Spicy Thai Inspired Millet

I was recently gifted a copy of An Epiphany of the Senses, a beautifully-compiled cookbook by my friend and fellow blogger, Nancy of Spicie Foodie. Inside, it contains delicious recipes that are a mix of her heritage (Mexican), her country of residence (Czech Republic) and strangely enough, Asian. I can only assume that her interest in Asian culinary influences stems from the fact that food from this region uses a cornucopia of spices for flavoring. Of course, I may be wrong so if you're reading this, Nancy, please feel free to correct me.

International Incident Party: Somewhere Over The Rainbow...

It seemed that I blinked and it's already December. Time to celebrate our greatest moments over the year but more importantly, time for another International Incident Party! Penny of Jeroxie.com as our lovely host has wisely pronounced 'Colour' a.k.a. 'Color' as the theme of this month's party. What better way to see the year out than with a big bang, an explosion of culinary colors? 

In the six months since I've embarked on this blogging journey (I'm a mere baby in the blogosphere!), my kitchen has seen its fair share of rainbow-like dishes gracing its countertop and table. I certainly like to play with the most vibrant colors naturally available - reds, greens, yellows - but there is one oddity and that is my predilection for purple and pink. Strange really, because I'm not terribly feminine in outlook or appearance (in fact, I often imagine myself as a tattoed-up Jesse James with boobies and a black leather apron, real baad, oh yeah!). All this time, my poor brain may possibly be rebelling against this constant desire to be a biker-foodie chick, resulting in recipes that manifest themselves as the girliest-looking concoctions, as you can witness below:  

1. Purple Somen Noodles in Capsicum Bowl

2. Amazing Technicolor Gratin

3. Red Dragonfruit Granita

4. Cashew Crusted Dragonfruit Hearts and Matcha Cheesecake

5. Nectarine, Pistachio and Grape Jelly

6. Tamarind Pasta with Muscovado Chilli Sauce

7. Green Tea Rolls with Purple Sweet Potato Filling

8. Fruity Il Gianfornaio

Anyway, back to this party. I was so excited to showcase more colors in my food that I ended up preparing a three-course meal bursting with flavors and vibrancy. I suggest you put your sunglasses on now as it's going to get crazy-bright in here ;-).

Appetizer: Colorific Salad-in-a-Sushi 

A refeshing, colorful salad presented in sushi form! Slivers of red cabbage, cucumber, carrot, beetroot, yellow pepper and mango are encased in fried egg-sheets, which are again rolled within nori sheets. If you can roll sushi, you can definitely roll these. They're slightly larger versions of regular sushi but they look like pyschedelic babes on a plate! My heart hurt to have to eat these, but hey, someone's got to do it...

Main course: Mother-in-Law's Tongue Pasta (Lingua di Suocera)

I've been intrigued with these unbelievably stunning noodles for a while but when I googled it up, there was no information on how to actually make it. For now, it seems that the secret recipe and technique for producing this pasta will remain with the Marella family in Puglia, Italy who makes these by hand! Never one to give up, I bravely attempted my own version of Lingua di Suocera. However let me just put on record that my real-life mother-in-law's tongue was not the inspiration for this creation (in fact, I'd be worried if hers took on these hues!).

I experimented with 6 colors derived from carrot (orange), spinach (green), black sesame (black), blueberry jam! (blue), turmeric powder (yellow) and cocoa powder (brown), and left one plain. It was pretty tedious work lining up the linguine-sized noodles lengthwise against one another before rolling them flat to seal - and of course, they never do in the exact way you want them to - then trimming off the edges to form a wide, flat, stripey, colorful noodle.

It was a warm afternoon when I made this, and after painstakingly crafting a whole set of just 5 noodles, I gave up and  jumped into the pool with the kids. The rest of the linguine was not wasted though, they were heaped together and cooked into a gorgeous multicolored pasta dish that my young housemates devoured after their swim. Luckily, I remembered to take a snapshot before it was all gone!

