posted with his permission. It came out a rich purplish-brown colour. 1 red cabbage 1 small aubergine 3 large cloves garlic 1 small bunch spring onions Oil (G used organic rapeseed oil) 1/4 jar Patak's biryani paste (or a different flavour, or make your own) 1 vegetable stock cube 1 small glass beer 1 small jar tomato-based cooking sauce (G used pasta sauce; you could make your own) 1 pack Quorn "beef" chunks Rice Chilli peppers to taste Tabasco to taste Salt to taste Chop the vegetables, including the garlic, and sweat for about 5 mins. Add the biryani paste, beer and tomato sauce and sprinkle in the stock cube. Stir in the Quorn chunks. Simmer over a low heat while you cook the rice. Add seasonings. Serve over the rice. Makes enough for 4. Tags: aubergine, beer, cabbage, chillies, curry, garlic, lizw, oil, quorn, rice, spring onions, stock, tabasco, tomato, vegetarian (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
June 16th, 2009
07:46 pm [therealdrhyde] [Link]	Mildly spicey lamb chops Heat some oil in a pan until it is smoking hot. Add some generic Thai spices, ground black pepper, and mustard seeds. Chuck in a couple of chump chops. Fry until done. Dead simple, dead tasty. And keep the spicey oil and use it tomorrow. Tags: chops, lamb, lamb chops, meat, therealdrhyde (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
03:19 pm [therealdrhyde] [Link]	More on masala tea Make a good strong spicey masala tea with a third of a pint of water. Add a spoonful of sugar and the same of lemon juice. Top up to two thirds of a pint with ice cubes. Very refreshing. I use tea bags from Palanquin Tea but I'm sure that any old generic instant masala tea would do the job. Current Mood: refreshed Tags: drinks, masala tea, tea, therealdrhyde (Leave a comment)
May 31st, 2009
12:47 pm [nou] [Link]	Home-made V8 juice Inspired by a recipe for home-made tomato juice, I had a go at making my own. I didn't follow that recipe exactly, but took the advice given in comments to leave out the sugar and use carrots for sweetness instead. I also left out the salt — it didn't need it. I'll be making this again, and I'll try it in Bloody Mary next time too. 450g (1lb) roughly-chopped tomatoes 2 or 3 celery stalks, chopped handful of celery leaves, roughly chopped 2 or 3 smallish youngish carrots, roughly chopped (I didn't bother peeling them) 1 small onion, roughly chopped 1 or 2 cloves of garlic, chopped couple of shakes of Tabasco, to taste pinch of sugar if it really needs it Method: Put everything into a saucepan along with a splash of water, bring to the simmering point, then cook uncovered for about 30-40 minutes until the liquid has all come out of the vegetables. Puree with a stick blender and push through a sieve. There will be a fair bit of pulp left over; once you've squished as much liquid out of this as possible, you can use it to thicken soups and stews. Tags: carrots, celery, celery leaves, juice, juicing, nou, tomato juice, tomatoes, v8 juice, vegan (Leave a comment)
May 27th, 2009
01:06 pm [nou] [Link]	Dry-fried green beans with hoisin sauce. Last night for dinner I thought I'd use some of the green beans that came in our vegetable box, so I looked at my green bean bookmarks on del.icio.us and found a recipe for dry-fried green beans with hoisin sauce and garlic. peanut oil for shallow wok-frying 150g (5-6 oz) green beans, topped and tailed and cut into 6cm (2.5 inch) lengths (leave them whole if you prefer) 2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped (I used some that had dried out a bit in the fridge, call them semi-dried) 1 large clove of garlic, chopped 1.5 Tbsp hoisin sauce Method: Get a wok very hot, add a good slosh of peanut oil, then stirfry the beans until browned and blistered and on the way to being soft. Remove beans from wok and drain on kitchen paper. Wipe out the wok with more kitchen paper, then put it back on the heat and add the chillies, garlic, hoisin sauce, and a splash of water. Mix well and stir about for a couple of seconds until bubbling, then put the beans back in and stirfry for a couple of minutes until the beans have finished cooking and the garlic has lost its rawness. Do note that by "stirfry" I mean that you should have your wok as hot as you can get it, use a small quantity of vegetables in relation to the size of the wok, and keep flipping stuff around all the time. If your wok is cool enough that you can let stuff sit for more than about 10 seconds without it burning, then your wok is too cool. It was pretty tasty, though I think this is perhaps slightly too much hoisin. Tags: chinese, garlic, green beans, hoisin sauce, nou, red chillies, vegan, vegetable side dishes (Leave a comment)
May 26th, 2009
