Stir Fried Chicken with Egg and Noodles

One of my favourite lunches to make for myself as a teenager was two minute chicken noodles with an egg stirred through in the hot pan. As weird as it sounds, I loved it so so so much.  I wanted to create a (healthier) blast from the past for dinner one night this week, and this is what I came up with.  It made use of some bok choy, shallots and cayenne chilli which we have been growing in our balcony garden, which was even better.  Cooking with food you have grown yourself feels so grounded and beautiful.  This meal takes all of 10 minutes to make and serves 4.  I loved it.  The egg adds protein, holds everything together, and tastes great.

Gorgeous Asian Sauce

In my Sesame Soy Salmon with Soba recipe, I used my now-favourite Gorgeous Asian Sauce.  It is so simple and so delicious, I can't believe I haven't thought to make it before this year.  I decided to make this a separate post because I anticipate that it will feature in a few recipes from here on out.  It is a regular in my kitchen.  I recommend always keeping soy sauce and rice wine vinegar in the cupboard, and I am never without garlic and ginger.  The quantities can be doubled, trippled etc to meet the need.  This recipe makes enough for 2 serves, so tweak it as needed.  This sauce is good in stir fry, in noodles, in fried rice, with dumplings, on baked salmon, in a parcel of baked or steamed fish and veggies, or any other way you can think to use it. Plus it takes a whole 1 minute or less to make.

Beef Larb Gai (Thai meat salad)

I dream of taking a gastronomic tour of Thailand at some point.  Thai food has such a beautiful balance of flavours, fragrance and colours.  It is the kind of food that you don't measure exact quantities for, but rather add more or less based on taste.  That is how I like to cook.

This recipe is loosely based around larb gai, which is usually made with pork mince, but I was in the mood for red meat.  Larb gai is a thai meat salad - yes you heard me right.  Meat. Salad.  Omnomnomnom.  It is meant to be a crunchy meat.  Yumyumyum.  It can be served in a lettuce leaf or on rice, as I chose to do tonight.  Traditional larb gai uses sticky rice in the mix which has been ground into a powder, but I've stuck to various beautiful crunchy veggies from the onion family (shallots and salad onions) for crunch.  The fresh herbs make the dish.  It is healthy and delicious.

East Meets West Eggs

Weekend breakfast.  Zomg.  I love it.  Breakfast is one meal I will never get sick of.  Now - to be honest I love every meal of the day - but I particularly love breaking my fast.  There are so many ways to make it enjoyable, and most of them are simple and easy, which goes well with my weekend morning brain fog.  Having something yum starts the weekend off perfectly.  Everything flows from there.  I used to think that cooking breakfast had to be a big deal, but I've learnt that you can make a lot of simple and healthy breakfast dishes with ease.  I've also learned that basic things like scrambled eggs, while a treat done the old fashioned way, can be spun lots of different ways pretty simply in order to keep things interesting and reduce "ugh...this again" style food fatigue.  Below is a simple and tasty East meets West one-pot scrambled eggs and bacon dish.  It is on the table in no time with minimal fuss. The recipe is so easy.  What more could you ask?

Salmon Pho

I came up with this recipe after researching Pho (pronounced Fuh) and becoming inspired about interesting ways to cook meat.  Pho is a Vietnamese soup often eaten for breakfast.  The secret to making it taste good is using a high quality stock.  The meat is usually thinly sliced and cooked by ladelling hot stock over it. This intrigued me.  Pho is traditionally made with beef, but I wanted to do my own version using my home made vegetable stock and marinated salmon because I'm trying to eat more fish.  The result was a lot of fun to make and tasted beautiful.  The broth is a very different flavour to beef Pho, so I'm stretching things a little by using its name.  This meal is my twist on the cooking concept underlying Pho.  It is a fun meal to make for guests - serve it at the table and carry the pan of broth and a ladle with you.  You can then ladle the broth over the salmon in front of them so that they can watch the cooking process finish itself.  It is a bunch of fun.  Cooking this for the first time gave me lots of ideas - in fact my Sesame Soy Salmon and Soba recipe that I posted a month or so ago is a spin on this recipe - using similar flavours in a different way.  I know you will enjoy this as much as I did.

Sesame Soy Salmon with Soba

How's that for a tongue twister? I haven't made much Asian food lately and I was craving something with a delicious rice wine vinegar and soy based sauce along with some salmon.  After raiding the pantry and the fridge, this is what I came up with!  I was really happy with it in the end.  Salmon is always delicious.  Plus the sauce was so so good over the noodles.  It is important to prep all of your veggies etc first, because once you start, this meal is on the table in 10 minutes.  Gotta love a fast, delicious and healthy meal!  I was actually really proud of this meal.