But here's the real star of the party, my version of Mother-in-Law's Tongue pasta accompanied by red cabbage, garlic and coriander (cilantro) sauteed in butter. Those Italians have totally got it sussed out, they know exactly what it takes to make food that take your breath away. 

  

 

Hmm, I could stare at this the whole day.... if only I wasn't so hungry.

Dessert: Sweet Potato and Coconut Milk Agar

This purplelicious layered agar is flavored with purple and orange sweet potatoes and coconut milk, two ingredients that go extremely well together. The topmost layer contains thin strands of purple sweet potatoes (achieved using a mandoline) encased in sweetened clear agar. For the opaque sweet potato layers, the potatoes are first steamed and then blended with hot agar liquid to form a puree. Despite its carb contents, this pretty layered dessert makes for a delicious and surprisingly light finisher!

I had fun creating these dishes, it felt as if the rainbow had somehow shone its way into my kitchen and inspired me to look closer at its spectrum for ways to brighten up the plain old plate. Now before you come here looking for that pot of gold, check out what colorful goodies the other participants came up with by clicking on the thumbnails below. 

In the interest of maintaining a fun and light International Incident Party atmosphere, all recipes featured here will be posted separately in the coming few days. We wouldn't want to derive yawns resulting from a long-drawn out post now, do we? Haha, no we so wouldn't.

Don't forget to put some (natural) color in your lives and on your plates. Thanks for reading, and yes, you can take those sunglasses off now!

Purple Sōmen Noodles in Capsicum Bowl

I love the color purple, in case you didn't already know. Ironically, I don't own many purple clothes or accessories, nor are my walls and living/working areas decked in swathes of purple. A fact that my family and friends should be eternally grateful for, I suppose. Still, there is this space within my psyche that's attracted to naturally purple-colored food. My heart skips a beat and my brain goes all fuzzy every time I come across a purple or lilac-hued fruit or vegetable. I fail to explain why, maybe it's just the way I'm wired.

Some of my favourites are purple sweet potatoes, yams, red cabbage (which isn't really red at all), eggplant, grapes, blueberries, blackberries, purple carrots, figs, pomegranate, plums and peppers. There are a myriad other purplies out there such as varieties of cauliflower, asparagus and endive, but I have yet to come across them. When I do, I'm sure I'll be doing my little dance of happiness and whipping out my recipe brainstormer machine (a.k.a. my crumbling, grey notebook)!

Blue and purple fruits and vegetables are very good for health, which is why I'm a incurable fan. They contain nutrients that support retinal health, lower bad (LDL) cholesterol, boost immune system activity, support healthy digestion, improve calcium and other mineral absorption, fight inflammation, reduce tumor growth, act as anticarcinogens in the digestive tract, and limit the activity of cancer cells. Wow, if only they can effect a sunny, sexy disposition and high cheekbones a la Julia Roberts too, I'd be one happy woman! ;-)

For all the other foods not fortunate enough to fall within this indigo-purple spectrum, there are ways and means of creating the illusion that they actually belong there. Take these healthy, organic Sōmen noodles, for instance. They weren't created purple, but an afternoon in my kitchen certainly changed that! The red cabbage was my accomplice in turning these thin, wheat strands from minimalist white to a sexy lilac. The makeover was worth it, do you not agree?

Noodles boiling in red cabbage water

Voilà! Purple Sōmen.

Originally I'd planned to use these perfectly round eggplants to showcase the purple noodles (the idea was to make the dish look seamless from top to bottom, which seemed chic at the time).

But I majorly forgot that when eggplants are roasted in the oven, they turn golden brown. Oh well, it was a good idea while it lasted.  I promptly looked around for another suitable receptacle, and spotted two rather huge, canary-yellow capsicums staring back at me. They were perfect, because the yellow complemented the purple Sōmen really well, plus they retained their sunny color upon roasting.

