Friday’s Nonya Chicken Curry Recipe

Elaine’s Nonya Chicken Curry

 

This is the recipe I’m going to be trying tomorrow. Will keep you posted on how it turns out. I have made up a slight deviation aleady which is, lemongrass chicken stock to use for extra liquid. I have taken yesterdays’ roast chicken carcass boiled up with onion, celery, lemongrass, green chilli and few cloves of garlic. I forgot I had it on the hob and I was wondering what delicious dish my neighbour was cooking!! All bodes well.

Nonya Chicken Curry | Nomsies Kitchen – http://pinterest.com/pin/481603753877686862/?s=3&m=wordpress

The update…man oh man. It tasted sooooo damn good! As I usually go off piste with recipes, this curry was much the same. I didn’t have coconut milk to hand so used coconut oil to fry up the spices and evaporated milk later on. I also didn’t have fennel in my herb cupboard but I do have Chinese Five spice which contains star anise, so used that instead. It smelt and tasted fantastic and I will definitely be making it again. Key ingredient in this curry is the star anise or fennel, it is what sets it apart from Indian or Thai curries.

My supplementary ingredients…

Superhero Diaper Mom… boldly goes where no man dares (plus meal plan ideas!)

“Code Red” is called quite a lot in our house when making diaper changes amusing for our two-year old boy. Adam insists on “code brown” which is probably more appropriate on reflection. An afternoon spent at home chilling today – which has become a bit of a necessity with the kids starting pre-school and infant school now. It doesn’t take much to trigger an afternoon’s meltdown born of exhaustion (and that’s just me). I remember cheering as an 18-year-old that I would never again have to get up for school – how naive I was! So the weekdays and weekends have that familiar distinction again for us, but somehow the weekend lie in hasn’t quite returned. So steering my ramblings back to food, I have noticed that enough (or not enough!) sleep, food and water to drink (especially in Singapore) have a huge role to play in keeping the kids balanced physically and emotionally. There still aren’t enough hours in the day to always keep on top of all three but I’m trying!

So this week’s meal plan…

Roasted Sea bass, vegetables with pasta in tomato and oregano sauce
Pancakes (breakfast) and, Lemon Chicken, rice and green leafy veggies
Damn tasty burgers, oven wedges followed by chocolate ice cream – it’s my birthday!
Stuffed Cannelloni with Spinach and Cottage Cheese
Chicken Nonya Curry

My Sedap Singapore Meal Plan

Found on fashiontag.com

I must confess some of the meals in this week’s plan I may not be wholly responsible for cooking!

So who’s the fine looking lady you are asking? I could lie, but I won’t. It isn’t me. But it is what my hair will look like tomorrow, yay. It is important to look stylish at all times (hah) even when cooking.

I am being kind to myself this week – it has been a busy one already and it’s only Tuesday. My washing machine has broken down, which completely sucks when you have three children aged four and under who soil their clothes with reckless abandonment. On the plus side, I will be regaining some sense of style, and as if that wasn’t enough to make me smile, my big sister and family are coming to stay this weekend (who live in another country usually – woohoo). So, I shall be busy baking lots of lovely bread for the weekend, and be cooking up a storm of cakes and treats for their stay. So not much time left for regular meal cooking, between baking and looking uber glamorous!

Monday (or day one) – Roasted sea bass in Heng’s Nonya sauce, rice and corn on the cob
Tuesday – Mee Goreng with added veggies and less chilli for the kids
Wednesday – Ginger and Honey Stir Fried Pork with sweet potato, rice and garlic broccoli
Thursday –  Ayam (Chicken) Curry with fresh condiments, mango chutney and rice
Friday – Beef rendang with green leafy veggies

Top Tip for moms with little kids – Stock up your freezer
For those days when I cook something too spicy or way out for the kids taste buds, I have a freezer stocked with kid friendly food like fish fingers, leftover casseroles, mini sausages, bolognese and soups. So I don’t have to cook two different dinners, just cook one, defrost one!

Bad Boy Bass

Thank you Heng’s for making a super easy and tasty fish supper for me and Mr X. So tasty in fact I decided to blog about it. Best of all your delicious sauce contained no MSG or preservatives and it was indeed quick and easy. My cooking equipment included the oven, a pair of scissors, some aluminium foil and a cooking tray. easy lah.

I happened upon the sauce during one of my browsing sessions of the weird shit section of the supermarket. It’s not that weird I concede, but you should have seen some of the stuff it was alongside!! All I needed to do next was buy a bargain priced sea bass at NTUC supermarket ($5 people, that’s about £2.50 for my UK followers), gutted and cleaned or course. No fishy guts on this moms hands!

I cooked it, served it with boiled Basmati rice and simple steamed corn on the cob. Delicious, nutritious and quick. Will be doing again. Here’s a piccie pre-bake….and yes for all you lily livers it has the head on it still, oh grow a pair.  My Singaporean reader’s will be wondering what I am on about – don’t worry it’s a peculiar British thing that people like to pretend their headless fish were born that way!

 

BTW – in case you didn’t guess this recipe is for mum and dad, bloody spicy.

