Easy Mains

The recipes here are designed to be fairly quick and easy to cook, but (I hope you agree) taste good.

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Chargrilled Salmon on Chinese Brocolli with Oyster Sauce

Fish
1 500g salmon fillet, halved length ways into two narrow fillets.
200ml light soy sauce
4 tablespoons shaved palm sugar (preferably the brown sort).

Put the palm sugar in a mortar and pestle, add 1 tablespoon soy sauce and pound until soft. Add the rest of the soy sauce. Taste: make sure it’s balanced – neither too sweet, nor too salty. If it is one or the other, adjust with either more soy sauce (salt) or sugar (sweet). Put salmon in a bowl, mix with marinade, and cover with cling wrap. Marinade for 30 minutes (or whatever you have time for).

Preheat oven to 220C. Heat a grill pan (or oven suitable fry pan) on stove with some oil, until very hot. Fry salmon skin side down for 1-2 minutes, then turn. Put grill pan/fry pan in oven for about 15 minutes or until salmon is cooked.

Broccoli
1 bunch chinese broccoli, washed and cut into 10cm chunks.
Vegetable oil
4 spring onions, cut into 5cm chunks
4cm piece of grated ginger
3 garlic cloves
3 tbs oyster sauce
1 1/2 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs Shaoxing rice wine
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
125ml water
3 teaspoons cornflour.

Place broccoli in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand for 2-3 minutes, then drain. Mix sauces, honey, sesame oil, water and cornflour.  Heat oil, fry garlic, ginger, spring onions for a couple of minutes. Add sauce mixture. Cook for a couple of minutes. Serve.

Serve on rice. Dish serves 2.

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Chilli, Garlic and Prawn Pasta
This recipe changed my life. It’s one of Mum’s. It really showed me that simple food is great food. It works on only two main flavours (chilli and garlic), but really does taste amazing. Hope you like it.

2 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small red chilli, finely chopped
10 small green prawns (or 8 large), peeled etc
Good quality spaghetti or linguini
Thinly sliced parmesan cheese
Flat leafed parsley finely chopped.
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt flakes

Place pasta in salted boiling water and cook until tender.
Meanwhile, heat oil in pan. On low heat cook garlic and chilli for a
couple of minutes. Add prawns and cook for a couple of minutes
then turn and cook until cooked. Place pasta in bowls, top with
prawns and garlic, chilli mixture. Dress well with olive oil,
season with salt and top with Parmesan. Top with parsley. Serves 2.

Tips:
-The easiest way to ruin this dish is to cook the garlic on too high
a heat. If it browns, throw it out, it will be burnt and bitter. You
want to cook it on the lowest setting.
-In my view, this dish really needs more olive oil and salt at the
end than you would normally put in. It’s worth it.

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Easy Asian Fish
An ultra simple way to cook a whole fish.

2 small whole fish such as flathead, snapper, perch etc
2-3cm piece of ginger chopped
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 small red chilli
Chopped coriander

Preheat oven to 200C. Place ginger and chilli into a mortar and
pestle and pound to a paste. Add hoisin sauce and mix. Score fish
in three places on each side. Rub mixture into fish and, if possible, marinate
for an hour. Bake fish in oven for 20 minutes. Top with coriander.
Serve with rice and steamed bok choy. Serves 2.

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Fried Rice
Fried rice can be easy to ruin. It can turn into a soggy mash. The most important thing about the recipe below is the process. You can change the ingredients around, but don’t change the method. This is a vegetarian version but add meat if you like. I am aware that it is a Chinese culinary sin to add soy sauce to fried rice. I am a sinner.

1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon thai chilli jam (David Thompson, Thai Food has an excellent recipe for this. Make his, get some off me (I usually have a big jar made), or use a bought chilli jam/paste)
1 egg
8 baby corn
1 bunch chinese brocolli
1 red capsicum
1 cup long grain rice.
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
Oil

Left-over rice is best for this, but the following is for fresh rice. Wash rice and cook in a rice cooker. Leave to cool (important!). Heat oil, cook meat (if using) and vegetables in a pan. Put aside. Add more oil, then garlic and chilli jam cook on low-medium heat for 1 minute. Increase heat to high. Add egg and break yolk. After about 15 seconds add rice. Cook rice on the highest possible heat, stirring constantly until some grains become almost crispy. Add sauces and stir. Add vegetables (and meat if using) and stir through. Serve. Serves 2-3.

Note: if you are doubling this recipe do it in two batches. Overloading the pan when you are cooking the rice will result in mash.

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Hoian Hot Pot

Vegetable Oil
1 clove garlic
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 lemongrass stalk – dice white part, chop stalk into 10cm chunks
3 spring onions, cut into 5cm chunks
1 small eggplant, cubed
1 fillet fish, about 350g, cubed
1 small red chilli, diced
1 1/2 tbs fish sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon crushed fresh tumeric (or substitute with 1 tsp ground tumeric)
10 white peppercorns crushed
4 basil leaves sliced
3 tablespoons coriander, diced

First, mix tumeric with fish sauce, pepper, sugar and 1 cup water. Heat oil in medium clay pot or saucepan. Add spring onions, garlic and chilli and fry for a couple of minutes on low – medium heat. Add tomato and lemongrass, including stalks. Simmer for a couple of minutes. Add tumeric mixture. Bring to the boil. Add eggplant and cook for about 10 minutes. Add fish and cook for another five minutes, or until cooked. Serve on steamed rice with herbs as a garnish.

