Salt 'n' pepper gems

June 21, 2025

   

We've been getting the old potluck crew together again a bit this year and it's been so great. After the success of the tomato-themed evening earlier in the year, we regathered in June for a potato-focussed event. Potatoes offer up so many possibilities, but I've been eyeing off this very simple but very exciting-looking recipe in Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart since we first flicked through it. Potato gems are spectacular on their own, but this recipe really takes them to new heights. It's so, so easy and the return on investment is incredible - it was one of the hits of a very high quality potluck. Stop reading this, go and buy some gems and then come back and cook this up, trust me.

Salt and pepper potato gems

(from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

800g frozen potato gems (one bag)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 red chilli, finely sliced

3 green onions, finely chopped

seasoning

2 teaspoons of salt

1/2 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon white pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice

Preheat an oven to 220°C and then bake the gems for half an hour, until they're golden and crispy - don't be afraid to give them more if they're not golden. 

Combine all the seasoning ingredients in a bowl and mix well. 

Heat a large frying pan or wok over medium heat and add the oil. Once it's nice and hot throw in the chilli and green onions and stir-fry for a minute. Throw in the gems and stir-fry for another couple of minutes until everything is nicely combined. 

Kill the heat and stir through the seasoning. Serve immediately. 

Cauliflower & eggplant, both with hoisin

June 7, 2025

   

While Michael was away on a work trip, I set about making myself a large, vege-full set of dishes that I could spin out over many meals. These two recipes from Tenderheart had a complementary way about them - the eggplant's marinade includes hoisin sauce and it's served over rice, while the cauliflower recipe involves making one's own hoisin and includes jointly cooking white rice, brown rice and quinoa.

Since I'm not fond of McKinnon's recommended green onion and coriander garnishes for these dishes, my rendition ended up looking very beige and brown. I went a little light on the hoisin for the cauliflower and had plenty leftover to lend to the eggplant marinade. I really enjoyed the mixed grains and would repeat that process to serve alongside any number of recipes.

Meanwhile, the eggplant didn't quite live up to the glossy image in the book. It was pleasantly salty and savoury, very tender; neither flawed nor quite what I was hoping for in a 'char siu' dish. Once I'd managed my expectations this was a very good meal that packed nicely for work lunches. Little garnishes like peanuts and sesame seeds make all the difference to me!

Hoisin-glazed cauliflower with mixed grains & peanuts

(slightly adapted from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

1 head cauliflower

olive oil

salt and pepper

1/3 cup roasted peanuts

hoisin sauce

3 tablespoons tamari

2 tablespoons tahini

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

pepper

2 teaspoons miso

mixed grains

1 cup brown rice

1/2 cup white rice

1/4 cup quinoa

salt

Preheat an oven to 200°C.

Place the rices and the quinoa in a sieve and rinse them. Transfer them to a medium-large saucepan with 2 1/2 cups of water and a generous pinch of salt. Set the saucepan over high heat, bring it all to the boil and then turn the heat down to low. Cook the grains for 30-35 minutes, until the water is absorbed and the grains are tender. Turn off the heat but leave the lid on the saucepan.

While the grains are cooking, make the hoisin sauce by whisking all the ingredients together in a bowl.

Chop the cauliflower into big, chunky florets. Place them in a baking tray and stir through olive oil, salt and pepper, and several tablespoons of the hoisin sauce. Roast for 20-30 minutes, until the cauliflower is tender.

To serve, load plates up with grains, then cauliflower, spoon over extra hoisin and then sprinkle over the peanuts.

Eggplant, 'char siu' style

(slightly adapted from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

2 large eggplants, sliced into 1cm thick rounds

white sesame seeds, to garnish

marinade

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon tamari

1 tablespoon golden syrup

2 teaspoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon five-spice powder

Whisk together all of the marinade ingredients. Arrange the eggplant slices in a shallow dish and pour the marinade over them. Allow the eggplants to soak up the marinade for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 hours. Turn them over and/or relayer them in the dish along the way, for more even flavouring, if you're marinating them for a longer period.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. Line 1-2 baking trays with paper.

Arrange the eggplant slices in one layer across the baking trays and bake them for 15 minutes. Retrieve the trays, flip the eggplant slices, and spoon some of the remaining marinade over them. Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes of baking. 

