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Archive for January, 2012

Seafood Kare Kare (Philippine Seafood, Peanut and Coconut Stew Inspired by Bale Dutung)

Posted in Cook, kulinarya cooking club, tagged , , , , on January 29, 2012| 18 Comments »

Seafood Kare Kare

Seafood Kare Kare

It’s embarrassing how, being a founding member of Kulinarya Cooking Club, I’ve neglected our monthly challenges. The one thing about taking an extended leave from blogging is losing the discipline to do every other thing that comes with blogging. Testing recipes, trying to make a dish you KNOW that tastes delicious, actually LOOK delicious, taking pictures, and then there’s the writing! It can be very intimidating.

Let me tell you what else seemed very intimidating. Making kare kare. This is a traditional Filipino dish made with a peanut gravy, thickened with rice. It is usually made with oxtail, tripe, and vegetables. To me, this dish was the ultimate in cold weather comfort food. When we moved to Australia I thought the recipe for this dish was to open a pack of Mamasita Kare Kare Mix. This dish was my achilles heel. Surely, there was no way I could make this from scratch.  Was there?

Which brings me back to Kulinarya Cooking Club. The goal of KCC was not only to promote Filipino food, but also challenge ourselves to learn new dishes with the support of our group. This month’s challenge was to make a Filipino dish but put with a healthy twist.

This month I decided to make kare kare from scratch. From the number of Filipino cookbooks I had, I noticed the common theme was the use of rice and peanuts to flavour the stew. As mentioned earlier, this dish is commonly made with oxtail, so my healthy twist was to use seafood instead. Oxtail, when simmered for a number of hours, provides the richness to the stew, something not available when using seafood, so instead, I’ve added some coconut milk for that added richness.

This dish was inspired by a meal I had during my last trip to the Philippines. We ate in a home called Bale Dutung, owned by Claude Tayag and his wife Mary Anne.  I also later found out that Anthony Bourdain had eaten at Claude’s place when he did a feature on Filipino food.  We had ten (at least that’s when I gave up from delicious food overload!) dishes that day and this was one of my favourites.  Claude had let it slip during out conversation that the kare kare was made with coconut milk and it does add that extra lucious dimension to the dish.

Ice Cream Cart from Bale Dutung

Ice Cream Cart from Bale Dutung

So here is my (late) contribution to Kulinarya Cooking Club.  Seafood Kare Kare, served with a steamed bowl of rice and bagoong (fermented shrimp paste).  I realized that it wasn’t that difficult to make kare kare from scratch, and, I was really really pleased with how well it came out.  Plus, it definitely taste mush better than any Mamasita mix.

After I proudly told my sister I had made the kare kare without a mix, she asked me whether I had also made the bagoong from scratch.

Ha!… Let’s start with baby steps…

Kare Kare from Bale Dutung

Kare Kare from Bale Dutung

Seafood Kare Kare (Philippine Seafood, Peanut and Coconut Stew)

serves 8

  • 100 grams uncooked rice
  • 200 grams raw peanuts
  • 6 tablespoons canola oil
  • 3 tablespoons annatto seeds
  • 4 tablespoons peanut butter (optional)
  • 500 ml good quality coconut milk
  • 2 onions
  • 6 cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 bunch snake beans
  • 8 pieces lebanese eggplants
  • 2 bunches bok choy
  • 1 kilo prawns
  • 500 grams squid, cleaned
  • 1 kilo large mussels
  • salt and fish sauce to taste
  1. Make the stock, peel the prawns (reserve a few whole ones for presentation) and place the heads in a pot with 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil then simmer for 30 minutes. Strain the stock and place in another container. Set aside.
  2. While the stock is simmering, place the rice in a pan and heat until the grains turn a golden brown, around 10 minutes. Place the rice in a spice grinder and grind until fine. Set aside.
  3. Pre-heat the oven to 160c and place the peanuts in the oven and roast until golden, around 30 minutes. Place the peanuts in a food processor and process until it comes together in a paste. Set aside.
  4. Heat the oil in a small pot and add the annatto seeds. After around 2 minutes, turn off the heat and allow the seeds to steep in the oil for around 10 minutes.
  5. Strain the seeds and heat 4 tablespoons of the oil again in the pot used to make the stock. Add the chopped onions and the garlic. Season with salt and saute until the onions are soft and translucent, around 5 to 7 minutes.
  6. Add the ground peanuts and ground rice. Cook for around 2 to 3 minutes.
  7. Add the prawn stock, a little at a time. If the sauce is too thick, thin out with some water. Taste and adjust the seasoning with some fish sauce and the peanut butter if necessary.
  8. Place the sauce in a blender and blend until smooth. Remove from blender and place back into the pot. Taste and adjust seasoning again if necessary.
  9. At this point, add the coconut milk, depending on how thick you want the stew to be.
  10. To make the vegetables, Heat the remaining oil and fry off the eggplants until nicely browned. For the rest of the vegetables, you can either place the vegetables in another pot of boiling water and serve on the side of the stew, alternatively, you can add the vegetables to the peanut stew.
  11. For the seafood, lightly score the squid and pan fry. Boil the mussels until they just open. Add the prawns, squid and mussels right before serving.
  12. Serve with bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), calamansi and steaming rice.
Seafood Kare Kare

Seafood Kare Kare

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Whatever happened to Trissalicious?