Sōmen is traditionally eaten cold and dipped in clear soup or broth. However, for this purpose, I just drizzled olive and chive oils over the noodles and seasoned it with basil, garlic, shallots, sea salt and pepper, and they were good to go. The boiled cabbage (where we got all the lovely purple water from) was sliced very thinly and stirred into the noodles. Meanwhile, roasting the capsicum 'bowls' brought out their sweetness and they provided a lovely color and flavor contrast to the savoury purplies. Oh ok, the toasted black and white sesame seeds were only really there to lend some prettiness to the already good-looking dish, but bless them, they also contributed a subtle nutty taste to the whole dish. I couldn't have asked for more.

This kitchen experiment turned out really well, and my passion for purple continues. So, what's your favourite food color?

Purple Sōmen Noodles in Capsicum Bowl

Makes: 2
Ingredients:
¼ of a medium red cabbage, boiled in 3 cups of hot water
90g organic Sōmen noodles
2 tablespoons chopped basil leaves
1 shallot, chopped finely
2 garlic cloves, diced finely
2 large yellow capsicums, cut off tops and remove seeds
1 tablespoon chive oil
2 tablespoons soya sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
Sea salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/325F and roast the prepared capsicums for about 15-20 minutes, drain out the liquid that accumulates in the cups twice while roasting.

2. Slice cabbage into 2 chunky pieces and place in boiling water in a deep pan, let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. Drain the purple water into another pan and reserve the cooked cabbage for use as a garnish.

3. Place the Sōmen in the cabbage water and boil according to the instructions on the packet (I only needed to boil mine for 2 minutes). Stir with a fork gently to prevent the noodles from sticking together. Drain, rinse and wash briefly by hand with running cold water to remove starchiness and oil.

4. Place noodles into a bowl and add basil, shallots, garlic, chive oil and the boiled red cabbage which have been sliced thinly. Mix together gently. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Carefully arrange strands of Sōmen into the roasted capsicum bowls and drizzle over the soya sauce and olive oil over the top of the noodles. Sprinkle with the toasted sesame and serve with clear, hot soup.

Puffed Up Lurrvve Pastry

I just looked back at my last three posts and these are what I made and blogged about:

1. a purple-colored pie,
2. black-colored sushi, and 
3. frozen pink-red colored fruit named after a fiery animal!

Pretty random, don't you think? Ahh yes, colorful too. I very much like to play with color, and the natural colors of food allow me to go crazy with my some of my, ahem, creations. Then there's the taste factor. I have to make sure the flavors go together too, and not just have a visually enticing dish. Otherwise, my nibbles will be like those 3rd and 4th runners-up in beauty pageants... unmemorable and never to be heard of again.

Yesterday, I decided to experiment with puff pastry, not for the first time but probably the first time in many moons, or light years. Long time ago, anyway. I made it from scratch (yeah, I wish!) store-bought frozen puff pastry. For the record, I have NEVER attempted to make puff pastry in my entire life. The thought of rolling, folding, rolling, layering the butter in between the dough sheets over and over and over again scares the apron off of me! I mean, I can't even pronounce the darn dough in French - Pâte feuilletée - my eyes read the words, yes, but my brain and mouth wouldn't compute. My tongue just cannot seem to wrap itself around all those dashes, umlauts and silent "e"s and "l"s. The fact that I never progressed beyond the Beginner's Level at the Alliance Francaise has something to do with this, I suppose. I totally reek in French, sad... because I do love their culture, food, chicness and all that. 

Diva D, my fellow home dweller, on the other hand, HAS made puff pastry in our Red Kitchen! This momentous occasion took place a few weeks ago, and although the puff pastry was not perfect, she was very patient and persistent in her efforts. Below was the result - breakfast Croissants. Completely unglazed, because I'd forgotten to remind her about this step... 

The pastry was light and flaky and was simply fab! I was both proud (that Diva D did it on her own with only a cookbook and YouTube as references) and ashamed (that I still can't get over my puffpastryphobia). How did it get to be this way? 

That was a slight detour from my recipe for this post. Yesterday, I had sent some of these baked puff pastry parcels to the office (not mine, since I no longer work there) and my ex-colleagues dug in and well, really dug them. Only one problem, I had no clue what this dish was called when queried by friends! You see, I'd only just invented the munchies in my head, then in my kitchen, but the recipe itself had not yet been committed to paper.

