Spaghetti Bolognese with Spanish Chorizos, Hot Salami & Mushrooms

Seriously only takes 10-15 minutes to cook!

I know I have pretty much neglected my food blog ever since my son was born in December - I have instead been updating my baby blog www.kimbaspride.com with all of his developments, posting up his photos, etc. It doesn't mean at all that my passion for food is gone! No way that will never happen as long as I still need food to live. It just means that hubby and I have mostly been living off frozen meals, meals prepared by friends and family, and takeaway. Occasionally I manage to whip up something simple for a nice change e.g. make a fresh salad, steam some veggies, grill some fish, etc so we don't go crazy bored over the same frozen meals night after night.

I have also rediscovered my love for sushi and have been a lot of sashimi and California Rolls lately. Imagine digging back into sushi after 10 months of being deprived (pregnant women are not allowed to eat raw fish) - it was HEAVEN!

Despite it being summer here in Australia though, the past couple of days have been really cold and wet. That's Melbourne. You can easily experience all 4 seasons in a year within a few days. So I've decided to cook up a fresh plate of a classic pasta dish with a slight twist. Inspired by our friends who have now fed us a few times with their version of spaghetti bolognese with mince, salami and olives - I've decided to cook my favorite sausage Spanish Chorizos and Hot Salami and add mushrooms to the ready to go Leggo's Bolognese Chunky Pasta Sauce with Tomato, Garlic and Herbs.

When the sauce is tossed with freshly cooked spaghetti and topped with some Parsley flakes - the result is a delicious SPICY version of Spaghetti Bolognese, perfect for those who love a bit of spice in their food.

I know this is not exactly a recipe, but the fact that it only took me 10-15 minutes to prepare AND cook this dish means that anyone who is ever in a hurry (e.g. a new mother perhaps?) would hopefully appreciate this blog post.

Hopefully my little baby boy settles into a more solid routine soon with longer sleeps so I can cook up something special for my blog again! Unless of course, you don't mind me posting recipes for my Tuna Bake casserole which is basically cooked pasta tossed with Tuna Chunks and Leggo's Tuna Bake Sauce in a casserole dish sprinkled with grated cheese on top and cooked in the oven at 180C for 15 minutes? Nahh.. I didn't think so :p

Gu Long Stewed Pork Slices with Rice Porridge

First and foremost, yes yes I know I am slightly obsessed with spring onions and seem to overload most of my Asian dishes with what seems to look like too much spring onion topping... my bad!

Every once in a while, eating something that comes out of a can is not the end of the world. Quite the contrary with a select few cans that can ONLY be found at Asian Grocers. I grew up eating rice porridge - whenever I'm sick and unwell, my mom or dad would make me a bowl of porridge. Sometimes it's just plain porridge with salted egg or century egg. Other times I get a lovely bowl of "bak moi" or pork porridge. Either way, a good bowl of porridge can be the ultimate comfort food!

Which is why I'd like to share this product with my readers - Gu Long Stewed Pork Slices - available at most Asian Grocers in Australia and supermarkets everywhere in Malaysia.

To cook plain rice porridge, just boil 1 cup of white rice in 6 cups of water until rice is soft and forms a smooth, creamy porridge. Serve porridge in a bowl. Remove half of the contents of the Stewed Pork Slices can and heat in a separate bowl for 1 min in the microwave. Top the heated pork slices (and its juices for flavor) on top of the porridge and sprinkle chopped spring onions. Enjoy while it's hot!

Easy Spanakopita Recipe

In order to cook one of my previous blog posts Pumpkin and Spinach Casserole, I bought some spinach from CostCo. To those of you who may not know, if you buy spinach from CostCo, you end up buying 1kg worth of spinach. That is A LOT of spinach.

I don't normally cook vegetarian dishes, so I had no idea what to do with that much spinach! So I sent a message to my sister in law who IS a vegetarian and she recommended this Spanakopita recipe. Since then I have done some Google searches to find out more about this dish, and turns out it is a Greek classic so I decided to give it a go!

By the time I cooked this dish, a few weeks have actually passed since I bought that massive bag of spinach so I had frozen spinach to work with. Very different to the recipe my sister in law gave me, so I had to make some slight changes. Obviously, frozen spinach once thawed becomes blanched spinach and therefore I had to squeeze out any excess water before finely chopping it. I also decided to COOK the spinach with the onion and garlic to make sure any excess water evaporates and the spinach is as dry as possible. Anyway, all method will be revealed in the recipe below :-)

Ingredients:

750g spinach, finely chopped

500g feta cheese, crumbled

6 eggs

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large red onion, chopped

1 tsp minced garlic

1 packet frozen filo pastry sheets

250g butter, melted

Method:

If your spinach is frozen, make sure it is thawed completely. Squeeze excess water from spinach and chop finely. Heat olive oil in a frypan and saute red onion, minced garlic and spinach until fragrant. In a bowl, mix together feta cheese and eggs, then add the sauteed onion and spinach mixture into the bowl and mix well. 