09:55 pm [nou] [Link]	Masala tea. I've been drinking quite a lot of masala tea recently, having been turned on to the stuff after a dinner at Lovage at the start of this month. I've been following this recipe from the BBC Food website (serves 1): 350ml (12 fl oz) water 100ml (3.5 fl oz) milk (I use soya milk) 4 black peppercorns 10 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed (see photo) good pinch green fennel seeds (I'm not sure what other kinds of fennel seeds there are; I just used regular ones) small piece cinnamon stick 1 tsp fresh ginger, peeled and roughly sliced 1 teabag sugar to taste (I use jaggery) Method: Simmer the spices in the water and milk for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, then add the teabag and let it brew to taste. Strain the whole lot through a sieve, making sure to squeeze the teabag well, then sweeten to taste with jaggery. Anyone else here make masala tea? How does your recipe differ? Tags: cardamom, drinks, fennel seed, fresh ginger, indian, jaggery, masala tea, nou, soya milk, tea, vegan (19 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 15th, 2009
12:04 am [nou] [Link]	Stuffed baby aubergines. The other night I made a couple of tasty things for dinner, the main one being stuffed baby aubergines. I basically followed the Mahanandi recipe, though I used hot chilli powder instead of the dried chillies. It was quite tasty, though I felt the stuffing was a little bitter, so I'll be more careful about the flavour balance next time. Tags: aubergines, baby aubergines, indian, nou, vegan (Leave a comment)
May 10th, 2009
11:11 pm [nou] [Link]	Pani puri. Today I went for a jaunt to Southall with uon, hoshuteki, and my sister Liz. While we were there, I popped into Dokal & Sons to purchase some puri for making pani puri, a tasty and refreshing Indian snack. The "puri" part of the equation is a crisp, thin-shelled, hollow sphere made from flour/semolina. To make it into pani puri you poke a little hole in it, put in some filling (mashed potato, chopped onion, chickpeas, etc), pour in the pani (tangy tamarind-flavoured water), and then pop it into your mouth and eat it in one go. Puri: While you can make your own puri, it's much easier to just buy them. If you don't live somewhere you can buy them, there's a recipe here (which I haven't tried yet). There's a handy tip here for the shop-bought ones — although they have a long shelf-life, they lose their crispness after a while. Just stick them in a cool-ish oven (that post recommends 300°F/150°C, I thought that was a touch too hot in my fan oven) for 5 minutes, then let them cool and they'll be lovely and crisp again. Filling: The filling I used was fairly simple; boil a potato, peel it and chop it small, then mix it with finely-chopped onion and season it with salt and ground roasted cumin. If you want to get more fancy, there's a sprouted moong bean filling here that looks interesting. Pani: The pani (which means "water") is the real star of the show. Here's how I made mine. First take some dried tamarind and soak and extract a paste. Now put this paste in a blender with some water, fresh coriander, peeled chopped fresh ginger, chopped chilli, and ground cumin. Whizz to smoothness, then season to taste with black salt. Add more water if necessary to make it pourable. Put it in the fridge for 2 hours to let the flavours blend (and also because it's more refreshing if the pani is slightly chilled). To serve: Don't do what I did for the photo here, and make them in advance, or the potato filling will soak up the pani and turn into boring mush. Make one, eat it, make the next. In practice, to serve a crowd you'll put out the shells, filling, and pani, and have people make their own. I am going to feed one to uon right now! Tags: chaat, finger food, indian, nou, pani puri, snacks, vegan, vegetarian (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 9th, 2009
06:45 pm [nou] [Link]	Aubergine in XO sauce, and pork in black bean sauce. Yesterday's dinner involved yet more inspiration from the blogger I mentioned in my previous post. XO sauce is a fishy, spicy, umami sauce/condiment used in Chinese cuisine. Although you can make it yourself, it's also sold in jars. I got mine from the same place as the century eggs I used for my congee; See Woo supermarket in London Chinatown. You can actually use it just as-is, as a condiment, or you can use it as an ingredient. I made a very simple aubergine and prawn dish, like so (inspired by this): Defrost some frozen shelled prawns by frying them quickly in a bit of oil (I used groundnut), then remove from the pan and reserve. Cut an aubergine into lengthwise strips, then cut each strip into two shorter strips. Fry these in the same pan until limp, then add 1 Tbsp soy sauce and a sprinkling of sugar; fry until the sugar has dissolved and the liquid has gone. Mix the aubergines, the prawns, a couple of spoonfuls of XO sauce, and a splash of hot water to help mix the sauce in. Serve. I also made pork with garlic and black beans; I only had half the amount of pork specified there, so I added in some tofu, which I cubed and fried in the fat left over from the initial frying of the pork. I used sake for the "cooking wine". I also cooked it for about 2.5 hours, which left the meat lovely and tender and the tofu full of flavour. Tags: aubergine, black beans, chinese, meat, nou, pork, pork belly, prawns, tofu, xo sauce (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
