Coast Recipes

I recently went up to the Sunshine Coast with a bunch of friends from work. We went because Jen is sadly leaving us to head back to her homeland of Canada. She will be sorely missed due to her bubbliness, helpfulness, cheerfulness, general awesomeness and many other nesses. I'm not normally the kind of person to go out drinking even with friends, but I made the exception for Jen.

I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE

I stepped up to cook for 10+ people for the event. As always I was extremely nervous, I'm always worried that I'll give someone food poisoning. My Boyfriend went with me and he said that all during the night he had to keep waking me up because I was grinding my teeth in my sleep.

The kitchen wasn't greatly stocked, the one large knife they had was too long, blunt and slipped off onions, they only had one large mixing bowl and no cake tins. For pots and pans, there was a terrible stainless steel pan that burnt everything, had no insulated handle and that J-Dawg referred to as an ugly slut of a pan, an electric wok that could only be placed in one spot as there was only two electrical points in the kitchen right beside the sink and at the end of the island which had no ventilation. The gas burner was set up so left was off, middle was the hottest heat and then right was lowest heat, weird as fuck. There was one colander to use.

 I was so worried about having nothing special to cook with I went down with my own cooking gear. I brought down a mandolin, two springform 22cm cake tins, a wire cooling rack and a 12 piece muffin tin. I also brought down cinnamon, green onions, pad thai sauce jar in triple wrap, vanilla bean paste, a large amount of red onions/ brown onions/ garlic/ cucumber, garlic chives and flaked almonds.

Despite all this, the food went down really well. On the Monday night I made pork san choi bow, chicken pad thai and apple crumble muffins. On the Tuesday, I made for breakfast, garlic thyme mushrooms, shaker pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon, huge amounts of toast and the other girls made breakfast mimosas. I made a lemon cheesecake and more apple crumble muffins during the day. For dinner on Tuesday, we had marinated Vietnamese beef noodle salad and a marinated Vietnamese chicken noodle salad. For breakfast, Wednesday morning we had more bacon, French toast, hash browns, random fruit salad and more toast.

Here are all the recipes I used or at least variations on a theme. I didn't deviate from these recipes very much so here are their links from earlier in my blog.

 Apple crumble muffin,

Pad Thai

San Choi Bow

Uses: easy appetiser, pretending to be healthy

Ingredients:
1 large brown onion, diced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
500g pork mince
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup of kecap manis
1/4 cup of oyster sauce
Pepper.
1 can of baby corn, cut into 2-3cm blobs, I used a large 425g can
1 can of water chestnut slices, tiny 1cm pieces, I used the Valcom brand of 227g
1 stalk of lemongrass or 1 tablespoon of lemongrass paste
1 head of iceburg lettuce, carefully separated into cups
Cooking oil

Optional:
1 minced birds eye chilli
Ginger
1 teaspoon of sesame seeds
Diced shiitake mushrooms
Carrot
Turkey/chicken/beef mince

Instructions:
1. Dice up all your ingredients, onions, garlic, baby corn and water chestnut slices. Place a plate or something, while you get everything ready.
2. Heat your frying pan until hot, pour in some oil and get ready.
3. Brown your onions until fragrant, 2-4 minutes, then throw in your garlic and lemon grass until also fragrant.
4. Throw in all your pork mince, break it up with a spoon until they are all just cooked.
5. Pour in all your sauces, stir to combine. Taste and see what is missing, soy sauce is your salt, oyster is your general tastiness, kecap manis is your sweetness. Season with pepper after.
6. Throw in your baby corn and water chestnut pieces until combined.
7. Get someone else to break off your lettuce leaves. The easiest way to do this is to flip your lettuce upside down, and break it off at the very base of the lettuce, peeling carefully outwards so you reveal a whole unbroken leaf. Or you can try this looks cool but a bit wary.

Marinated Beef

Uses: Salads, rice paper wraps, protein loading

Ingredients:
1kg of beef, I used topside roast
1 large sliced brown onion
4 cloves of minced garlic
1/4 cup of oyster sauce
1/4 cup of kecap manis
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/3 cup of cooking oil
1 stalk of lemongrass, 2-3 tablespoons of lemongrass paste
1/2 squeezed lime
1/2 cup of sliced green onions

Instructions:
1. Place the beef in the fridge while you are chopping everything else up.
2.  Get the beef out of the fridge and cut into thin slices of meat. Slightly frozen beef keeps its shape better and doesn't squish down like unfrozen meat.
3. Mix everything together in a large bowl/tray whatever. Place in fridge sometime before you want to actually eat the food, give it at least half an hour to marinate. Leave a note on the fridge door to shake/stir the meat every time someone goes to get something from the fridge.
4. Heat a large frying pan/wok/grill to a high medium/hot heat, oil with butter or actual oil until melted.
5. Cook the meat in small batches, stirring frequently until the onions caramelise and the meat has a nice char, depending on what you use expect this to take anywhere between 3-6 minutes, the thinner the slices of meat the faster it cooks. Allow the meat to rest slightly before serving.

