Quik Thinking

May 13, 2010

Recipe for veggies and cous-cous

Since moving to Montreal 3 weeks ago, I have been cooking about twice a day. Based on my experiments, I have come up with a recipe for a delicious and nutritious meal that is both cheap and easy to prepare. Here it is.

Equipment:

kettle (for boiling water, which can be done in a pot or microwave if you don't have a kettle)
skillet and spatula
pot
wooden spoon
cutting board
chef's knife
spice/coffee grinder (optional)

Raw materials:

1/2 cup cous-cous
vegetable oil (e.g. olive, sunflower, canola, sesame)
2 carrots
a handful of chives or 4-5 leeks
10-12 fingers okra
6-8 mushrooms
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few pitted black olives. [green may work but I haven't tried them]

Powdered spices (best made fresh in a grinder):

cumin
cilantro
turmeric
red chilli (go easy on this)
fenugreek
black pepper

Method:

Grind the spices if you have whole spices and a grinder.
Wash the veggies.
Pour some oil into the skillet and put it on a low flame.
Slice the carrots and add to pan.
Chop the chives/leeks into itty bitty pieces and add to pan.
Slice the okra and add to pan.
Add half the spices to pan and stir.
Chop mushrooms into quarters, add to pan and stir again.
Cover pan with lid.
Add a cup of water to the kettle and begin heating.
Check your email and return when the kettle screams.
Mix cous-cous with 1/2 cup boiling water, salt and remainder of spices in pot.
Stir with wooden spoon and cover with plate.
Turn flame off under skillet and stir contents.
You have time for one more quick email check but don't forget about the food!
When cous-cous seems to have absorbed all the water, ad a tablespoon of oil and fluff with fork.
Add contents of skillet to pot and stir.
Garnish with olives and serve. Serves one person with my appetite so probably good for two regular people.
Don't forget to wash your dishes!

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // food recipe

Comments [2]

February 16, 2010

Malaysian iced tea

When I was in the SF bay area, I was fond of a drink known as Malaysian Iced Tea, which was similar to the Thai version. Naturally, when I came to Malaysia, I began looking around for it. To my great bewilderment, nobody seemed to serve it! I started to suspect that perhaps it was one of those recipes that was actually invented in the US (presumably by Malaysia immigrants) and didn't really exist in Malaysia. This was a disappointing hypothesis because I had been eagerly looking forward to having some while here.

Today, however, I discovered that it does exist and is known locally as teh c peng or 3 layer tea. And the reason I had so much trouble finding it is that it's from East Malaysia (on the island of Borneo) while I've been in West Malaysia (on the peninsula South of Thailand).

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // food Malaysia travel

Comments [0]

December 15, 2009

Red cabbage

Tina slice a red cabbage down the middle while we were making dinner last night and I liked the way it looked so I photographed it.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // cooking food

Posted from San Francisco, CA

Comments [0]

September 1, 2008

Durian

While biking though the Sunset yesterday evening, I spotted a shopping-cart full of durians and purchased one. Despite their reputation for being stinky, I did not find it stinky at all. It was, however, delicious.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // food

Comments [0]

August 11, 2008

Ninja restaurant

On Sunday afternoon Chris took me to Yoyogi park, which is supposed to be like Dolores park (in hipsterness not size) but it was overrun by tourists. That small defeat was dwarfed, however, by a mind-blowing chance encounter with a pair of good friends from Montreal whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years. Unbeknowest to me, they just happened to be visiting Tokyo at the same and we wound up in the same part of the park. Originally, Chris and I had planned to check out a ninja restaurant for dinner but after the initial shock had worn off, Chris called the ninjas and expanded our reservation so we could all have dinner together.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, we were shown to our seats by a waiter decked out in ninja garb and after we'd ordered from the set-course menus, ninjas proceeded to bring us courses at intervals so rapid I couldn't keep up. While the food was all very good, my favourite dish was the tempura, which handily beat out any tempura I'd ever had before. By special request from Steph, I took photos of the food. Just before we had our desserts, a ninja came over to our table and performed some magic tricks. At a mere two feet from us, it was impressive that we barely noticed how he did any of them.