Alaskan crab legs

Alaskan crab legs

Bought half of an Alaskan type crab what is living in north Russian sea, frozen.

I pour half a cup of rice wine on the body and bake at 180˚C for 15 minutes to refresh it.

The meat of the upper legs, which is bigger is sweet, the lower thinner legs are a bit salty.

It is too much to eat and 1/3 is left for another meal. 

sour cream semi-dried tomato chive sauce

I made a sauce with sour cream, semi-dried tomato and chive, which tasted a bit like Thousand Island sauce. This gives creaminess and mild sweet sour taste to crab meat.

Alaskan crab with semi-dried tomato sour cream sauce

Pickling and fermenting vegetables

In hot weather it is good to have some pickled vegetables with the meal, improve appetite, also a way to preserve excess produce.

Pickled cucumber

1. Cut cucumbers into long strips that fit inside a preserving jar vertically.

pickled cucumber

2. Into cider vinegar that will be enough to fill the jar, add mustard sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, coriander seeds and white peppercorns. 

cucumber

3. Pour into cucumber jar, keep in the fridge, consume after 2 days and finish in 2 weeks.

Pickled gherkin

pickled gherkin

1. Cut gherkins into thick slices, fill a preserving jar.

2. Into cider vinegar that will be enough to fill the jar, add chili, brown sugar, all spices berries or star anise. 

pickled gherkin

3. Pour into gherkin jar, keep in the fridge, consume after 2 days and finish in 2 weeks.

Fermented beetroot

fermented beetroot

1. Cut beetroot into thin slices or strips, add 2% its weight of salt and mix well, rest for a few hours to soften, juice will leak out.

2. Pour beetroot and juice into preserving jar up to an inch below the top, mix in thinly sliced garlic and ginger.

3. Add 2% brine to submerge all beetroot. Cover the top with cling film for gas to escape. 

fermented beetroot

4. Keep at room temperature in the dark (cover with a bag), the next day bubbles will start to form. After 4 days beetroot will be mildly sour (keep longer at room temperature to have more sour taste), close lid and keep in the fridge to start consuming it.

Gin cucumber sorbet

Gin cucumber sorbet

Just created this sorbet because of having a few more cucumbers than I could use up in time. Base on Gin Tonic, but use cucumber juice instead. With the alcohol in Gin, the sorbet will not freeze hard. It is a nice treat as sun-downer in summer.

 

young cucumbers

1. Juice whole cucumbers to have around 550ml juice (for one load in the ice cream machine). I add a small piece of ginger while juicing to add a kick. 

cucumber ginger juice

2. Season juice with a pinch of salt, just enough sugar to make it mildly sweet, and some lemon juice, just like how you would like your Gin Tonic. Add Gin, I used 60ml, around 10% of juice. Fridge until cold and churn in ice cream machine. 

Gin cucumber sorbet

Albacore cerviche

 

Albacore cerviche

Normally cerviche is lime juice and raw onion poured on raw fish, I like the onion to be cooked for easier digestion and the lemon juice poured just before serving, so that only the outside of fish has citrus flavor and inside is its pure taste.

This is albacore belly being kept in the freezer, it is actually easier to cut it into neat slices when semi-defrosted. 

albacore belly

1. Sweat onion until soft, cool down.

2. Slice raw fish and arrange in a layer on a plate, sprinkle a little salt, put onion and coriander leaves on top, pour lemon juice just before serving.

Rhubarb and blackberry curd

My chickens are producing 3 to 4 eggs a day, so there is definitely fried eggs in the morning, the excess I made curd as dessert to be stored in the freezer. As the rhubarb plant is growing well, I decided to use it, a tart curd is always delicious. Blackberry is added to give a pinkish colour, which unfortunately is lost after adding eggs and butter.

 

rhubarb

For 300 gm fruit puree, use 3 eggs and 100gm butter

1. Peel off tough outer skin of rhubarb, cook with a handful of blackberry, half a cup of water, a pinch of salt and brown sugar, until soft, around 5 minutes. Sieve out blackberry seeds.

 

rhubarb and blackberry puree

2. Whisk eggs until very well mixed, at very low heat, melt butter in a pan, add eggs and mix well, pour in rhubarb puree, increase to medium heat and cook gently like a custard, season with more sugar if necessary.

 

Rhubarb and blackberry curd

3. Cook until mixture thicken and coat the spoon, or around 80˚C.

Green bean curry chutney

climbing and runner beans

With a steady harvest of green bean, I have started to freeze the excess, also make this chutney to be kept in the fridge for later use. 

cooked runner and climbing beans

1. Break green beans into 3cm pieces, easier to pack into preserving jar. Bake at 180˚C for 10 minutes until soft.

2. Sweat onion and garlic until golden, add coriander and cumin seeds, cook until fragrant. Add curry powder and turmeric to your taste, add cider vinegar that would be enough to cover all the beans. 

3. I use dry figs (or date) to thicken and sweeten the sauce, instead of conventional sugar and cornstarch, season with salt and pepper, cook until dry figs soften. 

Green bean curry chutney

4. Add cooked beans, mix well, fill preserve jars. Keep in the fridge.

Crab apple bay leaf ice cream version 2

Crab apple bay leaf ice cream version 2

The last version is very rich and dense, so in this one, I used 400g crab apple jam, 250gm custard infused with bay leaves, and 150gm cream to make a lighter version.

Mackerel potato cake

Mackerel potato cake

I am slowly using up the frozen mackerel caught in March. Plain grilled is getting a bit boring so I make fish cake from cooked mackerel instead.

1. Boil potato until cooked. Bake mackerel until cooked.

2. Roughly mesh up both, using as little potato to bind the cake together as possible, this is my preference. Season with salt, pepper, and mix in fresh coriander for colour and aroma. 

