Quick pantry dinner: Lup Cheong Fried Rice

Whenever I cook rice, I always make at least double the amount I need.  This is so I can knock together some fried rice the next day.

It's so simple - the main ingredient is day-old cooked rice.  You can use white or brown but I think white works best.  Brown long-grain could work equally as well though.

All you need to worry about is getting a flavour base going.  Once that's done, just throw in the rice!

I hadn't been shopping in a while, but here's what I managed to scrounge together:

-  half a red onion
-  two small carrots
-  handful of green beans from the garden
-  red chilli
-  soy sauce
-  thumb-sized piece of ginger
-  pack of lup cheong (chinese cured) sausages
-  brown sugar

Finely dice onion, chilli and ginger, throw into a hot wok with about a tablespoon of vegetable oil.  Stir fry for a minute until softened and fragrant.  Add lup cheong - this is quite a fatty sausage and will impart some more juices and flavour into the pan, stir fry one minute.  You could instead use some chorizo, chicken or prawns, or for a vegetarian option, add firm tofu.  Add carrot (you could also use frozen peas, tinned corn, capsicum, etc) and stir fry for another minute or two until cooked.  Add cooked rice (about 2-3 cups worth), a splash or two of soy sauce, sugar and season with a few shakes of white pepper.  Stir fry until combined.

I like to spoon over some chilli oil for a little extra kick.

Hommus and pitta on a Saturday night

In today's Good Weekend mag (page 28) there was a recipe for pitta, so I started putting together the dough to prove and thought about what might be good to accompany it.  I had a little bit of tahini and a can of chickpeas in the pantry, so the obvious answer to that would be hommus. 

Paired perfectly with a cranberry cocktail ...

... and my hunky, frypan-wielding husband.

We ate the finished product straight out of the pan, dipped in the creamy hommus.

Easy hommus:

In the bowl of a food processor, put some chopped chilli, two cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp water, 2 tbsp tahini, 3 tbsp olive oil - and pulse until well blended.  Add a drained tin of chickpeas and a few big pinches of fresh chopped parsley and blend again until smooth and creamy.  Add juice of one lemon and salt to taste. Serve with pitta bread.

Vietnamese cold noodle salad with chilli & mint dresing

Using last night's leftovers, I made a cold Vietnamese salad.  I arranged the rice noodles, bean shoots, torn mint leaves (from our garden) and chopped chicken on a plate, then made a tasty dressing.  Start with 1/4 cup sweet chilli, then 'layer' those typical Vietnamese ingredients until you have the right flavour.  As a general guide, add to the sweet chilli sauce: 2 tsp sugar, 1 spring each chopped mint and coriander, 1 tbs light soy sauce, 2 tsp fish sauce, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, 1 small chopped red (de-seeded) chilli, juice from 2 limes or lemons.  Chopped peanuts would have made this dish, but in lieu of those I sprinkled over some sesame seeds which tasted fine.

Making dumplings with my Dumpling

Okay. So the title is a bit corny; but those of you who know me, understand I'm not often given to random acts of cheesy-ness (figuratively speaking). But tonight I arrived home from another day at the office to a slightly down in the dumps husband in need of a wifely chat, a cuddle, and some comfort food.

For some reason, we best communicate in the kitchen, usually while cooking. It struck me tonight that we hadn't cooked together in quite some time - between my working hours and his small business, it's a rarity to both be in the house before 7pm - so our marriage was probably long overdue for some maintenance. We set up a small production line of gow gee & won ton skins, and a mix of minced chicken & prawn, coriander, garlic, ginger, soy, sesame oil and spring onions (all pulsed in a food processor). We stood together side by side - Tim on gow gee duty, folding them "half moon" style, and me on won ton duty, folding them into "nurses caps" (no photos this time, but look up you tube for good dumpling folding instructions). And as we stood there, (folding, chatting, folding, chatting) a pleasant sort of calm descended with the simple, gentle repetitiveness of the activity.

The nurses caps were simmered in a basic chicken stock + soy and chilli sauce; while the half moons were fried in the pan in canola oil. Both were served with love, along with Tim's home made "dumpling sauce" consisting of a bunch of chopped fresh coriander, minced ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, a chopped chilli from the garden and half a cup of dark asian vinegar.