May 7th, 2009
09:24 pm [nou] [Link]	Congee. For some reason, I always thought congee was difficult to make. Turns out it's really easy! I made some today with pork and thousand-year-old egg, following a recipe posted by Helen Yuet Ling Pang. The basic idea of congee is simple; cook some rice in lots of water until it breaks down and forms a thick porridge. Possible flavourings include stock, soy sauce, meat, eggs, herbs, and so on. It's a savoury dish, often eaten for breakfast. I had mine for lunch, but there's plenty left over for breakfast tomorrow. I used Thai jasmine rice, which worked well; 100g of that in 1 litre of water, plus a splash each of soy sauce and Touch of Taste vegetable stock concentrate. I flavoured it further with 100g of pork and two thousand-year-old eggs. I cut the pork into 1cm pieces and marinaded it with cornflour, soy sauce, black vinegar, and white pepper; just for 45 minutes while the rice was simmering, then the pork and chopped thousand-year-old eggs went in for another 15 minutes. I'll definitely make it again. Vegetarians could leave out the pork (marinaded-and-fried tofu might be a good substitute), and you could use normal hard-boiled eggs if you can't get the thousand-year-old ones (I got mine from See Woo in London Chinatown). Tags: breakfast, congee, eggs, lunch, meat, nou, pork, rice (8 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 29th, 2009
06:21 pm [pseudomonas] [Link]	quick puddings I bought a couple of (I think the brand is "Aunty") mediocre microwaveable puddings half-price for the sake of the pots. I've just mixed a couple of tablespoonsful of flour, about 1 tablespoon of pelleted veg suet, some baking powder, sugar, mixed spice, and raisins, and enough water to make a wet mixture. I put a spoonful of golden syrup in one of the little plastic basins, slopped in the puddingy stuff (not to the top - it expands!), stood the whole thing in a bowl, and then microwaved for about a minute and a half. Inverting and eating suggests that it was a pretty good idea. I forgot to do what I'd intended and put rhubarb in there somewhere. There's always tomorrow. Tags: pseudomonas (Leave a comment)
April 25th, 2009
08:19 pm [lizw] [Link]	Another pasta recipe I started out with the idea of making pasta ai peperoni con la panna, and somehow it morphed into this, which turned out to be incredibly yummy:- 500g bag wholewheat fusilli 2 peppers (I used one red and one yellow) 3 cloves garlic 1 punnet mushrooms Olive oil Dash of balsamic vinegar Salt 2 cans kidney beans 375 ml double cream Pinch chilli powder 75g parmesan Ground black pepper (optional) Cook the pasta as per package directions. While the water is boiling, roughly chop the peppers, garlic and mushrooms. Pour enough olive oil into your blender to cover the blades, add the peppers and blend. Pour the resulting mixture into a large frying pan and heat it. Crush the garlic cloves and saute them in the mixture. Add the mushrooms and saute those as well. When the mixture gets a bit dry, add the balaamic vinegar. Add salt to taste. Drain the kidney beans, rinse them well and add them to the frying pan. Stir and heat through. Stir in the double cream and chilli powder. Grate the parmesan. By now, the pasta should be ready. Drain it, return to the pan and stir in the sauce. Serve with parmesan, and ground black pepper if you like it. Current Mood: accomplished Tags: balsamic vinegar, beans, chilli, cream, garlic, lizw, mushroom, olive oil, parmesan, pasta, pepper, vegetarian (Leave a comment)
April 13th, 2009
06:50 pm [nou] [Link]	Easy cauliflower-leek soup. The remains of last week's vegetable box were looking reproachfully at me, so I made them into soup. Prep, initial saute, and cleanup took 15 minutes, plus there was another 15 minutes' simmering time. Wash a small leek, then slice about an inch of the green part very very finely; wash again then saute for a couple of minutes in some olive oil until soft; remove from pan and set aside. Chop the rest of the leek, wash it, and start to cook it in the same pan, stirring occasionally; chop a few cloves of garlic and add them too. Chop the cauliflower now, discarding the hard stem in the middle. Boil the kettle. Once the leek's had about 5 minutes, add the cauliflower to the pan along with enough boiling water to cover, plus a slosh of vegetable stock concentrate and a slosh of white wine. Bring to the boil, turn the heat down, and simmer for about 15 minutes until the cauliflower has softened. Add a spoonful of tahini and puree well with a stick blender. Season to taste with salt and white pepper, garnish with the reserved leek greens, and serve. Tags: cauliflower, leek, nou, quick and simple, soup, tahini, vegan (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
