Rare Blends - Moroccan Greek Salad

We often serve something that resembles a Greek salad as an accompaniment to our meals at The Chubby Chops. They're quick to prepare and compliment many dishes. I always add a few ingredients that you wouldn't normally find in a Greek salad such as apples and sultanas.

One evening, I thought I'd go a step further and came up with my Moroccan Greek salad. It looks quite interesting but, to be honest, it tasted a little bit flat. Still if you don't try, you'll never know. 

Perhaps the orange wasn't as juicy as it could have been? Perhaps a little rose water sprinkled over the orange would have helped? A pinch of cumin? A few quite minor changes could make this into a family favourite. See what you can come up with.

Moroccan Greek Salad

Ingredients

A tomato or two

A small cucumber

A small dessert apple

A chunk of feta cheese

Some black olives

A few sultanas

An orange

A handful of mint leaves

The juice of half a lemon

Some olive oil

Honey to taste

When it comes to the volume of olive oil, I usually squeeze the lemon first and use somewhere between two and three times as much olive oil.

Good quality black grapes, sliced in two, are even better than sultanas.

No need for salt, the feta cheese has plenty of it.

Equipment

A salad bowl

Method

Squeeze the lemon into the bowl, poor in the olive oil, add the honey, and stir vigorously. (You could use a whisk, I usually use a fork).

Very roughly chop the tomato, cucumber and apple. When chopping the apple it is best to discard the core. Add them to the bowl.

Throw in the olives and sultanas.

Cube the feta cheese and add it to the bowl.

Now stir gently so that everything in the bowl get nicely coated with the dressing.

Next peel the orange, cut it into small cubes, and add it to the bowl.

Give the salad one more very careful stir so that the orange mixes with the other ingredients.

Finally, tear the mint leaves and spread them over the salad.

It's Nothing Like - Chicken Rendang

We're expecting guests tomorrow and Mrs Chubby Chops is planning to cook her delicious lontong. To be absolutely correct, she'll be cooking sayur lodeh to serve with lontong. It's her sayur lodeh that is so enjoyable. I had some boneless chicken breasts that I wanted to cook so I thought I'd cook something along the lines of chicken rendang to compliment Mrs Chubby Chops sayur lodeh.

I'm not a fan of chicken rendang as I believe that the slower cooking beef makes a much tastier dish. What I came up with is nothing like chicken rendang anyway. The biggest difference is that I wanted to cook something child friendly so I really cut down on the number of chillies compared with a typical rendang.

Ingredients

Four skinned chicken breasts

About 500 grams of santan (thick coconut milk).

Two small red onions

Six cloves of garlic

A couple of inches of ginger

Two lemongrass stalks

One red chilli

A heaped dessert spoon of turmeric powder

A heaped dessert spoon of kerisik

Half a small turmeric leaf

Five or six kaffir lime leaves

Salt

Sugar

I used fresh santan, a can of coconut milk or cream would suffice.

Kerisik is fresh grated coconut slowly dry roast until it turns brown. You could probably try to make it from desiccated coconut. If you do, you will need to constantly stir the coconut when you roast it.

If you can't find lemongrass, you could probably use the peel of a lime instead. The peel of a lime would also be the best substitute for kaffir lime leaves too.

I can't think of a substitute for turmeric leaf which seems to add more to the aroma than the taste.

As for the chilies, I'd normally have used five red chillies for such a dish. Doubling the amount of chillies and removing the seeds would give the dish a  smoother, more subtle taste.

Equipment

A wok, preferably with a lid

Method

Slice the chicken into finger-sized pieces. Try to cut the chicken with the grain so that it retains a little bite once it is cooked. 

Pound or grind the chilli, onion, garlic, ginger, and lemongrass into a smooth paste.

Stir the turmeric powder and a little salt and sugar into the paste.

Empty the coconut milk into the wok. Add the chicken and paste. Simmer slowly, covering with a lid if your wok has one. Stir gently from time to time.

