Zuchinni in Coconut Milk Curry Sauce

Inspired by the delicious, light “Kari Sayur” or vegetable curry side dishes which accompany most Balinese meals, this is a simple, quick side dish alongside Balinese Pork or just eat the whole bowl as a main course!

This version is very simple but comes close to the real deal using basic ingredients which are easy to get outside of Bali.

Ingredients:

1-2 eschallots (small red onion) finely diced

2-3 cloves of garlic

2 small red chillies

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1/4 cup coconut milk

1 tablespoon of fish sauce

1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1/4 cup water

2-3 zuchinnis cut into medium size chunks

Salt to taste

Method:

  1. Pound together garlic and chillies to create a paste or if easier just use a garlic press and finely chop the chillies.
  2. Finely dice the eschallots or red onion
  3. Heat oil over medium heat, add onion and cook slowly until soft and transparent about 5 minutes
  4. Add garlic and chillies, turmeric powder and cook for about 1 minute, then add coconut milk, zuchinni, salt, fish sauce and water…bring to boil and simmer slowly until zuchinni is tender. You might need to add more coconut milk and/or water as you want the end result to be soupy and not dry.
  5. Serve as a delicious side dish to anything, but great with Balinese Pork and jasmine rice.

Sunday Buffet @yellowflowercafe #ubud #penestanan

If you want a truly authentic Balinese buffet experience then this is it! Stunning setting, warm and friendly service, off the beaten track. Take your phone torch and trek up through the back lanes of Penastanan village on the outskirts of Ubud for a truly memorable feast,

View of Mt Agung from Yellow Flower Cafe
Red bean soup appetiser
Not just veg, Sunday buffet at Yellow Flower Café Ubud
Fern salad, tempeh, tofus, chicken lawar, sambal, pandan rice….list goes on!
Stunning setting for Sunday buffet at Yellow Flower Cafe Penestanan, Ubud.

Rendang and Rawon rock at Waroeng Bernadette #penastanan #ubud

We were so excited to hear that a new Waroeng Bernadette had opened earlier this year in Penstanan, just on the outskirts of Ubud central.

Having visited their original establishments, in Mas and then in Ubud central in the past, we knew already from friends who live in Penastanan that the new restaurant is living up to high expectations from diners.

Serving authentic Javanese specialities, Warung Bernadette will definitely be giving one of our other old favourites Warung Mendez a run for its money! (But Mendez does have a wider range of dishes in their menu)?

We started with crispy Indonesian sweetcorn fritters, followed by beef rendang and beef rawon.

Crispy Indonesian corn fritters

The slow cooked beef rendang is melt in the mouth and served with pickled vegetables, tofu, tempe, greens in a delicious coconut sauce. Crackers and rice.

Beef rendang

The beef Rawon soup was redolent of the unique flavour of the keluak nuts which give it the trademark almost black colour. One of the best Rawon soups I’ve tasted, served with preserved egg and crackers.

Beef Rawon soup

Beautifully designed interiors, great service and just down the road from our villa in Penastanan.

Waroeng Bernadette in Penastanan, Ubud

Loving our leftovers #boxingday

A great tradition in our family is the quick turnaround of leftovers from Christmas Day into Boxing Day dinner with fresh, asian flavours.

This year we had our extended family visiting so as well as our usual Turkey and Prawn Pad Thai, I added Asian Pork Belly Salad and Fried Rice with ham to the menu to cater for 12 people.

It was a great menu to use up leftover turkey, prawns, various vegetables and herbs at our holiday rental house.

The fried rice with lots of Christmas ham, mushrooms, carrots and peas was perfect for our granddaughter who loved it as much as the adults! Easy to make and certainly helped fill up the family after a hard day relaxing!

As always so much fun to have a big gang to cook for!!

Fried Rice with leftover Xmas ham
2023 Turkey Pad Thai garnished with lots of fresh salad ingredients

Hokkien Har Mee Laksa Bowls #harmee #laksa

This version of the famous Hokkien Har Mee, spicy Malaysian prawn and pork soup, was inspired by our daughter’s recent visit to have Laksa at Abel’s Komi Tiam in Canberra.

Stuck here in Sydney, with a couple of pork short ribs in the freezer, I googled around for a recipe to use the ribs and come close to an almost irreplaceable Abel’s Mum’s Laksa experience.

I read with interest about all the different versions of street hawker soups …which brought back great memories of our trip to Malaysia many moons ago.