Serve the eggplant slices with more marinade spooned over the top, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

Kale dumplings with brothy butter beans

May 25, 2025

   

We're still working our way through the delights of Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart, and Melbourne's grim winter had us digging this perfect warming stew. It went so well that we made it for a second time about a week later for friends, and it's immediately slotted into my favourites list. It's kind of a nice one to have two people at work here - both times I took charge of the stew and Cindy managed dumplings - but nothing here is actually super complicated or time-consuming. The first time we did it we followed Hetty's instructions and steam-cooked the dumplings on top of the stew (covered, in the saucepan), but we had enough spare to do an oven baked batch as well and that ended up as our go-to method. Either way is utterly delicious though - you wind up with this hearty, aromatic stew topped with rich, cheesy dumplings. It really is an aboslute killer.

Kale dumplings with brothy butter beans

(a recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

olive oil

1 leek, white and pale green parts, finely sliced

6 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon red chilli flakes

400g can crushed tomatoes

500ml veggie stock

2 x 400g cans butter beans, drained

1 teaspoon white sugar

50g kale leaves (about half a small bunch), destemmed and finely chopped

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

half a bunch of basil leaves, roughly chopped

salt and pepper

dumplings

1 cup plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons butter

50g kale leaves (the other half a bunch), destemmed and finely chopped

3/4 cup grated cheddar

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

half a bunch of basil leaves, chopped

salt and pepper

In a large saucepan heat 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil and, when it's hot, add in the leek and stir-fry for 2 or 3 minutes until it softens. Throw in the garlic, tomato paste, paprika and chilli flakes and stir for anothe minute or so.

Add the tomatoes, stock, beans and sugar and season well with salt and pepper. Bring the mix to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, get to work on your dumplings. Combine the flour, baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper in a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mix with your fingers and then stir in the kale, cheese and basil and mix well. Beat the egg into the milk and then fold this into the mix until everything is just combined.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Go back to your stew and stir the kale leaves and red wine vinegar in, tasting the mix and seasoning with salt and pepper as needed.

Transfer the stew to a casserole dish or ceramic baking tray and scoop out golf ball sized dumpling balls and layer them across the stew - you need to leave a little space between them because they'll expand a bit while you bake. 

Give them about 15 minutes in the oven - you want the dumplings to go a little bit golden on top and be cooked through (a skewer should come out clean). 

Serve, topped with the remaining basil leaves and a few drizzles of olive oil. 

Mushroom pâté & sesame toast

April 20-22, 2025

   

I've been a long-time reader of Anne Helen Petersen across multiple platforms and a few months ago she announced the start of a cooking club within her substack. The first cookbook we were all invited to cook from was Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart, an easy and welcome request in this household! I used this as motivation to try a couple of 'project' recipes over the Easter weekend.

The two recipes I signed up for form a clever pair within the Mushroom section. First, there's mushroom, leek & walnut pâté - I liked that it included dried porcinis for a flavour boost. There's soaking and sautéing and blending and refrigeration; nothing too complicated but best taken slowly. The process generates a lovely, savoury spread that I ate on fresh bread. I'd increase the quantity of five-spice and salt if I made this again.

Second, there's sesame mushroom toast - a home-made, vegan alternative to prawn toast. This transfers the mushroom pâté to the plainest white square bread, where it's layered with sesame seeds and shallow-fried. We love eating veg*n versions at restaurants, and I expected the home version to be messy and not quite right. How wrong I was! This sesame mushroom toast was easy to fry golden (and also successful with less oil than instructed) and tasted magnificent, especially with the sweet and sour sauce drizzle. I immediately posted photos to my veg*n groupchat with the caption I just made the mushroom sesame toast from Tenderheart and am now levitating. Then I wrote way too many effusive words in AHP's cookbook club thread. Now you get some, too!

   

Mushroom, leek & walnut pâté

(a recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

olive oil

1 leek, finely sliced

30g dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes

3 cloves garlic, minced

500g mushrooms (any type), roughly chopped

1 teaspoon five-spice powder

1/2 teaspoon red chilli flakes

salt and pepper

100g walnuts, soaked in warm water for 10 minutes

Set a frypan over medium heat and add a couple tablespoons of oil. Add the leek and cooked until softened, up to 10 minutes.