Meanwhile, brush a rectangular casserole dish with some melted butter using a brush. Start by lining the dish with one single sheet of thawed filo pastry, with its sides hanging on the edges of the dish. Brush the filo sheet with butter and layer another sheet on top. Keep repeating this process until the bottom pastry layers is about 10 sheets thick. Make sure it is well buttered between each layer.

Pour the filling mixture onto the sheets and fold excess filo on the sides over the filling. Top with at least 5 layers of filo pastry, also making sure it is well brushed with melted butter between each layer and especially at the top layer for a nice, brown and crispy finish.

Bake at 180C for approx. 30-40 minutes.

Kimba's Notes: This was my first time fiddling with Filo Pastry so I found it quite challenging! The sheets were sooo fragile and super thin. Do not stress if it keeps tearing though, just keep layering them and use the butter to keep them together. I have no idea where my bottom layers of pastry disappeared to, so I would suggest layering them much thicker at the bottom. The top layers of pastry though, delicious and crispy!

Simple Homemade Curry Puffs

Here's a really simple idea on how to best use those potatoes you include in your Chicken Curry that no one seems to want to eat (well, most of the time the actual chicken in the curry tastes so good people would eat less of the potatoes to avoid "filling up" their tummies too quickly).

This brilliant idea was suggested to me by a friend whose grandmother does this all the time. It is GENIUS! Plus it is so simple. It makes me want to include MORE potatoes in my future Chicken Curries just so I can have more filling for my Curry Puffs, lol.

Chicken Curry recipe here: http://www.kimbaskitchen.com/2010/05/chicken-and-vegetable-curry-recipe.html

Basically, all you do is extract the leftover potatoes from your Chicken Curry, leave just enough curry sauce to add to the flavor and mash the potatoes. You may conveniently use Frozen Puff Pastry from the supermarket, defrost them, then cut them into circles. Spoon potato filling onto the centre of the puff pastry and seal well on its sides using the "rope method" (a good YouTube instruction on how to fold curry puffs here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-lKp6qtK4).

The result is ready to be cooked in the oven at 180C for approx. 15 minutes, or you may freeze them uncooked, ready to be cooked anytime later on! Enjoy!

Homemade Kolo Mee with Minced Pork & Wontons

Anyone born and raised in Sarawak and have moved overseas like me would understand this when I say... "Sometimes we just want a big bowl of KOLO MEE!!". Sarawak Kolo Mee is one of the most common noodle dish from Kuching, Sarawak - and nowhere else in the world does it like the locals from my hometown in Kuching. It is basically a noodle dish cooked in a special sauce topped with char siu, minced pork, sometimes fish cakes and spring onions. I like my Kolo Mee also topped with "kiaw" or most people would know them as wontons.

This recipe probably doesn't taste anywhere near the real deal, but for now it will do. It satisfies my craving for dry noodles and I'm very happy with the soft wontons and texture of the dry, slightly oily noodles. For something relatively simple to prepare, it is really as close as I can get to the real Kolo Mee!

Ingredients:

1kg minced pork

5 tbsp sesame oil

5 tbsp light soy sauce

3 tbsp fish sauce

Salt and pepper to taste

1 packet wonton skins

1 packet dried noodles

3 tbsp chicken bouillon powder

3 litres water, for boiling

Chopped spring onions, for topping

Noodle seasoning:
Char Siu sauce
Light soy sauce
White pepper
Oil
Fried onions

Method:
To prepare the wontons, mix the minced pork with sesame oil, light soy sauce, fish sauce, and season well with salt and pepper. Place a small teaspoon of meat onto wonton skins, wet the sides and press them together onto a triangle shaped wonton to seal the filling.

Meanwhile, heat a frypan with a bit of oil and fry some of the minced pork until it turns brown.

To prepare the broth for boiling the noodles and wontons, cook the water and chicken bouillon powder in a big pot until it starts to boil.

Meanwhile, prepare the noodle seasoning in a bowl by adding 1 tsp of char siu sauce, 1 tbsp light soy sauce, a dash of white pepper and a teaspoon fried onions.

Cook the dried noodles in the pot of boiling broth for a few minutes until noodles are soft. Remove the noodles from the broth using a strainer and toss / mix well in bowl with prepared seasoning.

Cook the wontons in the pot of boiling broth for a few minutes until the wontons are soft and filling cooked through. Remove the wontons from the broth using a strainer and place on top of noodles. Top also with cooked mince and spring onions.