Tag: lime

David Thompson’s Coconut Chicken Salad

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: 2 – 4

This recipe dates back to the days of Darley Street Thai.

And wasn’t that just a brilliant restaurant, especially in the day. (I’m showing my age aren’t I?!)

We did a long Thai lunch, cooked exclusively from David’s tome of Thai cooking, ‘Thai Cooking’.

The pork and prawn egg nets by Nat were incredible, though this chicken salad was the standout. Totally luxurious, svelt, moorish and refreshing, all at the same time. And that kaffir lime!

Classicly good Thai – Royal Thai – cooking.

By itself or alongside a hot and sour curry, this simply speaks to why the Thais are just so clever with their food.

Yum!

Ingredients

1 c coconut cream
Pinch of salt
150gm skinless chicken breast fillet
1 – 2 tbsp chicken stock
Large pinch palm sugar
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tbsp lime juice
2 stalks lemongrass, very finely sliced
3 red shallots, sliced*
4 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded
1 tbsp shredded coriander leaves
Handful of Thai basil leaves
1 tbsp ground, roasted peanuts

Paste

3 long red chillies, deseeded and grilled
2 garlic cloves, grilled and then peeled
Large pinch of salt

Method

  1. First, make the paste: gradually pound the ingredients together, using a pestle and mortar, until smooth.
  2. Heat coconut cream with salt, add chicken breast and simmer very gently until cooked (4 – 5 minutes). If the coconut cream seems about to separate, add a few tbsp of stock. Remove chicken, cool and shred.
  3. Return four tbsp of the coconut cream to the boil and mix in the paste. Season with the palm sugar, fish sauce and lime juice: it should taste rich, salty, sweet and sour. Mix in all the remaining ingredients and serve with a sprinkling of the peanuts.

* We tend to have quite large shallots in Australia and three of these would be too much. Play it by ear.

Chicken and Lime Salad

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 2

At a certain point over the Christmas/New Year break, all of us yearn for a culinary breather.

An end to the eggnog, ham and Champagne. A meal that isn’t 1,200+ calories (before the wine!).

Which is where – thankfully – this clever salad comes in.

Repent and enjoy.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts, poached and thinly sliced
1 Lebanese cucumber, diced
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
Juice of two small limes
1 red chilli, deseeded and sliced
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tsp vegetable oil
2 tsp palm sugar
Chopped coriander
Lime wedges

Method

  1. Mix together the lime juice, chilli, fish sauce, oil and palm sugar and correct the flavours.
  2. Mix together the cucumber and tomatoes and arrange on plates. Arrange the sliced chicken over the vegetables.
  3. Spoon over the dressing, garnish with the coriander and serve with the lime wedges.

Moscow Mule

.Reading time 1 minute.

Serves: 2

This week’s cocktail… the Moscow Mule, a simple-to-make and really refreshing number, perfect for the remaining sunny weekends of this Autumn.

There is a tradition of serving it in a copper mug, though from what I can gather, this is more about keeping it cold than anything.

Fill a tumbler with shaved ice and that will do the same trick.

Better still, use low calorie Ginger Beer and your Moscow Mule will come in with less calories than a Pure Blonde!

Enjoy this weekend.

Ingredients

60mls vodka
20mls lime juice
Ginger Beer, to top
Ice
Lime wedges to garnish

Method

  1. Add the lime juice and vodka to a copper mug or highball glass and fill with ice. Top with ginger beer, stir and garnish with lime wedges.

Oliver’s Guacamole

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Serves: Oliver

In a cooking blog that is meant to discover and inspire, it might seem a little odd to put up a guacamole recipe. According to Google, there are 2.380 million of the recipes out there and so it is safe to say that we don’t need another.

Except that it wasn’t until recently when I had a fresh guacamole and then made my own batch at home that  I remembered just how awesome guacamole is. It is so spirited and exciting and fresh. And so healthy that the top result about guacamole in Google describes it as almost ‘superfood’.

I’ll run with that!

Also, this blog being for my boys so that they have a bunch of tested recipes to cook for their friends and family, Oliver (8), the eldest who is really picky and plain about food, demolished this guacamole. By itself, he would never touch avocado, red onion or coriander… or any of the ingredients.

He would just eat the corn chips and be done with it.

But he will eat this guacamole by the bucket and that is a great way to get great foods into him.

It is also why it’s called Oliver’s Guacamole.

Enjoy it like he does and go all in with the flavour!

Ingredients

Avocados
Red onion, minced
Garlic, mashed with salt
Lime Juice
Cumin
Tomatoes, seeded and finely diced
Salt
Coriander leaves
Plain corn chips

Method

  1. Mash the avocados roughly with the lime juice.
  2. Mix through the remaining ingredients except the coriander and correct the seasoning.
  3. Garnish with the coriander.