While the leek is cooking, drain the porcini mushrooms and lightly squeeze them out, keeping all the soaking liquid. Roughly chop the mushrooms. Strain the soaking liquid through a fine sieve.

To the frypan, add the fresh and soaked mushrooms and the garlic. Cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the five-spice, chilli flakes, and salt and pepper. Allow the mixture to cool to a temperature that's safe for a food processor.

Drain the walnuts and place them in a food processor. Add the cooled mushroom mixture. Pulse the mixture to your desired consistency. Stop and scrape down the sides occasionally for evenness, and add a little of the mushroom soaking liquid if you need more moisture (I didn't need much at all). Spread the pâté on fresh bread or toast, either straight away or after storing in the refrigerator.

Sesame mushroom toast

(slightly adapted from a recipe from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

toast

6 thick slices square white bread

3/4 - 1 cup mushroom pâté (as above)

1/2 cup white sesame seeds

vegetable oil, for frying

sweet & sour sauce

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3 teaspoons tamari

2 tablespoons tomato ketchup

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Make the sweet and sour sauce by whisking all the ingredients together in a small bowl.

Spread a generous amount of pâté on each piece of bread. Sprinkle over a lot of sesame seeds, aiming for full coverage, and lightly press them into the pâté. Quarter the slices into triangles.

Set a frypan over medium-high heat and pour in oil to a depth of 5mm. Set up a plate or tray with paper towel to drain the fried toasts. When the oil is very hot arrange some toast triangles in the oil, leaving decent gaps between them. The toasts should sizzle immediately. Fry them for about 2 minutes on each side, until golden and crisp, then transfer them to the paper towel as you fry the remaining toasts in batches.

Serve as soon as possible, with sweet & sour sauce drizzled over the top.

Celery-cashew stir-fry with a food court omelette

October 3, 2024

   

We're pretty ambivalent about celery over here - it's a valued ingredient in a few favourite recipes, but often leaves more stalks behind than go into the chosen dish. Roasted cauliflower salad is my usual fall-back and it can take some extra beyond the written quantity. When I chose that as my first celery-laden dish this week, I decided to test whether Hetty Lui McKinnon's recipe for cashew celery could serve as a similar back-up.

McKinnon stir-fries celery chunks with your choice of green vegetable, strips of five-spice tofu and cashews, and coats it all in a cornflour-thickened savoury sauce that's lively with ginger. Served with rice, it's a full meal. Even so, I decided to serve it alongside McKinnon's food court omelette, another recipe I'd bookmarked from Tenderheart. It's stuffed with broccoli (or in my case, what remained of a bag of frozen mixed green vegetables) and smothered in a salty-soy gravy that echos the stir-fry sauce.

The omelette is another dish that, served atop rice, is potentially a full meal on its own. (I remember first encountering something similar at Middle Fish and absolutely loving it.) My omelette was much messier than McKinnon's, and I'll not repeat frozen veges for this one, but the gravy was fun and these two dishes worked together well. Time will tell whether we return to this tasty combination, either to use up more celery or entirely on its own terms.

Food court omelette

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil

a few spring onions, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

6 eggs

salt and white pepper, to taste

1 head broccoli, cut into small florets and a 5mm dice (or two handfuls frozen green vegetables)

rice, to serve

gravy

1 tablespoon cornflour

1 1/2 tablespoons tamari

3 teaspoons vegetarian oyster sauce

3 teaspoons Shaoxing rice wine

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 cup vegetable stock

pinch of white pepper

Make the gravy by placing all of the ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to the boil, stirring consistently, for 4-5 minutes. When the gravy has thickened, turn off the heat and set it aside.

Heat a few teaspoons of oil in a frypan, then add the spring onions and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set it aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat together the eggs, salt and pepper. Stir in the broccoli. Return the frypan to the heat and add a tablespoon of oil. Add a quarter of the spring onion mixture and a quarter of the egg mixture, cooking until the underside is golden and much of the egg has set. Flip the omelette over and allow it to cook through. Remove the omelette from the pan (I stored mine on a paper-lined tray in the oven on low heat) and repeat with the remaining oil, onions and eggs.

Serve each omelette over rice with gravy poured over the top.

