My Aboslute Favourite - Jamaican Curry Goat

If you ask me what's my favourite Jamaican dish is......the list of probable responses would be:
a. Jerk Chicken
b. Escovitch Fish
c. Oxtail stew
d. Curry Goat

and my answer every time would be Curry Goat, I've only had it a few times here in Oz (always at a restaurant) and have been wanting to make my own. Finally the other day we went to the markets and came across an ethnic butcher and I decide to poke my head in and see what's available and what do you know, right in front of me is a tray of "curry goat" meat. It's like calling to me to take it home.

I was so excited and quickly messaged a few friends to come over for a Sunday night dinner party.

The goat turned out amazing! I saw a piece left on Mr ShyGuy's plate and I thought he wasn't having it so I quickly stabbed it and transferred it to my plate, only to have him turn around and tell me he was saving it and was just going to get a knife to cut it down.... o well, you snooze you lose....heehee

Here's the Jamaican Curry Goat Recipe:

Ingredients:

the curry goat bubbling away happily on my stove

• 500g curry goat meat
• 2 onions, sliced
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 potatos, cubed
• 2 carrots, cubed
• 2 sprigs spring onion, chopped
• 1 habernero chilli, chopped
• curry powder
• all spice
• thyme
• Ketchup
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Supar
• Salt and Pepper
• Oil

Directions:

• Add 1 of the sliced onion, garlic, chili, curry powder, salt and pepper to the goat meat and let marinate for at least 5 hrs or overnight
• Heat up oil in your heavybased sauce pan and brown the goat meat, leaving the onion/chili stuff behing
• After meat is browned on all sides, all remaining marinating stuff to the pan and top with some boiling water until meat is covered, put lid on and simmer on medium/low heat for 1 hr
• Add the chopped up vegetables and top with more curry powder
• Add seasoning and cook down uncovered til the sauce is thick and gloppy

Serve with white rice, I'm so making this again soon!

BEST Tuna Salad - Super Healthy

 

So the other day at work, Ms KB brought this amazing tuna dip to our Cheese Day Extravaganza and I loooved her dip, if you left me with it I would have polished it off and maybe even ignored the cheese (!). It was that good. She told me it was super easy to make, just 1 tub of Philly cream cheese and tuna with some lemon juice, S & P. Seriously it was good and simple.

I've made it and loved it. But the whole experience was shadowed by a twinge of guilt with the philly cream cheese. When I reported back to Ms KB about how much I loved the dip, she told me the alternative healthy version was to use cottage cheese. Well I know how much my friend ItsyBitsy's partner Hulk30 was loving cottage cheese during his bulking up stage, so I know it's super healthy.

Here's the tried and tested BEST Tuna Salad Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 medium can tuna in springwater
• 1 250g tub of cottage cheese (lite, if you want)
• 1/2 sliced spanish onion
• 1/2 apple chopped
• 1 handful of chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon seeded mustard
• Generous squirt of lemon juice
• Salt &  Pepper

Directions:

Mix it all up and eaaaaat it now!

Breakfast and Brunch

Breakfast and Brunch - definitely the most important meal of the day. Well especially Brunch since that's 2 meals in one and usually the highlight of my weekends.

Shashuka with Feta

This morning I was having a craving for poached eggs in a spicy tomatoey sauce - Shashuska. It's a popular Israeli dish that can be eaten at brekfast/lunch or dinner, but usually doesn't have cheese, but I'm a rebel! heh

I've made it once before and it was great. But alas, my fridge was empty :( and needed to make a quick trip to the local fruit and veg shop for some ingredients

Ingredients

• Onion
• Garlic
• Capsicum
• Can of diced tomato
• Eggs
• Chili
• Cumin
• Salt & Pepper
• Parsley
• Feta (optional)

Directions

Cook the diced onion, garlic and capsicum, add in the can of tomatoes, season, cook uncovered to reduce the sauce and then crack in eggs, cook til eggs are almost ready, top with feta and parsley. Served with toast

Vegetarian Frittatas

 Vegetarian Frittatas

These gorgeous little frittatas are made with so much veggies, they're really good for you - plus it's low carbs!
Basically cook mixed veg (onion, garlic, capsicum, mushrooms and spinach) and then add in beaten eggs, fill the muffin pan and topped with feta of course and bake in oven. Perfect snack and great for picnics!

Weekend Brunch

More Brunch

Here's just some other breakfast I made, the poaching technique is coming along  

2014 Cooking and Eating

I meant to post earlier but then my laptop died O.o and I really couldn't do it properly from my phone, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

There's been a few highlights so far:

Firstly Fijian Kokoda, this was one of the food highlights from my trip to Fiji last year, I kept thinking about it upon my return. It was the perfect meal on a 40+ degrees C day.

Fijian Kokoda - Cerviche with Coconut Cream

Ingredients 

• Any Firm fish 
• Celery 
• Spanish Onion 
• Tomato
• Capsicum
• Chili
• Salt & Pepper
• Light Coconut Cream
• Lemon/Lime juice
• Parsley

Directions:
Dice up all the ingredients, add the Lemon/Lime juice to "cook" the fish for 30 minutes, then add in the coconut cream and mix. Top with chopped parsley.