Marinated Chicken

Uses: salads, rice paper wraps, rice whatever really

Ingredients:
1kg of diced, brined chicken thighs, skin off
1 large sliced brown onion
4 cloves of minced garlic
1/4 cup of oyster sauce
2/3 cup of kecap manis
1/2 cup of soy sauce
1/3 cup of cooking oil
1 stalk of lemongrass, 2-3 tablespoons of lemongrass paste
1/2 squeezed lime

*Brine/brining is a technique where you put chopped meat, normally chicken into a salt water bath. You literally chop the meat, throw on some salt, cover it in water and leave it for the same time you would a marinate. Brining both seasons the meat and makes the meat more tender as the salt enters the cells of the meat and causes the meat to absorb more water, increasing its weight and moisture by as much as 20%. It's good for meat like chicken breast which has a tendency to dry out and have little flavour or if you're cooking a whole roast, where one part of the roast cook and dry out faster than the other, ie breast versus thighs. Check out this site for a more scientific explaination.

Instructions:
1. Dice your chicken thighs into bite sized chunks. Place into a large bowl/tray and add about 1/4 cup of salt, you can use more if you are pressed for time. 
2. Cover the chicken in cool water until the chicken just barely floats. Leave for some time before proceeding with the rest of the marinade.
3. Drain off the chicken, chop everything else up.
4. Mix everything together in a large bowl/tray whatever. Place in fridge sometime before you want to actually eat the food, give it at least half an hour to marinate but no longer than a day. Leave a note on the fridge door to shake/stir the meat every time someone goes to get something from the fridge.
5. Heat a large frying pan/wok/grill to a high medium/hot heat, oil with butter or actual oil until melted.
6. Cook the meat in small batches, stirring frequently until the onions caramelise and the meat has a nice char, depending on what you use expect this to take anywhere between 5-10 minutes. Allow the meat to rest slightly before serving.

Dark Chocolate and Macadamia Cookies and Meatball Stew

So I've been wanting to make this dark chocolate and macadamia cookie recipe for months now. I saw it many moons ago in some woman's magazine like Woman's Weekly or something. We get these magazines all the time at my workplace and we normally get given them by patients once they are done with them. The only issue is that when it comes to recipes, they normally go missing.

This is because some scum bags at work like to rip out the recipe instead of photocopying it or taking a photo like a civilised human being. You hardly deserve to be called ladies, and I hope that the recipe was fantastic and you fail badly at it. I always feel so annoyed when I see the recipes have been ripped out because it means it must've been good enough, and by the low standards of my workplace, easy enough for someone to pull off and still look good.

Dark Chocolate and Macademia Cookies

Super delicious

Uses: bribing house mates, study rewards, nurse fodder.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of sifted cocoa

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of white sugar

250g of cubed butter

1 beaten egg

1/2 cup and 1/2 cup of sifted SR flour and plain flour. Or use 1 cup plain and a tbsp of baking powder

1 cup of halved roasted macademias

150g of good dark chocolate or cooking chocolate

Seems like a lot of ingredients, but its not!

Note:

I didn't use milk in this recipe at all. I thought I was going to but decided on a mostly shortbread style biscuit, which doesn't require any milk. I'm never a fan of using plain flour and baking powder, so I normally use weird ratios of SR and plain flour.

Instructions:

1. Preheat an oven to 180C while you are doing all this. Line several baking trays with baking paper

2. Whiz together the sifted cocoa, sugars and butter together until creamy brown paste is formed.

Simple!

3. Scrape out the mixture and mix in the beaten egg

4. Begin sifting the flour onto the mixture, don't be shy, tap it.

There is an egg somewhere under that

5. Mix briefly until no white parts remain, but don't overmix or it gets weird and starchy.

Nice and smooth

6. Mix in the macademias and dark chocolate. Don't overmix, just mix until just combined

Good enough

7. Space far away from each other, a small 50c piece sized ball of dough, flatten slightly and continue. Or do it however you want, its a cookie, its going to get eaten not admired

This will not end well. They turned into a flower, see the top image :)

8. Bake for 10-15 minutes to desired consistency. They will firm up once cooled down, but will be very crumbly until then. 