The coconut milk, paste, and chicken starting to simmer

Gradually, the sauce will start to thicken. Once it does, add the kerisik, finely sliced turmeric leaves and kaffir lime leaves. Add more salt and sugar if necessary.

After the kerisik and leaves have been added

Continue to simmer the dish, stirring more and more frequently as it starts to dry out. Take care not to break the pieces of chicken which will be very, very tender at this stage. 

Cook until the sauce is quite dry.

The finished dish

It's Nothing Like - Cassoulet

I'm normally a last minute cook, by which I mean that I wait until it's almost time to eat before I decide what to cook. Only once I have decided what takes my fancy do I worry about whether I've got the correct ingredients. Usually I don't have them so I have to improvise. Some of my improvisations are better than others. Thankfully Mrs Chubby Chops rarely complains and Little Miss Chubby Chops can be so fussy that it makes no difference.

This recipe has its roots in Cassoulet and some similarity to one cooked by Jaime Oliver during one of those "a complete meal for four in twenty three seconds" TV programmes.

It's Nothing Like Cassoulet

This makes a great supper dish eaten with some good rustic wholemeal or rye bread.

Ingredients

A couple of skinned chicken breasts

A pinch of cumin powder

A pinch of coriander powder

A pinch of salt

A splash of olive oil

A squeeze of lemon

Some frozen broad beans

A can of cooked foul medammas

A can of tomatoes

Two cloves of garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

A brown-skinned onion, peeled and thickly sliced

Two pinches of paprika

Another pinch of salt

A good slug of olive oil

I've used canned chick peas instead of foul medammas and have managed to remember to buy a can of butter beans for the next time that I cook this dish. I'm hoping the use of butter beans will make the dish even better.

Equipment

A heavy bottomed frying/grill pan

A heavy bottomed large sauce pan

Method

Slice the chicken breasts longways so that you end up with slices the size of a thin sausage.

Rub the cumin, coriander, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice ono the chicken pieces and leave to stand for 15 minutes or so. (Less if you're in a big hurry).

In the meantime, sauté the onion and garlic in a good slug of olive oil until they are soft.

Add the canned tomatoes (I prefer to liquidise them first), the broad beans, and drained canned beans. Season with salt and paprika. Then bring to the boil and leave to simmer.

Heat the dry frying/grill pan to a high temperature and quickly cook the chicken strips so that they are cooked through, crisp on the outside but still moist inside. I usually cook them for about 5 to 7 minutes and never more than 10 minutes.

Once the chicken is cooked, leave it to stand for a few minutes. Then add it to the tomato and beans for a few minutes.

The dish is now ready to serve.

"Snowman"

Little Miss Chubby Chops has a couple of kids's cookery books. One has a recipe for a meringue snowman. One day, just before it was time to eat, she came to me and said "Please can I have a snowman for dessert?". There wasn't time to cook the meringue (even if I did know how to do it) and the recipe used ingredients, such as marmalade, that we didn't have.

I didn't want to disappoint her so I came up with a simple biscuit snowman using the sour cream that we had in the fridge. Little Miss Chubby Chops loved it.

Today, Little Miss Chubby Chops wanted dessert after her lunch, not just any dessert, she wanted a snowman. We had some gorgeous fresh, thick cream (naturally thick not thickened) in the fridge. So I started to make the snowmen using fresh cream instead of sour cream. I gave Little Miss Chubby Chops a taste of the fresh cream. The cream had hardly touched her lips before she decided that she didn't like it and it wasn't getting anywhere near the back of her mouth, let alone her throat. So it was back to sour cream.

A Snowman

Ingredients

A digestive biscuit

A ginger nut

Three teaspoons of sour cream

Five chocolate buttons

Method

Spread the sour cream on the biscuits.

Arrange the biscuits so it looks a little like a snowman.

Use the chocolate buttons for the eyes, mouth and buttons for the snowman. 

