Stir-fried shrimps with vegetables

Stir-frying is probably the most frequent cooking method I use at home. I mean, why not? With stir-frying, we can whip up descent, if not fabulous, meals in a matter of minutes from almost any kind of food, be it vegetables or meat, whole food or processed ones. But there are times when my stir-frying rituals run a little slower than usual, especially when the ingredients need some extra time for the preparation.  Like for today`s dinner where I used fried eggplants as one of the ingredients. Plus, I used shrimps, which also means extra work for me to devein them. But even so, I usually end up forgetting all the fussy preparation when I start the cooking.

So, shall we cook now?

Wash eggplants and cut them into your desired shapes. For me, I quartered them lengthwise and then halved them crosswise. Usually people deep-fry the eggplants to make the "fried eggplants", but I always shallow-fry them because I`m too stubborn. If you too want to shallow-fry them, heat oil enough to coat the eggplants on a pan and do the frying in batches. Just make sure you don`t put too many pieces at once because the frying is supposed to give the caramelized bits, not to steam them. Another thing is, the eggplants will absorb the oil very quickly that you might need to add more oil every time you fry the fresh batch.

Set aside the fried eggplants. Honestly, I can just gobble these guys up only with a drizzle of soy sauce.

Next ingredient: shrimps.  I didn`t remove the shells as I wanted to get more flavor and to prevent them from curling in too much, but I cut open their backs and discarded the veins. And washed them, of course.

On the same pan used for fyring eggplants, heat oil and fry the shrimps. I think the smell and the changing color are what I love the most from frying shrimps.

Flip over the shrimps and throw in garlic. I usually mince the garlic, but this time I just bashed the cloves and used them right away. Oh, this smells even better!

Then, throw in shiitake mushroom slices and keep stirring until the mushrooms shrank and wilted. Now the smell is getting double-better!

Slowly stir in the fried eggplants and season it with soy sauce, salt, and pepper. The fried eggplants are very soft, so be careful not to break them apart during stirring.

Final touch to add the greeny look: broccoli. The stems and florets. Please use them all. Now, since I love the broccoli to stay crunchy, I usually just throw them in the pan, cook for like 30 secs, turn off the heat, and put a lid on the pan to trap the heat inside and thus steaming them  for a few minutes.

This looks like a cooked salad, I know. But I loved every bit of it that I finished this whole plate without even remembered that I didn`t eat rice with it. Juiciness, crunchiness, and bursts of flavors blended beautifully in this dish. The fussy work on cleaning the shrimps was definitely gone far from my mind when I devoured everything on this plate. What fussy work?

Happy Saturday and enjoy your weekend feasts!

Ingredients:

Shrimp, washed and deveined

Garlic

Eggplants

Shiitake mushrooms

Broccoli

Soy sauce

Salt

Pepper

Cosmos meadow at Yakurai Garden-Part 2

Here they are, the close-ups from the previous post. Which color(s) do you like?

If I have to choose only one favorite, this will be it. The sharpness of the this butterfly`s V-shaped wings below has deeply awed me. But I love the color pattern of the butterfly above, though. I can`t choose one!

All the up-close and personal images here were shot by my husband, whose patience and endurance under the scorching heat and sweat-me-off humidity are far beyond what I`m capable of. I guess he deserves some good food today. I`m thinking now.

Cosmos meadow at Yakurai Garden-Part 1

I know my blog is running slow at the moment and it seems to me that with less cooking-related posts and more outdoor adventures going on, this supposed-to-be food blog is turning into a travel blog.  I actually don`t mind if that really happens, but I`m somehow sure that there will be more posts on food coming on.

So, bear with me again and I hope you enjoy the pictures we took on our visit to Yakurai Garden. And since there are too many pictures to share in one post, I decided to put the close-up pictures in a separate post (Part 2).

On the way to the garden, we passed these beautiful paddy fields under the perfect sky and I tapped his shoulder asking him to stop the bike. Just look at these, how could I not stop here??

This is me crouching over to get a closer look at...

...these precious rice stalks that have been feeding me for my whole life.

After another hour riding or so, the garden, finally. As what the garden`s homepage promised us, we could see meadows of cosmos with heavenly colors of red, pink, violet, orange, and white. The peak season is between this month and October and that might explain why the greens partly still dominate the view. But I had nothing to complain about. 

With these candy-colored flowers cheerfully seated over the green grassy stems, why should I?

And I was so thrilled to see the blue sky full of clouds above. For those of you who haven`t known me well, I`m a cloud freak. I do love blue skies, but add white fluffy clouds to them and you`ll find me shamelessly screaming while busy recording the moments with my camera. 