On the day that we made this, my Boyfriend's housemates were cat calling us all evening, trying to score some cookies. We left the plate out overnight and he said in the morning there was a hand written sign saying, "OMG I ALMOST HAD ONE, SO TEMPTING." He promptly printed out a sign of this:

Her response was: OMG BEST RESPONSE EVER. Then when we left the house half the plate went missing haha.

As usual, I made a savoury dish but this time it was as more of an afterthought since I really wanted to make the cookies first and foremost. This is just a basic meatball stew/soup recipe cobbled together that I normally make for lunches in winter. Change/adapt to whatever is in your kitchen but here is my basic recipe. Its not the fanciest thing in the world, but its cheap, filling and smells delicious, and nearly everyone has this stuff in their pantry.

Meatball Soup

Uses: warm belly lunches. Making salad eating nurses jealous.

Meatball recipe:

Ingredients:

500kg beef/chicken/pork/veal mince

1 small onion, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of tasty cheese
1 large egg, beaten
Salt and pepper to taste

All the ingredients in one!

1. Mix all this stuff together

Before

After

2. Make small 50c piece sized balls or whatever shape you want. Squeeze them hard like you're strangling your worst enemy

Nice. Also a wild hairy foot is spotted!

3. Put in the fridge for at least 15 minutes so they hold their shape,
4. Briefly fry them in hot oil until golden brown edged

Mmm meatballs. Ignore burnt bits, they will add flavour to your soup!

5. Set aside and begin making soup

Soup recipe:
1 large onion, sliced/diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

2x 500g cans of diced tomato

1x 500g can of 4 bean mix

2x carrots, sliced
1 large potato, scrubbed, diced
1 small capsicum, diced
1tbsp Tomato paste
500ml-1L of chicken stock
1tbsp mixed herbs
Salt/Pepper/Brown Sugar/Balsamic Vinegar to taste

Ingredients:

1. Brown off the onion on a medium heat until slightly browned

2. Throw in your garlic and stir until you can smell cooked garlic

3. Throw in everything hard, like potatoes, carrots, all your canned goods and all your stock. Bring to the boil. Hard herbs go in now as well.

Classy.

Overcrowding ftw

4. Remember to skim off scum. Reduce to a simmer until the potato begins to soften, throw in meatballs and softer vegetables such as mushrooms, capsicum and friends

SKIM SKIM

5. This is the time for seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar, balsamic vinegar and soft herbs if wanted.

Lastly, here is a picture of the first blog related injury sustained in the kitchen.

Poor darling.

What happened? Well the can opener I picked out was apparently one of the two dodgy ones in my Boyfriend's share house and it doesn't maintain equal pressure when being used. So I had to keep repuncturing the can. Once I failed to open it, I called in my Boyfriend and he got out his actual can opener which works, and did another go around the can, which resulted in this razor sharp second ring on the can. He then pried out the fallen in ring and flicked it up against his thumb quite deeply. Thanks for taking one for the team darling :)

Pad Thai Party!

Woo pad thai party for two! This is the second time this year I've thrown one, once again the turn out is terrible. The last one was around April if I remember correctly? It was a pad thai party with sizzler cheese toast for afterwards since I learnt the recipe for that too. I think only like three of my friends dropped by ):. Dr H, JGirl and Taka. None of my usual food party friends dropped by like Shishi and Yanikins, they were all either doing stuff and so a lot of food was thrown at people to be disposed of.

An unusual side effect was that for the month after, we kept having to go to Thai places with friends cause they missed out. We went out for Yanikin's birthday at Chat Thai in Market Square and he ordered Pad Thai. Dr H promptly ate parts of Yanikin's and said that mine was better. Apparently I got rave reviews from my dad, Dr H's parents and JGirl's parents, all of whom ate their children's pad thai before they woke up from their food comas.

"I found it in my fridge and I don't know where it came from but it was delicious."
Direct quote from Dr H's parents

Same as last time, I kept getting hassled at work for not inviting people to my pad thai night. Apparently I keep picking days when people aren't working, or just started working or days they have stuff on. That's not my fault guys, that's your own stuff you have to deal with and maybe you should buy my ingredients like I suggested and then I could hold a pad thai party at your house? Last time the damage was about, $30? I'm poor but even that's not bad, considering I filled 10 large Chinese food containers with pad thai. This isn't including all the stuff we ate on the day.

