Green Curry Fish and Prawn with Coconut Rice

During the last half hour I spent in the office today it looked very bleak outside, it was rainy and I really was not looking forward to running out to the car and getting wet, it must have dampened my spirits as I rang Jo and asked her to stop by on her way home so I could take her out for dinner.

Stopping somewhere in Northbridge on our way home for dinner has become a fairly regular event, often it will be my favourite Vietnamese Vinh Hong, not only because I love the food, but also because of Jo’s love for the wine bar next door, it is a nice way to end the day, especially  after being busy at work.

Well that was the plan anyway, however by the time I left the office it had stopped raining, and Jo was still stuck on the freeway, so I told her to continue on home and I’d cook for her after all, I had started driving myself by this time and was formulating an idea in my head to cook a green curry chicken.  That was until I turned the next corner and the traffic was at a stands still, so after a quick U turn, I was heading back from whence I began and looking for a quicker route home, that route took me through North Perth, straight past our local fish monger, an ordinary chicken curry had now been elevated to a fish and prawn curry.

After a quick stroll through Coles, I was headed home with my snapper and king prawns, a yellow capsicum, a handful of green beans, a bunch of chives and a red chilli, with this and a few items from the pantry dinner was on its way!

I make my own green curry paste from green chillies, lots of coriander, shrimp paste, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, shallots, galangal, ginger, garlic, Kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass, it is absolutely the best, when I make it I make enough so as to make a couple of curries and then to fill an ice cube tray for later use, I used 3 cubes tonight from my last batch. 

I cooked the rice in coconut milk using the absorption method that takes 30 minutes to cook, having prepared the curry ingredients in the first 10 minutes of that time, left me 20 minutes to cook the curry, such an easy dinner to make and oh so YUM YUM to eat, really did leave me wanting more, but that would leave Jo without lunch tomorrow and we cannot have that now can we!

Pot Roast Chicken ala Rasa Malaysia

I found this recipe on Rasa Malaysia’s web page and the photograph of the chicken sitting in a rich orange coloured sauce looked amazing, then on reading the recipe and it reminded me of how I do my Pot Roast Beef, so I had to try it out for myself.  

Mt Barker - Free Range Chicken, pot roasted

The other appealing thing about this recipe was the ease at putting it all together; it really is a very easy meal to prepare and having done so , it made a delicious meal.  

I added a stick of celery to the pot, as I had some I wanted to use up and served the chicken up with some steamed rice and crusty bread and as I said earlier it was delicious.
The chicken was so moist and tender and the sauce was yum yum, so much so that after I had a full belly I still went back to the pot for more sauce and another slice of bread, just a perfect meal for the rain night we had!

Thai Red Curry Shark with awesome rice

If you came over to visit me right now, you would swear as you stepped over the front door step that you had stepped from Australia into Thailand, such are the aromas of the Murphy household tonight and if you like Thai food like I do, you’d think man that smells so good!

Now if you were an avid reader of my blog (God help you), you would know that I have blogged similar meals to tonight’s meal here in the past, but I am blogging this meal anyway as it is one I am very happy with, and there is enough difference and enough new information to warrant it.   That is partly due to a couple of new ingredients, well new brands of ingredients better put, that I have tried for the first time and also due to a new method I have used to cook the rice, both parts have made tonight’s meal one to remember.

I will start the same way as I did in the kitchen, with the rice.  I cook rice using the absorption method as I find it is not only the easiest but proves every time to produce the best results, it also makes it easy to time the cooking of the meal, as I practically do it in two parts, where I cook the rice for 15 minutes, then let it rest untouched for 15 minutes.  Tonight however I did vary the method by first quickly stir frying a teaspoon of grated ginger, a crushed clove of garlic and a teaspoon of finely chopped coriander root in a little oil heated in my wok.  Once the ingredients were nice and fragrant I added a cup of rice and mixed it through stirring continuously for about a minute, the now fragrant rice grains were transferred to a large pot to which I added 1¾ cups of chicken stock.  You then put the lid on the pot and onto a high heat until the liquid come to the boil, then turn the fire down as low as it will go and leave it for 15 timed minutes, as soon as the alarm goes off remove the pot from the heat, reset the timer for another 15 minutes and you get perfect rice, every time.  I changed that last bit tonight however, as I had prepared 2 tablespoons of coriander leaves, 2 tablespoons of mint, a cup of finely chopped bean shoots and a small finely diced carrot which I added to the rice and then mixed in quickly with a fork, then replaced the lid to let it stand for the remaining time.  It was amazing rice, I could have sat down and just ate that it was that good.

