Take-Away Reheats!

Sometimes, you just can't beat a take-way. Sometimes you just can't beat the guilty pleasure of reheating last night's take-away. It's wrong, but it feels so right.

Here are a couple of tips for reheating those unhealthy, tasty treats:

Perfect Crispy Based Pizza Reheats

Heat a non-stick frying pan so that it's pretty hot. Don't add oil. There's plenty in your pizza already. Microwave a slice or two for just long enough to get it hot all the way through, and then throw it base down into the pan. This will magically crisp the base.

Curry Toasties!

Dig out that Breville sandwich toaster (other brands are available) and re-live your student days by making toasties! Get last night's curry out of the fridge, and if the pieces of meat are large, then hack them into manageable chunks with a knife. Get a pan with a lid (to keep moisture in) and add a tiny bit of water. If you don't have a lid, add a bit more water. The water is to make sure that as you heat the curry, it doesnt get too thick and stodgy. Heat the curry through until it's piping hot all the way through.

The final step is to make toasties! Depending on the type of curry, I have occasionally added cheddar. It's filthy, but I'm a filthy boy. Also, this 'recipe' works with leftover chilli con carne or spaghetti bolognese.

Imagine the power of curry and toasties COMBINED!

Got any tips on how to use leftovers? Let us know in the comments below!

Chilli Sauce Recipe - Just like you get on Doner Kebabs!!

Here's a quick and easy chilli sauce recipe, perfect for splashing on kebabs. I had it with marinated chicken & veggies in a pitta bread and it was great. Fruity and refreshing but spicy, this should take you about 10 minutes. Try sticking it in a burger to give it a real kick.

I took a tin of tomatoes, a large white onion (sliced), 4 cloves of garlic, a splash of white wine vinegar, a big blob of ketchup, a couple of teaspoons of mint sauce and a handful of red chillis. It went into the blender until really fine, then into the fridge where it should save for a couple of days.

Told you it was quick and easy!



Chilli sauce! Behold it's ethereal glow!

I reckon that if you were to replace the mint sauce with horseradish, this would also work perfectly with seafood such as prawns.

Soft Shell Crabs - Ugly, but tasty.

I recently discovered the joys of cooking (and eating) soft shell crabs. Popular in Asia and America, they don't seem to enjoy the same popularity here in the UK. As far as I'm aware they can only be bought frozen in this country, but if you can find yourself a fishmonger or Asian supermarket that stocks them, you're in for a treat.

When a crab is getting too big for its shell, it does a crabby striptease and sheds the old one. Underneath is the new shell, but it's soft and takes a while to harden. When harvested in its soft shell, the crab can pretty much be eaten whole.  If working with fresh crabs, you need to take rip off its gills and 'bib' (blurgh!), and then cut its face off (retch!). An advantage of the frozen ones is that it has already been violently violated, and you can defrost it and get cooking. You eat the whole thing, including the shell and legs.

Uncooked crabs.
The one on the left is on his back, showing off to some prawns.

The simplest way to cook them is to just dip in a little seasoned flour and deep fry for a few minutes until they look crispy and brown. Put them in the frier on their back first so that they spread their arms and bask in the oil, if you put them legs first, they curl up an look sorry for themselves. They will spit because of all the water in there, so watch yourself!
You could also make (or buy a packet of) a tempura batter, or coat it in 'panko' breadcrumbs. I went for dipping the crabs in whisked eggs, and then in potato flour. This makes them go good and crispy.

He's ugly but delicious!

Soft shell crabs are good in a sandwich with mayonaise, cucumber and tomato. They also work really well with Asian food. I ate these badboys with egg fried rice and prawn toast, and some sweet chilli sauce for dipping.

Home Made Sesame Prawn Toast!

There's a big gap between real Chinese food and the sugary MSG laced stuff that most takeaways sell, but I still love a bit of prawn toast. Forget buying it from a takeaway, though, when you can easily make far, far better quality stuff at home.

Get some uncooked prawns, and either blend them, or do it with a knife, which is really satisfying. Lay the prawns out on a chopping board, get a large sharp knife, and just chop away until it's a lumpy pulp. Then throw it in a bowl. Fine chop some spring onions, and mix them in the bowl with the prawns, plus a small dash of soy sauce and a little beaten egg to help it stick.

I chop you good!

Get some white sliced bread that you've dried in the oven (low temperature for a while until it's a bit crispy), and coat one side with your prawn mixture, patting it down so that it sticks to the bread. Then coat with sesame seeds, and pat them down so that they stick.

Can you tell me how to get.. how to get to Sesame Seeeeeeds

Then simply deep fry the bread for a couple of minutes until a nice brown colour, cut into 2 or 4, and serve with soy sauce or sweet chilli sauce for dipping. Better than from a takeaway!

