Sweet Pumpkin And Lily Bulb Soup

What you do with left over pumpkin(s) in... let's say half an hour? I had some pumpkin chunks left over from the soup I made previous days :-) I thought of stir-fry with some shrimps or just with plain with garlic or onions but changed my mind which I don't even know why. Then as I browsed the net for ideas, I realized that it was Halloween judging from all the pumpkin posts on foodies blogs! To all my friends, I wished you 'Happy (belated) Halloween!' I don't celebrate it but it's kind of fun seeing bloggers and friends having fun around you and it also reminded me that Winter is just around the corner!

Besides the pumpkin, I also found my pack of 4 pcs Lily Bulbs which I can't recalled when I bought it. I have to make mental notes not to buy things or ingredients that I don't intend to use early. I did a post about Fresh Lily Bulbs before - you can have a look at how the bulb looks like. The thing is, if I don't buy it now, I may not seeing them anymore on the shelves. It's either off season or last of the lasts. I have to wait next year again! You faced such predicament to buy or not to buy??? Until I find a bigger home for larger refrigerator, I have to content with what I have now... :-( Now, for a quick dessert, yes, I'm using the pumpkin and Lily Bulbs as dessert, for a change.

Sweet Pumpkin And Lily Bulb Soup

Serves 2-3 portions

150 g Pumpkin

50 g Fresh Lily Bulbs

30 g Rock Sugar (or to your taste)

400 ml Water

Method:

1. Wash and cut pumpkin into small chunks. Set aside.

2. Wash and remove any yellow petals from Lily bulbs. Separate bulb into petals.

3. In a pot, heat the water until it boils.

4. Add in the pumpkin chunks and let it cook for about ½ hour or until soft. Add in the rock sugar and Lily petals. When the rock sugar dissolves, remove the pot from heat to avoid over cooking the Lily petals. Serve hot or cold (you can add some ice cubes if you like.)

Note: If you can't find rock sugar, you can use your daily sugar or raw cane sugar. I'm not sure if you can find Fresh Lily bulbs in your regions (please check with your local delis, florists or Asian supermarkets) but you can use the dried lily petals. Soak the dried petals, preferably overnight and boil it until soften. Then add it into the pumpkin and syrup mixture.

Enjoy!

Easy Crispy Garlic Coriander Rice

I missed eating Garlic Rice for unknown reason but with sore throat, my family advised me not to take too much fried food. I'm getting better now... thank you for all your get well wishes! I hope I won't get this problem for awhile since more festive seasons coming soon. I don't want to be left out... ;-) So, I thought why not using my pre-fried garlic crisps and add into boiled rice instead of frying the rice. I always fried some extra garlic or onion crisps and keep that for later use. The addition of coriander gives extra fragrant to this rice dish. Since, it's just add-on dish, I even mixed 2 extra types of herbs - Basil and Tumeric leaves :-) For the Tumeric version, I julienned fresh tumeric root and chiffonade the leaves. Just before serving, I add in the herbs and stir the rice well. Then I served the rice with Stir-fry Gai Choi with Shiitake Mushrooms and Salted Fish (as in the pic).

Easy Crispy Garlic Coriander Rice

Serves 2

1 cup Rice, washed & drained

2 tbl Olive Oil

1-2 tbl Minced Garlic

2-3 tbl chopped fresh Coriander Leaves

Method:

1. Cook the rice according to manufacturer's instructions. Keep warm.

2. Heat olive oil in another pan in medium heat. When hot, add garlic and stir fry until fragrant and golden brown - about 1 minute.

3. Remove pan from heat and stir in chopped coriander leaves.

4. Pour the garlic -coriander mixture into the freshly cooked white rice. Stir to mix well.

5. Serve garlic-coriander rice on it's own or as accompaniment to meat and other fish dishes.

Notes:

If you want even faster, you can pre-fry the certain amount garlic crips in advance and bottled with the oil as well. When you need it, just add into rice or any dishes that you want. Besides Coriander, you can also use other herbs like Basil or Italian Parsley.

In this recipe, I used Basmathi rice. You can use Jasmine rice.

♪Enjoy♬

Tuna Steaks on Soba Noodles

Few days ago, I bought a piece of Tuna steak Sashimi grade quality. Lean and not sinewy at all which is fantastic. It's been quite awhile I didn't cook tuna but I ate a lot when I'm at Japanese Restaurants or any of those Kaiten style or fast sushi franchisees. Back home in my country, I used to frequent one called Sushi King but since few years ago they no longer serve Tuna dishes on their Kaiten and also their menu. I assumed it's the price of tuna that Sushi King discontinued it from their menus (?) So, now I'm a regular customer at Sakae Sushi. Tuna, unlike Salmon can't be farm bred... well, almost. They need to move about constantly even with their massive weight in the sea to have that lean and myoglobin enriched tissue muscles which were highly sought after. Most of this Tuna available in Europe supermarkets came from Indonesia. Sometimes, if lucky you can get air-flown tuna which is more expensive than frozen ones. This applied to air-flown Salmons as well. For Salmons, my preference is from Norway... of course, best if you can get genuine wild salmons! Now, we have major problems of overfishing tunas as well as other species of marine life... :-( It's not a joke or prediction. I think those inland lakes suffered the most from human exploitations. I haven't tasted farm-bred tunas even though there are farmers who bred bluefin tunas out there. For sure, the taste would be different and like farm bred salmons there would be health problems. Anyway, let's be prepared to taste farmed tunas which could be around the corner... :-|

In the mean time, here's a dish I cooked using the tuna chunk I bought from the wholesaler who had some left from a buyer because they need only some amount for their restaurant. 