Cashew celery

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

2 teaspoons cornflour

3 tablespoons vegetable stock or water

1 tablespoon tamari

2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine

vegetable oil

4 stalks celery, trimmed and slice diagonally

1 tablespoon minced ginger

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

a few spring onions, finely chopped

green vegetable of your choice (we had kai lan), cut into 5cm lengths

200g very firm five-spice tofu, sliced into 5mm strips

1 cup roasted cashews

white sesame seeds, to serve

rice, to serve

In a small bowl, stir together the cornflour, stock/water, tamari, and wine until they're well mixed. Set them aside.

Set a wok over medium-high heat and add some oil. Add in the celery and stir-fry for a couple of minutes until the celery starts to soften. Push it to the side of the wok so that you can stir-fry the ginger, garlic and spring onion for 30 seconds, then bring the celery back in to the mix. Add the green vegetable, tofu and cashews, cooking for just a minute. The cornflour has probably separated from the other sauce ingredients in the small bowl, so stir them back together and pour them into the wok. Toss everything together until the sauce has slightly thickened and coated everything evenly.

Serve over rice, sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Cheesy baked rice cakes & kale

June 27, 2024

   

I bookmarked a lot of recipes in Tenderheart when I received it for my birthday last year but when I saw the photo of this one, I actually guffawed. Crisp-edged kale in cast iron under a blanket of golden-brown melted cheese? Yes. With rice cakes as the accompanying carb? That's a cool idea I would never have had. It seemed like a cosy winter dish so I saved it up until now. We've been experiencing colder days than I think I've ever been through in our 18 years in Melbourne, so it's definitely the right time.

Beneath that cheesy top layer there's a lot of stock and a couple of collapsed tomatoes - I was surprised at how soupy it all turned out! That moisture is important for cooking the rice cakes, but I'd be tempted to reduce it a little next time. I reckon using canned (instead of insipid winter) tomatoes might make for a thicker, richer sauce too. As I typed up the recipe, I noticed an instruction that I didn't on the day of cooking, which is to rinse the rice cakes to prevent them from sticking to each other - I'll definitely give that a go next time.

The use of gochugaru matches the rice cakes and adds some extra warmth without burn. Whether this dish turns out soupy or saucy, it's a whole lot of comfort. 

   

Cheesy baked rice cakes & kale

(slightly adapted from a recipe in Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon gochugaru

2 tomatoes, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon caster sugar

1 L vegetable stock

900g rice cake sticks, rinsed in water to separate

leaves from a bunch of kale, roughly chopped

170g tasty cheddar, grated

200g mozzarella, torn

If you've got a big dish that can transfer from the stove to the oven, use it! I don't, so I started with a large saucepan. Set it over medium heat, add the olive oil and then the garlic. When it's fragrant, add the gochugaru, tomatoes, salt, sugar and stock, stirring to combine. Cover the mixture with a lid and allow it to simmer for 10 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200°C.

Remove the lid from the saucepan and stir, squishing the tomatoes against the sides or even getting a masher in there. Add the rice cakes and kale, stirring until the leaves wilt. Stir in half of the cheddar and mozzarella. Transfer the mixture to a casserole dish. Top with the remaining cheese and then bake until melted and golden, 15-20 minutes.

Brussels sprout & spring onion oil noodles

May 27,  2024

   

We're still revelling in the fresh noodles and rice cakes available at our local Korean grocery! I had some noodles left over from another dish and picked out this Tenderheart recipe to make use of them. I was keen to use Brussels sprouts again ('tis the season!) and also liked that the dish was spiked with black vinegar.

Finely shredded Brussels sprouts and spring onion get cooked in lots of oil until they're golden and crispy, and there's supposed to be a lot of oil left over afterwards. I didn't find that to be the case - I think I set the heat too low for the first 15-20 minutes, such that the vegetables didn't change colour much and soaked up a lot of the oil. I'm finding that some of McKinnon's recipes are lighter on the seasonings than I prefer, so I'll also use a heavier hand on the tamari and black vinegar when I make this again.

A dish with such a simple ingredient list really benefits from the special texture of those fresh noodles. Crisp-fried veges add a neat textural contrast, and I went to the trouble of grilling the leftover vegetables to keep it up.