These clouds, they look ridiculously very near to the ground, don`t they?

There`s no flower here, but I think the colors filling in this place is equally gorgeous as those in the meadows. 

The sun was setting down and we got to take these backlit pictures before going home. 

Love this silhouetted stalks!

Coming right up with the next post for the close-ups!

Grilled shishamo with sambal

Just about a week ago, a fellow blogger Nami, whose fabulous blog "Just One Cookbook" always keeps me hungry and drooling over my PC screen, showed her shishamo wrap in one of her posts and that reminded me how I love those fish. Shishamo, or Japanese smelt, is very tasty, easy to deal with, and you can eat the whole thing, from head to tail. And since I was born with genes that makes me crave for spicy food all the time, I`m going to share with you my version of cooking shishamo. A spicy version, just like the other dishes I have here.

So this is a pack of shishamo with a sac of roe inside each of them I usually get from the store. Apparently, Nami rinses these fish before cooking them, but I do not. Ahem, I did not. Will rinse them next time.

If using oven, line them up onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins. When I serve them without sambal or any condiments, I usually coat them with olive oil, garlic powder, pepper, and cayenne to get more flavors. And just a pinch of salt as the fish is already a little salty. But with sambal, I just grill them as is.

While the fish is in the oven, spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the beautiful nutty scent. Set the toasted seeds aside when you`re done.

Next is sambal. There are various ways of making sambal involving raw or cooked ingredients, but this is how I usually make it. I actually have written about sambal last year, where I served with fried tempeh, with slightly different ingredients. This time I substituted shrimp paste for dried shrimp. I love, really love shrimp paste for its pungency, but today I wanted a milder version.

So, put chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor (or mortar, of course). If you`re lucky enough to have fresh chilies, by all means use them and you can omit the chili powder. As most of the time I can only get the dried ones, I have to add chili powder to make the paste redder like the regular sambal.

Grinding the sambal paste in a food processor might scream "unauthentic" to the air, but I`m perfectly happy with it. With the sambal. It still is a sambal for me, after all.

Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat. Since the paste didn`t look red enough for me, I added some more chili powder, which I didn`t show you here.

While sauteing, puree tomatoes and pour it to the sambal paste.

Last aromatic is lemon. Squeeze in the juice and grate in the zest.

Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water. I sometimes add fish sauce too when there are no shrimp paste or dried shrimp in the sambal. I don`t know if other Indonesian use soy sauce or fish sauce for making sambal, but to me sambal tastes more wonderful with these two condiments. 

Now this is the consistency I like when I make my sambal. Not too dry, but certainly not runny. You can use this sambal paste for spicy fried rice or red curry, although you need to add some other spices and coconut milk for the latter. 

When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat. 

Remember the grilled shishamo? Please tell me that you aren`t forgetting them in the oven.

Toss them in the sambal to get them lightly (or heavily, your call) coated.

Stack the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish and pop it back to the oven for another 10 mins.

Or you can just serve this right away, which what I usually do when I`m super hungry.

Now for the rice, you can certainly serve the regular steamed rice, but you might want to try out this version. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds you made earlier, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.

For two plates of rice, I added 1 tbs sesame oil. Not much, really. I just want the rice to be scented, not to be oily.

Here is the fish back from the oven, red and gorgeous. Well, who`s hungry now? I am. I certainly am. And look how happy that little kid over there.

Scented rice, spicy fish, and of course, raw vegetables. Our Saturyday`s feast, everyone.

GRILLED SHISHAMO WITH SAMBAL
 
Ingredients:

Shishamo

For sambal paste

Makes about 1 cup

3 dried chili

2 tbs chili powder

1/2 cut  onion (but preferably shallots)

Thumb-sized ginger

3 candlenuts

1 Tbs dried shrimp (or shrimp paste for more pungency)

2 small-sized tomatoes (or 1 medium-sized one)

1/2 cut lemon juice and zest

Salt

1 Tbs soy sauce

Brown sugar

Pepper

Sesame-scented rice

2 plates steamed rice

2 Tbs sesame seed, toasted

1 Tbs sesame oil

Method:
For grilled shishamo
1. Arrange shishamo fish onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins.
2. Set aside when grilling is done.

For sambal
1. Put chili, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor or mortar and blitz or grind.
2. Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat.
3. Puree fresh tomatoes and stir in the sambal paste in the pan.
4. Squeeze in lemon juice and grate in the zest.
5. Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water.
6. When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat. 

For serving
1. Toss the grilled shishamo in the sambal until evenly coated.
2. Arrange the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish.
3. Optional: Pop the fish back to the oven for another 10 mins.

For sesame-scented rice
1. Spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the nutty scent.
2. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.