Tuna Steaks On Soba Noodles

300 g Tuna Steak

200 g Soba Noodles (Buckwheat Noodle) 

6 stalks Spring Onions, sliced thinly

1 clove Garlic, crushed or finely chopped

3-4 tbl Fish Sauce

2 tbl Sweet Chilli Sauce

2 tsp Palm Sugar, grated or Soft Brown Sugar

1 tsp Sesame Oil

4 tbl Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 nos Lime- only for juice

20-30 g Coriander, chopped or Flat Parsley

Method:

1. To make dressing, place the lime juice, fish sauce, chili sauce, sugar, sesame oil and garlic in a small bowl. Mix well.

2. Heat olive oil in a griddle pan. Add the tuna steak and cook over high heat for 2-3 minutes on each side or to your preferences. Remove and keep warm.

3. Cooked noodles according to manufacturer's instructions or boil it until softens. Drain well. In another bowl, add half of the dressing. half of spring onion  and coriander to the noodles and gently toss together.

4. Cut the tuna steaks into even cubes, slice it or roughly shred the steaks using  a fork like I did.

5. Place noodles in serving plates and top with tuna. Mix the remaining dressing with balance of spring onion and coriander. Drizzle over tuna and noodles. Garnish with lime wedges.

Note: If you prefer, you can serve the tuna steaks whole with noodles of your choice on the side. Besides using soba noodles, you can try other noodles as well like thin wheat noodles, egg noodles or pastas...

Enjoy!

Boiled Aubergine With Crispy Garlic, Dried Shrimp Served On Beansprouts

I don't know what happened lately that caused my home to be like pigeon nest. That's what my sister said to me LOL. I guessed what she meant was there's non-stop of guests at my home just like pigeons to their nests... hmmm... I don't know where she got that phrase from. Anyway, this situation tells me it's time to move to bigger space!So, tomorrow's going to be noisy and busy day but for tonight's dinner, I have left over of japanese aubergine (again... :-P). I bought a lot because the price was very cheap plus it's organic! Yesterday, I bought some juicy and crunchy beansprouts and some silken tofu (not sure what to do with the tofu yet.) Already, I baked and grilled the gorgeous small japanese aubergine aka Nasu. There's 1 method I didn't use for quite sometime - boiling. It's one of my mom's favourite ways dealing with aubergine besides charcoal roasting on top of her faithful portable terracotta stove with a small square opening at the base (I like making 'firework' with that stove LOL.)

With what I have from the fridge and short of time for dinner, this was what I came up with for quick yet light meal.

Boiled Aubergine With Crispy Garlic, Dried Shrimp Served On Beansprouts

Serves 2-4

2-4 nos Japanese Aubergines (Nasu)

5 cloves Garlic

10 g Dried Shrimps

100 g Beansprouts

1 nos Red Capsicum (Bell Pepper) or 1 Red Chilli

1 stalk Spring Onion

Some Shoyu or Light Soy Sauce

Some Oil

Method:

1. Washed the vegetables and toss them dry. Cut the aubergines into halves at last minute before boiling them. Slice the spring onions. Set aside.

2. Soak the dried shrimps to remove some saltiness for 1-2 minutes. Drain and pat dry with kitchen paper and set aside.

3. Minced the garlic finely and chop the capsicum into

4. In a small pan, pour in 1/4 cup of oil and when it's hot add in the dried shrimps. Fry until fragrant and crispy. Remove and drain the excess oil with kitchen paper. Set aside.

5. In a pot, boiled some water with some salt. When it boils, add the beansprouts. Blanch the beansprouts for few seconds. Remove quickly and arrange on a serving dish/plate.

6. With same water, add in the aubergine halves and boil them until soften. Remove from pot and drain. Arrange aubergine halve on top of beansprouts.

7. Sprinkle the chopped capsicum and the fried dried shrimps on the boiled vegetables.

8. Now, this maybe a bit tricky... because you need to do fast before your garlic burnt.

In the pan that you fried the dried shrimp, add extra cooking oil; another 1/4 cup or just enough for the boiled vegetables. When oil is hot again, add in the minced garlic. Fry the garlic until fragrant and crispy but not burnt.

Remove the pan from heat and with the garlic crisps still frying in the oil, pour all the contents all over the boiled vegetable. Yep, the vegetables will sizzles, don't worry :-D

9. Sprinkle sliced spring onions and drizzle generous amount of light soy sauce. Sniff and enjoy with hot rice or or a bowl of noodles.

Note: If you can't find dried shrimps, you can substitute it with minced fried salted fish of your choice eg. bacalhau, dried whitebait (shirasu), dried anchovy...

This dish may sound difficult at first but once you got your own method to fry quickly and pouring the garlic oil over the vegetables, is easy and fast to make. To eat it just stir or mix the ingredients. You will notice that it's not oily at all. I love the gravy with plain white rice. :-)

Enjoy!