The base for this very simple recipe is our dead simple pasta sauce. At the end of the recipe it says: ‘add any seafood, meat, meatballs, chicken or sausages at this time. It’s usually a good idea to add the protein early in the process so that it cooks in the sauce and absorbs its flavours. This recipe, however, is designed to use protein that is cooked. I often use Luv-a-duck Confit which is not a good fit for a pasta sauce, but sardines are as long as they’re not the usual soggy ones you find in most tins.

I tried this recipe several times with fresh or frozen sardines, and each time they turned out too strong and gamy in flavour. Then I came across these terrific Sole Mare Sardines in cans, which I buy at Woolworth’s or Coles, where they’re often on special for about $2.

They’re plump, firm and super tasty. Just drain them and drop them into the hot sauce for a few minutes until they’re warmed through. there are lots of chorizos on offer these days, and I’ve found DON chorizos the tastiest and a good match for the sardines, but there are other choices such as Primo and some artisan brands.

Here is what the dish looks like, and you can see why it’s a good idea to add some fresh green things like parsley or shallots or chives. It all starts with presentation, ja?

Bon appetit – for the sauce recipe, please go here: dead simple pasta sauce

This is one of those dishes that just happened. I’d bought a chunk of pork belly at IGA, to use as the Saturday night roast, with roast potatoes and a mélange of caramelized onions, fennel, beetroot and red cabbage.

During the week that followed I used the leftover pork in a casserole, together with other leftovers – I had a chorizo, some Kaiserfleisch, bacon, leeks, onions, capsicum, fennel, shallots and some Parpadelle.

Kaiserfleisch is also called Kassler, or smoked pork loin. This is really tender and tasty, and just $16 a kilo at Coles. You can use speck or lardons or thick bacon … in this dish more than most, anything goes. I had the idea to make an east-west fusion kind of dish.

The pork belly was the most juicy, most melt-in-the-mouth pork we’ve had in a long time so I didn’t want to overcook it. Therefore I left it until last, just to warm it up. The process was:

1. Put the onions, capsicum and fennel into a roasting dish with some olive oil, and cook at 175 degrees for 30 minutes.
2. Add the chorizo – I add it whole and cut it into chunks later since it stays moister that way
3. Add the Kaiserfleisch or speck or lardons
4. Watch a bit of TV or read a book for 15 minutes
5. Fry the bacon, leeks and shallots with some ginger and garlic
6. Add some white wine and chicken stock, bring to simmer and add to the dish
7. Add Passata to thicken the sauce to your taste (I don’t like it thick)
8. Add the parpadelle just before serving

What is ideal here is a roasting dish that you can also use on the stove across a couple of jets, because you want to have the liquid bubbling gently while you add the herbs & spices.

• Garlic, ginger, soy, honey and sweet chili sauce
• Add a little sherry and Balsamic reduction
• Add bay leaf, thyme, Rosemary and coriander
• Add seasoning
• Add wine and stock and passata as needed
• Check the taste and adjust – we want something halfway between European and Asian on the flavour spectrum. Mildly hot and spicy.

Give it another 20 – 30 mins, and add the Parpadelle a few minutes before serving.

February 2020 update

At last we have a photo of the real thing! This is a really simple dish that came about as a result of some left-over salmon pieces. They were too big for one sitting so we put the excess in the fridge. The rest is pretty easy. The best way to cook this dish is the way you cook Asian food: line up all the ingredients and accoutrements, and cut everything to size, because the actual cooking takes just 10 minutes.

These days I also prefer to cook the pasta separately, and warm it up either in the main dish or or in a frypan with a little butter. Another change I’ve made is to use red and green Pesto from Leggo, because the Sacla options picture below are difficult to find. Just now I discovered that Leggo’s have issued a product recall on their Pestos – aarrrggghhh! So use a different brand for the time being.

INGREDIENTS

• Left over Salmon pieces, about an inch cubed or bigger
• Lately I add some prawns as well
• A little garlic
• spring onions or big shallots or leek
• Asparagus tips
• Bunch English spinach
• Fettucine
• Seasoning
• Italian herbs,. thyme, dill
• Sacla pesto or sauce
• Sour Cream
• White wine
• Olive oil
• butter

STEPS

• Cook the fettucine – I cook it for 10 mins but you may prefer it more al dente
• Wash the spinach, chop into biggish pieces, fry in a bit of butter for a few minutes
• Drain the pasta, put the spinach in a dish and keep it warm

You can start on the next steps while the pasta is cooking (I’d get the spinach out of the way though), or you can start after the spinach is keeping warm and the pasta is drained.