Postman's Surprise? No, Puffed Up Lurrvve sounds much better!

Since there are so much good flavors and even more love in this pastry parcel, how about we just nick it "Puffed Up Lurrvve?". LOL! The names get crazier each time. Admittedly, the puff pastry was ready-made but if you're interested in making it yourself, here's a recipe by Chef Carla Pelligrino of Rao's in Las Vegas. If the culinary terms detrempe and beurrage don't put you off, maybe the level (Difficult) and prep time (almost 2 hours) will. You get a medal for bravery if you complete this task, just please let me know and yeah, you're completely entitled to rub it in.

Well, I did make the filling....does that count? I used bulgur wheat, and mixed it up with beef rashers, Feta cheese, yellow capsicum, black olives and seasoned it with garlic, shallots and coriander leaves. Delish-shuz! Here's the low-down:

Puffed Up Lurrvve Pastry

Makes: 18 pieces

Ingredients:

2 sheets frozen puff pastry (10"x10")

125g bulgur wheat

600ml water

4 strips beef rashers

100g Feta cheese, crumbled

8-10 canned black olives, pitted and sliced

2 yellow capsicums, roasted, deskinned and diced

3 cloves garlic, diced

2 shallots, diced

4-6 stems coriander leaves, chopped

salt and pepper, to season

1 egg, for glazing

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 200C, and thaw frozen puff pastry for 5-10 minutes before using.

2. Boil the bulgur wheat for 15 minutes until most of the water has been absorbed, then drain. While it is still hot, add the beef rashers, garlic, shallots, coriander, capsicum, olives and mix gently until evenly distributed. When the mixture has cooled, add the Feta cheese and mix further. Season with salt and pepper, set aside.

3. Cut each pastry sheet into 9 equally-sized squares while still slightly frozen, then place each small square in a muffin cup (below).

4. Place a heaped tablespoon of filling into each pastry cup, then pull the 4 corners of the pastry towards the middle to "seal" the parcel. Brush top with beaten egg to give it a golden glaze when cooked.

Battle Strategy: Cucumber-Mascarpone, Lemongrass Chicken and Potato-Capsicum Tower with Black Pepper-Lime Dressing

Vote for ME!

As soon as I found out last week that I was to compete in the next Foodie Fights battle, I went searching for my dusty Battle Cap, already long ago discarded to a distant corner of my memory. Preparing to go into battle, I was reminded of the heart of the message contained in Sun Tzu’s Art of War – “To thine own self be true”. Hell, I even own a ring bought from The Barber’s Daughter that depicts this phrase, so convinced was I that Shakespeare had penned this line just for me! Whatever. I shall be true to myself and push the envelope for this battle.

After having a rather restless night, I started strategizing about what dish I was going to push forward to the frontline. The two ingredients that are a must: Cucumber and Black Pepper. Cool and hot. The two extremes, so far so good.

Whipped out my notebook and began brainstorming up something I’ve never made before (and hopefully, have never been made by anybody else, although I would never really know. Even Google has its limitations!). This process is called “Learning how to make a meal without looking at a cookbook". LOL. 

After working the chemistry out in my head, I’d decided on a Smörgåsbord of flavors packaged into a deliciously comforting appetizer called (brace yourself!) : Cucumber-Mascarpone, Lemongrass Chicken and Potato-Capsicum Tower with Black Pepper-Lime Dressing. A mouthful certainly, but I really wanted to showcase the main ingredients in it!

  The star players.