Variations

I've successfully used full milk, greek-style yogurt instead of the sour cream. Real cream would probably be popular with most kids, just not Little Miss Chubby Chops.

As you can see from the photo, we didn't have any chocolate buttons so I used Hundreds and Thousands. 

Brie, Mustard, and Onion Beef Rolls

I was preparing dinner recently and, at the last minute, realised that the meal needed a starter to make it complete. I had some thin slices of beef which we normally eat in the morning for breakfast. I was able to come up with this tasty, light dish to fill the gap.

Brie, Mustard, and Onion Beef Rolls

Ingredients

Topside of Beef, 10mm thick slices

A quarter teaspoon of mustard for each slice

A decent slice of mature Brie for each slice

An onion, cut into wedges and tempered

A little olive oil

I use French mustard with whole mustard seeds. A smooth mustard should work equally well provided it is vinegar rather than water based.

The brie could be substituted by other cheeses but I would recommend using a cheese that turns gooey when heated rather than one that turns stringy (such as mozzarella). The cheese needs to be mature so that its taste doesn't get overpowered by the mustard.

As the dish will be cooked quickly, the onions need to have their rawness taken away but not lose their crispiness. Sauté them lightly in a little olive oil until the rawness has gone but they retain a little bite.

Equipment

A heavy bottomed grill/frying pan

Cocktail sticks

The dish needs to be cooked very quickly at a high heat. Our cooker has a double gas burner that provides comparatively high heat for a domestic cooker. A thin bottomed pan will quickly warp and cause food to cook unevenly and stick to the pan.

Method

Lay out the slices of beef on a plate, slightly stretching them as you do so.

Spread the mustard on the side facing upwards. Place a slice of cheese on top of the mustard and a wedge of onion on top of the cheese.

Ready for rolling 

Roll the slices of beef and secure them with a cocktail stick.

The Beef Rolls waiting to be cooked

Place the pan over a high heat source and wait until it becomes hot. 

Whilst the pan is heating sprinkle a little salt over the rolls.

When the pan is nice and hot, splash a little olive oil around the pan. Place the beef rolls in the pan. Keep the heat high. Turn the rolls so that they brown evenly until you can see that the cheese has melted inside.

Turn them out onto a serving dish or plate and leave them to stand for about five minutes before serving.

Air-Fried Spicy Chicken Wings

Both Mrs Chubby Chops and Little Miss Chubby Chops are partial to chicken wings. We recently bought one of those "air fryer" gadgets. This is our recipe for spicy chicken wings.

Air-Fried Spicy Chicken Wings

Ingredients

Some chicken wings

A couple of cloves of garlic

A piece of ginger about the same size as the garlic

A small pinch of salt

Two pinches of turmeric

One pinch of ground coriander seed (serbuk biji ketumbar)

Two pinches of ground cumin seed (serbuk jintan puteh)

One pinch of ground aniseed (serbuk jintan manis)

Two pinches of paprika

The merest hint of cayenne pepper (serbuk cili)

A good slug of olive oil

If you don't have your own Little Miss Chubby Chops (or the male equivalent) you may like to increase the amount of cayenne pepper.

Equipment

An air fryer

A decent mortal and pestle

If you don't have an air fryer, you could choose to grill the chicken wings or roast them in an oven.

It saves a lot of time if you have a mortal and pestle which both have a rough surface. The first mortal and pestle that I owned was one of those with a smooth surface that are better suited to a chemistry lab than a kitchen. I wasted hours because of it.

Method

Roughly chop the ginger and garlic.

Put the pinch of salt into the mortar. Then add the garlic and ginger. Start pounding, The salt at the bottom will act as an abrasive and make it easy.

Once the garlic and ginger have turned into a paste, add the spices and stir well. The paste will be very thick at this stage.

Loosen the paste by stirring in a good slug of olive oil.

