Saturday, June 21, 2014

Shixcooks: herbed meatballs with veg and tofu soup

My sisters just came back from Australia and bought me a whole bag of goodies 


As you can see, it's a whole lot of chocolate, bags of nuts, tea, slippers, sleeping pants, a notepad, a pack of tissue (hahaha) but my prized possessions are the vanilla pods and fresh herbs (they're in the brown bag). 

Side note: if you were wondering, yes my walls are pinkish. Hahahaha. 

Back to the posting proper. I used a itty little bit of herbs to make the meatballs and MASYAALLAH it was so nice. It's quite fast (because I do everything at the same time) so here goes:

Prep time: 20 mins
Cooking time: 20 mins

Ingredients:
3 litres of beef stock (or 3l water and 2 beef cubes)
1 onion, sliced
2" ginger, mashed slightly 
1 carrot, sliced
2 potatoes, small chunks
200g leafy vegetables
1 tube of firm tofu, cut into 1
Salt to taste

500g ground beef
A stalk of thyme
A stalk of rosemary 
Salt and ground pepper to taste

Method:

1. In a pot, place the stock, onion, ginger, potatoes and carrots and bring it to a boil. 

2. Pull off the leaves of the thyme and rosemary from the stem then finely chop them up. 

3. In a bowl, mix the minced beef, herbs, salt and pepper thoroughly. 

4. Using your hands, make tight balls using the beef mix of approximately 2-3 cm in diameter. (I make them small so that they cook quickly.)

5. Once the stock starts to boil, add in the meatballs. Leave it to simmer for about 10 min. 

6. Once the meatballs have all floated to the surface, you know they're cooked. Add in the veg and tofu. 

7. Once the veg have wilted slightly, carefully mix everything up and add salt if necessary and turn off the flame. 

We're done!!

Tip: 
- put your meatball in one at a time just to check that it doesn't crumble when cooking. If it does, make sure you compress the remaining meatballs so that this doesn't happen. 
- use any vegetables that you have in hand
- if you have only dried herbs, use about half a teaspoons each. 

Enjoy!

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Shix cooks: Lemon-ginger chicken

A simple recipe that it very over friendly

Ingredients:

Ground to a paste:
2 cloves onion
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp chilli paste
2" ginger 
3 stalks lemongrass
1 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp each fennel seeds and cumin seeds 
1 tsp lemon rind 
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 kg chicken
1/2 cup coconut cream
2 slices dried tamarind
Salt and sugar to taste

3 tbsp oil

Method: 
If you're planning to bake this, marinade the chicken in the spice paste together with salt and sugar then bake it at 170 deg for 30 mins

If you're cooking this on the stove top, start by heating the oil a wok or a deep skillet. Then, fry the paste till fragrant (and MasyaAllah, is it fragrant). Once that's done, add the tamarind slices and chicken. Cover your pot and let the chicken cook. After 20 mins, add in the coconut milk, salt and sugar. Let it cook for another 15 mins then it's done.