Once the rice was off the heat I got to work on cooking the fish which I had coated with a tablespoon of rice flour to which I had added a ¼ teaspoon each of ground cumin, ground coriander, ground cardamom, black pepper and salt, I then stir fried the fish in hot oil for a couple of minutes and then set aside on paper towel to drain any excess oil off.  I added a little more oil to the wok and once it was hot stirred in a large tablespoon of red curry paste, the first of the new ingredient brands I was trying out, the brand is Hogan’s Chilli Sauces, it is a WA product, handmade and has no artificial colouring, flavours or preservatives.  Until tonight I had always used and sworn by Valcom curry pastes, I don’t know if I could go back to that product after using Hogan’s paste.  I cooked the paste for a few minutes, it became very fragrant and sort of starts to separate a little, I then added the coconut cream, tonight I am using Ayam Brand Premium Coconut Cream and again I don’t think I could use anything else in future, it made the most beautiful sauce, I added the cream off the top of the can a little at a time to the chilli paste until I had it all combined before adding the juice from the bottom of the can and letting it cook for a couple minutes.  When the timer got down to two minutes to go, I added the fish back in and allowed it to heat over a low flame.

Wow, this has turned out to be a long blog, I think it has taken longer to write this than it did to cook the entire meal!!!  But now it is written I am happy, cos this is one meal I definitely want to cook again!

Chicken Paella

I received the September edition of the Good Food magazine in the post yesterday and on reading it found a recipe for Chicken Paella, that look so easy and sounded fantastic so I had to try it, I have been thinking about it all day so was glad to get home and start cooking.

It really wasn't until I started preparing the ingredients that I realised the name Chicken Paella was a little bit odd for the dish, as there is so much pig in it, with the combined quantities of bacon,  pork sauage and chorizo sauage far out weighing the chicken.

But that aside, this was a great meal, very flavoursome and on the table in less than 45 minutes from start to finish, served up with a fresh garden salad, some crusty bread and a nice glass of red, it was extremely hard not to keep going back for more!

I love paella, and have been guilty on many occasions for over eating when I get stuck into one, never more so though than when on honeymoon with Jo Girl, we where at the Petronas Towers at one of the many restaurants on the outer ring, Jo videoed me whilst I was stuffing my face, it was a great day and we often have a laugh over that video, great memories!

Leek risotto with lemon fish

Whilst leafing through one of my new cook books this morning looking for some inspiration for dinner, I asked Jo what she had in mind, when she said fish I was very pleased as I had been thinking I’d like to cook risotto and rice is a perfect accompaniment to go with fish.  A few pages into the book later and I had found the perfect recipe, leek risotto with lemon fish, it was perfect because it not only combined the two ingredients we wanted, but it was doable in a little over 35 minutes, the perfect dish for a Thursday night. 

The fact I had all but one ingredient in the house was also a big plus, the missing ingredient being a leek, I knew would be easy to source, so need to go out of our way to any speciality shops, although as it turned out there was a small catch in the end, as the shop I chose to go to now has a new shoe shop next door and whilst I did use a little will power and walked straight past on my way to the grocery store, I could not resist having a little peek on my way back.  I now have a lovely new pair of shoes, well they are boots in fact, at least I got out of it reasonably well, last time this happened I had Jo with me, we were going for coffee, 4 pairs of shoes and $600.00 later, well that was an expensive coffee!

The star ingredient tonight though, was the fish, and that was in fact a beautiful fillet of shark, Bronzy, I think the chap that gave it to Jo said it was, whatever, it was top quality, had been caught and preserved by someone that knew what they were doing when it came to fish, outstanding product and one that was perfect for our dinner.

