Bread Crackers

I don't really like crackers.  I love the idea of something crunchy and savoury that you dip or load high with fillings, but I hate how much salt or artificial flavouring usually goes onto them.  So I decided to make my own.  I noticed that last time I made pizza dough, I rolled it out a little too thin and it went really crispy and crunchy, and decided to do it on purpose this time.  I had added a little turmeric to the dough when I kneaded it, rather than into the liquid of the dough, because that way it made pretty swirly patterns (actually, I just forgot to put it in...).  Then I cut little circles out using a cookie cutter. Before they went into the oven, I brushed them with a mixture of honey, soy sauce, and water, and sprinkled them with sesame seeds.  Mum and I accidentally ate a huge plate of them instead of having a real dinner, so you can tell they were pretty good.  Here they are, aren't they pretty?

Yummy warm noodle salad

As I will talk about soon, I've been watching two series of Nigella's tv shows on dvd.  Last night just as we were about to make dinner, Nigella was making a shrimp noodle salad (I think...) and we had just been saying we have noodles and left over chicken to eat.  I decided to make a noodle salad with whatever there was handy, and this is what we ended up with.

Chicken

Noodles (wide Asian-style)

Capsicum

Broccoli

Spinach

Cabbage (green)

Cashews

Sunflower Seeds

Cumin Seeds

Soy sauce

Honey

Turmeric

Little oil

Cook the noodles, drain, toss with some oil, set aside.  Boil half of the spinach for about 2 minutes and then douse with cold water.  Rip up the rest of the leaves into mixable pieces.  Cook the broccoli so that it's just softened.  Cook the cabbage in the usual way with butter and pepper.  Heat a frying pan, add cashews, sunflower and cumin seeds and dry roast them (or in my case almost burn them) then add a little soy sauce and a pinch of tumeric, then a squeeze of honey and mix all together and turn off the heat.  Lazily shred the chicken.  Toss all ingredients together.  By the time you do all of it, the hot stuff will be warm, the cold stuff will be at room temperature and you will end up with a slightly warm salad that is really yummy.

My own satay

I am so stoked!  I made the best satay sauce ever tonight.

1T honey

1T smooth peanut butter

1T chunky peanut butter (100%Nutz)

Squeeze of soy sauce

1t tumeric

2t cumin seeds

Some chilli

Little water to make it into a sauce

Then I just slathered it all over some chicken, popped them in the frying pan, then added some coconut milk to the left over sauce and poured it into the pan with the chicken once it had browned on both sides, added some carrots and broccoli and covered it.  Then after a while we added some coconut milk because it was getting dry.  It was YUM.  YUM YUM yum, and even Mum liked it.  :-)

Chicken Pilaf

Cooked Fri 15 Oct, 2010, for Julie-Anne

From Healthy Food Guide Magazine, Oct 2010

2 Spring onions

2T grated fresh ginger (we used about 2t mashed from a jar)

1T soy sauce

2 cloves garlic (we used about 2t mashed from a jar)

750g chicken thighs (we used about 600g, and it seemed to be about the right ratio chicken:rice for our taste)

[we didn't use mushrooms, but it says 500g, thickly sliced]

1c long-grain rice

3c chicken stock (that's two of the small boxes - we only had one and topped it up with water, and it was fine)

2T sweet chilli sauce (we didn't have this, so I put in a squeeze of chilli and about a t of sugar)

1T fish sauce

1c frozen peas

Chop spring onions and cut chicken into chunks. Mix chicken, spring onions, soy sauce, garlic, ginger to coat, then brown in a pan (a big sauce pan is good, we used the electric frying pan and it was too big, especially as we didn't eat it the second it was ready - it would have started to dry out, but we added a little water and then piled it up on one side of the frying pan and turned the heat way down). Take the chicken out put the rice, stock (and/or water), fish and chilli sauces, bring to the boil, covered, then simmer for 10mins. Put the chicken back in and cook again for 8-10 mins (we didn't need this much time as the chicken and the rice cooked faster). Add the peas and let them warm up.