Chop up garlic, spring onions / shallots / leeks / asparagus tips and fry them for 5 minutes in olive oil

Add  prawns and fry for a couple of minutes, add seasoning and herbs (thyme, dill and Italian)

Add cooked salmon pieces, stir some more to warm them up

Add a dash of white wine, a few tblspoons of Sacla pesto, and a few of sour cream and blend

Stir and add the pasta, stir some more, add more wine if needed (we just want a nice coating on everything)

Gently fold the spinach into the dish and serve

Simple, isn’t? I like a little grated parmesan on any pasta dish but that’s just me. I once ended up in an argument with the chef in an Italian restaurant who told me that was not the done thing.

It’s a super flexible recipe: you can use prawns or chicken or tofu

There are many variations of Laksa: some are mild, some are curry-fiery; some use coconut milk, some do not; some are soups, others resemble casseroles. That gives us a pretty free hand.

THE PRAWNS

I used prawns for this, those frozen Ocean Chef Argentine reds form Patagonia I bought a while back. Woolworths no longer carry these. ALDI is now the only source I know of, and the packet simply says ‘Ocean Royale Frozen Wild Raw Peeled Prawns 500g.’ You need to read the fine print to discover that these are Pleoticus Muelleri: Argentine Red Prawns. $17 for 500g. Smaller than Ocean Chef’s.

Just now, Woolworths have added a new brand of prawns from the Gulf of Carpentaria – Karumba. They’re good, firm, flavoursome prawns. Not cheap at $26 for 500g deveined and shelled down under, which is unheard of. You can of course use prawns of your choice, including fresh ones; these are just my picks for price, quality and convenience.

THE NOODLES

Laksas rely on rice vermicelli or Hokkien noodles, but I don’t like either and prefer to use Italian style vermicelli. As long as you’re not fussed about authenticity, you can choose the noodles you like.

THE LAKSA

This is the easy part, as long as you’re happy to use packed products off the shelf. The quality is very good these days, so that’s the dead simple way to cook Thai food. Like most Asian dishes, you can cook this in batches and then combine the ingredients in the last step.

The photo is of the chicken version

Ingredients

• Prawns, 300 – 400g for 2
• 2 – 3 tbspoons Laksa paste
• 1 tbspoon chopped lemongrass (from a jar is easiest)
• 1 tbspoon Tamarind paste
• Can of coconut milk
• 2 tbspoons sour cream

• 3 – 4 Shallots
• Half a small leek
• Handful of sweet peas
• A few pieces of Asian greens like bok choy
• 2 limes leaves
• Juice of half a lime
• 2 cloves garlic chopped
• tbspoon grated ginger

• 1 tbspoon fish sauce, or soy sauce with a couple of anchovies
• Balsamic Reduction (I prefer it to sugar)
• white wine
• coriander seeds and leaves
• chili flakes
• seasoning

THE PROCESS

1. I always have some pasta in the fridge, cooked and ready to go. I just add it at the end. If you’re using rice vermicelli, it will cook quickly when added to the final assembly
2. Warm up the laksa paste mixed with half a glass of wine, then add garlic, ginger, lemongrass and tamarind paste. Set aside after a few minutes, when you can smell the aromas
3. Stir-fry the veggies in a decent size wok or pan,  for about 5 mins
4. Add the prawns
5. Add herbs and seasoning, lime juice and more wine or broth as needed
6. Add the set-aside laksa paste with the add-ins
7. Add more than half the coconut milk, add the sour cream, add fish sauce/ soy sauce, Balsamic reduction, throw the noodles into the mix
8. STEPS 4 TO 7 SHOULD ONLY TAKE A FEW MINUTES
9. Keep stirring. Test the taste, adjust seasoning, add more coconut milk if too strong, add some chili flakes if you want more heat
10. If you want more flavour, add a little more laksa paste. Stir well and serve.

It looks like a lot of work, but it’s not really, and it’s easy to divide it up into manageable tasks; and you can take a breaks before the final assembly.

I love casseroles. Why? Because they are powerhouses of flavour if you know what you’re doing, and they largely cook themselves. The other day I felt like doing something different, so I went for sausages rather than chuck steak, chicken or pork belly.