Stuff I actually had to go out and buy:
Woolies - blue elephant brand pad thai noodles x 2 - $2.50?
1kg Chicken drumsticks - $4
1kg fish tofu - $10
500g prawn skewers I found in my freezer - possibly $6
1/2kg of bean sprouts - I have no idea what this costs, but I'm going to guess $1-4? Since 250g is $1.50?
Garlic chives from my dad's garden

Pantry staples:
Actual garlic cloves
Onions
Roasted Peanuts
Eggs
My pad thai sauce made from tamarind, fish sauce and sugar that I had in my house


J. from work suggested that I drop by and give her some leftovers for her dinner at work. I'm pretty sure I just laughed at her and said, I didn't like her enough to do that, since I don't drive and G, who is coming over, wouldn't be near there when she was going home either. J. also laughed and said that she was thinking of saying, "I would totally drive all the way to your house to give you pad thai leftovers!" Then she also realised that she probably wouldn't and also didn't like me enough to do that. I'm pretty sure I laughed before saying, THIS IS A GAME OF LIES, and stormed off, to her immense amusement. We're good friends, J and I.

Yeah. Friends.

Anyway, this time I've only got eggs and chicken as my main proteins for my pad thai. I've also played around with the sauce recipe too, since I didn't feel like it was sour enough last time. I've also made a new tag called, "Terrible Instructions," the terrible instructions tag will be used whenever I leave terrible Asian instructions to do things. Simple enough right? The Asian was left out in case people become offended and forget I'm Vietnamese. I'll use this tag for when I make food according to Terrible Asian instructions, which are terrible, vague cooking instructions where everything is, "enough for one handful of beans," "enough oil to coat the pan," or even "use three bowls of the small bowls that we use for rice, filled with flour".

The International Standardised Measurement:
1 Rice Bowl, equal to 1 European/American/Australia cup

What are these vague bullshit instructions. Their quantities are utterly subjective to their local kitchen, illogical and their determinations of what should be an approximate amount are eye gouging inducing terrible. This is the kind of instruction I grew up with, its no wonder I'm acopic at life and baking. My father would hate going to beaches with people cause the instruction would basically be:

"We're heading to the beach."
"Which beach is that?"
"That one we go to all the time."

One of the beaches we go to

Another beach we go to

We go to this one, alllllllll the time

Dude, we were here just last week

This one?

He hated that, especially since we never drove in front and we frequented about six beaches, some of which we had to take a ferry to go to. Those pictures are all from the beaches I even remember the names of, there's probably more that I don't know the name of, major points if you can name all these popular beaches. So he raised us not to do it. However when it comes driving instructions:

"YOU HAVE TO BE MORE OVER HERE!" Whilst pointing vaguely.
"WHICH WAY IS HERE." Shouted the Asian daughter.
"HERE, HERE." Car stalls/car curbs it/angry car honks.
"GET OUT OF THE CAR, I'LL SHOW YOU HOW TO DO IT."

I TOLD YOU TO GO OVER HERE.
Obviously not my dad, he has a moustache.

My dad wasn't the only one though, my mother did the same thing. I once asked her how to make congee. "You put the chicken in a pot. Fill it up with water. Cook it. Put rice in and cook it. Put salt in and that's congee." My aunt laughed at her, and my mother couldn't understand why she was laughing.

Pad Thai Sauce:

Pad thai sauce

Uses: Pad thai. Duh. Stinking out your neighbours.

Ingredients:
Fish Sauce
White Sugar, palm sugar is a pain to melt
Tamarind pulp in hot water. Alternatively tamarind soup base or a tamarind concentrate is fine too.
Hot chilli powder

I figure the same proportions as Vietnamese Nuoc Mam cham. So 1:1:1 for sugar, tamarind pulp and fish sauce. Then balance to taste. Mine is noticeably sour, with a salt hit and a bit of sweetness to it, with a final back burn of chilli. For the purpose of this recipe, we'll say a cup. I have no actual idea of what measurement I used, I literally used a ladle that I later found out contained 40mls. No idea how much tamarind pulp water I ended up using.

Instructions:

1. Soak the tamarind pulp in a tiny amount of hot water, basically the same amount of water as your fish sauce/sugar. Don't worry if you add too much.

Tamarind in block form. 

2. Measure out your other stuff
3. Using clean hands, squeeze the pulp and seeds off the water and mix until its an oddly warm and slightly thick mixture. It should be face wrinkly sour and have that distinctive tamarind tang. Strain and discard pulp.

The seeds and pulp

3.a See if you can measure out that much, if it looks like a ridiculously huge amount you can do what I did and evaporate some of it off in a large saucepan. More surface area, faster evaporation ; )

Yes. Yes, burn my pretty.

4. Mix all three together! It should have distinct notes of all three, sour, salty and sweet.
5. Add chilli powder to taste. Mine was weak, so I added about a tablespoon.