This is Sesame Prawn Toast, in case you weren't paying attention

Get googling for variations on the recipe, you can't really go wrong! Different versions include adding a bit of pork mince or chicken in with the prawns (since prawns aren't always cheap). You can also experiment with adding a little bit of chilli, a sprinkle of finely chopped coriander or Thai fish sauce into the mixture. I've chopped up a bit of salmon or scallops in with the prawn mixture before. It's always come out tasty.

Seafood Laksa recipe - Easy coconut curry

I mentioned to someone at work that I needed to stock up on Laksa Paste. My colleague looked at me in horror. The problem is that it sounds like I was talking about ointment for my bunghole, when I was in fact talking about a key ingredient in Seafood Laksa, one of the tastiest recipes I know. Just like a lot of the recipes I post on here, it's easy, it takes very little time, and tastes like something you would expect to get in a fine Asian restaurant. It's good served in small bowls as a starter, but works best served as a hearty and warming main meal.

The hardest part of this recipe is getting some Laksa Paste. I have been relying on Penta brand laksa paste, and it looks like this:

It's available in the world foods section of Tesco, but they'll probably expect you to beep it through the checkout yourself, and that's just rude. They'll be getting you to get up at 4am to stock the shelves yourself before you know it. Try and get it from an independent shop or an Asian supermarket if you can.

Laksa curry is a Malaysian and Singaporean dish. It's a coconut curry soup full of seafood and noodles. It's a good dish to make if you are serving a table full of people without getting into a panic about timing everything right and having enough space in the oven or on the hob.

The soup is made by mixing a couple of tablespoons of Laksa paste with chicken stock and coconut milk in a pan and heating it up. Laksa paste contains chilli, but is still fairly mild, so at this stage you might choose to add some chillis (fresh are best, but chilli flakes are fine).

Cook some noodles. Any type will do, but vermicelli are the authentic noodles to use. Cook a selection of seafood in the soup (don't overcook the seafood), along with a few baby corn, a few beansprouts and water chestnuts. For the seafood, I like to use prawns, bits of squid, pieces of salmon, and a few scallops. If you can get fried tofu, use some of that. I've seen it for sale frozen in asian shops, as it's a pain in the arse to make.

Laksa curry. Notice the deep fried tofu bottom left

Grab the serving bowl, and in each one put some noodles, then share out the seafood. Then pour the soup over the top and garnish with a bit of coriander, a couple of slices or strips of cucumber and half a boiled egg. The egg seems like an odd choice, but just trust me on this one, the Malaysians know what they're doing with this stuff.

I don't like to get into specific recipes and measurements for recipes like this one where you can improvise with it depending on what you like or what you've got in the house, but below are a few detailed recipes to get you started

BBC Good Food Prawn Laksa recipe
Seafood Laksa recipe from Taste.com.au
video of the recipe from http://www.asiafoodrecipe.com

And click HERE for a Laksa blog!

If you don't like seafood, do the exact same recipe with bits of chicken, but cook the chicken thoroughly just before you throw it into the soup.

Enjoy your meal, or as the french say "Eeet theeez food, you peeg!"


Update 11/04/2012:
It seems that Tesco have stopped stocking Penta laksa paste, as have a number of online retailers. It is my brand of choice at the moment, as a couple of other ones I've tried have been too spicy. I like spicy food, but my wife doesn't, so the extremely mild heat of the Penta brand stuff works because I can cook for us both and then throw loads of chillies in my bowl. I found a plentiful supply when i visited a Hoo Hing Supermarket today.

If you have a favourite brand of Laksa paste, then please comment and let me know. I'm all up for trying new ones.

Coconut Shrimp with Orange Mustard Dipping Sauce recipe

For a start, let's get the shrimp/prawn thing out of the way. Americans call them Shrimps, English people call them Prawns. I'm calling this recipe Coconut Shrimp because it's my blog and I can use the American words if I want to, dawg.

Prawns, flour (top), egg, Panko and coconut (right)

This recipe is a piece of piss. Get some fat tiger prawns (or any large prawns) and shell them, but leave the tail on. Set up an assembly line of 3 bowls and a plate. First bowl has flour in it, the second has raw whisked egg, and the third has a mixture of 1 part panko* breadcrumbs and 2 parts dessicated coconut. Take a prawn, dip it and cover it in flour, then cover it in egg, and then cover it in the coconut and panko. Fry them for 2 or 3 minutes until they're a nice golden brown colour.

Ideally, you want to serve them with a dipping sauce. Soy sauce would do it, or sweet chilli sauce, but if you're really feeling smart you could try making your own like I did.

This is how BAD ASS is made

Get about 3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons of honey, and 1.5 tablespoons of orange juice and mix it up well. You can even give it a little taste if you want and decide if you want it more mustardy, orangey or...Honey-ey. If you're feeling cheeky, you could add a few chilli flakes. This stuff was BAD ASS. Tangy and spicy, it was perfect with the coconut flavour of the prawns.