The paste

Rub the paste into the chicken wings and allow to stand for at least half an hour.

Marinating chicken

Pre-heat the air fryer at 200ºC for five minutes. Then cook the chicken for ten minutes at 200ºC. Turn the chicken over and cook for another 10 minutes. Turn once again and cook for another 5 minutes by which time the chicken should be ready.

If the chicken has not quite browned to your taste, turn it over and cook for a further three minutes.

A light sprinkling of salt just before serving will bring out the full flavour.

The Most Basic Tomato Sauce

Whenever I visit a new Italian restaurant, I usually order penne in tomato sauce. It's the most simple dish but the quality of the tomato sauce speaks volumes about the restaurant. This is my version, it's simple, it's quick and it passes The Chubby Chops taste test.

The Final Product

Ingredients

A can of tomatoes

A good slug of olive oil

One chunky clove of garlic, peeled

A pinch of salt

Two pinches of paprika

Two pinches of sugar

About the canned tomatoes and olive oil. For this dish, it is better to avoid ring-pull cans.

In trying to eat healthy, I attempt to minimise the amount of processed carbohydrates in our diet. White sugar, white flour and white rice being three of the worst in my eyes. So the sugar that I use for tomato sauce is raw cane sugar. Apparently, it retains the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to digest the sugars whereas white sugar doesn't. I've read that refined brown sugar is no better than white sugar as it is basically white sugar coloured with one of the by-products of the refining process.

Equipment

A 15-20 cm diameter saucepan

A garlic press

A handheld food mixer

There's no need for a non-stick pan. I use a thick-bottomed steel pan but that brings its own challenges. A thin-bottomed pan would do.

My hand mixer fits nicely in an open "standard" can.

Method

Heat the pan so that it is warm rather than hot, cover the bottom with a decent layer of olive oil and let the oil warm up.

Crush the garlic into the warm oil and let it very gently simmer so that it softens but does not brown. I find this very tricky with a heavy-bottomed pan and it takes constant attention. Somehow it's easier with thin-bottomed pans as they don't retain so much heat.

Once the garlic has softened, open the can of tomatoes and carefully drain the juice into the pan retaining the tomatoes. Turn up the heat a little.

The juice from the tomatoes simmering in the oil and garlic

Now blend the tomatoes in the can until they are as smooth as you like your sauce. Add them to the pan.

If your blender doesn't fit into the can, you will need to blend the tomatoes in a suitable container. Which will of course add to the washing up. My blender is too large to get into a ring-pull can so I try to avoid them. It's not a problem if I remember before opening a ring-pull can, I simply open it at the bottom with a can opener.

You may be wondering why I blend the tomatoes before cooking rather blend the sauce once it has been cooked. The reason is that I believe the tomato sauce both tastes and looks better this way. If you blend the sauce, your blend all the ingredients not just the tomatoes. This deadens the tastes for me. When you blend the completed sauce, the bright red colour of the tomatoes gets diluted to an orangey-red somewhat akin to the colour of tinned cream of tomato soup. I like my tomato sauce to look the colour of ripe tomatoes.

Add the pinch of salt and a couple of good pinches of both paprika and sugar to the pan. I find paprika adds a touch of smoothness and nicely deepens the colour of the sauce.

A quick stir, bring to the boil, and simmer until the sauce thickens a little.

Variations

Add a splash of olive oil once the sauce is finished and removed from the heat if you like a really rich tasting tomato sauce.

 

"Mee and Soup"

Little Miss Chubby Chops is a fussy eater. When she likes a dish she wallops it down, when she doesn't not a single molecule will enter her throat. IF she can be persuaded to try a new dish, she gingerly touches the first mouthful with the tip of her tongue. Most new foods get rejected at this stage. 

It's much the same with individual ingredients. Little Miss Chubby Chops has been blessed with microscopic eyesight. She can spot a speck of onion or green vegetable in her food from twenty paces. If she really likes the dish, she'll  continue eating but will remove all the offending items. We get though a lot of paper napkins.