April 11th, 2009
10:46 am [kathrynt] [Link]	Produce box pulao A pulao is a central Asian highlands dish with rice, like a pilaf or a paella -- all three words obviously share the same root. This recipe is loosely based off of two in "Beyond the Great Wall," which is the cuisine of the ethnic minorities in China. (If you like food, btw, I would strongly recommend this book. I've made many things from it, and they've pretty much all been delicious.) I call it "Produce Box" pulao because really, when you get right down to it, the original dish is made with whatever happens to be around; the highlands of central Asia are not a place of particular abundance. So you can really use whatever is in your produce box that week. This is actually a recipe for two dishes to be served together. They make an extraordinarily tasty, satisfying, and healthy meal. You need: Garlic (non-negotiable) An oniony thing (I've used leeks, scallions, shallots, and bulb onions of all varieties) A sweet root vegetable like carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, or possibly beets A strongly-flavored root vegetable like daikon, radishes, or perhaps celery root -- I usually use daikon A mild root vegetable like a turnip or a rutabaga, or you could use summer or winter squash instead A tin of tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes, or green tomatoes (you could probably sub something else here but I dunno what. Crabapples? You need something with a sweet / acid profile.) Meat. I used goat when last I made this. You could use lamb, or game; you want something really strongly flavored. If you have a source for old, clapped-out laying chickens, or stewing chickens, that would be good too. You could probably make this vegetarian if you thought about it, but I haven't thought about it. Rice or other grain. I've used short-grain rice, long-grain rice, brown rice, a mixture of rices, red rice, and barley. You could also try quinoa, amaranth, wheat berry. . . Strong leafy greens. I've used spinach, chard, and kale. Water or stock. If you're making this vegetarian, I would _strongly_ recommend using a very, very good vegetable stock, possibly with some white wine added. Lemon juice, plus an additional lemon. Olive oil, salt, and pepper. (The olive oil is non-traditional; the traditional fat would be lard or lamb fat. I like olive oil.) Method: Chop your garlic and your onion element, and saute in the olive oil in a nice large pot -- I have a 6-quart wide saucepan I use. While those are cooking, chop all your root veg; after the onions are slightly brown and translucent, add the meat and brown it on all sides, then add the root veg. Stir that around a bit, then add the tomatoes and some water or stock, enough to nearly cover everything involved. Turn the heat down to low and braise for a while -- how long will depend on your meat. With the goat, I let it braise for about three hours, but goat is a tough sell. Chicken would take about an hour. Vegetarian, probably only thirty to forty-five minutes. (Come to think of it, you could use sausage in this as well; lamb or game sausage would be particularly good.) When the meat is falling off the bone or apart into shreds, add rice and more water or stock. (Quantities are very approximate, but you want to add twice as much liquid as rice at this point.) Return to the boil, then turn back to low and cook for another half-hour or so. While that is happening, rough-chop the greens. In a big frying pan, put some olive oil and about a half-cup to a cup of water. Add the greens -- you might need to do this in stages -- and cook over high heat until they are well cooked and soft. At this point, slosh a good glug of lemon juice over them and season with salt and pepper. Salt and pepper the pulao to taste, slice your lemon into quarters, and serve. The lemon wedges are for the diners to squeeze over the pulao to add their own preferred acid balance. I find that if the greens are over-lemoned, you can mix them into the pulao and eat them that way. Quantities: The last time I made this, I used 3 cloves of garlic, one Perfectly Enormous leek, 3 carrots, a huge daikon, a turnip, a 28-ounce tin of whole tomatoes, 2 pounds of very bony goat shoulder slices, two cups of rice, and two bunches of kale totaling probably a pound and a half. We had leftovers of the pulao but not of the greens, serving 2 adults and a toddler. Tags: goat, greens, kathrynt, meat, rice (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 10th, 2009
