Spiralizer Saturday: Prawn Mooli Stir-Fry

This week my spiralized meal was based on a recipe from the Inspiralized cookery book by Ali Maffucci, which is a brilliant book (and website) if you are just getting started with a spiralizer. It was called Prawn Daikon Pho, a daikon being a type of radish, sometimes known as a winter radish or an Oriental radish. I'd never heard of it, let alone seen one in the supermarket, but I did remember seeing something called a mooli that was also from the radish family. From internet research I've decided that daikon and mooli are either the same thing or at least closely related!

If you have any spiralizer recipes you want to share, please add them to the linky at the bottom of this post!

I don't really like radishes as I find them too peppery so was a bit dubious about whether I would like mooli (and let's just say I'm not exactly known for liking new vegetables) - but I loved it! That may have had something to do with the sauce in this stir-fry but I am keen to try the mooli again (I used half of it in this recipe) in something else.

The Inspiralized recipe also includes jalapeno peppers but I don't like spicy food; I also left out the spring onions, onion, and whole coriander leaves - and instead added fresh dill which I had from another recipe. Ali's recipe is also a Pho which is more of a soup - I find eating those very messy so made it a much drier stir-fry. It tasted really good and was very healthy - I was having a bad day thinking about how much weight I need to lose so this made me feel a bit better!

 

Serves 2
300ml vegetable stock
2 tsp Thai fish sauce
3 tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp chopped fresh ginger, or 1/2 tsp ginger puree from a tube
approx. 160g cooked and peeled large prawns
half a mooli or daikon radish, peeled and spiralized
1 large carrot, peeled and spiralized
handful of small broccoli florets
1 tbsp. chopped fresh dill

Heat the stock, fish sauce, lime juice, coriander and ginger in a large wok and add the spiralized mool, carrot and the broccoli. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables have softened, then add the prawns and heat through. To serve, sprinkle with the chopped dill and a dash of lime juice if desired.

Sticky Chinese Pork with Spiralized Carrots

For this week's Spiralizer Saturday I cooked a meal based on this recipe from Delicious Magazine for sticky Chinese pork. But instead of having it with mangetout and pak choi I had spiralized carrot, which worked really well.

I started by marinating the diced pork in soy sauce, oil, Chinese five spice powder, garlic, ginger and honey.

If you want to spiralize a carrot, you need to choose the thickest carrot you can find - I've had difficult in the past when the carrots were too small.

Stir-fry the pork with the marinade

Add beansprouts, red pepper (I ran out and didn't realise) and the spiralized carrot

Finally I added some small florets of broccoli

Cook until the vegetables are tender then serve.

Once again I'm hosting the Spiralizer Saturday linkup - if you have any recipes that can be made using a spiralizer add them here!

Pad Thai and Ozeri Wok Review

Often we go to my mother in law's on a Saturday night we have a takeaway from her favourite Thai place and we both always order the same thing - Pad Thai. I've never actually made one before but was given more confidence from doing a Thai cooking course recently, even though we made different dishes. And when I was sent a wok to review by Ozeri it seemed the perfect thing to cook.

I followed Felicity Cloake's recipe in the Guardian for the perfect Pad Thai though I wasn't as fussy about the type of noodles and used straight-to-wok ones. I found fish paste, tamarind paste and pam sugar in Sainsburys though I had to do without the dried shrimp; I didn't think it mattered as I was using prawns in the Pad Thai. I decided to leave out the Chinese chives as well as I had no idea what they were or where to get them (Chinatown, I imagine) but what was really annoying was that the shop I went to was all out of beansprouts.  I didn't want to put this meal off and make it another time as I had already done that twice so instead used some alfafa sprouts I had in the fridge and added some shredded carrot for a bit of crunch. I also left out the tofu as I don't like it. Other than all those things I followed the recipe!

 I was sure that the takeaway Pad Thai would taste a lot better due to some sort of MSG or highly calorific additive but was very pleasantly surprised to find that mine tasted just as good - even without the beansprouts!

The Ozeri Green Earth wok I used is one of my favourite pans now – it’s huge (12 inches) which means you can cook enough for the whole family – but it also works well for just one person as there is plenty of room to move the ingredients around, for instance when I added the egg and pushed the other things out of the way to let the egg scramble on the bottom of the pan for a few minutes.

 

But even though it’s big, it’s not as heavy as I was expecting, so is very easy to handle. The colour is great – the smooth ceramic coating coupled with the green base makes it look quite expensive somehow.

 

Ozeri pans use a ceramic coating that is PTFE- and PFOA-free, meaning that even at high temperatures it doesn’t release any harmful toxins, and is also scratch resistant and easy to clean. It’s non-stick and made cooking my Pad Thai a breeze.

