June 30th, 2011
While I was constructing this salad in it’s bowl I was gently reminded of performing similar activities years before. When I was young(er) and my parents would have guests over for a braai I was often entrusted to make the green salad that would accompany our meal. This was a job that I took most seriously. I remember spending ages chopping and slicing the ingredients laid out by my mom. Finally (and most importantly) I deliberated over how to arrange said ingredients into intricate patterns, trying not to repeat arrangements previously used. I guess some things haven’t changed.
Today’s Lunch:
- Salad with mixed leaves, smoked chicken, baby tomatoes, feta and spring onion.
cheese, chicken, feta, salad, smoked chicken, spring onion, tomato
Packed Lunches
June 29th, 2011
Wow, I can’t believe it has been nearly five months since my last blog post. How absolutely shocking! They say time flies when you’re having fun, but I can’t say that these past few months have been that exciting. Maybe it’s just a sign that I’m getting a bit older? My return has been somewhat inspired by an invitation to a bloggers get together being organised by the lovely Betty Bake and Being Brazen. The invitation got me thinking, if I want to be thought of as a blogger then I should blog right? So, I’d like to renew my blogging license and here is a blog post to prove it.
Today’s Lunch:
- Chicken cooked in a sticky plum sauce,
- stir-fried carrot, courgette, mange tout, spring onion and fresh corn kernels and
- egg noodles.
carrot, chicken, corn, courgette, mange tout, noodles, spring onion
Packed Lunches
November 2nd, 2010
I had these dumplings hiding out in my freezer begging to be freed from their icy home. I finally gave in to their demanding little voices and heated them in a makeshift steamer* before popping them into my lunch box.
Today’s Lunch:
- Chicken dumplings (with the beautiful plaited pattern on them),
- pork dumplings,
- edemame beans,
- baby tomatoes,
- shredded cabbage and
- a little bottle of soy sauce.
*a colander set over a pot of boiling water and topped with the pot’s lid
cabbage, chicken, dumplings, edemama, pork, tomatoes
Packed Lunches
August 5th, 2010
This past weekend I had the privilege of watching Christine Stevens prepare a few recipes from her book Harvest at the Cape Town Book Fair. One of the dishes she prepared was a winter salad containing cabbage, carrot, celery and onion dressed with an orange juice vinaigrette. She explained that she thought cooking was all about adapting and that the original recipe in her book used fennel, but since she had none on hand she’d substituted onion instead. The combination of fennel and orange was the inspirational springboard for this salad lunch.
Today’s Lunch:
- Mixed salad leaves topped with
- carrot, red onion and fennel marinated in a little orange juice topped with
- sliced smoked chicken and
- orange segments with feta cheese.
carrot, cheese, chicken, fennel, feta, lettuce, onion, orange, orange juice, salad, smoked chicken
Packed Lunches
July 30th, 2010
This lunch is my entry into the My Easy Cooking Thai themed first blogging event. After my success with nut butter in the last Daring Cook’s Challenge I though I might try my hand at making satay from scratch, but after picking up a small brick of tamarind pulp at the New Asian Spice Supermarket in Sea Point I finally decided on Pad Thai. For inspiration I turned to Chez Pim and her method of making Pad Thai.
Today’s Lunch:
- Pad Thai with
- chopped peanuts seasoned with a little chilli powder and
- a wedge of lemon
The first step is to prepare the Pad Thai sauce, but before I could do that I had to process my brick of tamarind pulp. For 250g of tamarind I used two cups of warm water letting it soak for a little while, then working the seeds and fibres from the pulp and finally straining the soaked tamarind to catch any bits I might have missed. This is the fun messy part 
Once I had my tamarind paste I heated a 1/4 cup each of fish sauce, tamarind paste and unrefined brown sugar and 1 tsp chilli powder over a low heat until the sugar melted. This was enough for three portions. Now the sauce was completed I could move on to preparing the rest of the ingredients.
Ingredients (per portion):
- prepared Pad Thai sauce
- 1 tsp peanut oil
- 1/2 a chicken breast, thinly sliced
- 1/2 a clove of garlic, chopped
- 1 egg
- 60g rice noodles (approx 1/6 of a 375g bag), soaked in water till pliable
- 6 prawns, cooked and shelled
- 6 sugar snap peas, cut in half diagonally
- 2 ears of baby corn, cut in half lengthways and then into thirds
- 1/4 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
- 1 spring onion, sliced diagonally
- chilli powder (for serving)
- Thai basil (for serving)
- chopped peanuts (for serving)
- lemon wedges (for serving)
Method:
- Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan.
- Add chicken, garlic and a spoonful of prepared sauce. Stir-fry until chicken is nearly cooked.
- Add noodles and another few spoons of sauce. Continue stir-frying until noodles soften.
- Push chicken and noodles to the side of the wok/pan, crack egg into empty side and quickly scramble till cooked.
- Add prawns, sugar snap peas, baby corn and yellow pepper. Stir-fry all ingredients together until vegetables are just cooked.
- Serve immediately, sprinkled with chilli powder, spring onions, torn Thai basil, chopped peanuts and spritz of lemon.
baby corn, chicken, egg, garlic, lemon, Pad Thai, peanuts, prawns, rice noodles, spring onion, sugar snap peas, Thai basil, yellow pepper
Packed Lunches, Recipes
July 14th, 2010
Leftovers from this month’s Daring Cooks challenge made for an excellent lunchtime treat, especially with the freezing rainy and snowy weather we’ve been having in the Cape recently.
Today’s Lunch:
- Butter chicken,
- basmati rice with fried onions,
- carrots and
- green beans.
butter chicken, carrot, chicken, green beans, onion, rice
Packed Lunches
July 14th, 2010
The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.
The first part of this month’s challenge was to produce a fresh nut butter using nuts of our choice. I chose to make a raw almond butter and because the end result would be used in a savoury dish I loosened it up with a little garlic infused avocado oil. For awhile I thought my little food processor wouldn’t be able to handle the nuts or produce anything but nuts crumbs. But with a little patience and a few added teaspoons of avocado oil we eventually got there.
The final part of the challenge was to produce a savoury dish using our freshly made nut butter. I chose the butter chicken recipe as it is a dish I’ve wanted to cook for awhile. It came out really well and yet again I find myself wondering what I was so afraid of and thinking that sometimes things are not as complicated as you think they are.
All recipes from this months challenge can be found here.
almond butter, almonds, butter chicken, chicken, curry, nut butter, nuts
Daring Cooks
May 31st, 2010
Today’s Lunch:
- Chicken and mushrooms in a creamy sauce,
- butternut,
- pattypan squash,
- broccoli and
- couscous
broccoli, butternut, chicken, couscous, mushroom, pattypan
Packed Lunches
May 17th, 2010
Guess what’s for lunch today? Leftovers from this month’s daring cooks challenge.
Today’s Lunch:
- A slice of green chile and grilled chicken stacked enchilada,
- refried beans and
- a salad with lettuce, onion, baby tomatoes and avocado.
avacado, cheese, chicken, enchilada, lettuce, onion, refried beans, salad, stacked enchilada, tomatoes, tortilla
Packed Lunches
May 16th, 2010
Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.
I chose to make a single large stacked enchilada instead of individual smaller ones. Not being able to get my hands on Anaheim chillies or tomatillos I also had to improvise and used what chillies I could get my hands on and the suggested green tomatoes with tamarind to replace the tomatillos. Recipes for the Green Chile Sauce and Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchiladas can be found on Fine Cooking.
cheese, chicken, enchilada, green chile sauce, stacked enchilada, tortilla
#Cheesesluts, Daring Cooks