Cucumber-Mascarpone, Lemongrass Chicken and Potato-Capsicum Tower with Black Pepper-Lime Dressing
Makes: 16 “Towers”

Ingredients:
Cucumber-Mascarpone Layer
1 cucumber
1 teaspoon salt
125g Mascarpone cheese
1 egg-white

Lemongrass-Chicken Layer
3 pieces boneless chicken breasts, sliced
2 sticks lemongrass, sliced
1 carrot, peeled and grated
3 cloves garlic, sliced
2 shallots, sliced
1 egg
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper

Potato-Capsicum Layer
1 red pepper
4 medium potatoes
100g butter

Black Pepper-Lime Dressing
4 limes
2 tablespoons peppercorns, cracked
5 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon salt

Method:

This is a relatively easy and tasty appetizer to make and truthfully, it really helps if you’re organized and seasoned at the biz of multitasking. I say this not to put you off but the preparation process for the three layers are staggered and everything only comes together at the end for the baking part. This is the order of the baking process: Lemongrass chicken first, Potato layer second, then all three layers together. Hope you’re still with me! *grins*

First things first - preheat the oven to 200°C, then prepare the layers as follows:

Lemongrass-Chicken Layer

1. Place the chicken meat, carrots, lemongrass, garlic, shallots, egg and olive oil in a food processor and mix until it becomes a paste. Season with salt and pepper and process further. (Note: For the lemongrass, slice thinly towards the root end and discard the green leafy end).

2. Press a tablespoonful of the mixture into the bottom of a muffin cup and push down lightly to flatten. Cook the chicken patties in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.

3. Turn the patties out of the muffin tray, set aside and go cook the potato layer.

Lemongrass-Chicken patties, good enough to eat on their own. That lemongrass flavor is so seductive, the chicken has no choice but to feel (and taste) sexy around it!

Capsicum-Potato Layer

1. Roast the capsicum under a hot grill/broiler until the skin chars and splits. Let it cool slightly, then peel off skin and dice the capsicum.

2. Peel the potatoes, cut into chunks and boil until cooked. Drain the water and place the potatoes in a bowl.

3. Add the butter and diced capsicum to the potatoes and blend everything together with a potato-masher. There will still be chunky bits of capsicum in there, and that’s ok, it’s part of the masterplan.*winks*
4. Press a tablespoonful of the potato-capsicum layer into the bottom of a muffin cup and bake for 10 minutes.

5. Remove from the oven, place a chicken patty on top of the potato layer and set aside while you prepare the last stage which is the cucumber layer.

The act of mashing was good, cheap therapy. I thought of all the people who'd ever been rude to me and oh, how wonderful it would be to just squish them like so!

Cucumber-Mascarpone Layer
1. Peel the cucumber and slice into thin strips along its length, discard seedy core. My favourite way to produce these thin strips is to use a potato peeler. Add salt to the cucumber and leave in a bowl for 15 minutes to draw the moisture out. Squeeze cucumber, drain the water and set aside. (Do this part while the potatoes are boiling and the chicken patties are in the oven – Multitasking, see?).
2. Just before baking, beat the Mascarpone lightly to soften it. In another bowl, whisk the egg-white into stiff peaks and fold gently into the Mascarpone.
3. Take the muffin tray with the potato and chicken patty layer already in it and place a few strips of cucumber on top of the patty. Spoon the Mascarpone mixture on top of the cucumber julienne and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown and puffy. Leave in the tray to cool for 10 minutes before turning out carefully. Serve with black pepper-lime dressing to bring out the different flavours.

Black Pepper-Lime Dressing

1. Squeeze lime juice into a small bowl. Add olive oil and salt.

2. Crack black peppercorns in a grinder or using a pestle and mortar. Add this to the lime dressing and drizzle over the cooked "tower" just before serving.

Cracked black peppercorns in a tangy lime-olive oil dressing. Sizzle, Crackle and Zinggggg!

Oh, you're still here? Thought I'd lost you at the first layer! Anyway, you can serve and enjoy the dish like this but if you're a masochist like me, then you'll go on and make the phyllo "wings" to embrace this dish. It's easy, just take a sheet of phyllo pastry and rub olive oil on both sides. Cut into 1-inch wide strips and drape into the muffin cups (below). Bake at 200°C for about a minute, keep an eye as it burns fast!

Carefully insert a tower in between the wing, garnish with some more cucumber strips and finally drizzle some dressing on top.

PS. Hope you enjoyed the post, and apologies if it was starting to read like an epic. I wanted you to feel the pain. LOL! Don't forget to go to Foodie Fights and vote for me... Heart ya!