Of all the fish that I buy and cook, the most versatile for me is mackerel steak. It has great texture, reasonable taste and it freezes well, qualities that give me a range of choices for when and how I will cook it.

A mackerel steak will go well in many Asian curries. I have for example used it in fish-head curry; no cheeks, but a lot more flesh than an actual fish-head. In Malay cuisine, it is good deep-fried then sautéed in a spicy sambal paste. And it goes well in Indian curries.

Thirty years ago when I was in Kuala Lumpur, there was an Indian restaurant in Brickfields that did a roaring trade in deep-fried fish at lunchtime. Essentially, it had a spice rub applied, then was deep fried and served piping hot. If you use mackerel steak for this, it makes sense to have it sliced thinner.

Mackerel steak takes well to western style preparations, though here of course I would want thicker slices. Any dish that calls for firm-fleshed fish will be pretty OK with mackerel. And for simple weeknight meals, a basic western preparation of mackerel steak is hard to beat for simplicity and goodness.

This is an example of a broiled mackerel steak that I do. Originally inspired by a Mark Bittman recipe, I have since added minced garlic and minced chilli to the mustard. In moderation, I might add, but enough to give a little extra dimension to the taste. Total time to broil was 17 minutes. Seven minutes on the first side, turn and dress with mustard mixture, then broil for another 7 minutes. Top with the chopped honey tomatoes and broil for another 3 minutes. The rack is placed 13 cm / 5 in. from the element, and I do not put it closer to finish as that is not necessary.

This is one main course that takes less time to cook than the potatoes. In this instance, as the main has plenty of flavour, I paired it with a simple Italian style potato salad. Boil the potatoes skin on, peel and slice, allow to cool, then sprinkle with minced garlic and parsley. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and you’re all set.

With a green salad on the side, it makes a good meal.

Want more on mackerel steaks? See Article and Recipe

Despite the rather unappetizing name (Rats Ears Fungus, if the Thai name is translated), this is a really delicious species of mushroom that originates from China. You can see it in cooked form at the top of the photograph. As I often do, I had bought a pack of this on impulse when I came across it in the supermarket. Put it in a drawer in the kitchen and forgot about it. Then the other day I had to look for more cumin seed, and when I dug in the drawer, found the pack. It would expire soon, so I thought I’d better use it.

What to cook was the question. I had a pack of 2 cuts of pork shoulder, with a reasonable amount of fat, making it ideal for a long braise.

So, decided on pork braised in five-spice flavoured sauce, with cloud ear fungus. The Thais will know the sauce as palo sauce.

I cut the pork into 2 cm / ¾ in chunks and marinated it for about 40 minutes in dark soya sauce, five-spice powder and honey.

Brought a decent sized pot of water to the boil, took it off the heat and put in the dried cloud ear fungus to reconstitute for 20 minutes. Please note that it increases in size several times when reconstituted, so use a large enough pot.

Meantime, I prepared a paste of garlic and shallots, to which I added 3 segments of a star anise and a dash of sugar. I also made an additional sauce base of dark soya sauce and salt.

When pork and cloud ear fungus were ready, I fried the garlic-shallot paste till it turned a golden brown, then added the marinated pork and fried it until it changed colour. I put in the additional sauce base, stirred well, and then added the reconstituted cloud ear fungus.

Added 2 cups water, and as soon as the sauce came to a boil, I reduced the heat, covered the pan and simmered the pork for an hour.

The gravy was thick enough, but not too dry which is what you want. It is delicious, expect people to want spoonfuls of it on their rice, so do not make the mistake of preparing too little gravy, or allowing it to thicken too much.

As this is a strongly flavoured dish, which we would be eating with rice, I opted to have a simple minestrone soup to provide the vegetables.

Nice meal, and I had enough left over for a single portion, so I froze that. I’m curious to see how this dish does after freezing. I’ll post when I know.

Photograph and Glossary Listing - Cloud Ear Fungus (Mushrooms)

When you need to cook for 2 people on a week-night, simplicity is what you probably look for, and that is what I feature today.I cooked pan-fried sea-bass stuffed with chilli paste, and a soup that consisted of chicken stock, onion and garlic for added flavour, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and cabbage.

First, I started cooking the rice in the electric rice cooker. No attention needed, and it would keep warm till required.

I started the soup, by browning the chopped onion and garlic in a little olive oil. I then put in the chopped carrot and potato to ‘sweat’ these, before adding the chopped tomatoes. I allowed the tomatoes to give off their liquid and for that to evaporate (yes, you’ll see the steam rising). This gives a similar effect to roasting tomatoes, ie the flavour concentrates and the natural sugars caramelize, enhancing the taste.

Once the tomatoes had broken up nicely, I added the stock and simmered the soup for 20 minutes. I then added the cabbage for the last 10 minutes only, as I like my cabbage to have texture and not be too mushy.