Elaine’s Beef Rendang Istimewa

Beef Rendang (Daging Rendang)

One of my all time favourites….Beef Rendang. It tastes so damn good. If you have never eaten this, your culinary life is incomplete! If you are too lazy to cook I can recommend Ivins Ivins peranakan restaurant in Binjai Park, Singapore. But you know what they say, ‘give a man a fish’ and all that…..

Now, the aficionados will probably be cussing me after this post as this recipe is slightly bastardized to fit my store cupboard. Whatever dude.

Ingredients:
Approx 500g Beef shin or chuck steak cubed (the best stew steak in my opinion – and usually cheap)
1x 400ml Canned Coconut Milk and 100g desiccated coconut, or, two large handfuls of freshly grated coconut* from which you will make your own milk and coconut for the sauce.
One stalk lemongrass
3-4 large cloves garlic peeled
1 large knob fresh root ginger (about size of a golf ball) peeled
1 large onion peeled and roughly chopped
2-4 Lime leaves (fresh or dried)
1 heaped tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 fresh green chillies, or, 1-2 tsp chilli powder (more or less as you like)
6 stoned prunes, or, 1 tbsp tamarind paste
1 large pinch sea salt
3-4 tbsp. cooking oil (rapeseed or olive, or vegetable)

Blitz in a food processor: onion, garlic, ginger, fresh chillies or chilli powder, prunes or tamarind paste, spices, salt and 2 tbsp of oil.

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a heavy bottomed pan. You are going to cook this dish for almost 2 hours on the hob so you need a large, solid pan to make sure it doesn’t burn. Add the paste and fry for a few minutes until the paste is sizzling. Add the cubed beef and stir for another couple of minutes till the meat is browned and thoroughly covered in the paste.

Smash your lemongrass bulb till split but in one piece and drop into the pan with the meat. Add lime leaves and stir.

Add tinned coconut milk and desiccated coconut, or home-made milk and grated coconut, and stir and gently bring to the boil. Cover the pan and simmer for 2 hours stirring occasionally.

This is a relatively thick stew so don’t worry if the sauce reduces down. If it gets very low add a small amount of water.

Garnish with fresh coriander and serve with white rice. The flavours in this dish get even better eaten a day later – just remember to store it properly ;).

*fresh grated coconut is available from supermarkets and vegetable markets in Singapore. It is packaged in supermarkets and found in the chiller section by fresh noodles, dumplings, tofu etc. In the market you will need to ask market seller to grate it for you on the day. When you have got it, just mix in a medium bowl with approx 900ml drinking water, and with clean hands squeeze the coconut in the water. Do this for about 5 minutes and set aside till you need it. The cream will rise to the top but you can just stir it back in to get really creamy coconut milk – sedap!

W6 Meal Plan

Off Piste Picnics at Sunset

I dedicate this post to Priss and Vinegar who inspired me to relax the bath time mantra “thou shall bathe thy children at the annointed time or face the wrath of a tiresome two year old, and four year old, and 7 month old”. Whatever dude…we had fun.

AND…late afternoon is the best time temperature wise to hang out in Singapore’s playgrounds. Today we went for a scoot, swing and picnic tea. Yes, I confess, I didn’t stick to my meal plan, but I did use the roast chicken leftovers the other day. Okay?

As Mr X is out wining and dining tonight, the kids and I all had ‘dinner’ at lunch time. Ginger and Honey Pork, Sweet Potato and Kai Lan stir fry (even bubba). The kids ate the Kai Lan, a local green leafy veggie, aka kid kryptonite, so let’s hear it for the marinade! Recipe to follow.

I do this swopping of our main meal to midday, quite a lot now as it suits us better. Much to the amusement of one of my friends who wanted a glossary for decoding my English references to tea, lunch, dinner, pudding, dessert and snacks. Let’s just say I eat often! Mr X with his home office couldn’t be happier. Except I suspect he is hoping for a second hot home-cooked meal. No chance mate. At noon the kids are more alert and eat better then, I am more alert and cook better then (!), and it frees us up for guilt free teas out. In singapore local kids seem to go to bed quite late so lots of activities including eating out, take place from 6 or 7pm. As long as you don’t mind pushing back the occasional bath time it works well. So far, our late afternoon excursions have included Singapore Cable Car picnics, West Coast picnics, and the Night Safari. I just wish my old neighbour Theresa (a late afternoon playground and ice lemon tea officionado) still lived near enough to join us now I’ve got my s**t organised. C’est la vie.

In singapore food can be bought everywhere but if you are picnicking some handy snacks I’d suggest… sandwiches..and the king of is..peanut butter…they stick together well, less filling falling out and kids fav. Other fillings include soft cheese and strawberry jam, grated cheese and ham. I always throw in grapes or bananas, kids crisps, milk to drink in little cartons with straws (an exotic treat)  and water, as it is always a sweaty day here. Today I took along a defrosted pot of homemade strawberry, pear and rice bubba food, and bedtime bottle for bubba too.

Kids had a great time, so did I. Two were bathed and in bed by 8.30pm, the middle monkey did a bit of yoyo bedtime, but is now asleep with his train snoring contentedly. 9.33pm. Peace and quiet and cold beer. Not a bad days mothering.