Posted in Cook, tagged , , , , , , , on January 22, 2012| 38 Comments »

Goat's Cheese Tortellini with Prawns, Pinenuts and Raisins

Goat's Cheese Tortellini with Prawns, Pinenuts and Raisins

Where do I even begin?  We last left of when Bizou died. I never told what exactly happened.  I guess five months ago it was difficult for me to put in in writing.  Even today, I get teary just thinking about it, but hopefully this will explain my absence for so long.

The morning that Bizou died, my friend Calley and I were meant to have a Doggie Donation Day for Monika’s Doggie Rescue.  We were going to have a stand infront of the supermarket to collect old dog toys, beds and other accessories for the event.  We had spent the whole night putting up posters for the event and when I got home, I decided that I was going to make sunflower cupcakes for a gold coin donation.  That morning, as we set up our stand, I had only brought half the cupcakes so I told my husband that we had to go back home to get the rest.  He said that I should just stay and finish setting up while he went back home to pick up the rest.

That’s when it all happened.  As he carried the cupcakes to the car, she slipped out of the gate and was hit by a car.  The rest, you already know.

Not meaning to sound too dramatic, but I truly felt that life was so cruel.  It was ironic that  Calley and I had gone out of our way to do something to help rescue dogs and in the process had lost my own.  When you have something special taken away from you so soon, you want to find ways to explain why it happened.

I blamed it on the cupcakes. If I hadn’t baked them, they my husband wouldn’t have needed to go home and get them and Bizou would have not ran out of the gate.  I couldn’t step into the kitchen without being reminded of Bizou.  And so, as much as I could, I stayed out of the kitchen.

So many things have happened since then that I don’t really know where to start.  I guess it will take a few posts to get you up to speed.

But let me begin by telling you about this little bundle lying at my feet as I write this story.  For the first few months of her life she scared me.  So much so that not a day would pass where I wouldn’t ask myself “what have I done?”  A number of times I thought about giving her back.  I thought that getting a new puppy would make it easier to move on.  Little did I realize that instead, this would be one of the hardest things I’d ever done.

Meet Pash.

Pash

Pash

I ate out a lot over the last few months.  There is a little cafe near where I lived that served this dish regularly and it was one of our favorites. I remember the first night we ordered it, we were going to share a plate, we ended up ordering three plates. It was that good. The original recipe is from Neil Perry – he serves this at his Rockpool restaurant. Making the pasta is not for the faint hearted. It’s not easy making pasta using only potatoes and flour (no eggs to help bind the mixture) but the results are well worth the effort. If you can’t be bothered, feel free to use regular pasta, or otherwise, I suspect wonton wrappers would work as well.

Goat's Cheese Tortellini

Goat's Cheese Tortellini with Potato Gnocchi Dough

King Prawn and Goat’s Cheese Tortellini

From Neil Perry’s Rockpool Cookbook, Serves 6

  • 12 large prawns, peeled and deveined
  • 1/2 cup raisins soaked in hot English Breakfast Tea
  • 1/4 cup roasted pinenuts
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese to serve

For the Tortellini

  • 200 grams butter
  • 350 grams floury potatoes (I used Desiree)
  • 150 grams baker’s flour
  • 150 grams fresh goat’s cheese
  • 1 lemon
  • salt and pepper to taste
  1. To make the tortellini, boil the potatoes in salted water for about 20 minutes until you are able to pierce the flesh all the way through with a knife.
  2. Place the goat’s cheese, lemon zest, and some lemon juice to taste in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
  3. When the potatoes are cooked, drain them and peel the potatoes and push them through a potato ricer. Add a pinch of salt and pepper and the flour. Mix until the dough forms a cohesive mass. Place half the dough in a bowl covered with a tea towel to keep warm. Take the other half and dust with a little flour as you put it through the pasta machine to ensure it doesn’t stick. Run it through the largest setting a few times until the dough comes together. The dough will not look as smooth as pasta made with flour and eggs.
  4. Continue to lower the setting of the pasta, ensuring that you use just enough flour to ensure that the pasta doesn’t stick to the machine. Stop when you reach the third to the last setting (it won’t be as thin as regular pasta). Lay the pasta sheet on the bench and trim the edges with a pizza cutter or sharp knife. Cut the pasta into four inch squares as you will be folding the dough over to make triangles for the tortellini.
  5. Pipe a bit of the goat’s cheese mixture toward the top left hand corner of each square. Fold the bottom right hand corner to the top to form a triangle enveloping the goat’s cheese. You should have the triangles on the bias with the point facing away from you to the top left. Fold the base of the triangle lengthwise so it is level with, and covers, the top point. You will have a long skinny piece of pasta with a bump in the middle.
  6. Pick up the pasta and wrap it around your index finger with the top point of the triangle facing away from you. Squeeze the two ends together where they overlap and remove your finger. Place on a floured tray and continue with the rest.
  7. To finish the dish, place some olive oil in a pan and heat. Add the prawns and cook for around one minute on each side, until cooked through but make sure not to overcook the prawns.
  8. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the tortellini and remove from the pot with a slotted spoon once they float to the top. Set aside and keep in a warm place.
  9. To serve, place around 4 to 5 pieces of the tortellini around the outside of a plate and the prawns in the middle. Sprinkle with the raisins and pinenuts. In the same pan used to cook the prawns, heat the butter until it starts to foam and smells nutty. Spoon the butter over the prawns and tortellini. Finish with grater parmesan cheese.
Goat's Cheese Tortellini with Prawns, Pinenuts and Raisins

Goat's Cheese Tortellini with Prawns, Pinenuts and Raisins

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