Creamed Spinach

On cold, wet and windy days like this weekend, I love to go to the supermarket and then cook for the freezer.  Today, being just after Christmas, I bought 800g of sliced smoked salmon for about £9, a real bargain:-)  This I have packaged up in greaseproof paper slices and frozen.  Luckily I love smoked salmon...

Anyway, I was also in the mood for freezing some vegetable dishes, and so one of the things I made was this creamed spinach which freezes well.

Ingredients
500g spinach
75g shallot, chopped
1 tsp olive oil
150g half fat creme fraiche
1 rounded tsp ground nutmeg
good grinding of black pepper

Nutrition Info (for whole 500g spinach)  
Calories:495
Protein: 21g
Carbohydrate: 45g
Fat: 30g
Dietary Fibre: 11g

Method

• Wash the spinach.  Pour boiling water over to blanch, then strain in a sieve.  Press out as much water as possible.
• In a saucepan, saute the chopped onion in the oil over a medium heat for 5-10 minutes until golden.  Add the freshly ground pepper, ground nutmeg, and stir in the creme fraiche.
• Mix well with the spinach.
• To serve, heat through in a saucepan.
• Freeze in small portions, or flat freeze in cooking rings or silicone cupcases then store in freezer bags in the freezer.

Notes
You could also make this with cream, mascarpone or coconut milk instead of the creme fraiche.   If you don't want to freeze it, then yoghurt would also work well.  To freeze, you need a good proportion of fat (...in the recipe...).

Kimchi butter stir-fried cabbage with orange

 Ingredients
White cabbage
Broken-up orange, pith removed
kimchi butter for stir-frying (blend 1 quantity unsalted butter with 2 quantities kimchi)

Method

• Slice enough cabbage and put in a wok with some kimchi butter.  Stir fry for a few minutes, adding the broken orange pieces at the end to warm through.
• Serve immediately.

Sage and Onion Stuffing

When I was in England last summer, I brought back some stuffing mix, which I ate with some roast gammon on New Year's Day, and then cold over the next few days...

This gave me the taste again for roast gammon, stuffing and cranberry sauce (I'm using lingonberry sauce from Ikea) sandwiches.  Not having any more stuffing mix, I made my own today from some of my own bread that I hadn't eaten and had gone stale.  Here is the recipe.


Ingredients
180g stale bread (only because that's how much I had!), made into breadcrumbs
a good teaspoon of sage, to taste
1 medium onion
1 medium apple
25g walnuts
25g raisins

Method

•  Preheat the oven to 170C.
• Put the breadcrumbs into a large bowl and stir in the sage.
• Grate the onion and apple and stir into the breadcrumbs.
• Crumble in the walnuts, and stir in the raisins.
• Mix everything together well.
• Spoon into a greased shallow baking tray and bake for about 45 minutes until brown and crispy on top.

Tofu and Wakame Miso Soup

It was about time that I put a recipe for my miso soup on here. Recently, a friend of mine gave me some homemade niboshi dashi which is a dried stock mixture of grated dried anchovies and grated kombu. It's best to use a fish stock for this recipe if you substitute, although I've used chicken gravy granules before successfully enough...

Servings for this recipe vary... I had it all for myself for breakfast, but depending on when you're eating it and what you're eating it with, it could probably serve up to 3 people!

Nutrition Data
The thing I would note most with this is that whilst miso soup is very healthy, and much healthier than many other food choices available, it is worth choosing low salt varieties of stock and miso. This nutrition data is only for the tofu and the miso, and with the assumption that you eat it all!
Calories: 146
Protein: 10.5
Fat: 7.2g
Carbohydrate: 10g
Dietary Fibre: 2g

Ingredients
400 ml of dashi stock (use the instructions according to your recipe)
6 pieces of wakame seaweed
150g silken tofu
1 heaped teaspoon of miso

Method

• I made the dashi by putting 2 rounded teaspoons of the homemade dashi in a saucepan with 400ml of water, and heating it to simmering point.
• Whilst it is heating, cube the tofu and add this, together with 6 pieces of wakame.
• Take out a tablespoon of dashi and mix the miso in this, then quickly stir it in just as the dashi is simmering.
• Serve immediately.

Note
If I was doing this properly or for other people, I would have strained the dashi before adding the other ingredients, but I don't usually bother when I'm being quick.

Egg Drop and Salmon Soup

All quantities are approximate - it's really not important to measure everything out. I used a 400ml bowl because this was breakfast! If this was a side dish, then this would easily serve 2.





