'Chicken Itame' - Chicken and Coconut Soup

When ever I go to Wagamama's, the dish that I order nearly every time has to be the 'Chicken Itame Soup.' That may sound unadventurous to you, but the delicious mix of mouthwatering, light, spicy flavours literally leave me begging for more. So 'more' is what Jossi and I decided to create.

We had a sneaky look at the Wagamama's website to try and work out what we could put together to get a similar result. I have to admit, ours didn't turn out quite the same, but it definitely captured the 'essence' of the dish and was a pretty good home made attempt!

Ingredients:
chopped chicken breast
noodles
garlic
ginger
lemongrass (we used a teaspoon of the powdered type, but the real stuff would be better)
can of coconut milk
one chili (we also threw in some chili flakes)
a red onion
stir fry veg- we used bean sprouts, pepper, bamboo shoots and cabbage
a couple of cups of water
a squeeze of lemon or lime
a twist of salt and pepper

Chop all of your ingredients and heat up a little oil in your pan. Sizzle the chili, garlic and ginger for half a minute of so and then add your chicken. When your chicken is mostly cooked through, add the rest of your veg and stir fry together.

Then simply add your can of coconut milk, noodles (we used fresh ones, but if you use the dried type, cook them first!) and a couple of cups of water to your stir fry and let this simmer. Pour in your lemon juice and sprinkle in the salt and pepper. Joss and I also added a few more pinches of lemon grass here as well.

Leave on the heat for 10 or 15mins just to let the flavours infuse through and there we are, one delicious (almost) restaurant quality dish, made by you!


P.S. I think this would be amazing if you added a teaspoon of thai green curry paste to your veg- if you do, tell us how it tastes!

Steak Stir Fry

In case you haven't already guessed, Jossi and I are rather big fans of Asian food. In fact, even as students we have a tendency to pop out for dinner once a fortnight to various chinese and indian restaurants around the city. They're our guilty pleasure and after, we tend to waddle home stuffed to the brim and try very hard to forget that we promised we'd go to the gym the next morning.

More recently, as the work has piled on and we've started to take our sporting commitments a bit more seriously (rowing for Joss, cheerleading for me) we've found that we don't have enough time for the leisurely stroll into town and to sit down for two solid hours of gluttony. Instead, we've taken to cooking our own. So, on that note here's (another) dish that we sizzled up this weekend!

Supplies:
two frying beef steaks
honey
soy sauce
'Kikkoman sweet sauce for rice'
a handful or two of stir fry veg (the pack I had contained bean sprouts, carrot, lettuce and some bamboo shoots)
sesame seeds
one clove of garlic
a knob of ginger
a pinch of chili flakes
one lemon

a pinch of salt and pepper
a teaspoon of brown sugar
rice

Start by cooking your rice- pop a few handfuls in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil.

While your rice is cooking, chop up your ingredients, heat some oil in your pan and toss in the sesame seeds followed by the chili flakes and garlic. Let this fizzle for a bit but be careful not to let anything burn. Then, making sure the heat isn't too high, add a generous splash of soy sauce and rice sauce, along with a squirt of honey and any remaining veg. Stir in the brown sugar.

When the veg has reduced a little,  add in your chopped frying steaks- personally I don't like beef too well done, but if you prefer it not to be pink, add yours in the same time as the veg.

 To finish, add your cooked rice to the pan and drizzle over the juice of one lemon (if you heat the lemon in the microwave for a few seconds, you get twice as much juice out of it). Stir this through and then you're done!

This dish is definitely not all that high on the prettiness scale, but it's moreishly good- we both finished the whole pan that night!

Unfortunately for me,  I'm going to have to go on a shop before I can cook this again since the soy sauce bottle fell out of the cupboard and onto my head this morning, smashing all over the floor- not a good start to the day!

Sugar, Spice and All Things Rice

When I started this blog, I didn't intend to spend all my time writing about food, but as you may have guessed by now Jossi and I are rather obsessed by the stuff. There's nothing more satisfying than  putting together a whole bunch of raw ingredients, crossing your fingers and ending up with something finger lickingly good!

Anyway, this is something the pair of us rustled up at the weekend- enjoy!

What do you need?
a couple of chicken breasts
some red thai curry sauce (red thai curry paste and some coconut milk should do the same job)
peppers (I used about 3/4 of a yellow one in the end)
red onion
a tin of pineapple
a handful of cashew nuts
carrots
a large chili
garlic
ginger
a pinch of salt and pepper
rice

As you may have seen already, my quantities of ingredients are rarely exact- I tend to taste as I go along and add more as and when I think the dish needs it, Just remember that when you cook veg, it shrivels and reduces so you always end up with less than what you started with!

Start by putting a large pan on the hob and heating up a splash of oil. Finely chopping your garlic and toss it in the pan so it sizzles, then add your chicken, chopped into small pieces . Chop all your other veg and toss it in with the chicken along with the salt and pepper.

I just love how colourful this dish is!

When the chicken is cooked through, pour in your pineapple chunks and the cashews. Turn the heat down low- you don't want to simmer away all that lovely pineapple juice!

While the chicken and veg is cooking on a low heat, start cooking your rice in a separate saucepan. When this is done, pop it in the pan with your chicken and veg. Add a couple of spoonfuls of the red thai curry sauce. Stir through and you're done!

This dish is an explosion of taste and we quickly polished off half the pan before it'd even cooled, although do be careful as the chili makes it pretty hot- we were chasing each mouthful down with a glass of water!

Jossi sneakily tucking in already!