Leek Risotto

200ml white wine

5 cups stock, vegetable or chicken

2 tbl spn olive oil

1 very large leek, or 3 very small, sliced

2 cups arborio rice

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tbl spn lemon juice

cracked black pepper

Lemon fish

60g butter

2 teaspoons shredded lemon rind

2 tbl spn chopped parsley

4 x 180g firm white fish fillets

2 tbl spn lemon juice

Method

Place stock in saucepan on medium heat and bring to a steady simmer

Heat oil in pan and add leeks, cook until golden, about 6 minutes

Add the rice, stir in well and cook for 1 minute

Add the wine, cook until all wine has been absorbed, then add a ladle of hot stock, let that cook until totally absorbed before adding another ladle of stock, continue until rice is tender, soft and creamy.

Add the Parmesan and lemon juice and mix in well.

To make the fish, heat the butter, lemon rind and parsley in a pan over medium to high heat, add the fish and cook for 2 minutes on each side, or until tender

add the lemon juice.

Serve rice in a bowl with fish on top, add a little more Parmesan and parsley.

Bon apetito

Curried Sausages and Apples

I always find it funny when I shop, every now and then I will buy an ingredient, just because I like that ingredient so much, such was the case the other day when I was at the deli bar and I saw my favourite big thick Italian sausages, just the sight of them made my mouth water!

It was only after buying four of those big boys and placing them in my trolley that it occurred to me that I would have to now cook them in some manner, but by the time I got to the checkout I had made my decision and I have been hanging out to cook my very own recipe for Curried Sausages and Apples since.

I had to make my very own recipe because I could not find anything like what I wanted to do with these big boys, I wanted the curry to be similar as that my Mum would make, and I also wanted to include apples in the dish, after that all I wanted was a nice balance between spicy n hot rounded out with a little bit of sweetness.

My only concern with the result was always going to be what Jo thought of it, as this dish contained two of her least favourites, yellow curry and sweetness.  That is why I had to laugh when she sat to eat her dinner and exclaimed with a surprised voice “Oh I thought we didn’t have any potatoes” and then a little latter after I mentioned something about the sausages, she began to laugh as she had thought she was eating chicken!
With that I had to think to myself, job well done!

Curried Sausages and Apples

Ingredients

4 thick Italian pork sausages

1 tablespoon oil

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 red chilli, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 tsp grated ginger

2 sticks celery, chopped

1 carrot, julienned

½ red capsicums, julienned

2 tablespoon madras Curry powder

2 tablespoon plain flour

1 ½ cups chicken stock

2 Granny Smith apples, cored and quartered and halved again

½ cup sultanas

Garnish

¼ cup coriander

8 cherry tomatoes

1 red chilli, sliced diagonally

Method

Bring a saucepan of water to the boil, drop the sausages in and reduce to a simmer, cook for 10 minutes, then remove and set aside to cool, once cooled remove the skins, slice thickly on the diagonal, set aside

Heat oil in a heavy based pan, add onions and cook until tender 3-4 minutesAdd the ginger, chilli, garlic and celery cook until fragrant

Add the carrots and capsicums, cook for a couple of minute

Add the curry powder and flour, nix well with other ingredients and cook 1-2 minutes until very fragrant and grainy looking

Remove pot from the heat and slowly add the chicken stock stirring to mix in well, return to heat bring to the boil, stirring occasionally

Add the meat and cover with lid, reduce heat to simmer, and cook for ten minutes

Add the apples and sultanas, cook covered for a further 15 minutes

When you add the meat to the pot, get the rice on, to do so first rinse rice thoroughly, then place in a saucepan to which you add 1¾ cups of water for every cup of rice.  Place the lid on top and put the pot onto the hotplate, bring to the boil, once it boils, turn the heat right down as low as it will go and simmer for 15 minutes, I start a timer as soon as the heat goes down and it is important not to lift the lid at all.  Once the 15 minutes is up remove the pot from the heat and sit it somewhere safe, again do not lift the lid, leave it there for another 15 minutes, pt the timer on again!  Once the time goes off the second time you will have perfect steamed rice, now take the lid off and break u a little with a fork, then serve with the curry on top, garnish with coriander, chilli and cherry tomatoes, enjoy!
s 