To make this with chicken or pork, follow these directions but cook some chicken thigh fillet or pork fillet in the sauce for about 15 minutes or until cooked. For beef, slice some beef fillet thinly and cook for about 1-2 minutes in the sauce. For a very tasty beef version, add big chunks of stewing beef, 2 star anise and 1 cinnamon stick to some stock and cook for two hours. Drain, reserving one cup for the hot pot sauce, then follow directions as normal.

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Mediterranean Leatherjackets
See my post on why Leatherjackets are a great fish to eat. Sure this dish blurs the lines between ‘easy mains’ and ‘general mains’. Give it a try, it is quite simple and quick, despite three separate elements.

2 good sized Leatherjackets (one per person)
2 cloves garlic
10 marinated green olives (oil reserved – important!), halved
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons capers, rinsed
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into large chunks (normal potatoes would work well too)
A handful roughly chopped parsley leaves
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tablespoon each of sea salt flakes and coarsely ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 200oC. Slit Leatherjackets twice on either side at thickest part of flesh. Rub fish with salt and pepper, filling in slits. Set on cooking tray. Season sweet potato and bake. After 15 minutes of cooking, add fish to oven with the potato. Cook for 10-15 minutes until fish are cooked through and potato is tender. Meanwhile, add a generous layer of oil from marinated olives to pan (if possible add some oil from a jar of sundried tomatoes too). Heat and add garlic and cook for a few minutes. Add tomatoes and cook until just soft. Add olives and capers and cook until heated. Add parsley leaves and lemon juice and stir. Serve fish on top of sweet potato, surrounded by tomato and olive mixture and drizzle the fish with plenty of the oil from the pan.

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Rosemary, roasted garlic, chorizo, sundried tomato and rocket barbecued pizza
I posted once about the surprising method of barbecuing pizza dough. This is a suggested topping for this style of cooking pizza.

6 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 chorizo sausage, sliced
4 sprigs rosemary
3 tablespoons chopped sundried tomatoes
two handfuls of sliced red capsicum
1 cup grated parmesan
two handfuls of rocket leaves
1 batch of pizza dough

Preheat barbecue grill plate. Dip unpeeled garlic cloves in olive oil and place on a tray with chorizo. Bake at 200C for around 20 mins or until chorizo and garlic are cooked. Combine rosemary and garlic and crush briefly in a mortar and pestle. Roll out pizza dough and brush one side with olive oil. Place dough, oil side down, on grill plate and cook for around two minutes, using a hood if possible. Remove dough, Place garlic, rosemary and toppings (except rocket) on the uncooked side and top with cheese. Return pizza to barbecue, close hood and cook for another minute or two or until cheese is just melted. Top pizza with rocket leaves.

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Smoked Salmon, Cherry Tomato and Rocket Spaghetti
This is a variation of ‘Chilli, garlic and Prawn Pasta’, but I thought I’d add it because it has developed into quite a different dish.

250g Spaghetti
1 100g Packet of Smoked Salmon sliced
2 small garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 small, hot red chilli, finely chopped
1 punnet grape tomatoes (cut in half if they are large)
A few handfuls of rocket leaves
Zest of 1-2 lemons, finely grated (try to avoid the white pith)
Chopped parsley
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt
Thinly sliced Parmesan cheese
Cook Spaghetti in a large saucepan of salted boiling water according to packet instructions. Meanwhile cook garlic and chilli in oil on low heat (careful not to burn!). After a few minutes, add tomatoes and zest and cook until they just lose their shape. Drain pasta, distribute into bowls. Top with a handful of rocket leaves, tomato mixtue, salmon slices, parsley, olive oil, salt and some flakes of parmasan. Serves 3

*I have cooked this with some baked slices of Chorizo instead of Salmon and it worked well.

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Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls

1 packet Vietnamese rice paper sheets
2 carrots
8cm Chinese white radish
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 rice wine vinegar
2 small red eye chillis
2 lemon grass stalks
6cm piece ginger
1 frilly lettuce
300g smoked salmon

Cut carrot and white radish into small 8cm long sticks. Combine sugar and vinegar in saucepan on low heat until dissolved. Simmer for a minute or two. Add carrot and radish. Cook for a couple of minutes. Remove vegetables from saucepan. Add chilli, lemongrass and ginger to saucepan and simmer for a couple of minutes. Put sauce into dipping dish. Prepare a shallow plate or dish for rice paper rolls. Fill with boiling water. To make each roll, soak rice paper sheet in water for about 20 seconds until just soft. Layer ingredients into rolls, wrap and serve.

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Yellow Dhal

Lentils
1 cup red lentils
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 4cm piece of ginger, grated
1 tomato, chopped
1 can coconut milk
2 bird’s eye chillis, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 cumin seeds, ground
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, ground
1 teaspoon salt

Final Seasoning
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
15-20 curry leaves

Handful chopped coriander leaves

Fry the onion, garlic, ginger and chillis in a little oil until onions are soft. Add lentils, tomato, and coconut milk, salt and water to cover. Cook for 30-45 minutes, topping up with water to keep at a ‘thick soup’ consistency. For the final seasoning, heat some oil in a small saucepan over low heat. Add mustard seeds, cover until the seeds start to pop. Add cumin seeds and curry leaves and fry for a minute or two. Add seasoning to lentils. Serve in bowls, top with coriander leaves. Can be served with naan bread or rice.