 

Thanks to Ozeri for sending the wok to review. All opinions are my own.

Slimming World Fakeaway Chinese New Year Meal

 

 

Happy Chinese New Year! It’s the year of the goat or sheep, which means it should be an important year for people born in 1979 such as myself!

 

I wasn’t specifically planning to celebrate Chinese new year but we were having some people over to dinner and it seemed a good opportunity to make Chinese food. At least, if you ignore the fact that one person doesn’t really like Chinese food (though he’s so fussy there isn’t much he likes, which makes dinner parties hard!), one was vegetarian, two don’t really eat vegetarian food (being big meat eaters and quite picky about vegetables) and the other two eat pretty much anything.

 

Despite all that I thought I could make a few variations on the same dish to keep everyone happy. I’ve got a great Slimming World recipe book called ‘Fakeaway’ – i.e. how to fake your favourite takeaways and make them much healthier. Chinese food isn’t as unhealthy as some anyway – there are a few dishes like duck which are fatty, and if you go to a takeaway that does deep-fried sweet and sour balls (yum!) that will rack up the calories, but a lot of Chinese restaurants do a more upmarket sweet-and-sour dish which doesn’t involve batter and the deep fat fryer. At the same time, you need to watch the oil and the fattening sauces when you are stir-frying (not to mention the prawn crackers!).

 

I picked a few recipes from the book and spent a good half hour chopping, preparing, mixing sauces and marinating meat. I lined everything up in rows so I knew which ingredients were for which dish – you can see here them all ready to go!

 

First of all I made chicken chow mein. Mix soy sauce, Chinese rice vinegar, garlic, ginger and five spice powder in a bowl and coat 1 chopped chicken breast per person. Leave to marinade for 20 minutes.

Stir-fry with Fry Light until the chicken is cooked, then add the vegetables to the pan: julienned carrot, sliced mangetout, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots (unfortunately I couldn't get hold of either of those so had to leave them out), sliced red pepper, baby sweetcorn (though the supermarket had sold out of that too), sliced spring onions, beansprouts and finally I added a whole bag of straight-to-wok noodles.

 

 

Pour over 1 tbsp. oyster sauce mixed with 2 tbsp. soy sauce and 1/2 tsp oil and stir-fry until the vegetables have softened to your liking.

 

At the same time I made a dish called speedy vegetable noodles with tofu. Again make the sauce first, mixing soy sauce, garlic, ginger and five spice powder. Spray a wok or large frying pan with Fry Light and stir-fry mangetout, mushrooms (which I forgot to buy - not doing well here!), red pepper, spring onions, pak choi (left out as the vegetarian doesn't like it so I added courgette instead) and cubes of tofu. Add noodles, 1 tbsp. sweet chilli sauce and 2 tbsp. soy sauce and stir fry until cooked.

 

 

I cooked extra noodles and also decided to do egg fried rice, though this was less of a success. I used microwave rice to make my life easier so cooked that, then placed it in a saucepan with peas and spring onions, soy sauce and a beaten egg. But I got sidetracked speaking to my guests and the rice started to stick a bit on the bottom of the pan! It wasn't too bad when it came to serving at least.

 

 

 

Finally for my boyfriend who doesn't like stir fry I made chicken satay, from a recipe on the Slimming World website. Marinade one diced chicken breast per person in a mixture of soy sauce, sweetener, garlic and ground cumin and when you are ready to cook, just fry the chicken in Fry Light.

 

 

Make the sauce in another pan: you need peanut butter, water, garlic, sweetener, soy sauce and fromage frais. Simmer until the mixture thickens and serve with the chicken - I thought this tasted really good and luckily so did my fussy boyfriend!

 

I had some lovely sets of chopsticks I bought in Kuala Lumpur and some fan-shaped paper napkins; the prawn crackers were put out in bowls for the guests to nibble on while I finished cooking and we had quite a feast!

 

 

 

 

 

 

As this is a really healthy meal I'm sharing this with the Spice Trail challenge, which has as its theme this month 'temple food'. The challenge is hosted by Vanesther at Bangers & Mash.

 

As I used courgette in the vegetarian dish I can send this to Anyone Can Cook, this month hosted by Catherine at Cates Cates as the theme is zucchini and marrows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salmon Stir-Fry with XO sauce

I found an ingredient for Alphabakes beginning with X! XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce that originates from Hong Kong; you cnn make your own, but apparently you need dried scallops, Jinhua ham, dried shrimp and canola oil, which I don't think would be very easy to source in the UK - or you can buy it ready-made in a jar from Tesco.