You see the nice rich colour of the soup? That is from the tomatoes and carrots, and it tastes every bit as good as it looks, plus it is bursting with nutrients that you need.

Once the soup stock was in, I prepared the chilli paste for the sea-bass. It consisted of garlic, shallots and chillies, blended. I did not bother to fry the chilli paste first, as I would have done if grilling the fish, because frying in oil meant I would get the paste cooked sufficiently to develop taste.

I heated the oil until it shimmered, then fried the fish for about 8 minutes a side over medium heat. That was it, as simple as it gets.

And if you like to pan-fry fish, note the oval fish frying-pan I use. The shape means you can fit in a fish that a circular frying-pan cannot, unless you use a huge pan. Plus, you are not using large amounts of oil just to get the correct depth, as you would in a circular pan.

So, a simple soup with all the vegetables you need, and a pan-fried fish with enough spice to light up the meal. All prepared in short order, for a satisfying weeknight meal for two.

Why don’t you try it?

Note: Cooked tomatoes are rich in the antioxidant lypocene, cited as helping to protect against cancer, lower cholesterol and protect against heart disease. Supposedly, this is best absorbed when with oil, like the olive oil I used to start off the soup.

This was going to be an article about using chicken parts in chicken stews and curries, but somewhere along the line it became a bit more than that. A while back, I was reflecting on how we cooked chicken in the old days. We’d cut up a whole bird and cook it, bones and all.

Then supermarkets came into being, and we started to have the option of buying chicken parts. I thought that was great. I have always preferred breast meat, and being able to buy only this was a boon.

Today, it is almost difficult to find whole chicken in the supermarket. And yet, something has changed in the taste of the dishes I love. That wholesome, full-bodied flavour was gone. A curry or a stew with only breast meat just lacks something.

So, I have started mixing breast and boney pieces in chicken stews and curries. It would make no difference in a stir-fry or deep-fry, but when you simmer long enough, the bones make a difference. Try making a soup without stock, and you will know exactly what I mean. Sure, you’ll taste the vegetables and whatever else, but it will not be the same.

And so, Spicy Chinese Chicken Stew, a dish that I haven’t cooked in ages. The Chinese style sauces give it the base, the somewhat un-Chinese dried chillies give it the characteristic bite. The combination is heavenly, as the many Straits born cooks in Malaysia know very well.

The mix of sauces gives this chicken stew a sweet and salty flavour, the ginger adds a nice tang to it, whilst the dried chillies add spice. If you want more heat, by all means increase the dried chillies. Ten chillies give it a nice undertone, fifteen a more pronounced heat - by my standards at least, so please adjust to suit your palate.

The list of ingredients is short, and probably the most difficult part of cooking this dish is measuring out those ingredients. It needs so little attention when you cook it that I’d say it basically looks after itself.

The result? Everything I remembered about one of my childhood favourites.

Recipe : Spicy Chinese Chicken Stew

I had a couple of nice duck breasts in the freezer, so I decided to cook them for dinner. After some thought about what sauce to make, I opted for an orange sauce rather than a vinegar based sauce.

Started off the Orange sauce first. Caramelized some sugar, then added red wine vinegar and juice from 2 Sunkist oranges. Boiled that briefly, then set aside.

I cut a fine cross-hatch pattern into the skin of the breasts, but otherwise left the membrane intact. Seasoned them, then sautéed them skin-side down first, in a pan over medium-low heat. It took about 18 minutes to get the skin brown and crispy, then did the flesh side for 10 minutes. Finished off with another 2 minutes on the skin side to crisp them up a bit more.

Set the breasts aside to rest, poured off the fat from the pan, then added the sauce and deglazed the pan. Using the Calphalon, it was pretty easy getting the browned bits off the pan and into the sauce. Reduced it till there was a sheen on the surface, then added the zest from 1 orange, and we were set.

I did a quick sauté of French cut Haricot beans in olive oil with garlic, and served that with boiled potatoes.

It was nice, the sweetness of the sauce going well with the tang of the zest, with crunchy textured beans to add interest. And the boiled potatoes were a subtle complement to the duck.

A dish worth doing again.

Some years back, I was in an office canteen that had all sorts of noodles on offer, including one that had fish slices. It was incredibly popular with the staff in the building, but over time, I had forgotten about it. Somehow, when I decided to cook noodles the other day, this dish sprang to mind. So, I postponed the noodles by a day and we went out the next evening to buy some fish fillets, along with other stuff of course. High fuel prices make a trip out for 1 optional item a useless extravagance.

We had intended to buy grouper, but the prices were ridiculously high, so we ended up getting seabass.

I cut the fillet into smaller slices, then fried them with minced garlic, sliced shallots and 1 bird chilli (prik khi nu). Took out the fish, leaving behind the garlic, shallots and chilli.

I then added my gourmet quality pork stock to the pan, and brought it to a boil.