Pan seared Salmon, Creamy Feta with Beetroot Salad
and Orange Sesame Salad

Another dinner I was particularly pleased with was this Pan-Seared Salmon with 2 salads. The Feta was the souvenir from my trip to the Hunter's Valley with some friends at the Smelly Cheese Shop and it is divine! Really lifted the simple Beets and Mint with Feta salad.
The 2nd salad was an orange with sesame salad for some citrus notes to cut through the creaminess and sweetness of the other side. the Salmon was cooked skin side down until the skin was crispy and there's still a hint of the bright pinkness in the middle of the flesh. Perfect!








It's been a while since I made my Jamaican curries and since Mr Shy Guy doesn't eat beef, the usual meat substitute I use is Kangaroo, when I first posted this picture on FB, my Yaardie friends were all slightly horrified (and intrigued no doubt). It was actually really yum, the sweetness of the kangaroo meat added a twist to the usual Caribbean flavours, with thyme, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and habanero chili for the extra kick - which is what makes it stand out from the other curries.

Jamaican Curried Kangaroo

Tikka Masala Chicken with Raita

 Here's a couple more dinners I made

Sweet potato and Quinoa Patties with Fig Salad

Random recipes in 2013

Baked Buffalo Wings

So last week I tried out a few different recipes to varying degrees of success.

Here's the succesful one, and super duper easy, basically 3 ingredients only

Baked Buffalo Wings
Ingredients

• Chicken Wings
• 1 bottle of Frank's Hotsauce
• Unsalted Butter

Boil Chicken wings til cooked and no longer pink
Heat up hotsauce with butter
and then grill/bake chicken wings in oven and when crispy pour heated hotsauce over and keep adding the sauce to it every 5 minutes til sauce is finished

Nasu Dengaku

Here's another one of my new favourites, Nasu Dengaku. The sweet and salty flavour of the miso goes perfectly with the creaminess of the eggplant. I could just eat this all day long. and it was pretty simple to make.

Nasu Dengaku
Ingredients

• Eggplants, sliced in half vertically
• Spring onion
• Miso paste
• Sake
• Seasame Oil
• Toasted Seasame seeds
• Sugar
• Mirin

First, brush seasame oil on cut side of eggplant, place face down to grill in oven at 200 degrees C for 5 minutes til skin blackens, then flip it over and grill for another 5 minutes until it's all a bit mushy.

At this point, while eggplant is grilling, mix miso paste with mirin and a splash of sake (I used vodka) and heat on stovetop, add sugar and keep mixing til the paste is bit liquidly and spreadable. Take eggplant out of grill, spread miso mix on top and stick it back in oven for another 2-3 minutes, becareful the top can burned quite easily because of the sugar.

Remove from over and top with chopped spring onion and toasted seasame seeds to serve.

Slow-cooker Venture

Jamaican Stewed Peas before cooking

I do love my slow-cooker, especially during Winter. I often just chuck stuff in right before bedtime and wake up to an aromatic house. Honestly I think the smell wakes me up most of the time. LOL

So I've used my slow cooker over 4 times in the past week and a half, because my cooker is so big, I generally make a massive pot enough to feed 6 people - but there's only me. So I get sick of left overs really really fast. My friends and colleagues at work have been dragged into

tasters of my slowcooking venture. So far I have made Chinese Soups, Jamaican Stew and also an Italian dish.

Stewed Peas ah Ready!

Here's the Jamaican Stewed Peas recipe:
Ingredients

• 2 tins of Red Kidney Beans
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 ham hock
• 1 pack of gravy beef/chuck steak
• 1 onion chopped
• 3 clove garlic chopped
• 1 tspn ginger
• bunch of spring onion
• bunch of thyme
• Chili (I added lots)
• sprinkle of allspice, cloves, cinnamon
• Salt & Pepper to taste

And basically you just chuck everything in the slow cooker and wake up to deliciousness! This is such a comfort food dish for me and always brings a smile to my face. The authentic Jamaican version would have pigs tail instead of hamhock and also spinners (little doughy fingers that I was too lazy with)

Before: Chicken Cacciatorie

And the other thing I made was Italian Chicken Caccaitore, though it was ok for me. I have friends who raved about this dish, but maybe I used too much liquid and it was too soupy. Even though I left the lid off 2 hours before end.

But the slow cooker is great for Chinese soups! OMG why haven't I been doing this before? I looove soups, my family used to nickname me "Tong Wun" aka Soup Bowl because I would just drink bowls and bowls of soup everytime at dinner. I made Ginseng Chicken soup and also Dried veg with pork bones, carrots and shitake mushroom soup and they were great!

2013 eats! Piggie Returns!

Aaaah can it really be May already? So It's been well over a year since I last posted. ooops. Sheer laziness I tell ya. no other excuse.  So here's a few of the things I've cooked up over the past year and forgot to blog about....

                                                                  

Red Lentil Soup

Cauliflower soup with truffle Oil

Chinese Dinner: Fish fragrant Eggplant, corn egg drop soup, salted bake chicken wings and some seasonal

greens