Our local butcher has a good selection of sausages, from chicken to pork to lamb and beef, from mild to hot, from thin to thick. I was also thinking about caramelized onions, which I used tom buy in a jar, so I looked up making them from scratch. I wondered if you could caramelize fennel, which I often add to casseroles instead of boring veggies like celery.

It’s really simple, it turns out: you cut up some Spanish onions and fennel bulbs into pieces about the size of those lemon slices they serve with fish in restaurants. You chuck them in a fry pan and add generous quantities of olive oil and butter.

If you’re on the side of those who believe that fat is evil, this will not appeal to you. You can add a little white wine, but the process relies on a fair amount of oil. I add some balsamic reduction as well, just to steer the outcome in the right direction.

The rest is straightforward.

Ingredients

• Assorted sausages
• Chunky bacon or Speck pieces
• 2- 3 cloves of garlic
• A few small onions or eschalots
• Caramelised onions and fennel
• Green beans
• Leeks
• Mushrooms
• Chickpeas (tin)
• Olive oil, butter
• Sweet paprika
• Crushed tomatoes (tin)
• Passata
• Red or white wine
• Worcester sauce
• 2 – 3 Bay leaves
• Chicken or veggie stock
• chili flakes
• tarragon
• oregano

Process

• Brown the sausages and bacon in a big pan with some olive oil
• add the small onions and garlic, then the crushed tomatoes and beans
• Add the trimmed beans with some passata and stock, enough to just cover the sausages
• Add a pinch or 2 of paprika, dash of Worcestershire sauce and seasoning
• Put the casserole dish in the oven at about 170
• Get the onions and fennel going in a fry pan – caramelizing takes about 30 mins
• Keep them coated with the sauce – olive oil, butter, balsamic, small amount of white wine
• Stir every few minutes to prevent burning any bits
• When they’re done, add them to the casserole, along with chopped leeks and button mushrooms
• Make the final adjustments for seasoning and herbs, add the chickpeas 10 minutes before serving (drained and washed) – they don’t need cooking, just warming.

Serve on its own or with some boiled or mashed potatoes

OK, it’s no big deal, there are loads of recipes for this dish on the web, but as usual we have some simple hacks to make life easier.

This one started with some leftover chicken, already cooked. All I needed to do was to add a bunch of stuff:

• Leeks or shallots
• Green beans or bok choy, and / or sweet peas / snow peas
• A few strips of red chili, red pepper or capsicum
• Garlic and ginger
• 2-3 Kaffir lime leaves chopped up

• 2 tbspoons of green curry paste
• 2 tbspoons of Fish sauce (or soy sauce infused with anchovies)
• Can of Coconut milk
• White cooking wine
• Lemongrass paste
• Tamarind paste (non-essential)
• Lime juice
• 2 tblspoons of Balsamic reduction (instead of sugar)

• Fresh Thai basil or mint – the remaining herbs can be dried
• Coriander leaves and coriander seeds (cilantro)
• Cumin
• Turmeric
• seasoning

As usual, I almost forgot to get a snap of the finished product. Here it is on my plate, mixed with rice.

The rest is easy:

1. as usual, line up all your ingredients
2. fry or roast the chicken or prawns or whatever, set aside
3. chop up the garlic and grate the ginger, add them to the vegetables
4. stir-fry the veggies, cut beans in half lengthways
5. warm the curry paste with some soy sauce and white wine in a small pan until fragrant, turn off
6. After a few minutes, add the chicken or prawns to the veggies, then add the curry paste mix and some of the coconut milk, then the rest of the ingredients .
7. Bring to a simmer, then add the remaining pastes, the lime juice and the herbs.
8. Add more coconut milk, stir and test the taste.

The cooking process should not take much longer than 10 minutes. If you need to regroup and take a breath, just turn things off – this dish handles interruptions very well.

Serve with your favourite rice.

Kim

You can substitute fish or chicken or pork or tofu if you like

It’s easy as long as you’ve nailed down the process. Takes about 20 – 30 minutes, less once you’ve done it a few times. What I’ve learned about Asian dishes is the importance of 4 things:

1. Quality ingredients
2. Thorough preparation
3. A process that works under pressure
4. A decent size wok or fry pan that you can take high heat

Let’s start with the ingredients:

