member blog: carolineb
carolineb
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29th Jan 2006
carolineb's blog posts
Couscous prawn timbales on red pepper coulis
Fri 09 Jan 2009GARDEN BLOG
Coulis
Put bell peppers under a grill, wait till the peel gets black and bubbly. Peel the peppers and remove the seeds. Use your blender or foodprocessor to mix peppers with the chickenstock, chili and garlic. Season to taste with a bit of lemon juice, set aside.
Couscous prawn timbales
Bring a pan to a medium heat, add a bit of olive oil and roast the garlic, paprika powder and ground cumin for about 2 minutes. Smells incredible!
Add prawns and roast for another couple of minutes until they are pink and opaque.
Remove the prawns from the pan. Add the chicken stock to the pan and bring to boil.
Cut the prawns into pieces of about 1 cm and set aside.
Slowly add the couscous while stirring, remove from the heat, cover and let soak for 5 minutes. Loosen with a fork or simply your fingers. Add coriander, celery, lemon zest and juice, ground pepper, prawns and half of the chopped bell pepper and mix well with fork or fingers.
Rub timbale moulds with a bit of oil. Squeeze couscous into the moulds. Unmould onto a plate. Put some pepper coulis around, sprinkle a bit of the chopped bell peppers on top and garnish with a coriander leaf. Done! 
Personal note on the timbale moulds
Since I do not possess those moulds I had to think about an adequate alternative. First try with a small wine glass failed. Couscous would not come out again. Hmm... I let my eyes wander around my kitchen and suddenly I knew: simply use the caps of the baby bottles. Just worked so well! 
lamb tajine with quinces and honey
Wed 07 Jan 2009GARDEN BLOG
Rub the bottom of a tajine with oil. Slowly bring to a medium heat. Put the lamb cubes, celery chunks, cinnamon sticks, cloves, bay leaf, saffron, some salt and pepper into the tajine. Pour in the water. Cover and let boil for 30 minutes.
Open the tajine and put in the quartered quinces. Cover and let boil for another 30 minutes until the quinces and the meat are tender.
Open the tajine again. Remove the quinces - you might want to put them under a grill or sauté them in butter. Leave the tajine uncovered, bring to a higher heat, add honey and ground cinnamon and let the juices reduce for another 15 minutes.
Put back the quinces and serve with couscous. 
Approach to stir frying
Thu 01 Jan 2009GENERAL BLOG
On New Year´s Eve we started our third try of wokking properly. 
It worked alright, but we decided to meet an asian cook tomorrow evening.
I will report...
Tom kha gai with shrimps
Thu 01 Jan 2009GARDEN BLOG
Put chicken stock and coconut milk into a pot, slowly bring to simmer. Stir in galangal, lime leaves, lemongras and chili. Season with fish sauce to taste. Add mushrooms, carrots, chicken and shrimps. Cook gently until the chicken is done.
Put in bowls, garnish with coriander...
Burning down the wok
Mon 29 Dec 2008GENERAL BLOG
Next step after buying a wok gas burner is to season the wok itself. As you can guess by my picture, we did something wrong (at first). 
I had figured out two methods of seasoning a wok:
1) Put half a cup of oil into the pan, heat the wok to maximum power, and toss the oil a little in the wok. Remove excess oil. Wipe it out. Done.
2) Heat the wok, rub hot wok with an oil soaked cloth. Done.
I considered the second method as pretty dangerous, so we chose the first (also because of the fact, that the vendor recommended this method). Also not too nonhazardous - the oil started burning at maximum heat. Maybe our cup is much bigger than the one of the vendor, but at least it was a good show. Should have seen our 16 months old triplets watching daddy burning things (from inside the house of course)... 
So we were left with an ultra tarry wok. 
My OH gave his best to remove the sticky vestiges and we had to start the procedure again. But at this time I consulted my wok cook books in which the following method is advised (consistently!):
Heat the wok at a low temperature, rub 2 tbsp of oil into the wok with kitchen paper and with caution to your fingers, heat the wok to high temperature for 10 minutes. Afterwards wipe it out with kitchen paper. Repeat until no more black marks are on the kitchen paper. Done.
Now, this was easy... 
carolineb's foodwise posts