Brussels sprout & spring onion oil noodles

(slightly adapted from Hetty Lui McKinnon's Tenderheart)

3/4 cup neutral oil

8 spring onions, finely julienned

250g Brussels sprouts, trimmed and finely sliced

450g noodles

4 tablespoons tamari

3 teaspoons white sugar

1 teaspoon black vinegar

Place the oil, spring onions and sprouts in a large saucepan or frying pan over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions and sprouts are golden and crispy, up to 30 minutes. I had to keep an eye on mine and adjust the heat along the way to get them cooking fast enough to brown but not so fast that they burned. When they're ready, pour the mixture through a sieve, so that you can catch the oil and keep the vegetables crispy.

Bring a different large saucepan of water to the boil, and cook the noodles according to their instructions. Drain them.

Add the tamari, sugar and vinegar to the drained oil and whisk them together. Toss the noodles with the flavoured oil (choosing the oil quantity to suit your taste), then serve the noodles topped with the crispy vegetables.

Caramelised Brussels sprouts & kimchi with rice cakes

April 21, 2024

   

We've been eyeing off all the Brussels sprouts recipes in Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart and counting down until they were in season to try some out. We jumped the gun a little with this - they don't really peak until May or June - but we were too impatient to wait. The newish Korean grocery at Barkly Square made ingredient shopping for this one super easy, and the results were excellent - smoky and spicy and generally delicious, with a great combo of textures. I really love cooking with and eating rice cakes, so I'm pretty sure this will get another go around before winter ends. 

Caramelised brussels sprouts with kimchi & rice cakes

(from Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart)

500g sliced rice cakes

400g Brussels sprouts, trimmed

olive oil

salt and pepper

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon minced ginger

3/4 cup vegan kimchi, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon tamari

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 tablespoon toasted white sesame seeds

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and cook the rice cakes - check your packet, but ours only took a couple of minutes. Drain and refresh under cold water - try to keep them from sticking to each other too much.

Halve the Brussels sprouts (or quarter them in if they're big) and heat a frying pan over high heat. Drizzle with olive oil and add the sprouts and a generous shake of salt to the pan. Leave them to cook for a couple of minutes without stirring, so they char on the bottom and then turn them and do the same again for another couple of minutes. Repeat until they're tender and nicely charred all over. Transfer them to a bowl and set aside (you may need to do a couple of batches, depending on the size of your frying pan).

Add some more oil to the pan and stir together the garlic, ginger and kimchi. Press the kimchi into the pan and leave to cook for 2-3 minutes until it's also nice and charred. 

Run some more water over the rice cakes and separate them as best you can and then add them into your pan with the kimchi, along with the sprouts. Toss everything together and add in the tamari and sesame oil, plus generous shakes of salt and pepper. 

Kill the heat and serve, topped with a generous sprinkle of the sesame seeds. 

Charred cauliflower & crispy tofu with sweet peanut sauce

March 10, 2024

   

One of my colleagues brought in a delicious-looking gado gado lunch a few weeks ago and I was reminded how excellent a plate of anything covered with peanut sauce can be. We went digging around in our books for inspiration and hit upon this version in Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart. It's a lot less work than the Ottolenghi recipe we've made in the past, and the results are just as satisfying - the charred cauliflower is sweet and smokey, the crispy tofu triangles add a bit of texture, and the peanut sauce is so, so easy. 

You can mess around with this however you like - add some nuts or different crispy veggies, trade the eggs for some tempeh, really whatever you've got to hand. Let's face it, everything tastes delicious doused in sweet/spicy peanut butter.

Charred cauliflower & crispy tofu with sweet peanut sauce

(a recipe from Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart)

olive oil

1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets

salt and pepper

1 cup chickpea flour

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

500g tofu, sliced into 5mm thick rectangles

2 Lebanese cucumbers, roughly chopped

4 jammy eggs

bean sprouts

crispy shallots

1 lime

sauce

1/2 cup of peanut butter

3/4 cup water

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon red chilli flakes

2 tablespoons kecap manis

salt

Heat the oil in a large pan on high heat and fry the cauliflower florets in batches, for about 8 minutes each. Just turn them occasionally, you want them to char up a bit. Set them aside and season with salt and pepper.

Spread the chickpea flour out on a plate, combined with the garlic powder and a bit of salt and pepper. Dredge the tofu slices through the flour mix to coat and then fry in a hot pan with some more olive oil. A couple of minutes on each side should get the tofu nice and golden. Set the tofu aside and, once it has cooled, slice into triangles.