Night market at Langkawi Island in Malaysia

The solution came forward in the form of a combination of recipes and my decision to just buy a good ready-made curry paste to start off the process. I bought this and other ingredients at a new Asian supermarket Summit at Bondi Junction

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s easy to make and you can pre-prepare most of it and just repeat and assemble at the end.

Ingredients for Hokkien Har Mee

The other inspiration was this article in The Guardian Use your Noodle By Yottam Ottolenghi

The end result, somewhere between a laksa and a har Mee was just the soupy Asian fix we were looking for, and I got to use up the pork short ribs!

This recipe will serve 3-4 people.

Ingredients:

  • 500-750g pork Asian style short cut ribs (ask your butcher)
  • 8-10 green prawns with heads and shells intact
  • 180g curry laksa paste (or closest you can get)
  • 50g of rock sugar chunks
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 4 litres of water
  • 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
  • 500g yellow Hokkien noodles
  • 350g or thereabouts of rice vermicelli noodles
  • 1 bunch water spinach or Asian greens of your choice eg bok choy
  • 2-4 hard boiled eggs
  • 3-6 tofu puffs
  • Bean sprouts
  • Asian crispy fried shallots
  • Leaves of half a bunch of Vietnamese mint (totally optional but great if you can get it. It’s not called Laksa leaf for nothing)
  • Finely chopped coriander, mint or vietnamese mint for garnish.

Method:

1. Cut pork ribs into single pieces in between the ribs, set aside

Cut pork into single ribs

2. Peel and remove veins from prawns, reserving heads and shells.

Don’t forget to keep prawn heads and shells

3. Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large stock pot or casserole, add half the curry paste (reserve the rest for later). Stir fry curry paste until dark and fragrant, add prawn heads and shells (not the prawns!). Stir fry until prawn heads turn pink.

Add in prawns after frying half the curry paste

4. Add pork ribs, rock sugar and salt and cook turning until ribs are covered in curry paste and meat is sealed.

Add pork ribs to prawn and curry paste mixture.

5. Pour in all the water if you can and bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 1.5 hours, checking from time to time to skim off impurities and oil from pork ribs. Check to see park is fall of the bone tender, add more water along the way to ensure you have enough soup for all your diners. (End result should be about 2 litres of delicious soup stock.)

Skim stock to remove impurities along the way

6. After about an hour, hard boil your eggs, blanch your green vegees and set aside, blanch Hokkien noodles and vermicelli noodles, chop herbs, wash bean sprouts …so you have all your ingredients ready to go.

Blanch greens until just tender

7. After an hour and a half of simmering…..Strain soup stock into a large bowl through a fine sieve or strainer. Remove pork ribs from sieve and set aside to cool in a bowl.

8. I then strained the stock one more time through a fine sieve, but that’s not totally necessary.

9. Clean stockpot or casserole dish. Pour stock back into the pot and place on stove ready to heat up and pour into your bowls.

10. In a small non-stick pan, add the other 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, heat, then add all the rest of the curry paste. Once the curry paste is dark and fragrant and the oil is separating from it, place half of it into a small sambal dish. Add the prawns to the remaining paste and oil in the pan and fry until prawns turn pink and paste is nicely coating the prawns.

11. Heat the soup stock until simmering and add vietnamese mint leaves, tofu puffs to warm up….Quickly reheat ingredients in microwave if needed, an assemble bowls.

Reheating stock with laksa leaf and tofu puffs

12. In large soup serving bowls, arrange your ingredients starting with equal amounts of Hokkien and vermicelli noodles sitting side by side, top with warmed pork, green, prawns, bean sprouts, heated up tofu puffs and halved boiled eggs.

Place ingredients on bed of noodles

13. Remove vietnamese leaves from stock if using, then ladle soup over bowls until just under the brim of ingredients.

Soup poured over ingredients and garnished before serving

13. Sprinkle with herbs and crispy shallots and serve piping hot with the sambal on the side for those who want an extra chilli kick.

New Summit for #Asian ingredients #eastgate #bondijunction

Discovered this new Asian supermarket called Summit in EastGate Shopping Centre at Bondi Junction today. Could have spent hours browsing the colourful aisles and fridges packed with intriguing ingredients.

Ingredients for all sorts of Asian cuisines including Chinese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Indian and Japanese!

Bought everything I needed for my Hokkien Har Mee/Laksa inspired bowls for dinner tonight.

Will be going back for a planned exploration excursion!!

Here are some pics:

Ingredients for Laksa bowls
Tempted to buy this bag of Korean crackers
Juice heaven!
Asian snacks galore
Ready made authentic pastes and spices
Didn’t have time to interpret products in
this aisle!