• Prawns – I use Ocean Chef Extra Large Raw Prawns Tail On, from Woolworths. They’re from the Gulf of Carpentaria, shelled and deveined,  and cost $22 for half a kilo. Sometimes they’re on spec at $17. These are firm, fleshy, tasty prawns that take about 4 minutes to cook but can take extra heat without going soggy.
• Leek, 1/3 of a decent sized leek; or spring onions if you prefer
• Bunch of broccolini
• Handful or sweet peas (sugar snaps)
• Grated ginger to taste
• 2 cloves of Garlic
• Juice of 1 lime
• 3 kaffir lime leaves, chopped up
• 2 tbsp sweet chili ginger and soy sauce (Kikoman is good)
• 5 tbsps of Ayam red curry paste
• 2/3 can of coconut milk
• White wine
• Teaspoon Chili flakes
• Coriander, fresh or dried
• Basil, fresh or dried
• seasoning

Prep and Process

As usual with Asian cooking, it’s best to have all the bits and pieces ready to go before you start cooking

• Thaw the prawns, ideally put them in the fridge on a plate covered in cling wrap for a few hours or just let them thaw in the open air for an hour or two, make sure you pour water off once in a while
• Parboil or steam the broccolini – 5 minutes depending on thickness, set aside
• Grate the ginger, smash and chop the garlic, cover in lime juice – set aside
• Chop the leek and cut the strings off the sweet peas
• Fry the garlic, ginger, chopped leek and lime leaves in sesame oil in a wok or hot pan for 3 – 4 minutes, add the broccolini, the soy sauce, and 1/3 or a glass of white wine or thereabouts
• in a small pan. fry red curry paste for a couple of minutes with about 3 times the quantity of white wine or sherry, set side
• Add the prawns, add seasoning, fry and toss for 3 minutes
• Add the red curry paste mix, then the lime juice, the chili flakes, basil and coriander
• Stir well, then add the coconut milk and the sweet peas.

The last 3 steps shouldn’t take longer than 6 – 7 minutes. Serve on its own or with some rice (I use rice I’ve left over from the day before.

It’s a simple, traditional recipe that relies on quality ingredients coming together in a seamless dish. It all starts with quality ingredients. Real chicken is a minefield these days given the laughable definition of free range: 10 birds max per square meter and an open hatch in the barn door. Did you know that Lilydale chickens don’t come from Victoria, let alone the Yarra Valley? That Maggie Beer products don’t come from the Barossa and King Island meat comes from other places? Our butcher gets his chickens from Thirlmere in country NSW. Hudson in Sydney sells terrific Bannockburn chickens. If you look around, you can find real chicken.

Ingredients

• Drumsticks, wings and thighs (skin on)
• Speck or Kassler or thick streaky bacon
• Small onions or eschalots
• Carrots
• Fennel bulb
• Swiss brown mushrooms (optional)
• Garlic, to suit your taste but don’t overdo it
• Wholemeal flour
• Tin of crushed tomatoes
• 2 tblspoons tomato paste
• Dry white wine
• Chicken stock
• Butter, olive oil
• Seasoning (I use coarse black pepper and Herbamare salt)
• Thyme, rosemary, chives

Quantities depend on the size of the casserole you want to make. I tend to make enough in a big flat dish to feed 6 (or two of us for 3 meals). I’ve taken to freezing portions of meals for convenience.

For 4 people, you’ll need 8 chicken pieces, a handful of speck, 4-5 carrots, 2 fennel bulbs, 5 onions and a handful of mushrooms. The rest is tasting and and judgement, and adding the right amount of liquid: what we want here is a sauce that is in between thin and thick.

How-to

I find that the carrots and onions take longest to cook so I put them in the oven (in the casserole dish) with some olive oil while I prepare the chicken and the rest of the ingredients

• Dust the chicken pieces lightly and brown in a frypan, a few minutes each side, in olive oil and butter
• Add the chopped garlic when you turn the chicken over
• Turn the heat down, give the pan a minute to cool, then add the crushed toms and paste
• Add a glass or 2 of white wine and stir
• Cut up the fennel bulbs into big chunks and add
• Add seasoning
• Add the lot to the casserole dish with the carrots and onions
• Add some chicken stock to cover, stir well and put back in the oven
• Cook for half an hour at 175
• Just before the half-hour mark, fry the speck / kassler / bacon with the mushrooms in butter for 5 – 7 minutes
• Add these to the casserole and stir well, turn over chicken pieces, add wine or stock as needed
• Add the herbs, check if it needs more seasoning and adjust
• If there’s too much liquid, take some out and reduce it in a small pan.
• Give it another half hour (or less if you like your chicken firm)