05:20 pm [lizw] [Link]	Vegetable box, week 4 Things that came in my box: Potatoes, carrots, savoy cabbage, cauliflower, swede (which went into the recipe for root vegetable wedges I posted last week), babycorn, onions, flat mushrooms Things I also bought: Aubergines, green and red chillies, avocados, baking potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, watercress, kohlrabi, pak choi, leeks, cucumber, mangetout, coriander, tomatoes What I made with them: Mushroom chatani (a mushroom curry from the Gate cookbook) Baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese sauce Risotto with spring onions, carrots, kohlrabi and tofu Rice bowl with sushi rice, tofu, spring onions, garlic and avocados Teriyaki aubergine with vegetable stirfry (babycorn, mangetout, shiitake mushrooms, and pak choi, also from the Gate cookbook) Green rice with coriander pesto, leek, broccoli, watercress and Quorn meatballs (nice, but the flavours clashed a bit; next time I'd use a less "meaty" type of Quorn, maybe the chicken-style pieces) Pasta with cabbage, leek and mushroom (recipe in my last post) Broccoli quiche with home-made potato wedges and cheesy carrot and kohlrabi wedges with mushrooms, using the recipe from my last post - again, this was delicious Things thrown away: just half a cabbage that had wilted a bit - not too bad. Things left over to use in the coming week: Some tomatoes, 2 avocados and some baking potatoes Tags: lizw (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 7th, 2009
08:24 pm [lizw] [Link]	Pasta with cabbage, leek and mushroom This was tonight's dinner. It worked even better than I expected and was very more-ish. 1/2 pack wholewheat pasta (I used penne) 2 oz butter Enough rapeseed oil to prevent the vegetables sticking - I used about 1 tbsp 1 leek 1/2 head savoy cabbage 1 large portobello mushrooms 100g pine nuts 2 oz cheshire cheese 2 oz parmesan Salt Black pepper Cook pasta according to pack instructions. Meanwhile, trim, wash and slice leek; cut cabbage into strips; chop mushroom into rough chunks. When the pasta has about 8 mins to go, melt the butter in a large saucepan and sweat the leeks over a low heat until soft. Turn the heat up to medium, add the mushroom and saute for a few minutes. Add the cabbage and stir till it wilts. If the mixture starts to stick or brown, add the rapeseed oil and keep stirring. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the pine nuts. Drain the pasta and add it to the vegetable mixture. Stir in both cheeses. Divide into bowls and grind more black pepper on top. Serves 2, takes about 20 mins. Current Mood: accomplished Tags: butter, cabbage, cheese, leek, lizw, mushroom, parmesan, pasta, pepper, pine nuts, vegetarian (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 6th, 2009
02:55 pm [therealdrhyde] [Link]	On vegetable boxes I used to get a veggie box from uk5organics, who appear to no longer exist. I stopped when I started ordering my nosh from Ocado instead of traipsing down to the local stupormarket, partly because I needed to get my order up above Ocado's minimum, but also because I was just getting too much veg. I couldn't eat all that they delivered and it pains me to see some of it go to waste. But now that I don't have to worry about Ocado's minimum order size (bah, prices going up, so I'm above the minimum even without veg) I'd like to give it a go again. Can anyone recommend a company that will deliver a small box to CR7 every two weeks? To be honest, I'm not particularly fussy about it being all organic and low mileage and hippy-friendly, I just want a variety of good quality veg. Tags: therealdrhyde (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
April 3rd, 2009
02:10 pm [lizw] [Link]	Vegetable box, week 3 Things that came in my box: Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, cauliflower, swede, sweet potatoes, broccoli, courgettes Things I also ordered: Spring onions, mushrooms, garlic, peppers, cabbage, chard (all organic) What I made with them: Spaghetti with cabbage, chillies, pine nuts, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and pecorino Pasta shells with mushroom and Quorn mince sauce Chard and potato panfry with Quorn "beef" strips Paneer pilau with sweet peppers and urad dal Pasta with mixed beans and peas in walnut and garlic cream sauce Root vegetable bake Broccoli quiche with cheesy swede and parsnip wedges (based on this recipe, with more garlic and no butter, and replacing the rosemary with thyme) and steamed cauliflower (using leftover cauliflower and swede from last week and the new ones that arrived today; the wedges were really yummy, and I'll definitely cook swede that way again.) aegidian also made a curry with courgettes, peppers and parsnips. Current Mood: cheerful Tags: garlic, lizw, parmesan, parsnip, swede, thyme, vegetarian (3 comments \| Leave a comment)

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