According to Wikipedia the name comes from cognac - extra old, which is known as XO. I know from my previous incarnation as a drinks writer that high end western spirits are very popular in Asia and Wikipedia says that XO came to denote high quality, luxury products. So I guess that XO sauce is supposed to be a luxury item - looking at the list of expensive ingredients I can understand why that is!

I had a look online for a recipe and they all seemed to be variations on a basic stir-fry. Most of the recipes I found suggested using chicken but I thought the seafood flavours in the XO sauce would work really well with salmon, and I was right. You can use any stir-fry vegetables and I have to admit cutting a few corners and buying a packet mix, which included beansprouts, cabbage and carrot. I used scissors to chop a piece of salmon into chunks.

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan or wok then add a teaspoonful of the XO sauce and stir around the pan. Pour in about 50ml fish stock or water. Then add the veg and stir-fry until softened. Add the salmon chunks and add another dash of water or fish stock if desired. Stir-fry until the veg and salmon is cooked through.

Serve, and enjoy! This was the first time I have tried XO sauce and I really liked it so will see what else I can do with the rest of the jar.

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen is X.

Secret Ingredient Noodle Stir Fry (after Kung Fu Panda)

This month's Food 'n' Flix is - for a change - a film I'd already seen: Kung Fu Panda. Chosen by Heather at Girlichef, it's a Dreamworks animation with an A-list cast (Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu) providing the voices for a panda called Po who wants to become a kung fu master, and the friends and rivals who help and hinder him along the way. I like it because it has a cute tubby panda doing high kicks but it's also one of those films with a strong message.

Po is an adopted child and his father is a goose who runs a Chinese restaurant (or indeed, a restaurant, as the film is set in China). His speciality is Secret Ingredient Noodle Soup and it is only when Po is training to become a kung fu master that his father deems him worthy of learning the secret ingredient - which turns out to be nothing. The message is that if you believe something is special, it is - which helps Po believe in himself and defeat the baddie.

So when it came to making a dish to best represent this film I knew I had to make a "secret ingredient" noodle dish - but somehow wanted the secret ingredient to be both something and nothing. I hit upon an idea after attending a cookery session with TV chef Phil Vickery and the British Turkey Association. Phil explained a technique called "velveting", which he did to the turkey before cooking it in a stir fry. Velveting is a Chinese technique originally so it also worked really well as the "secret ingredient" for this recipe. Chop your turkey or chicken breast (turkey is less expensive and low in fat, people!) and coat it in a mixture of egg white and cornflour (about 1 tbsp cornflour and one egg white) and leave for up to 30 minutes. This helps keep the poultry moist and gives it a soft, velvety texture.

  

To make this dish I velveted the turkey and stir fried it, then chopped some onion and spring onion and fried those (after removing the turkey from the pan).

I then  added a selection of vegetables to my stir fry, including broccoli, carrot, bean sprouts and alfafa sprouts and some prawns. Serve with noodles.

Finally I added the turkey back to the pan and some sweet chilli sauce.

I'm sending this to Food 'n' Flix, hosted by Heather at Girlichef.

Vietnamese Prawn Stir-Fry

I adapted this recipe from one in Slimming World magazine  but I did go a bit overboard on the spice! I've toned it down a little for this recipe but really it is a matter of personal taste.

To serve 2, you need:

300g straight to wok noodles

bag of mixed stir fry veg or a selection of veg such as beansprouts, red pepper, mange tout

Fry Light

1 lemongrass stalk, diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes

1/4 tsp ginger puree or a 1/2 inch piece of root ginger, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

100ml vegetable stock

2 tbsp soy sauce

200g large prawns, peeled

dash of lime juice

Spray Fry Light into a wok and fry the onion then add the lemongrass, garlic and ginger and the chilli flakes.

Add the vegetable stock and soy sauce then the vegetables. Cook until they are softened or wilted or cooked through - it will depend on what vegetables you use. If you use carrot or red pepper, slice it into matchsticks.

Add the noodles and prawns, stir through and cook for a few minutes.

Sprinkle a dash of lime juice over the top to serve. I think I used too much of the chilli flakes and next time I might leave it out entirely! I liked serving it in a triangular bowl; I think the shape works well with this kind of dish.

I'm sending this to the One Ingredient Challenge, hosted by Nazima at Franglais Kitchen, and Laura at How To Cook Good Food, as the theme for January is "healthy".

 

Similarly the theme for Four Seasons Food this month is "virtuous". The challenge is hosted by Louisa at Eat Your Veg and Anneli at Delicieux.

 
I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for the challenge Bloggers Around the World, as the country this month is Vietnam.