All posts filed under: side dish

Carrot and Sultana Spiced Rice

Published by

A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man may be the difference between victory and defeat. The Emperor, Mulan (1998) JUMP TO RECIPE This simple dish is one of those things I’ve been making for years. I learnt how to do something similar at the Oriental Cooking class I took in 2008 with my sister, Smyles. It was an amazing class and I learnt so much about cooking different Asian dishes, techniques, and how to use spices I’d never even heard of at that point. Our teacher was from Malaysia and she taught us so much and so well that there are different things Smyles and I still make, to this day, that she taught us. The following recipe is kind of a mash up of different ones that she did with us, including a Saffron and Sultana rice that was incredibly tasty. I don’t have any saffron at the moment and I wanted to try something different in any case and this is the result. I personally think the fried onions …

Smyles’ 5 Ingredient Tomato Soup

Published by

“I’m the first to admit I’m not much of a cook. But since soup mainly involves tossing everything in a pot and waiting, it’s one of my better dishes.” ~ Suzanne Collins ~ There is something about cold, wintery, blustery days that just calls for soup. We have had plenty of them in the last few weeks and soup is indeed my comfort food of choice at the moment. This soup is one of my sister’s. I don’t really deviate in any way from her recipe, until it comes to the toppings. When I did my vegan month, back in November, she suggested this as something that could work quite well during it. And, boy, was she right! In fact, I’d get up early once a week, and make the soup (minus the blending) before I went on my morning walk. At that time, like now, we were in the middle of a national lockdown (and just in case you are reading this in 100 years, it was Covid-19 times!), and I was working from …

Fiesta Friday #165 Aubergine Rarebit

Published by

“Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.” ~ M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf (1942) Hello, fellow Fiesta Friday-ers! And everyone else who reads this blog – despite the fact I haven’t posted anything in weeks! Thank you for sticking with me because I certainly don’t deserve it. It only hit me this week (after almost a year of teaching) that I actually have more free time in the evenings than I’ve realised and more than I had in Korea. Even when I walk home and especially when I am teaching groups of teenagers because I tend to just need to adjust or adapt lesson plans rather than needing to completely start from scratch. I don’t know why it took me so long to realise this but it did. However, as a result, I’ve finally, properly, been testing a recipe. Until now when I was recipe testing I’d do a bit here, a  bit there and then nothing for weeks and then it would be months until I …

Spicy Marinated Butternut Squash

Published by

A few months ago we celebrated my Mam’s birthday. My mam loves Mexican food – well probably more Tex-Mex, to be honest, and so I prepared a feast. We had so much food. I think we had two different types of rice – my Easy Dressed-Up Cilantro/Coriander Rice and Green Rice (will have to share some day but as it’s something that I only make, from a recipe book, on very special occasions that will be some time in the distant future), as well as chicken and beef, lots of veggies, burritos, tacos and salads. In two words: A FEAST! The chicken was from this recipe book that I bought for my sister a couple of years ago called Everyday Mexican and it’s a wonderful little book that includes aforementioned Green Rice  as well as this fantastic Chicken Fajitas recipe where the chicken is marinated in honey/maple syrup, oregano and chili-flakes. It was a hit, particularly with the adults at the table and I definitely need to make it again at some point. The taste of …