My collection of favourite recipes..tried and tested!
We had this at Kim and Michael’s when we visited them in Sittard during our trip to the Netherlands in April 2011. They had prepared a Tex-Mex lunch with a fantastic beef fajita and one of the sides was this really nice rice that Kim …
Tired of Martha Stewart’s Perfect Roast Chicken, I scoured the internet for a Nando’s chicken kind of recipe. Back when Nando’s had a restaurant in Kuwait, we could go there for their amazing grilled chicken but now, alas, they’re gone. I knew I wanted to …
On our first visit to Belfast we discovered something called “soda bread” which was served at breakfast at the Tara Lodge where we stayed. It was the most amazing bread we had ever tasted eaten only with butter.
On coming back to Kuwait, all hubby could talk about was this soda bread. While I was subsequently away in Malaysia this Ramadhan, he googled and experimented until he produced an almost perfect soda bread.
This recipe is still work-in-progress he says but it can only get better!
INGREDIENTS
300 gms all purpose white flour
250 ml buttermilk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
DIRECTIONS
Put the salt, bicarbonate of soda and flour in a bowl and mix well. Add the buttermilk, mix well until a solid dough forms. Sprinkle flour on a clean smooth surface, flatten the dough with flour on the top. Form a circle and continue flattening it with your hands until its around 1 cm thick.
Cut the dough into quarters, heat a heavy based chapati pan or something similar and put the pieces to cook on low heat. A diffuser helps to spread the heat evenly. Cook approximately 15 mins each side until brown.
To eat, slice this bread down the middle and toast. Goes well with butter and even marmalade.
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This is a creative way to make Tacos Shells in a pretty shape using only your muffin tray upside down:
Another Spanish dish which hubby made sure I learned! I can’t remember how many times I’ve made it exactly but I’ve made it. The ingredients are as we make it and the technique too but here they are copied from this NBCsite: Meet the other …
This is a traditional Malay dish and literally translated, Roti Jala means something totally different! “Roti” is bread, while “jala” is fishing net! But the description is apt. When it is first made, it does looks like a fishing net. But I think “Lacey Crepes” is a more elegant and worthy name for this dish because in fact it is more a crepe than it is a bread and it is more lacey than fishing net 
Once cooked each crepe is folded into four like in the photograph above, or sometimes, it is rolled, like the photograph below.
It is called “roti” in Malay I guess because it is never eaten alone. Like bread, it is always eaten with something, either a sweet dish or for us usually, a curry. When I serve Roti Jala, its always with my chicken curry!
I recipised the dish because I just had to try and make it. Its fine in Malaysia – if you don’t know how to make it, you can order it, or you will find it in a Malay stall at a night market. During the month of Ramadhan, roti jala can be found at almost every Bazaar Ramadhan.
When we lived in Dubai of course, if you can’t make it you don’t get to eat it! So when Mum and my late Dad came to visit us in Dubai, I watched her make it and forced her to measure everything. And this is her recipe.
INGREDIENTS
3 cups flour
3 1/3 cups water
1 egg (or 2 for a richer taste)
Salt to taste
Yellow food colouring
Vegetable oil for the pan
Kitchen paper for applying the oil to the pan
Pandanus leaves for patting the crepes with oil
DIRECTIONS
Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl using a hand blended. Make sure there are no lumps. Pour the mixture through a sieve to remove any little lumps.
Shred a couple of pandanus leaves lengthwise, fold into to and tie the end with a rubber band or twine to hold it together.
Heat a heavy-based pan and using a piece of kitchen paper, dab in a bit of oil and rub the pan with it. When it starts to smoke a little the pan is ready.
Make one crepe at a time. Pour a little of the mixture into the roti jala tool sitting on a plate, bring it to the pan and swirl in small circular motions making sure they overlap to create the lacey effect. If the mixture does not make a “smooth” lace but instead comes out in drips and drops, the mixture is too thick. Add a bit of water, mix well and try again.
When the surface gets shiny, it is almost ready. Dip the pandanus leaf into some oil and pat the crepe with it. Lift the crepe off the pan onto a plate and fold it or roll it. Refill the tool and make the next crepe.
I’ve cooked chicken curry Malaysian-style forever, since I first lived on my own after getting married. BUT every time I cooked it it was different! So one day many years later after we moved to Kuwait, I decided, enough was enough! I had to recipise …
I’ve cooked chicken curry Malaysian-style forever, since I first lived on my own after getting married. BUT every time I cooked it it was different! So one day many years later after we moved to Kuwait, I decided, enough was enough! I had to recipise …
INGREDIENTS
150 gms green lentils
1 tomato
1 leek
1 carrot
1/2 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp sweet paprika powder
2 maggi vegetable cubes
1 bay leaf
3 cloves (the spice)
DIRECTIONS
Insert the 3 cloves into the 1/2 onion. Put all ingredients in a pan with 1 litre of water. Boil over a slow fire until the lentils are cooked – about 30 – 40 minutes.
When the lentils are done, remove all the vegetables. Discard the bay leaf and the cloves from the onion. If there is too much “soup” left after you remove the vegetables, take some out and put it aside.
Puree the cooked vegetables with a little of the soup from the pan using a hand blender then pour back into the lentils. Add back some of the soup you set aside if the soup is now too thick. Let the soup heat through. Serve with bread.
INGREDIENTS (For 6 persons in large – 41cm – paellera) 4 cups Egyptian calrose rice (600 gms) 1 chicken about 1 kg, cut into pieces200gms large squids, sliced to 1cm thickness600 gms clams600 gms tiger prawns (about 30 prawns)1 medium sole (optional) 8 roasted …
