Mia's Makings

This is probably one of the easiest noodle dishes I have made, as it mainly involved pouring bottled sauces over stuff in the frying pan. It was quite sweet from the oyster and hoisin sauce and if you like a sweet and mild Asian dish, this may be for you. You can use whatever vegetables you fancy, but keep them thinly sliced for fast cooking. I happened to have some shredded carrot, courgette, leek and radishes, mixed with bean sprouts from yesterday's raw Pad Thai and decided to chuck it in, alongside some sweetheart cabbage, green beans, onion, pepper, more courgette and more bean sprouts. I used garlic, chilli and sesame seeds for flavour. Because I cook a lot of Asian meals, I have invested in a range of sauces and that was handy today. The dish featured sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin, hoisin sauce and oyster sauce. As usual, I didn't measure anything. A squirt of this, a drizzle of that and ta-da! All I can say, use the sesame oil sparingly, as it is jam packed ...

Today I fancied a mild rogan josh curry and I had chicken fillets to play with. As we recently had rice three times in one week, I decided to use root rice this time in order to be kind to my waistline. I got the recipe and all the ingredients out and started peeling the onion... only to realise that I had the wrong recipe out. I was looking at a recipe for jollof rice, which is a dish in which the rice is cooking with the meat and sauce, similar to a biryani but with different flavours. Quickly I swapped to the correct recipe and stopped in my track when there was no rice in the rogan josh. How could I have remembered the recipe so wrong? The meat was to be cooked in a sauce and served with a side dish, such as rice, which is exactly what I didn't want. I find root rice as a side dish a little lacklustre. What was I to do? How about adding the root rice anyway and combine the two recipes? Surely that would work. There was only one way to find out. Guess what. It worked! As...

Springrolls, lovely crispy springrolls! I have always loved them, apart from my very first try at a Chinese restaurant when I was small enough to barely reach above the table. I had no idea what it was, but it sounded fabulous, like spring in a roll. I asked if I could have one. It wasn't a small springroll like the ones I have made here, but large enough to make a meal alongside a pile of rice. Nope, I didn't like it. Luckily my parents had guessed as much as and also ordered something that I was more likely to enjoy and we swapped. A year later we were back at the same restaurant and I wanted a springroll again. But I didn't like it last time, my parents reminded me. I know, but I will this time. Big sigh! I loved it, honestly I did. Somehow I knew I would and I did. Since then my love affair with springrolls have flourished. I grew up around the corner from a camp site by the beach. At the reception area was a fast food hole-in-the-wall, where you could get hotd...