More Cat's Vom.

I have about a zillion recipes for awesome food. Really REALLY awesome food. Food so good it will make you weep and hear heavenly choirs. There's just one unfortunate thing about some of these recipes.

They pretty much look like a cat has vomited on a plate.

Which, given that no one has invented Smell-O-Vision for Blogger yet, means that providing you with a picture will pretty much have the opposite effect I am looking for. Dry retching over your keyboard is NOT the effect I was hoping for.

So you'll need to use your imagination on this one.

When I was married to the Wasband, we had a dear friend known as Mr Yum-Yum. He would come over regularly and cook these awesome Vietnamese dishes. It was Mr Yum-Yum that first introduced me to rice noodle soup, wet cake and hair vegetable, now more than 20 years ago. He was Chinese-Viet, and learned watching his Grandma cook, back in Saigon.

This is my very favourite Mr Yum Yum recipe, and was a staple dish during my pregnancy with the Lima Bean. Think a sort of Vietnamese laksa or Tom Gai.

I have no idea what this is called in Viet, and a quick Google of "Vietnamese Sweet Soup" yielded nothing, so if the recipe is familiar to anyone, do drop me a line in the comments section and tell me about it.

Mr Yum-Yum's Vietnamese Sweet Soup. (feeds 4)

1kg chicken legs/drumsticks with skin on. Each drumstick chopped into 3-4 pieces with a freakin' big Asian cleaver.

Marinate in:

1tablespoon curry powder (I use Hoyt's for this, but Clive of India is good too) and a goodly slosh of Vietnamese light soy. Grate a knob of fresh ginger and 2 cloves on garlic. Add chopped-up chicken and marinate for 2 hours.

In a large, heavy based pot, bring 2 tablespoons of peanut oil to a gentle heat, add 1 stick of lemon grass bashed and smashed. Sloooooooowly simmer the lemon grass stalk, trying to render the essential lemon grass oil into the cooking oil. This usually takes about 10 mins on a gentle heat, stirring constantly.

Remove lemon grass stalks from oil

THIS NEXT STEP CAN BE OMITTED IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANNATTO SEEDS,
Gently infuse a teaspoon of annatto seeds in the lemon grass oil until the oil is a deep orange/red. Be very careful, as overheating the seeds means they will burn and the oil will be bitter and unusable. ALSO, overheated seeds tend to "pop" and leave scorchingly hot, bright red stains all over your kitchen and you clothing. This is a "do-not-want" situation. Once the oil is the right colour, let it cool and remove the seeds.

Bring the now-seedless oil back to a nice high temp and add the now-marinated chicken. Fry off until brown and add 1 whole diced sweet potato or 4 diced waxy white potatoes. Stir until coated with oil.

Add 1 can coconut milk, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk and a litre of chicken stock. Drop heat down to a simmer and cover. Cook for about 30 mins or until potato is tender.



Add 250g of fresh okra, peas or beans, and cook a further 5 mins.

Slop into huge big Asian-soup bowls, and serve with a crusty Vietnamese roll.

Ok, it will LOOK like cat's vom, but it will taste like majik.

Frugal Food #2

The thing with being frugal is that you have to plan ahead. There's no point deciding at 5.30pm that you want steak au poivre, if you've only got chicken mince in the 'fridge. The key to frugality is buying carefully and (more importantly) seasonally. Given it is Autumn here in OZ, there is no point getting a Jones on for raspberries, as you'll pay el primo $ for them. At this time of year, you want to be rocking on with your Quince self. Or your Rosella Pear self.

Yesterday, I knew that I had got 2 Porterhouses out of the freezer, and I knew I had some potatoes, a head of garlic, a medley of peppercorns (an Easter gift), so I was actually planning steak au poivre, until I rang Furry on the way home to find that he'd thoughtfully marinated the steaks in a goodly dollop of Elfred's Mumbai Chutney.

So much for planning ahead.

Rice is always a staple in our house, you can pick up 5kg bags for next to nothing, from Asian grocers, so that was definitely on the menu. I also knew there was a sweet potato lurking in the pantry somewhere.

And my best friend since going frugal?? My freezer. Before unemployment descended on us, I would have put aside left overs for the pups. As long as any leftovers didn't include onion, then Stella Bella and Mrs Peaches were set like jelly.

But since having to decide between paying the mortgage and buying heart medications ('cos we sure couldn't afford both this month), I've been a whole lot better at portioning food freezing leftovers.

Much to Stella and Mrs Peaches chagrin.

Which brings us to another frugal-friendly food.

Lentils.

Once, the staple of unwashed hippies and vegan crack-pots everywhere, lentils are now enjoying a resurgence in mainstream cooking. Once only seen on menus at places like Govindas or Gopals, the 90's saw David Lebovitz et al banging on about "lentils de puys" and thus bought them into the mainstream cook's consciousness.

And I happened to have some dhal in the freezer. I purchased my dhal from the dhosa man at the Balnarring Market, for $10 a kg, and I guestimate I'll get about 40 serves out of it! Like rice, it bulks up by about x 3 when cooked. Like rice, bags of various types of dhal can be purchased for next to nothing at your local Indian/Sri Lankan grocer.

So with my bulk porterhouses, my bulk rice and my bulk and frozen dhal, I managed to prepare a meal for 4 last night that came in at about $2.50 a head.

And I have rice and dhal left over for lunch today.

pg's spiced sweet potato.

Peel and chop one large sweet potato/kumara.
Boil/steam until tender.
Add a splash of peanut oil, some cumin seeds and some grated fresh ginger.
Mash.
Scoff.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly

pg's dhal.

500g organic mixed dhal
Place in a large pan with water to cover to a depth of 5cm above the top of the dhal.
Add a good knob of fresh ginger.
slow simmer for 4 hours, adding water as necessary, until lentils are soft.
Add a can of coconut cream.
Fry off some cumin seeds, some fenugreek, some coriander seeds and black cardamon seeds in ghee.
Add to lentils and stir.
Adjust seasoning.
Serve.

Leftovers are freezer-friendly.
(500g of dhal makes about 1.25-1.5 kg of cooked dhal. This, my friends, is a WHOLE lot of dhal, but given the cooking time for dhal, it works out so much easier to make it in bulk and freeze it)

Enjoy!