Noting that this mixture of ingredients doesn't make a particularly dark sauce when cooking. I read some recipes that added some tomato sauce, or paprika for colouring purposes. I will experiment with that later. In my earlier attempts at pad thai making, I actually cooked off this sauce for a thicker consistency, cooking fish sauce should only be done during the week day, in a well ventilated space and wafted into the direction of your enemies. The syrupy state of the tamarind pulp in this recipe was similar to my other attempt but I still felt it was too thin a sauce.

Pad Thai Recipe:

Pad thai.

Uses: creates jealously in friends, fresh to order party food, dinner

Ingredients:
400-500g chicken - I used the meat off two large maryland pieces, the drumstick and thigh portion
250g of pad thai or banh pho noodles. They're exactly the same thing, they're both made of rice flour, salt and water and the same length and width.
100g bean sprouts
20-50g garlic chives, normal chives can be substituted, but food snobs like me will know the difference.
An egg for each portion you cook off.
One large onion, cut into whatever shape you fancy for noodles
4-6 diced cloves of garlic
Smashed up peanuts
Portion of the above pad thai sauce.

Assorted stuff you need:
A large saucepan or wok
Lots of small bowls to store ingredients
Cooking oil
A square of folded up paper towel and a plate to rest it on
A ladle for getting out the sauce
****A gas burner or induction stove top***
Just stop reading this recipe if you don't have a gas burner or induction stove top. Fire works well too.

Optional ingredients:
Fish tofu
Raw prawns
Pickled radish
Dried prawns
Squid
Octopus
Banana flower
Chillis
Whatever protein floats your boat man

Instructions:

Prepare everything ahead of cooking or you will regret it. This isn't a recipe you can prepare things as you go. Have it all set up and ready for cooking.

1. Cut the chicken into smallish lumps, 2-3cm bite sized pieces. Place in a bowl of water with about 2 tablespoons of salt so it can brine up. Brining helps makes things deliciously infused with salt as well as tender. Place in fridge until ready to cook
2. Cook the noodles in boiling water until just before al dente. They'll cook more in the heat. Drain off and continue prepping.
3.. Cut the onion up into either large wedges or thin rings, depending on how much you like the appearance of onion in your noodles. Place in a bowl or plate
4. Finely dice all the garlic. Place in a bowl or plate.
5. Wash the bean sprouts and place on a plate.
6. Wash, trim and cut the garlic/ chives into10cmish pieces, put it on the same plate as the bean sprouts
7. Gather your eggs and a spare bowl to crack and mix them into
8. Drain off the chicken and place it in a different bowl. Arrange all the ingredients so that onions and garlic are closest to you, then the proteins, the sauce, the noodles and finally the bean sprouts/chives.

Super important set up!

ACTUAL COOKING INSTRUCTIONS VITAL TO NOODLES

1. Turn your gas/stove/whatever onto high, wait until it get hot to the palm of your hand
2. Season your wok or saucepan with a small amount of oil. Pour the oil everywhere, and then wipe it off. Let it steam for a few seconds and then pour some more oil in for cooking.
3. Allow the oil to heat up and throw in about 30g of onions, don't measure it out. Just grab a handful
4. Once the onions have started smelling delicious/softened slightly, throw in about a tablespoon of diced garlic

5. Keep stirring until the garlic browns, throw in your proteins. The longer it takes, the earlier it should go in. Chicken in this recipe goes in first.
6. Once the chicken is just sealed throw in about one ladleful 40-50 mls, 1/4th of a cup of pad thai sauce
7. Throw in your egg, in a dry/clean well, mix like a madman. Cook until dryish. Alternatively, swap 6 and 7 around.

8. Throw in your seafood. Prawns will literally take seconds, as well squid, octopus and fish tofu just needs to be reheated
9. Throw in handfuls of bean sprouts, garlic chives and one fistful of noodles.
10. Toss briefly until coated. Add further sauce, but beware the pale colour. No one wants soggy pad thai noodles.
11. Dump on a plate once the garlic chives have wilted, garnish with crushed peanuts.
12. Repeat 3-11 until all the ingredients are used up. Don't attempt to make a huge batch, you won't be able to handle it and it won't be tasty.
^ all the above will take about 3-7 minutes on a high temperature. Or about 5-10 minutes on a high medium. That's why its vital to arrange things beforehand.

After the pad thai party. G and I went to the dog park where a rip roaring good time was had by all. Dexter, G. and A.'s dog, fell in love with Ben, a giant white German Shepard to everyone's amusement. Super thanks to G. who didn't tell my dog park crush that I had a crush on him, although she knew who it was once she knew who his dog was. Hahaha, the voice of discretion.