Yes, it is gourmet quality. Firstly, it is prepared in a style that the commercial vendors do not do any more, as it takes too long. Secondly, I chill it overnight, and then de-fat it. The vendors never did that, nor are they likely to ever do it in this day and age. What you end up with is a sweet, rich stock that is incredibly light. I digress; you can read all the details on my home page this Friday.

I also sautéed sliced shiitake mushrooms in soy sauce and oyster sauce in order to have something with a distinctly different flavour in the dish.

Anyway, once the stock was ready, it was a simple matter of blanching the bean sprouts and egg noodles, then adding the fish slices to the stock to re-heat them, and dishing out.

I made large portions, and it was a nice 1 dish dinner.

Yesterday was a day for innovation in the kitchen, which included a snack of Thai Style Salad in the late afternoon. Come dinner time, a lighter than normal meal was in order.

 So, I cooked Spare Ribs & Watercress Soup. It would normally have been quite rich, given that I used a larger than usual quantity of spare ribs.

In order to moderate this, I added ginger - a knob of about 1 inch, cut into fine strips. I added it as an afterthought really, perhaps 30 minutes before I stopped simmering the soup.

It did turn out well, adding an interesting dimension to the overall flavour.

If you want a simple twist to the regular soup, try this.

I had a couple of big chicken legs in the fridge, so I decided to do Ayam Percik with them, which I have not cooked for some time now.

It is one of those no fuss dishes. Make a paste of garlic and ginger, add salt, rub in and leave to marinate for an hour or more.

The sauce for basting is made from ground dried chilli, shallots, ginger, shrimp paste, plus coconut milk, flour and tamarind juice. Just boil for 10 minutes or so then add sugar and salt.

Dip the chicken legs into this sauce, grill or broil, and use the remaining sauce to baste frequently.

I like to broil under moderate heat to ensure these big legs cook through without charring the outside too early, then raise the rack to the top level for 3 minutes a side to crisp them up.

I served them with rice and a soup of baby Bok Choi and carrots, for which I used the pork stock I had made previously, enriched with chopped tomatoes, shallots and garlic.

Nice, though it was suggested that having the chicken with Ulam style vegetables and perhaps a side of sambal belacan or Indonesian style sambal terasi might have been better.

Certainly something to bear in mind for the next time.

Update 5th September, 2008 - Ayam Percik Article and Recipe 

It was my birthday yesterday, and also a busy day checking out the functionality of upgrades to my website.I wasn’t in the mood for dining out and I was too busy to pop out and get the couple of steaks that I had originally planned. So, took a peek into the freezer and saw these lovely meaty pork spare ribs that I had picked up from Villa Supermarket last weekend.

Defrosted them, then squeezed the juice of 1 lime over the lot, and rubbed it in. I followed this with 2 tablespoons vegetable oil before I poured the rub over them and worked it in. In case you are wondering, pork spare ribs (at least the ones I get here) are not terribly fatty, and without the addition of the oil, have a very real chance of drying out too quickly.

The rub consisted of paprika, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, salt and brown sugar.

Preheated the oven to 130°C / 270°F, then laid the ribs out, membrane side up, on the rack in the oven tray and popped them in. Turned them over after 1 hour, and 30 minutes later they were done. Raised them up to the broiler for another 5 minutes to crisp them up a bit more and we were all set.

Had them with rice and a spinach soup that was really easy to make, and very nutritious I might add.

Next time I might try 110°C / 230°F just to see whether a longer slower baking time will have a positive effect. And I’ll remember to let you know how it goes.

Update 18 July, 2008 : Full Article and Recipe

Last night, I decided to try a regular roast chicken (not rotisserie as I have been doing), using a V-Rack to hold the bird, and the Fan function in my smaller oven.The manual calls it ‘Hot Air’ function, as opposed to ‘Conventional’. I only used it with the upper and lower elements, not including the circular element around the fan. Visions of a smoke filled kitchen made me try it 1 step at a time I guess.

Well, the fan does speed up cooking time. For a 1.545 kilo / 3.4 lbs chicken, I would have had to roast for about 80 minutes. I got it done in about 70 minutes, and that included an extra 5 minutes because the cavity juices were still a little red.

I roasted at 180°C / 360°F, started it breast side down, basted after 20 mins, turned 10 mins later (ie 30 mins roasting time), then basted 10 mins later and left it at that.

While the chicken was resting, I made a pan gravy. First I poured off most of the oil, then added 500 ml / 17 ozs water. Brought that to the boil, then stirred in 1 tbsp flour, made into a paste with a little water.

As the chicken was with spices (powders - coriander, cumin, paprika, ginger, garlic, chilli, pepper), all I needed was boiled potatoes and a plain salad to go with it.

Turned out nice and juicy, though I would have ‘done’ the breast a little less had it been the rotisserie I was using. Something to bear in mind the next time, as well as a reminder why I love the rotisserie so much.

Also, need a smaller bird next time I cook for 2, though they are not that easy to find in the supermarkets.

All said and done, it was an easy meal to prepare and good for a weeknight dinner.