Coconut shrimp with orange mustard dipping sauce

I reckon these would be good to serve up as a snack when friends visit for an epic gaming session, or watching a movie. If you're going the whole hog and having people over for dinner, then it's a great starter. The nice thing about making anything that's fried in batter or breadcrumbs is that you can cover pretty much anything in the stuff and fry it. Replace the prawns in this recipe with bits of chicken, or if you're feeling really posh, how about scallops! 

*Panko breadcrumbs are a really crispy and crunchy japanese version of breadcrumbs. They're available from most Asian stores, or in the world food section of your supermarket. 

Cioppino - San Francisco Fish Stew (EASY but TASTY recipe)

If this pug can run a hotel, you can make Cioppino

I was lucky enough to visit San Francisco last year. I stayed at a hotel which is run by a pug that has his own facebook page. I also met a homeless man who became world famous for jumping out of a bush. True story.

A signature local dish is a tomato and fish stew called Cioppino (pronounced Chuh-PEE-no). I spent the whole time saying I was going to try it, and didn't get round to it in the few days I was there. I promised myself I would have a go at cooking it back home in England, and it turns out that it's amazingly easy.

Cioppino recipes vary, which is good for me because I never have the attention span to follow recipes to the letter. You can make it as cheap or as fancy as you like depending what seafood you go for. In mine, I've gone for some blue swimmer crab pieces, some mussels, scallops, squid and lots of prawns. It's probably not that cheap for each bowl, but it's a pay-day treat. You can use any combination of fish you want, so for a cheap version you could probably use leftover cuts of fish if you've any in the freezer. Even crabsticks would probably work for a cheap alternative and it would still be delicious.

For an accurate recipe of Cioppino, google it. There's loads of good recipes out there. I googled a few recipes, then forgot what I'd read and just freestyled it as usual.

Essentially, it's 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, 2 tins of chicken and/or fish stock (I just used one of the tomato tins to measure from), and 1 tin of white wine. Use this liquid to make a soup with garlic, onion, parsely, oregano and basil. Then cook it for about half an hour, then throw all your seafood in. When it's cooked thoroughly, eat it with lots of bread.

A borrowed Cioppino picture. Sorry, internet.

I was hungry and got stuck in without taking a picture of it, so here's an 'illustrative' picture of the dish from someone else's website.

What I can't stress enough is how easy this recipe is to make. It's like you can't get it wrong! If you like tomato soup and seafood, then this is an ideal dish for an amateur chef to make to impress friends. It is really, really tasty. They'll think that you have ritually sacrificed and cooked Jamie Oliver, then eaten his flesh to absorb his internal genius and external punchability.


For reference, this is the recipe I followed the closest.

Frogs legs fit for a President

I bought some frozen frogs legs. One thing that you'll learn about me on this blog is that I'm a rebel. I'm just like James Dean or Marlon Brando. I wear a leather jacket and stick it to the squares. Well, I tend to stray from recipes when I'm cooking. Yeah! That's how I roll. Stick it to the man! Breadcrumbs? Screw you, BBC recipe website, I'm using Panko! Fight the power!

So I've been online and seen a couple of different ways to go about this, and I decided to not go strictly with any one recipe online. Rebellious, eh? I cut the legs in half (two legs stuck together still looks a bit too much like legs) and soak them in milk, which supposedly smooths out the flavour a bit and softens the meat. I then rolled them in flour (with some salt and pepper in there), shallow fried them and put a little pool of garlic butter at one end of the plate.

Incidentally, when I was googling frogs legs, I found this picture:

That's right, it's a picture of Barack Obama eating frogs legs.

I've thought about this image carefully, and decided that I'm pretty sure that Barrack Obama is awesome because:
(A) he's the first black president of America, which is a pretty big deal
(B) if I've got my facts right on this, he single-handedly took down Osama Bin Laden with a swift punch to the throat
(C) he eats frogs legs, which clearly helped him to achieve (A) and (B).
and (D) I think he's sending a clear message out to the French. He's saying "Hey, Frenchy! Next time we go terrorist hunting, you'd better help out or I'll eat your legs while doing a really mean GROWL face!"

Conclusion: Eating frogs legs makes you awesome like Barrack Obama.

So here's the finished thing:

Much to my surprise, my wife got stuck in and gave them a go. I thought that eating frogs might be a step too far for her, but she came away with the same conclusion as me. First time eating frogs, and the verdict is 'They were alright, they're ok, I suppose'. Predictably, in texture and flavour,they are a bit like chicken, and a bit like fish.

I think I went a bit too heavy on the salt that I added to the flour, but they were ok and nothing more. I'd be interested to try them done by a 'proper chef' in a restaurant, and I'd certainly like to try them done as part of an Asian recipe (Frogs legs are popular in places like Vietnam and China).


On a serious note, there are some that say it's really bad to eat frog legs. In the name of balance, I'll leave this link to an article from The Guardian and let you make up your own mind.