Sticky Lemon Mushrooms

January 13, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / 1 Comment

If you’re looking for an easy week night meal that takes about 30 minutes, this is the dish for you.

It’s full of intense flavour and you can add bits to it to bulk it up if you are extra hungry.

Ingredients

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 whole pack of mushrooms

1 tsp of Chinese five spice powder

2 tbsp plain flour

A thumb sized piece of ginger, shredded

250g of sugar snap peas or mangetout

2 spring onions, sliced

Then for the sauce:

3 lemons (finely grated rind and juice of 2, 1 thinly sliced.)

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp liquid vegetable stock

2 tbsp of golden syrup

2 tsp cornflour, dissolved in 1 tbsp of water

1) Make the sauce. In a bowl, mix together all the sauce ingredients, except the lemon slices, then set aside.

2) Heat the oil in a wok or a frying pan. Season the mushrooms to your taste and sprinkle with five spice and flour. Brown the mushrooms in the pan.

3) Add the ginger, mangetout and spring onions and sizzle for a few minutes.

4) Finally add the sauce and lemon slices and mix for 2/3 minutes until the sauce starts to thicken.

Serve over white rice. Enjoy! 🙂

Sweet Potato & Fig Salad

September 30, 2014 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

I don’t normally buy figs because they tend to be very expensive. However I walked into my local Morrison’s the other night and found a pack of four figs for 25p on offer. I had no idea what to do with them so I made a seasonal salad. You can adjust the spice in the recipe to your taste. Me? I like it reasonably hot!

Ingredients:

4 large sweet potatoes

4 large figs

1 red chilli

250 ml balsamic vinegar

4 spring onions

2 teaspoons of caster sugar

Salt

Pepper

2 teaspoons of oil of choice. (I use rapeseed.)

1) Get the oven on full whack.

2) Chop the sweet potatoes into wedges and place in a baking tray. Do the same with the figs.

3) Drizzle your oil over the tray mixture and add salt and pepper to season. Place into the oven for 30 minutes.

4) In the meantime stir fry a chopped red chilli and spring onions for a couple of minutes and leave to cool.

5) Now we need to make a balsamic reduction for the dressing. Pour the balsamic vinegar in a small pan and heat until it boils.

6) Add the caster sugar, stir well and leave to cool. the dressing should thicken to a syrup whilst cooling.

7) Remove the sweet potatoes and figs from the oven and mix in with the spring onions and chilli.

8) Serve drizzled with the sweet balsamic reduction.

This could be great as a side dish or even a full main course salad.

Enjoy!

Asian “Sea” Tofu With Sticky “Rice” and Steamed Greens

June 10, 2013 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

This was my first attempt at the 15 minute meals and it really set me on the right path. This will serve four people if you’re not someone who needed to eat two portions….well just because I did so 😛

Ingredients:

2 Limes

A bunch of fresh coriander

2 spring onions

1 red chilli

3 cloves of garlic

A finger sized root of ginger

Half a head of cauliflower

Half a can of coconut milk

A good quantity of pak choi

One sheet of nori

Sesame seed oil

2 large packs of tofu

Method:

* Drain both packets of tofu and press any excess water from the remaining curd.

* Slice into chocolate bar sized chunks and then slice 1/2 way through four times along. In these slits, place some torn nori. This will give the tofu it’s ocean type flavour.

* Place into a baking tray, cover liberally with sesame seed oil and place in the oven for 15 minutes on the highest heat possible.

* In the meantime, chop up 3/4 of the bunch of coriander, the 2 spring onions, the red chilli, the garlic, the ginger and the lemon grass. Place this in a pestle and mortar and crush until it looks like this:

(You can use a food processor, but I used the pestle and mortar because that’s what Jamie Oliver used.)

* Leave this to one side so the flavours can infuse.

* Grate the cauliflower (food processor is best) and place in a pan with the coconut milk. Allow this to simmer until you are ready to plate up.

* Elsewhere you will need a pan of boiling water. Drop the pak choi into this for approximately 3 minutes so they start to soften, then remove and drain.

* Dish up and sprinkle the remaining coriander over the top of the dish. Enjoy!