Hainanese chicken rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice with Red Chilli, Ginger and Soy dipping sauces

I found this recipe on SBS webpage’s whilst looking for something else, sort of stumble on it and it sounded great, only thing was I could not see a photo of it as it was not showing for some reason, so I just googled for images “Hainanese chicken rice recipe” and found a multitude of them.  On further reading of this dish, I learnt that it is pretty much made the same way by everyone that makes it and it sounds simple enough, but really it is a very long and involved process with many different elements to it, so it was good I left it to try on a quite Sunday afternoon.

Three hours after I began the cooking process, we sat down to an amazing dinner, very very tasty rice and very very tender chicken.  The chicken is poached in hot water, but water that is never brought to the boil with the chicken in it, it takes an hour for this process alone, but the result was very moist, tender and flavoursome chicken.  The stock produced from cooking of the chicken is used to start off the soup, which is in itself another hour of cooking time.

Preparing the rice in chicken fat, ginger and garlic

The rice aspect of the dish is started out by frying a lump of chicken fat and a little skin, which you then add ginger and garlic too, once the fat gives up some oil in the wok.  The fat and skin is then removed and the rice added, and cooked for a few minutes before it then makes its way to the rice cooker, or as I did a saucepan and cooked by your normal method, only you use some of the stock/soup instead of water.  The result is the yummiest rice, the rice was the highlight of the dish for me, but in saying that the chicken and the soup were pretty damn good too.

Poaching the bird

We had been out to the Swan Alley for lunch earlier in the day and had stopped at our favourite winery Windy Creek to pick up a few bottles of red, so it was only fitting that we cracked a bottle of their “Autumn Red” to go with our chicken and rice dinner.  This is the perfect drop when you have something a little spicy such as the Asian flavours we enjoyed tonight, it was nice too, a bit heavier than a Rose which is often matched with Asian foods.

Moist tender and juicy meat, yummo

I have just gone back to the SBS webpage’s to try and retrace my steps, as I want to do another Asian styled soup dish tomorrow night, which uses most of the same ingredients and methods as I have used today, the great thing is tomorrow I have ready made ingredients and it will only be a matter of heating them up, so all today’s efforts have some pay off!  The funny thing was I found the photo’s that I could not see the other day were in fact a video of a women cooking this recipe, I was gobbed smacked, as she appears to have taken some short cuts in the video, such as using ready made stock in the rice, but whatever it was great the way I did it, though after the three hours of cooking I was thinking the next time Jo wants Hainanese chicken rice, we are off to Northbridge!!!  Now what I cannot believe is I was actually able to trace my steps from last week and actually found the recipe for tomorrow night’s dinner, so I won’t have to wing it after all!

If you would like a printable copy of the recipe, just as I used, it let me know and I will email it to you, otherwise you can check it out here on SBS.