To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir until smooth. Add more water if it's too thick - it will get thicker as it cools down. 

Layer up your plates with cauliflower, tofu, cucumber, egg and sprouts and then drizzle with sauce, squeeze a quarter of the lime over everything and top with crispy shallots. 

Carrot peanut satay ramen

January 14, 2024

   

We're still working our way through the recipes that Cindy has bookmarked in Tenderheart and we used a quiet Sunday evening to take a crack at this carrot satay ramen. I'm always apprehensive about noodle soup dishes, but the prep is remarkably simple here: you make a big pot of peanutty stock, cook your noodles separately and then combine in a bowl with some extra condiments. 

This was superb, the carrots provide a bit of sweetness, but the peanut butter is really key - what dish is not improved by a few big globs of peanut butter? It definitely works here. I even whipped up some jammy eggs to really finish things off. Add a bit of crunch from some roasted peanuts on top and you've really got yourself a treat. We will absolutely be making this again soon.

Carrot peanut satay ramen

(a recipe from Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart,

also published in the Sydney Morning Herald)

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon of minced ginger

250g of carrots, grated

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sugar

200g peanut butter

1 litre of vegetable stock (or vegan dashi if you can be bothered making it - there's a recipe in Tenderheart)

350g ramen noodles

1 bunch of bok choi, roughly chopped

1/4 cup roasted peanuts

4-6 soft-boiled eggs

Seasonings

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon chilli oil

2 tablespoons tamari

Heat the sunflower oil in a large saucepan and add the garlic and ginger, cooking for a minute until fragrant. Throw in the carrot, salt and sugar and cook things down for about 5 minutes, until it's nice and soft. 

Add the peanut butter and stock and stir things together. Bring it to the boil, stirring often, and then cover and simmer for five minutes. Add the greens when it's done and you're basically ready to serve up.

In the meantime, prepare the noodles as directed in a separate pot - ours were just a few minutes in boiling water. Drain them and start to build your bowls! 

Add a teaspoon of sugar, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, chilli oil and a couple of tamari to each bowl and whisk together. Pop a quarter of the broth into each bowl and combine with the seasonings, add a quarter of the noodles, top with peanuts and your egg and serve.

Umami crisp

December 24, 2023

One of Cindy's birthday presents this year was a copy of Hetty McKinnon's newish cookbook Tenderheart. We've had some great successes with To Asia With Love, so it seemed like an obvious book to add to our collection. We're off to a strong start - the crispy salt and vinegar kale chips with chickpeas and avo was a lovely weeknight dinner, and the closest I've come to actually getting chickpeas to crisp up properly.

The broccoli wontons were a bit more involved, but equally excellent - they provided meal after meal for us during the structure-less post-Christmas period. 

   

Both of these dishes were really off the charts thanks to the addition of Hetty's umami crisp, a variation on the various chilli oils that were in her last book and I think the one we'll wind up making the most. The inclusion of dried porcini mushrooms and flaked almonds really brings out a richer, deeper flavour and some great crunchy textures. I love a blow-your-head-off chilli oil as much as the next person, but this one feels a bit more sophisticated. It's super easy to make too, and our first batch just ran out, so it's time to get back at it. 

Umami crisp

(from Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart, 

and also published in the Sydney Morning Herald)

20g dried porcini mushrooms, chopped

1 shallot, chopped finely

4 garlic cloves, chopped finely

1/2 cup flaked almonds

1/2 cup toasted white sesame seeds

1 cinnamon stick

1 tablespoon red chilli flakes

1 tablespoon gochugaru

1.25 cups of vegetable oil

1 tablespoon tamari

2 tablespoons roasted sesame oil

2 teaspoons salt

Combine the vegetable oil, gochugaru, chilli flakes, cinnamon stick, sesame seeds, flaked almonds, garlic, shallot and porcini in a saucepan over high heat. Cook for a couple of minutes until the oil starts to bubble and then lower the heat and cook for 15 minutes or so. You want everything to go nice and golden without burning - stir occasionally, but keep a pretty close eye on things. 

When you're happy, strain the oil through a fine mesh sieve over a bowl and let the mixture cool. When it's completely cool, stir it back into the oil and add the tamari, sesame oil and salt. Store in a jar in the fridge and serve it on absolutely everything.