Little Miss Chubby Chops really enjoys those soupy noodle dishes that are common in South-East Asia such as Lam Mee and Soto Ayam. She just doesn't like all the "things" in them such as bean sprouts, egg, chicken and onions. Mrs Chubby Chops and I have to carefully separate them all out for her.

Thankfully, Little Penang Kafé (more in a later entry) is very child friendly. There you can order separate bowls of mee (noodles) and Lam Mee soup. The Lam Mee soup is very tasty being based on a chicken and crab stock. 

Of course, we still have to make sure none of the minute flakes of crabmeat get into her bowl.

Olive drenched, smashed tomatoes

An attention grabbing name for a very satisfying, inexpensive dish. Simply cooking good ingredients usually results in good tasting food of which this is a classic example. Subsistence food for many people, it's great comfort food for me. 

Ingredients

A can of tomatoes

A few good slugs of olive oil

A good pinch of salt

One of the things that I've found out about food is that there is little correlation between cost and quality. Whilst this is especially true of eating out, it is also true of some of the humblest ingredients such as canned tomatoes. In England, you can hardly go wrong with a tin of own brand tomatoes in tomato juice from one of the major supermarkets. 

The situation is much, much different in Malaysia. Supermarkets don't have their own brands with the exception of Tesco (and they have a very small range). There is a choice of American and Italian brands. I find that La Valle, one of the cheapest brands, has the best taste, texture and juice. The only additive is ascorbic acid so they should be pretty healthy.

When La Valle is out of stock, I go for one of the other Italian brands. I try to avoid the American brands. The American brand tomatoes are so stiff it's as if rigor mortis has set in before they were canned. It must be down to all the preservatives in them.

When it comes to olive oil, I always use an extra virgin oil. The price difference in Malaysia between extra virgin oil and plain old olive oil is relatively small. It doesn't seem worth the hassle of buying and storing two different oils.

Equipment

A 15-20cm diameter saucepan

A desert or serving spoon

I use a copper-bottomed stainless steel pan but any old saucepan will do. There's no need for a non-stick pan, the smashed tomato will not stick unless you forget the oil or you actually burn it so badly it turns into charcoal.

Method

1. Make sure the pan is completely dry by placing it over a high heat.
2. When the pan is getting hot, add a couple of good slugs of olive oil so that the bottom of the pan is covered.
3. Whilst the oil is warming, quickly open the tin of tomatoes.
4. When the oil starts to release it's fragrance, plunge the tomatoes into the pan. Leave them whole at this stage. Don't reduce the heat yet.
5. Sprinkle a good pinch of salt over the tomatoes.
6. When the tomato juices are heated, take the spoon and gently cut the tomatoes so that the juice inside them is released.
7. Once the tomatoes are nicely bubbling, turn down the heat so that the contents of the pan are nicely simmering.
8. After five minutes, take the spoon and crush the tomato flesh against the side of the pan until that all the lumps are gone.
9. Continue to simmer until the tomatoes thicken a little and the oil glistens on the surface.
10. The tomatoes can now be served.

Eating

Olive drenched, smashed tomatoes are best enjoyed with a few slices of hearty, crusty bread. 

The loaf pictured is a rye sour dough loaf from a Hiestand franchisee in Malaysia. It's decent bread but doesn't stay crusty for long due to the humidity. (It isn't easy to find good bread in Malaysia).

Welcome to The Chubby Chops

We're The Chubby Chops. There are three of us, Little Miss Chubby Chops, Mrs Chubby Chops and me, Mr Chubby Chops. We're an Anglo-Malaysian family. We've lived in England and now we're living in Malaysia. We enjoy eating. We do really try to eat healthily but it's hard when you enjoy your food so much.

This blog will mainly be about eating. Places we've eaten. Food that we've bought and food that we've cooked. You might also get to know a little about us too.