Italian sausage and pea risotto

I have mentioned here before my passion for shopping at Drovers in Joondalup, it is a fair drive from home but I love going there, especially on a Sunday.  Whenever I enter the massive butcher shop my first stop is at the closet fridge to the entrance, this fridge is packed full of chicken carcasses, beef and lamb bones etc which are ideal for making stock.  I usually grab a bag of 4 chicken carcasses, for the princely sum of $2.00/kilo, they are fantastic value.  Once in the fruit and veg section I’ll grab a few extra veggies to make stock when I get home.  It has become the tradition to start chopping veggies and roasting the carcasses even before I have unpacked and put away the rest of the shopping.  Once the stock s made and placed in the fridge to cool, I am absolutely delighted, as I know I have got such a great base for so many dishes and sauces, so much better than brought stocks.  Tonight as I took the last of the Steak and Kidney pie from the fridge I noticed I still had 4 or 5 cups of stock from my last lot I had made, all through dinner I was wondering what to do with those 4 or 5 cups, no way was I going to throw it out, and it was a bit late for freezing it, there was no choice but to cook something.  Being that I did not have to cook dinner, I did not want to do anything to difficult, so I asked Jo if she would be interested in a risotto for her lunch tomorrow, she was very keen.  So once dinner was over I set about cooking risotto, this will be easy I thought, as I cut up onion and measured out butter, I decided I would add some Italian sausage, so out with the sausage, cut that up and start melting butter.  In with the onion, cook for 3 – 4 minutes till nice and soft, smelling great already, then decide to add the Arborio rice next and commence stirring, mixing well with the rice and onion when I notice dark brown grains in there, not happy Jan, I start to pluck the dark gains out when I notice the grains have legs and little faces, bloody weevils that’s what they are!!! So in the bin with that lot and off to the pantry to get a new packet, well you guessed it there is none in the pantry, bugger!  Quick phone call to my sister, but no luck there, no I have to go and find a shop at 7:45, not a happy chappy.

I did manage to get a packet, and did not have to go that far, so that was not too bad after all, so off we go back home to cut up some onion, measure out some butter etc …

As it turned out on the second go I decide to add the Italian sausage with the onion and I think this worked well, then added the rice after a few minutes and then the wine a couple of more minutes before starting to add the hot stock.  I love risotto, though I will never order it at restaurants anymore, as I am a bit biased and am very critical of others attempts to make a perfect risotto.  I learnt the secret to making risotto from a big bald headed Italian, who looked more Russian to me, but who am I to judge, he’d be too hard to fight in a dark alley!  This guy has won numerous awards for his risotto, it is supposed to be pretty good, and his secret is that you do not stir it once the white wine has been added, but shake the pan vigorously instead, I have used this method since and I believe it works.  Apparently if you stir the rice, you knock the guts out of it and it deflates the grains, shake it and each and every grain is nice and plump and full of flavour, well mine is anyway, my secret is the stock, it has to be home made, made with love from chicken carcasses and fresh veggies and a little drop of wine!

I actually took some amazing photos of my ingredients, all cut up and precisely measured out, but as Murphy’s Law goes the storage card was not in the camera so I only have the finished product, bugger!

50g butter

1 onion

150g Italian sausage, halved and thinly sliced

275 Arborio rice

150 ml dry white wine

4 – 5 cups chicken stock, boiling

225g frozen peas

50g Parmesan cheese

Melt butter, add onion, cook 3 minutes, add sausage cook 1 minute, add rice cook, stir well and cook until it starts to pop, add wine allow rice to absorb, then add a ladle of hot stock, shake the pan vigorously, when absorbed add another ladle, shake pan vigorously, continue until all stock is used up.  Add the peas just before last ladle of stock, shake in add the stock, bring back to boil, shake some more, take off heat, add butter flip through the rice, now add the Parmesan and gently stir through, grab some bread and a glass of vino and bon appetite! 

Tomato chicken curry with potato and aubergine

Thought I best do a blog tonight since I have had a few nights off, thanks to Friday football, a birthday party, a wedding and a case of food poisoning (had some bad grapes, again), all good now though still somewhat tired, but that is enough whinging for one post!

Had a very late finish from work today and came home to find Jo had defrosted some chicken drumsticks for dinner, only thing there was not a lot in the house, so I decided best and easiest thing to do would be a curry.  I had a quick look at one of my curry books but did not see anything that interested me so I just sort of threw a few things together as I went and ended up with a tomato chicken curry with potato and aubergines.  The best thing about curries is they are so easy and you can throw just about anything in the pot and it will work out ok, the second best thing is I know it is going to taste even better tomorrow, but tonight it tasted very nice indeed.

