Tag Archives: baby corn

#423 – Vegetable Soup Lunch

#423 - Vegetable Soup

Recently Cape Town became one of a handful of cities worldwide to endorse a weekly meat-free day. I’ve blogged previously about the Meatless Monday movement and my strange mental block when it comes to creating a meat-free meal on a specific day of the week. So I’m happy to follow the City of Cape Town‘s example and enjoy a few random meatless days a week.

This simple vegetable soup is a great vegetarian option for your chosen meat-free day.  Cubed celeriac, carrot and any other vegetable odds and ends you’d like to make use of, cooked with lentils in a vegetable stock and served with a generous spoon of flavoursome pesto.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Vegetable soup topped with a spoonful of pesto and
  • a slice of olive ciabatta.

#422 – Pad Thai Lunch

#422 - Pad Thai

This lunch is my entry into the My Easy Cooking Thai themed first blogging event.  After my success with nut butter in the last Daring Cook’s Challenge I though I might try my hand at making satay from scratch, but after picking up a small brick of tamarind pulp at the New Asian Spice Supermarket in Sea Point I finally decided on Pad Thai. For inspiration I turned to Chez Pim and her method of making Pad Thai.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Pad Thai with
  • chopped peanuts seasoned with a little chilli powder and
  • a wedge of lemon

My easy Cooking Event # 1 - Thai
The first step is to prepare the Pad Thai sauce, but before I could do that I had to process my brick of tamarind pulp. For 250g of tamarind I used two cups of warm water letting it soak for a little while, then working the seeds and fibres from the pulp and finally straining the soaked tamarind to catch any bits I might have missed. This is the fun messy part  🙂

Once I had my tamarind paste I heated a 1/4 cup each of fish sauce, tamarind paste and unrefined brown sugar and 1 tsp chilli powder over a low heat until the sugar melted. This was enough for three portions. Now the sauce was completed I could move on to preparing the rest of the ingredients.

Ingredients (per portion):

  • prepared Pad Thai sauce
  • 1 tsp peanut oil
  • 1/2 a chicken breast, thinly sliced
  • 1/2 a clove of garlic, chopped
  • 1 egg
  • 60g rice noodles (approx 1/6 of a 375g bag), soaked in water till pliable
  • 6 prawns, cooked and shelled
  • 6 sugar snap peas, cut in half diagonally
  • 2 ears of baby corn, cut in half lengthways and then into thirds
  • 1/4 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
  • 1 spring onion, sliced diagonally
  • chilli powder (for serving)
  • Thai basil (for serving)
  • chopped peanuts (for serving)
  • lemon wedges (for serving)

Method:

  1. Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan.
  2. Add chicken, garlic and a spoonful of prepared sauce. Stir-fry until chicken is nearly cooked.
  3. Add noodles and another few spoons of sauce. Continue stir-frying until noodles soften.
  4. Push chicken and noodles to the side of the wok/pan, crack egg into empty side and quickly scramble till cooked.
  5. Add prawns, sugar snap peas, baby corn and yellow pepper. Stir-fry all ingredients together until vegetables are just cooked.
  6. Serve immediately, sprinkled with chilli powder, spring onions, torn Thai basil, chopped peanuts and spritz of lemon.

#412 – Broccoli and Blue Cheese Pasta Lunch

#412 - Broccoli and Blue Cheese Pasta
I assimilated this pasta dish into my repertoire after reading the recipe in the Slow Food Cape Town CSA newsletter. It’s one of my favourite weekday meals to make, all you need is three ingredients and about fifteen minutes and supper is ready. Just perfect.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Broccoli and blue cheese pasta,
  • melon balls and
  • cucumber, baby tomato and baby corn skewers.

Did you notice the little octopus food picks in my lunch box? Aren’t they cute?  Here’s a close-up of the little smiling faces.

Octopus Food Picks

#397 – Vietnamese Summer Roll Lunch

#397 - Vietnamese Summer Rolls

I’ve been a little scarce on the blogging front lately. The combination of a broken camera and succumbing to the nasty bug that is doing the rounds has kept me from packing/posting any lunches. Today’s post is a lunch I packed last week that I photographed with the camera in my phone. It contains my first attempt at making a variation of Vietnamese Summer rolls. They didn’t turn out too badly, but are probably best eaten right after you make them and not left in the fridge overnight as I did.

Today’s Lunch:

  • Vietnamese Summer rolls filled with smoked ham and julienne carrot, mange tout, red cabbage, baby corn and spring onions,
  • a dipping sauce with soy sauce, umeboshi vinegar and some slices of spring onion and
  • some baby tomatoes.