Mackerel potato cake

3. Form flat cakes and sear gently in half olive and half butter until golden. Drizzle lemon juice on top before serving for a touch of sharp flavor here and there.

Quick pickled cabbage

Quick pickled cabbage

Harvested a cabbage but weather too hot to think of cooking it, so pickle it for one afternoon to eat raw, similar to making Kimchi. 

 

Quick pickled cabbage

1. Cut cabbage into thin strips, season with 1% its weight of salt, 2% of brown sugar, add garlic, chili and pepper to your taste, mix very well. Leave at room temperature and mix again every hour or two.

2. To serve, pour away the liquid, serve as such, or mix with roasted pine nut for some protein and coriander for aroma.

Ginger & sand ginger

Sand ginger sauce is served with steam chicken in the restaurant, but sand ginger is rarely seen in the market. I brought back a piece from the market in Bali in spring.

ginger

Both ginger and sand ginger are being grown in the green house to give them maximum warmth possible. It is the first time I grow sand ginger, unlike ginger that shoots up tall with thin long leaves, sand ginger's leaves are round, furry and lie flat on the ground. The flower of sand ginger is as pretty as ginger flower, white with a black dots. 

sand ginger

Leafy green vegetables

After harvesting garlic and onion, the land is prepared again for growing other vegetables. 

 

red amaranth, rocket & sweet potato

I like to sow seeds of leafy vegetables, they are most productive when being sown after summer solstice, grow mainly leaves and not bolting fast to generate seeds as in spring.  I need a lot to use in stir-fry.

red amaranth & Tung Choi

My favorites are red amaranth, Tung Choi (water spinach), rocket and sweet potato (for the leaves). My target this year is to harvest regularly to keep the plants small, so that the leaves are most tender.

leafy veg for stir-fry

Lamb with thyme and lemon juice

Lamb with thyme and lemon juice

Lamb tenderloin is easy to cook and serve, but is mild in flavor. I used thyme and lemon juice to make a light sauce.

1. Season lamb with salt and pepper. 

Lamb with thyme and lemon juice

2. On a baking paper, place fresh thyme below and on top of tenderloin. Squeeze juice of half a lemon and zest on top. Wrap up the top of the baking paper but leave both ends open to allow steam to escape. 

Lamb with thyme and lemon juice

3. Bake at 200˚C until pink in the middle, around 10 minutes and rest for 5 more minutes.

Mid July harvest

Peach Rosanne

 

This peach tree variety Rossane is nearly ready to harvest, one of the early mature variety that is juicy but not very fragrant. Need to protect them with a net, otherwise there will be nothing left to eat.

edamame

Edamame

This year I have to sow soy bean 3 times because of unstable weather in spring to have some plants that managed to grow big. Collected a small handful for a snack. 

Sichuan pepper

Sichuan pepper

Planted this small Sichuan pepepr bush 2 years ago and there is a tiny harvest, the berries are only mildly spicy. 

Sichuan pepper green berries

Albacore smoked

Albacore smoked

This is the last way to transform albacore, a way to impart flavor to a mild tasting fish. After curing and smoking, then cooking the fish, it looks and tasted like smoked chicken breast.  

Albacore smoked

1. Weight albacore, season with 1% its weight of salt, 1% of brown sugar, rub onto the fish. Keep in fridge for 2 days with a weight on it, turn over every 12 hours, then place fish on a rack to dry out in the fridge for another day.

Albacore smoked

2. Put cured fish on a rack on top of a small coal fire, cover with wood chip, smoke for an hour for a touch of smoky aroma, without warming up the fish above 25˚C. 

Albacore smoked

3. To serve, sear the outside of fish, cut into slices.

Albacore 'gravlax'

This is a transformation of the freshly caught albacores from a few days ago, for varieties in serving and for storage.

Albacore 'gravlax'

Gravlax is normally a way to cure salmon, but can be used in albacore with similar result. This way of curing will firm up the flesh of albacore, to a dense gelatinous texture.

1. Weight albacore, prepare a mixture of 1% (of the weight of fish) salt, 1% brown sugar, grated ginger, coarsely grind up Sichuan pepper, chili, lemon zest, 1tsp soy sauce for colour and 2tsp whiskey. 

Albacore 'gravlax'

2. Rub seasoning on fish, place in a dish that the fish just fit in tightly, place a sheet of baking paper on top, and weight it down with a heavy baking dish etc.

3. Place in fridge, turn over every 12 hours for 2 to 3 days.

4. To serve, scrape away seasonings, cut into slices. Keep the remaining gravlax albacore in freezer.

Pizza evening

Making pizza is a pleasant way to enjoy a slow, alfresco dinner in cool evening breeze with friends.

pizza with garlic, chive and sesame

1. Pizza bianca - cooked garlic mesh up in olive oil, season with salt, mix in chive. Spread on pizza dough and sprinkle sesame on top. 

pizza margarita

2. Pizza margarita - the friends' kid's favorite pizza, spread tomato sauce on dough, drizzle olive oil, sprinkle salt and grated cheese.

pizza with blood sausage and carrot

3. Pizza with blood sausage - spread tomato paste on dough, place carrot slices, blood sausage and grated cheese. When ready sprinkle fresh coriander leaves on top.

pizza with goat cheese and basil

4. Pizza with basil and goat cheese - spread tomato paste on dough, place basil, zucchini (marinated in oil and salt) and goat cheese on top.

Domino roast potato and beetroot

Domino roast potato and beetroot

A tasty way, also eye catching way, to serve roast root vegetables.

Cut potato and beetroot into thin slices, place in baking tray and drizzle olive oil on top. Bake at 200˚C for an hour, serve immediately.