Ingredients (serves 1-2, multiply quantities as necessary)
400ml of water made into a light stock (I used katsuodashi which is stock made from bonito flakes, but any stock would be ok)
a dash of soy sauce (about 1 teaspoon)
1 - 2 teaspoons of seaweed, perhaps wakame (I used nebarumekabu)
1/2 teaspoon of potato starch or cornflour, mixed with a little water)
1 teaspoon ginger paste or grated ginger with juice
2 slices cooked or smoked salmon
1 egg, beaten

Method

• Add the seaweed to the stock and heat until very hot but not boiling.
• Mix in the soy sauce and ginger, and stir in the potato starch mixture. It will not noticeably thicken, but will just stop the egg from sinking to the bottom.
• Add the salmon, and stir in the beaten egg, which will set immediately in strands.
• Serve immediately.
  

Rolled Omelette or Tamagoyaki

One of the students of a colleague of mine is the chef in a local restaurant and regularly brings us lunch on her lesson day! It's so kind! One of the dishes she recently brought included this beautiful rolled omelette made using stock (dashi tamagoyaki). It looked like a mille feuille or baumkuchen in terms of the incredibly thin layers.

I really want to get the hang of making this using stock, because it looks more beautiful the thinner the layers, but this is my attempt at regular Japanese rolled omelette. I don't think I mixed the egg thoroughly enough, because the white and yolk seem too separate, but it's still delicious!

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• vegetable oil

Some people also use 1 tablespoon of sugar, but the mirin is sweet cooking sake anyway. I don't measure out the ingredients exactly. If you want, you can add other ingredients such as bonito flakes or roll in thinly sliced ham or fish.

Method

• Using some kitchen paper, grease a small frying pan. I use a small rectangle pan measuring 14cm x 19cm x 3cm. This makes the tamagoyaki more regularly shaped than if you use a round pan.
• Thoroughly mix the eggs, soy sauce and mirin, without incorporating too much air.
• Heat the pan over a medium heat. It is ready when you add a drop of the egg mixture and it easily lifts from the pan.
• Pour over a thin layer of egg mixture. As soon as it is half set, start to roll it from one side of the pan to the other. Keep the roll at one end of the pan. Wipe clean with the oiled kitchen paper, and pour in another thin layer of egg mixture, lifting the roll briefly so that the egg mixture covers the whole pan.
• Again, when half set, roll the omelette starting from the first one so that this first one is inside the second. Repeat for as much egg mixture as you've got.
• To serve, cut into thick slices. Delicious hot or cold.

There is a nice descriptionwith step-by-step photos of how to make this really well at this website http://www.justhungry.com/tamagoyaki

Miso Daikon

This daikon radish is also known as mooli in Hindi and other Indian languages. It can be found in UK supermarkets under that name. Despite it being a widely used and grown vegetable in Japan, it in fact originated in continental Asia.

A couple of years ago, one of my students gave me a whole daikon from her allotment. It was huge (see picture, compared to my kettle). I was eating it for days, and at that time didn't have so many ideas for what to do with it. I think most of it I ate raw with a salad dressing I made from dijon mustard, honey, lemon and pine nuts. You can eat the leaves too.

Anyway, here is a recipe for Miso Daikon:

Ingredients
Some thick (2cm) slices of daikon cut from half a daikon
1-2 teaspoon soft brown or black sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 heaped teaspoon red miso
Black sesame seeds
Lemon zest to garnish

Method

• Slice the daikon into 2cm thick slices.
• Mark a cross on one side of each slice to help cooking and absorption of flavours.
• Put in a saucepan and cover with boiling water and the soya sauce. Boil for 20 - 30 minutes until tender.
• Put the sugar, miso, lemon juice and sesame seeds in a bowl. Add a couple of tablespoons of the cooking liquid and mix. Feel free to adjust the sauce ingredients to taste. I used golden sesame seeds as I didn't have black.
  
• Arrange the daikon on a plate, and spoon over the sauce.
• Garnish with lemon zest.
  

Delicious hot, and best eaten on the same day. If you can get yuzu, use that instead of lemon. To make it easier to eat, the sauce can be a thick spread.

Sesame Sauteed Spinach

Ingredients (serves 1)
200-250g spinach or komatsuna
1 teaspoon of sesame oil
chicken or tofu and sesame seeds to serve




Method

• Wash and drain the spinach and heat the sesame oil in a large frying pan.
• Add the spinach to the pan and toss for about 1 minute until the spinach is brighter green, but still keeps it's shape and bite.
• Serve immediately with some chicken, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Note: Variations: dry frying the sesame seeds might be nice; could use garlic oil instead.