Serve on its own or with potatoes, rice or pasta, a a bottle of good Riesling

I used Argentinean red prawns for this dish, which have become difficult to find. ALDI is about the only place left with their Ocean Royale Wild Raw Peeled Prawns. $17 for 500 grams, peeled and deveined. These prawns are from the freezing, clean ocean around Patagonia, and they are red in their uncooked state which confuses the punters I suspect. Predictably they disappeared just before Christmas (they should be back in stock by now) and, after much searching, an alternative appeared at Woolworths: Karumba prawns from the Gulf of Carpentaria, big firm, fleshy and tasty. Peeled and deveined down under, not in Thailand. Unheard of. Just one problem: they cost $25 for half a kilo. You can use ‘fresh’ prawns of course (all prawns are snap-frozen) but I hate messing with the shells and the poop canal.

PROCESS

1. I used cooked basmati rice from the night before, warmed up in the oven with some olive oil
2. Make sauce for the veggies: 1 – 2 tbspoons of oyster sauce, 2-3 of soy sauce, a dash of sdesame oil, a dash balsamic vinegar and a splash of water. Just mix it up, and it’s ready
3. Fry the smashed and chopped garlic, spring onions, bok choy and thinly sliced peppers for 5 minutes & add these to a small oven-proof serving dish. Pour sauce over the veggies
4. Fry the prawns with some grated ginger, add the sugar snaps late if you want them crunchy
5. Add seasoning and spicy stuff (see below)

Please note: I used small quantities of these ingredients one tablespoon at a time, constantly checking the taste. These prawns are quite forgiving and not easily overcooked, but don’t push your luck: it’s better to take them off for a minute if you need extra time. This is the creative part – use your own judgment, and experiment.

I served the prawns straight from the pan, and the veggies and rice in 2 separate containers.

INGREDIENTS

• Good quality prawns
• Spring onions
• Baby bok choy
• Sugar snaps or snow peas
• Red pepper or caps
• Sesame or macadamia oil for frying
• Garlic chopped
• Ginger grated
• Lemon zest
• Coriander (fresh or dreid)
• Fennel seeds (crushed)
• Chinese 5-spice

The spicy stuff

• Teriyaki sauce
• Oyster sauce
• Balsamic reduction, small teaspoon
• Chili jam, 2 teaspoons
• Chili flakes, just a few
• Sherry, just a dash
• White wine
• Soy Sauce

This is an old favourite with a few new tricks that make it more exciting. It’s an easy dish, but you need good concentration and timing for great results. I’ve updated it just now: added some fatty bacon because the fillet is too lean, and lacks flavour. I’ve added leeks as they add a sweet sensation, and Balsamic reduction to counter the cut of the green peppercorns. The final addition is chives.

Feeds 2 – 4 depending on the quantity of pork, takes about 20 minutes

Ingredients

• Pork fillet or tender pork loin (I prefer fillet cut into almost inch-thick slices)
• Some thick-cut bacon pieces
• couple of cloves of garlic, smashed
• 4 – 5 small spring onions or big shallots, or leeks coarsely chopped
• Fennel bulb, with the outer layer discarded, finely sliced
• Big handful of Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced
• A glass of white wine or chicken stock
• Small tin of green peppercorns
• dash of Balsamic reduction
• Sweet peas
• Tablespoon of Dijon Mustard or more. Use Australian if you prefer
• 3-4 tablespoons of sour cream
• Seasoning
• Fennel seeds, Coriander

 The Process 

The easiest thing is to prepare everything beforehand, and then stir-fry the dish: cut up the pork, spring onions, fennel and mushrooms, and place on different plates. Heat a decent size fry pan and add some olive oil or butter a mix of both. The cooking should take just under 15 minutes on medium to high heat – turn it down a little once you add the liquid. Keep a watch or timer handy.

• Add the spring onions and fennel to the fry pan
• Add the pork and the peppercorns
• Brown the pork on both sides
• Fry for a couple of minutes
• Fry the mushrooms and leeks in a separate pan for a few minutes, in butter and rosemary, add to the prok
• Add the wine, the mustard, Balsamic reduction, seasoning, fennel seeds, coriander and chives, plus wine/stock
• Turn heat down to simmer, stir well for a few minutes, making sure all the ingredients are covered in sauce, add more liquid if need be but not too much since the cream is yet to come.

12 to 14 minutes should’ve elapsed since you began the stir fry, now add the sour cream and blend it into the dish on low heat; check taste and consistency and adjust, and you’re about ready to serve it with a pile of beans or rice, pasta or potato.

Kim