Niamh's chowder and muffins

Tonight was the first night of Niamh's regular Wednesday cook spot.
She chose the recipes herself-Prawn and sweetcorn chowder, from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, and Chilli cheese muffins, from Sam Stern's Get Cooking.
I can't find links to these online, but they were both really easy, Chopped veg and bacon in the soup, with stock and as we used cooked prawns, they were added at the last minute to heat through.
The muffins turned out really well, maybe Niamh has the baking gene that I don't?!
I was on hand to help out, but I'd say she did 95% herself.
I'm very proud of her.

Turkey!

I know what you're thinking.
It's June, why would anyone cook turkey?
I didn't, I cooked food from Turkey.
Imam bayildi, hummus, and carrot salad.  The title of the salad is far too long, and needs accents!
Grated carrot with yoghurt and garlic.
.
I really enjoyed this, I love aubergines, and the flavours were subtle, but there.
Niamh wasn't so keen, but ate most of it anyway.
It's eat it or go hungry here! (Not really)

Her turn to cook tomorrow, so I might be not keen on it!

Salmon burgers

I decided we were having a takeaway tonight.  Specifically chicken kebab and chips.
After checking my purse and finding it pretty empty though, I had to find an alternative, and it needed to be quick. I was shattered.
I had some salmon in the fridge, which I knew would last another day, but found this recipe for salmon burgers.
It's another Simon Rimmer.
I didn't use the basil, the flavour didn't appeal with salmon.
I also used a different mayo.  I mixed may with chopped spring onion, capers and gherkins, with lime juice.
The burgers went into buns with some salad leaves and the mayo.
I served these with more leaves, and some leftover raw beansprouts, with a dressing made from soy and sweet chilli sauce.
These were lovely, a much lighter take on traditional burgers, and I'm sure would be great on the barbie.

Chicken Tagine.

Until tonight, the only tagine I'd ever eaten involved sauce from a jar.
It was tasty, I won't say otherwise, and using jar and packet sauces is how I learned to cook, but I felt it was about time I made one from scratch.
For this I used a recipe from my Lonely Planet, World Food, Morroco book.
Again, I can't give it to you, for copyright reasons, but it was chicken thighs, onion, garlic, ground ginger, garlic, saffron, black pepper, preserved lemons, black olives and the dreaded (according to some!) chicken livers!
I cooked this all day in my slow cooker.
It didn't look like much, in fact, it looked fairly off putting but the smells were delicious.
I served this with cous cous, to which I added a couple of sliced tomatoes and a green pepper.
I'm afraid I picked the pepper out of mine, as I don't like it.  I put it in for Niamh.
We both loved this, the preserved lemons give a brilliant fresh flavour to an otherwise rich dish.

Vietnamese food

This was more food from Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey. Everything I've made from it so far has been a curry, all have been delicious, and wildly different, and all from different countries, but I wanted to try some non curry recipes.
I flicked through, and chose Vietnam, as I've only ever eaten Pho from Vietnam, and even then it was years ago, in Australia.
The recipes I chose were barbecued pork patties with noodles, chicken broth and salad greens (Bun Cha), and clams with beer, black beans and ginger.
First off, I rather stupidly made the chicken stock from scratch, and then strained it straight down the plughole. This is not the first time I've done this.  A good old stock cube was substituted, with the asian flavourings added and simmered.
I can't actually give you the recipe as it's copyrighted, and unfortunately doesn't seem to be online anywhere, but this was pork mince with added fish sauce, palm sugar, garlic, shallots and black pepper, made into small patties and in this case, cooked on a hot griddle pan.  No barbecue here as I'm in an upstairs flat.

 These are served in an asian chicken broth with rice noodles

 The salad didn't really use the recipe.  I used torn little gem lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced spring onions, torn mint, coriander and beansprouts.  The dressing was fish sauce, palm sugar and rice vinegar.
The clams are cooked in a paste of black bean paste, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger and chilli, with lager as the liquid, fosters in this case!  They then have lime juice squeezed over.
This was a really flavoursome, healthy tasting meal.
We tend to think of Vietnamese food as slightly obscure here, at least in a small Scottish town, but all the ingredients are readily available.
I think I'm going to try some dishes from the Cambodian chapter next.

Garlic, cream fettucine with bacon and mushrooms

I got this from Jen's blog, well sort of.
I saw it on there and loved the look of it, but I actually own the book it's from-The Takeaway Secret.
I'd only cooked one dish from it though, as it's a small paperback book, with no pictures.  As pathetic as this sounds, I like big recipe books that I can prop open in the kitchen, with pictures to inspire me.
However, now that Jen had provided the photo, I could make it!
Recipe here
This was so easy to make, very quick too.  In fact next time Niamh has asked if she can cook it.  We've decided she's going to cook every Wednesday, so I'll let you know how she gets on.
It is very rich, but so tasty.  I think I'd do a salad with it next time, to cut through the richness, instead we just had an apple each afterwards!

Curry selection

We love curry here, in fact I keep vowing to steer clear of it for a while as we have it so often, but it never lasts long.
There's so many varieties, and because I have a really well stocked spice cupboard, I can make all sorts of interesting dishes without having to shop, so they seem really cheap.
I'd wanted to try a thoran for a while.  The concept of dry curries is quite new to me.  I'd actually chosen a beetroot one, since I've never cooked fresh beetroot, but couldn't find any in my small town, so went with cabbage instead.
I also tried mushroom pakora and defrosted a Sri Lankan tomato curry, that I'd made a while ago and frozen.  I added some green beans to this on reheating to add more veg.

The whole meal was delicious, the different curries, dry, crisp and saucy (ooer!) worked really well together, great contrast of textures, as well as flavours.
Niamh even enjoyed the cabbage, and she's not usually a fan