Chicken and Squash Laksa

Well, in the first flush of blog enthusiasm, here's the second recipe this week. Another Bowl Food recipe. It really is a great book (and is available in Amazon, if you want a copy after my authoritative and glittering review). Wikipedia informs me that a laksa is a "popular spicy noodle soup from Peranakan culture". Well quite. I just spotted a rather nice soup that combines my current obsession with coconut milk based foods and my copious amount of butternut squash (went to the market the other week, asked for 2, got overcharged, so instead of returning half my money, the guy gave me 2 more, so have been doing a lot of squash based cookery). Unfortunately I couldn't get various ingredients but I made an approximate version of the following recipe:

Paste:
2 bird's-eye chillies, seeded and roughly chopped
2 lemongrass stalks, white part only, roughly chopped
4 red Asian shallots, peeled
1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/4 lb dried rice noodle sticks
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1/2 lb butternut squash, cut into 3/4 inch chunks
3 cups coconut milk
1 1/4 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into cubes
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 cup bean sprouts
1/2 cup torn fresh basil
1/2 cup torn fresh mint
1/2 cup unsalted peanuts, roasted and chopped
1 lime, cut into quarters

Place all the paste ingredients in a food processor with 1 tablespoon water and blend until smooth.
Soak the noodles in boiling water for 15-20 mins. Drain. (Personally, I'm not sure why so long, but there we go!)
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a wok and swirl to coat. Add the paste and stir over low heat for 5 minutes or until aromatic. Add the squash and coconut milk and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the chicken and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and fish sauce.
Divide the noodles among 4 deep serving bowls, then ladle the soup over them. Garnish with the bean sprouts, basil, mint, peanuts, and lime wedges.
Serves 4

I recommend making it as I did, while sipping copious amounts of delicious Nicaraguan rum and coke, while Gordon Ramsay shouts at relentlessly self promoting but totally incompetent Americans in the background. (Favourite Hell's Kitchen quote: 'I thought that cold water was supposed to boil faster than warm'!) I couldn't get lemongrass, shallots, peanut oil or mint, so it wasn't very authentic, I suppose. But tasted pretty good. Just a little sweet, but that might have been because of the lack of proper ingredients. The basil worked really well though. Mmmmm. And this time you get a photo of my attempt. Isn't that nice?
Right, off to finish off Hell's Kitchen. Oooh, who will win?!

Minestrone Soup follow up

Little sis, who seems to be indirectly in charge of this blog, has instructed me that I need to say how things turn out. So, I've made the Minestrone Soup lots of times and it's never failed to taste lovely, but in fact this time it seemed to be slightly less tasty that usual. I think maybe the fresh tomatoes was the cause. So my advice is to stick to the tinned tomatoes. And always check you have all the ingredients for things before you start cooking!
In my opinion the soup improves with a bit of hanging around - always seems to be better in the second serving.
So there we go. A spot of feedback to keep lil sis happy.

Minestrone Soup

Little sis has inspired me to write a blog about nice food, mostly I imagine so that she can steal all the recipes that I make and use to make her jealous when chatting on MSN at lunchtime! But it struck me as rather an excellent way of wasting any extra time I might come across. Much better than planning lessons anyway. Plus I've come over all foody since I got obsessed with Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares! Gordon's mantra seems to be 'simple, local, rustic and seasonal'. Local's quite easy in Costa Rica - everything is made/grown here. Willl have to work on the rest of them, though.

So, today, to open the blog, I am making minestrone soup. Quite rustic don't you think? It's from this fantastic little book I bought called 'Bowl Food' - all curries, stir fries, soups and salads. It's one of the few books that will definitely survive the upcoming leaving Costa Rica cull. It's an American book so the quantities are correspondingly Yankee, but what can you do?!

The recipe goes as follows:
2 cups dried cannellini or borlotti beans (I lazily use cans of beans)
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 oz mild pancetta, finely chopped (pancetta is not easy to come by in CR, so I just use bacon)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 large potato, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 14 oz cans crushed tomatoes
3 cups beef stock
1 cup elbow macaroni or ditalini
1 cup shredded cabbage
2 tablespoons shredded fresh basil
shaved Parmesan, to serve

If you're doing it properly, you soak the dried beans in cold water overnight. I just get the cans out of the cupboard!
Then you heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, add the pancetta, and cook over a medium heat, stirring, for 1-2 mins (until slightly crisp). Add the onion, carrot, celery, potato and garlic, and cook for 1-2 mins. Add the tomato paste, tomatoes, beef stock and drained beans. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 40 mins or until the beans are tender. (Don't add salt before this stage, as it will toughen the beans.)
Add the pasta and cabbage and cook for another 15 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper. Serve with basil, shaved Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil (and wood-fired bread says the recipe book, so if you have any handy...).
Serves 6, or in my case 2 for about 3 days!

In fact, today I didn't have any tinned tomatoes - there's always one thing I forget. And the local shop didn't have any - an outrage! So have used fresh, which seems like a good thing really. Will see how it turns out.
Right, I'm off to do something useful. Not quite sure what it will be, but I'm sure an opportunity will present itself.