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, sliced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 Tbsp ginger

1 kilo chicken legs

2 med-lge potatoes, diced

1 large aubergine, diced

2 x 400g cans tomatoes, diced

1 cup stock

Curry paste

Curry paste

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp garamassala

2 tsp turmeric

½ tsp red chilli flakes

1 tsp sweet paprika

2tbsp white wine vinegar

Method

·         Add all ingredients for curry paste to a bowl and mix well with a fork until it forms a paste

·         Heat oil in a large heavy based pan, add onion and cook for a couple of minutes over medium heat

·         Add garlic and ginger and cook until onions are tender

·         Add chicken to the pan and cook to brown all sides, then remove chicken from pan and set aside

·         Add the curry paste and cook stirring until fragrant, about 1 minute

·         Add the stock, scrap bottom of pan to get all stuck bits off

·         Add the potato and aubergine, mix well to coat with curry paste

·         Add the tomatoes , mix in with stock

·         Return the chicken to the pan, cover with curry sauce

·         Raise heat until sauce comes to the boil, then reduce to a simmer, cover with lid and let cook for 30-40 minutes, the chicken should just start to fall from the bones and the potatoes tender

·         Serve with steamed rice and a sprinkling of fresh coriander leaves

Malai Prawn (creamy prawn curry)

Tried something a little different tonight and so glad I did it was so scrumptious!

Malai Prawn or creamy prawn curry if you prefer was a very easy recipe to follow and did not take long at all to put together, the longest part of it was the cooking of the rice, though I did spend a bit of time shelling the prawns as shelled prawns were not available today. The curry is a flavoursome curry more so than a hot curry, that could have had a little to do with the fact I only used the one chilli instead of the two listed, I will follow the recipe to the letter next time! The interesting thing whilst cooking this dish was the colours that it went through getting to the final product. The onions, chilli and tomatoes are blended together before cooking commences and that come out predominantly white, then changed to a green colour as the oils blended in and heated up and after a few minutes the red of the tomatoes started coming through, then you start adding the spices it becomes quite dark and then coconut milk and then cream lightening it up again. I’ll cook this again just to see that again, I found it so interesting.

Jo loved the flavour of the curry so much she has requested I make it again only with steak instead of prawns, she thinks that would be a real winner, such a dag!

I love dinners like this one, easy to cook, big on flavours and little mess to clean afterwards, and there will be plenty of room for a bit of apple pie a little later this evening!!

Ingredients:
• 1 kg large prawns
• 2 large onions
• 3 tomatoes
• 2 green chillies
• 2 tbsps garlic paste
• 1 tbsp ginger paste
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 2 tsps coriander powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 2 cups coconut milk
• 3 tbsps single cream
• 3 tbsps vegetable/canola/sunflower cooking oil
• Salt to taste

Method:
• Grind the onions, tomatoes, 2 green chillies into a fine paste in a food processor.
• Heat the oil in a pan and add the paste to it. Fry for a minute.
• Add the ginger and garlic pastes and fry for another minute.
• Add the spices and brown masala till the oil begins to separate from it.
• Add the coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste.
• Add the prawns and cook for another 2 minutes only.
• Turn off the cooker and stir in the cream.
• Garnish with coriander leaves and serve with steamed rice.

I used 600g prawns, and the one chilli, it really needed the 2nd chilli though, and there was plenty of sauce for more prawns, I will be on my Pat Malone tomorrow night so the leftovers may find its way onto a nice fish fillet! If you love curries that are not spicy hot, you’ll love this curry.  I found the recipe in a blog by an Indian lady, see the new link in My Favorites below.

Chicken risotto with italian cacciatore sausage and sage

I woke this morning feeling less than ordinary and well and truly in need of more sleep, thanks to having to get up 3 times during the night, I felt ill so I ended up having a day at home, rugged up on the couch in front of the TV. I wonder if anyone has had the misfortune of having to sit and watch free to air TV all day on a Thursday, man o man if you have I pity you and I hope you stay at Graylands was not too long!
I got around this boredom by whacking in my favourite DVD and watching Maeve O’Meara’s Italian Food Safari, for the third time! And even though I really didn’t want to eat, it had my salvia glands working overtime. I was feeling pretty ordinary by day’s end though and ended up ringing my Mum for some sympathy, she gave me an age old cure and told me to drink a glass full of half port, half brandy and I must say after my third one I was feeling a lot better, thanks Mum.

