Prawn wonton

You may remember a few blogs back that I mentioned I had a hankerin' for some dim sum. The day after I bought some wonton pastry squares.

My filling consisted of raw tiger prawns, garlic and ginger. A few bread crumbs and a little coriander were added for texture and flavour respectively. Egg white was added to bind it all together and I left it for 30 minutes to rest before filling the little squares.

They came out like little X's on top, with each corner brought together at the top, with as much air pushed out as possible.

I boiled a couple and deep fried the rest. I liked the fried ones more, but you already knew that!

4x8, ta for this Mona :-)

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:
Civil Servant
Bank clerk (temp)
Gas supplier clerk (temp)
That's all, professional student before then!

Four Movies I Could (and I do) Watch Over and Over
Shawshank Redemption
Star Wars (All 6 :-P)
Matrix (No. 1)
Dumb & Dumber (At least they're the 4 that I'd watch again now, it changes)

Four Places I've Lived
Peru
Manchester, UK
Quorndon, Leics, UK
And various other places in the UK

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch (at the moment)
Star Trek (all series)
Battlestar Galactica (both series)
Smallville
Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation
Ireland (kinda second home)
Cuba
France
Valencia, Spain

Four Websites I Visit Daily
BBC
Guardian
Catesa's food blog
Mona's apple food(ish) blog

Four of My Favorite Foods
Chips (UK style)
Pasta (I use a type of pasta 5 times a week usually, and make up some kind of sauce to go with it)
Steak
Sausages (advantage of living abroad, you get to appreciate the small things in life/home)

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
If I wanted it I'd be there. If I'm not there, I don't want it enough, so why worry about it?

Hmm, so I'm going nowhere, while eating fatty stuff with no view to using my various degrees at any point. That puts things in perspective! Anyone fancy a drink?

Dim sum and Chorizo surprise!

I went to celebrate a colleagues' Bday in China Town yesterday, I got a hankerin' for some dim sum, so I went back today (about 1 min from my work) and bought some frozen prawn dumpling. 2 mins in my steamer (bamboo wok thing) and hey presto, a starter!

I nicked Chorizo recipe from Nigella Lawson (yummy). It's fantastically intricate and messy involving millions of bowls and pans etc... OK OK you need an oven dish. That's it!

I chunky cut some new potatoes and added them to the dish with chunks of chorizo. You could stop their but I added crushed garlic, a couple of mushrooms I had left over and a small onions (sliced). Salt, pepper and add boiling water to cover. Violá, done!

200C in the oven, 1hr give or take.

Pork loin with thyme and sage

Well... there's not much to that really. As you know I bought some thyme the other day, so I mixed it with some dried oregano I had and chopped it nice and fine and sprinkled it over the pork loin along with salt and pepper.

I put it in the oven until it had cooked (50 mins?), anyway the juices ran clear. I think the Thai 7 spice that was used in the roasting tin the night before (I lent it to a housemate for his (bland) chicken), kinda rubbed off on the pork while it cooked. Mental note, don't drop Thai 7 spice on your t-shirt, you'll never get it out!

Served with boiled baby new potatoes, onions/garlic/mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Poussin

Or baby chicken to you and me :-)

For this little baby I created a marinade of lemon zest, thyme and olive oil. I pounding the lemon and thyme in a pestle and mortar then added a little olive oil, when it came to cook the chicken I squeezed the lemon/thyme mixture over it, then seasoned in and covered the whole thing in parma ham. I baked it in the oven for 50 mins, while occasionally basting it, I also took off the parma ham when it was crispy and allowed the poussin to brown for the last 20 minutes.

I served it with boiled new potatoes and a buttery, thymey, lemony, olive oily and white whiney sauce. :-)

Chicken Fajitas (with yogurt and lemongrass)

I started by butterflying a chicken breast and marinading it in a mixture of fresh coriander, chilli, bruised and finely chopped lemongrass, seasoning and yogurt. I left it for a 30 mins (I was rushing to get out to a movie). I warmed up my griddle pan and scrapped most of the marinade off the chicken and grilled it. It came of lovely and juicy.

In a seperate pan I fried half and onions and warmed through some cherry tomatoes. Then added the rest of the marinade to cook through.

Put into tortillas and it was a fine messy dinner :-D

Another Tomato Sauce

Finally got organised yesterday and cooked something for myself rather than cheating and buying in!

I fried off little cudes of pancetta in a saucepan in their own fat, then added finely chopped onions to soak up the fat. I added a little olive oil soon after, then added a couple of cloves are chopped garlic and stirred. Once that had had time to soften I added a bit of paprika and let that cook out before adding some red wine, not much, say half a glass, then in went a can of plum tomatoes and it's juice (I mashed the tomatoes up a bit in the pan).
Dried oregano and basil were added along with salt and pepper and I let that cook for about 20 mins. Then in went a few flageolet beans to warm through while the pasta was cooking. Bit of parmesan and you have the perfect meal to get you back on track after all the excess over the last few weeks! :-)