In the kitchen - Round-up 21-27 September

Illness was still working it's way through our house this week, but happily I have remained immune (maybe I am Typhoid Mary? maybe this is the illness I had at the beginning of the month?).

On Friday 21st, I made vegetable tempura of cauliflower, carrot, capsicum, mushroom, broccoli and zucchini dipped in batter and deep-fried. The batter was an egg yolk, 200 ml water and 200 g flour, loosely combined. I made two batches - the first was a bit thick and clung in lumps, whilst the second was much improved. The dipping sauce was some dipping sauce of mirin and soy that I have left over in the fridge from a previous Japanense effort. There was black rice on the side, which was nice but didn't really go.

On Saturday 22nd we had some koftas from our Andrew's Choice supply. Miss 1 thought that these were perhaps the best thing ever invented and ate two, as well as rice and salad, and then had them for lunch the next day too.

Darren cooked on Sunday 23rd and made pat thai from David Thompson's 'Thai Street Food'. This is clearly a favourite in our house. This time, the vegetables were bean sprouts and mushrooms and the garnishes were coriander and fried shallots. I think that this might have been the best effort so far...

Pat thai.

On Tuesday 25th we came home and cooked the last of our Andrew's Choice sausages: cheese kranskys. We had them on a fresh loaf of bread, with a green side salad and Mrs H.S. Ball's Chutney.

I had an annual leave day on Wednesday, so Miss 1 and I went to the zoo, where she showed me the proper way to eat a Paddlepop.

And we were tired when we got home, so we had take away for dinner!

Last night, Thursday 27th, I put together goi bo (beef, mushroom and glass noodle salad) from Luke Nguyen's 'The Songs of Sapa'. I read the recipe calling for 100 g of dried mushrooms and thought that that sounded like a lot, but I guessed it did say that it was a mushroom salad. I only had 50 g of dried mushrooms - that would have to be enough. After I'd rehydrated them, I re-read the recipe and realised that it called for 10 g of dried mushrooms. Now I have lots of mushrooms left... Anyway, this was beef marinated in garlic, soy, fish sauce, sugar and sesame oil. Then it was in a salad of vermicelli noodles, mushrooms, mint, basil, coriander, Vietnamese mint, kaffir lime leaves, red onion, carrot and green beans, dressed in palm sugar, lemon juice, fish sauce, soy sauce and garlic, with peanuts and fried shallots. Oh yeah!

Goi bo.

Update: Oh! I forgot! I made chocolate brownies for my neighbours too, because they are wonderful people who mowed my lawn for me :-)