Anyway, back to Maeve, one of the episodes had this big brute of a bloke, who looked and sounded more Russian than Italian, cooking a risotto dish.  Apparently he is a guru at cooking risotto so I paid close attention to him again and decided that I must put this knowledge to work, so I set about fixing some risotto for my gorgeous wife's dinner, whom I am sure would have looked after me a lot better had she not been so busy working!
The guy on the video cooked a sausage, red wine and pea risotto and whilst it looked good, I decided to cook with what I had at hand, and what I had was cacciatore sausage, to his pork, totally different, I also wanted to use the chicken breast which had been taken from the freezer earlier in the day. I did use some of his technique though, the most important one being not to stir the rice as it cooked, but rather to shake the pan and to heat the stock to a little higher than a slow simmer, the result was a very tasty dish, the sauce was smooth and creamy and the rice cooked beautifully with nice plump grains.
All the risotto’s I had cooked before tonight have been used to make arancini, and as such I had made the risotto sauce thicker which is ideal for arancini, so it was great to sit down and eat risotto for a meal on its own, something we will do more of in the future. If you would like to know how I went about cooking it check my recipes section, I will post it soon, otherwise check out the brutes method, see lnk below,
cheers Jack

Jack's Chicken Risotto with Italian Cacciatore and Sage

Link to Maeve O'Meara's Italian Food Safari Risotto segment  http://www.sbs.com.au/food/foodsafarirecipe/index/id/9787/n/Risotto_with_sausage_red_wine_and_peas

Thai green curry chicken

Cooking dinner tonight was like a trip down memory lane for me, and an absolute pleasurable trip at that! Such is the effect that Thai food has on me. I still remember the first time I ever ate Thai, it was at Top End Thai, a very authentic restaurant in Hannan St, Kalgoorlie. The owner/chef Artchariya Ward, is a beautiful woman of around 70 years of age now, and as far as I can tell still preparing meals for her very fortunate clientele. I was amazed and hooked on Thai at my first mouthful, it was like a flavour explosion in my mouth. That night we had a mixed appetiser plate, Green Curry Chicken, Seafood Jungle curry and Coconut rice, I liked it that much I went back the next night, this was back in 1996 and I still remember it like it was this afternoon. On my return to Perth, I started looking for a good Thai restaurant and was amazed to find Artchariya had a sister restaurant in Edward St, East Perth. I introduced many work and social friends to Thai food at that establishment, unfortunately Artchariya had to close it to concentrate on Hannan St when her head chef left for greener pastures. That was a sad day for me, and I cannot remember how many times I have said to Jo how I would like to take her to Kalgoorlie just to visit Top End Thai, it still rates as the best ever on my list.

A couple of years after that work trip to Kalgoorlie, I found myself in a position where I had to cook for myself or go hungry! Green Curry Chicken was amongst the first things I set about to perfect, I never cook to a recipe, so it changes every time I cook it, but tonight’s version is pretty close to the norm now. I actually went to the Dusit Thai restaurant in Northbridge for the only cooking lesson I have ever had, that night I was given a recipe and instructions to cook their dish, starting with grinding herbs and chilli’s into a paste, I have lost that recipe now, but I still follow some of what I learnt from them. One thing that I learnt was the brand of Coconut Cream they use and swear by, and it is the best!

In February 2000 my eldest sister went away somewhere and left my BIL at home to fend for himself, we decided to go out to some dance, and he was to pick me up, so I said come early and I’ll make dinner for you. Well he walked in and saw I had Green Chicken Curry on the stove and his face lit up, ten years later he still talks about that night and in particular that meal, something he does not and will never get at home.

In July 2004, I had my gorgeous girlfriend over for dinner, the first dinner I cooked for her, I had only known her a few days but she was impressed, so much so that I am still cooking for her today!

To say I love Green Chicken Curry would be an understatement, and to hear me utter those words you might think, mm that’s nice, the words really don’t convey the message that well do they, but my memories ah now that’s different and I have shared but a few!