~ seeking peace spice by spice by spice
I bought some more Melvados’ Basil Pesto. We’ve converted half of the EL department to love Melvados – their jalapeno cheese bagel in particular. I had bought some sutchi fillets – frozen – and decided to bake them. I spooned quite a bit of the basil pesto, topped with a few tomato slices and whole garlic pieces. And then voila! In just thirty minutes, you’ll have this lovely sauce over a rather unremarkable fish. It’s great, this pesto sauce.
Asam Pedas – a perennial Malay favourite. My Mom claims she could eat this every single day and not get sick of it. There’s so many different variations but the basic ingredients are the same throughout – chilli paste and tamarind water.
One day, my Mom had to go to the market and so I asked her to buy for me some fish. She got for me two beautiful red snapper and cleaned them for me. How sweet, right? Having to cook dinner one weekend, I decided to take the red snappers out from the fridge and cut them into three (OK I got the Help to do that) and proceeded to make the paste. Now, this chilli paste is actually very standard- dried chillies, onions, garlic, turmeric(fresh), belacan. However, that evening, I remembered watching an episode of Chef Wan and he threw in one lemongrass finely sliced and a couple of kaffir lime leaves in the blender! My Mom, my Guru of Malay home cooking, never did that. Feeling adventurous, I though what the hey, and did the same.
Oh, add in two kaffir lime leaves after putting in the fish. Make sure to do a taste test and season, use sugar if too sour etc. That night was the plain basic asam pedas, using kaffir lime leaves to flavour. Feeling rather proud of my effort (heh, how often do I cook ‘real’ Asian dishes?) I brought some over to the in-laws. FIL was cute, though it made me reflect on this dish. Asking MIL to try my dish, he started by saying, “_ eat. You look at the colour like that but it’s actually good.” I wonder what went wrong? Maybe for Version 2, I’ll try using a combination of dried and fresh chillies so hopefully it’ll turn out more authentic. 🙂
A new market had just opened near my place. Well, not a conventional market. It’s our island’s first indoor wet market. Anyway, when I went there, the fish that were sold were super fresh. I mean, the prawns were scooped alive from a tank and plonked rather unceremoniously on the selling tray. I saw one Chinese elderly man literally jump with excitement and he quickly bought a kilo of the super fresh still jumping prawns. Poor prawns.
I didn’t buy the prawns then. I bought 2 pieces of very fresh seabass. I love seabass. It doesn’t have a fishy smell and although the ones in the market here are very small with not much flesh, I love the fact that it’s still flaky enough when cooked for me to enjoy. Of course, one piece of fish is just nice for one person.
This was how I cooked the fish. Line bottom of baking tray with thinly cut pieces of lemon. And then on top of that the two fish. In their cavity, cilantro or coriander leaves. And I spooned sundried tomatoes, olive oil and salt/black pepper over the fish. Bake till done. Serve with rice and stir-fried vegetables. Oh, and a plain omelette. That was dinner a fortnight ago!
I like cream but it’s expensive. Then one day at Mustafa I saw this big pack at less than $4…
Because The Hubby was hungry and the lamb refused to defrost in time(the microwave oven’s still spoilt), I remembered my friend who makes wonderful tuna pasta. And, also at Mustafa, I saw the brand of tuna she uses – Heinz’ Starkist. In my fridge were leftover boiled pasta from yesterday’s pasta chicken soup so all I did was sautee garlic, add in the cream, tuna, cherry tomatoes, pasta, black pepper, salt and to cut the creaminess, a few sprinkles of Tabasco’s Habanero sauce. Voila! To serve, a sprinkle of black pepper and parmesan cheese. So delicious and fattening. This dish needs to be eaten IMMEDIATELY because once a bit cold, the cream will harden.
I was excited when I saw a bottle of sparkling apple juice at my NTUC. Excited because a colleague had recently told me that she used this in lieu of white wine. No wonder, because using just plain water always makes my spaghetti insipid (if not using a tomato-based recipe).
Since I had that bottle, this morning I thought I’d make Spaghetti Vongole using ‘white wine’. Har har. Of course to Non-Muslims, using real white wine would be better but I stick to my dietary restrictions the best way possible. Being a teetotaler (like, duh), I had no idea initially how to open the bottle. Then, when I finally figured it out, realised that once you’ve opened the cork, there is no way to cork the bottle back. Ha ha! I was never really good at concepts. Anyway, using the sparkling apple juice really made a huge difference to the dish.
I used frozen ready boiled clams just because they weren’t selling fresh clams at the supermarket this morning. Also, I added a couple of prawns. And loads of fresh coriander. The result was really good. Oh, and fresh super-sweet baby tomatoes. I had the best dish because after I’ve cooked it, I ate it straightaway. Lazy, I didn’t separate the noodles from the wonderful broth so by the time The Hubby ate the dish, all the liquid had absorbed into the spaghetti. Hee hee. Next time, I’ll separate and make individual portions.
The Occasional Cook 