Asian-ised Chicken Broth with Vegetables and Rice Noodles

I've been trying to jump on the health food bandwagon which is filled with chia seeds, beetroot brownies, green juices, phyllis husks and zucchini strands, with no bread, white rice or pasta in sight - and I kept jumping right back off. It's like going to a whole new world where real food is not real food anymore. Where brownies look like brownies but don't smell or taste like them (I tried), where vegetables pretend to be pasta, and rice and and potatoes become fugitives due to them being 'white carbs'. Not to mention bread which is no longer defined as comforting slices of warm softness for various toppings but is just known as a source of gluten, which is supposed to be bad for your gut and makes you fart, among other things. I mean, to me it all seems rather...scary, albeit in a food sense. What happened to the good old-fashioned advice of eating 3 square (well-balanced) meals a day with 2 healthy-ish snacks in between? That advice actually seems reasonable and easy-to-follow, not to mention agreeable to the tummy and the tastebuds. But now, you are supposed to have no carbs, unless they are low GI, no sugar unless it's in a fruit form (but no grapes as their fructose level is too high), gluten only if you dare, and no eggs puh-lease, just soak dem chia seeds overnight and voila you have egg substitutes (I dare you to make omelettes from them). Don't even get me started on paleo. Eat like a cave person but, but you can still have pancakes? (Sorry I don't mean to make fun of these healthy diets - okay just a little).

So anyway I was on that bandwagon again, feeling virtuous after consuming a whole bowl of gluten-free, organic homemade chicken broth with lots of  bak choy, broccoli, carrots, ginger, onions and chilli, topped with chicken and rice noodles (in other words, Mee Soup as it is known by the Malays in Singapore). And then fell right off when I decided that after all that virtousness, I just needed to eat chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And so I did, after baking it from scratch with white flour and real eggs (how dare I!) following Nigella's Old-Fashioned chocolate cake recipe which I love love love.

But at least I am happy to say also that seeing my children eat both Mee Soup and REAL Chocolate Cake makes me feel like a well-balanced mommy - strange but true!

Chicken Broth with Vegetables and Rice Noodles (Mee Soup)

Ingredients for the chicken broth

• Chicken bones from one chicken
• 2 onions
• 2 carrots
• 2 leeks
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
• 5 cloves of garlic
• Enough water to cover the chicken bones
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil everything for about 1 hour until you get a golden liquid. Drain and use the broth to add flavour to just about everything you want, but in this case, for the Mee Soup.

And now to transform it to Mee Soup

• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1cm ginger
• 5-6 small dried prawns or dried anchovies (from the Asian shop - can be omitted)
• Chicken breast/thigh cut into strips
• Chopped broccoli, carrots, bean sprouts, bak choy and whatever vegetables you like
• Thin rice noodles (the rice vermicelli kind, or the slightly thicker kind for Pho or Pad Thai)

Place the onion, garlic, ginger and dried prawns/anchovies with a little water in a food processor and blitz into a paste.  Fry in a teaspoon of oil until you the fragrant smell hits you. Then add half the prepared chicken broth (you can add more later if you need to), together with the chicken strips and chopped vegetables. Let it boil and simmer until the chicken strips are cooked and the vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile soak the rice noodles according to package instructions until they are soft.

For the assembly

Add the soft rice noodles, pour the hot broth with chicken and vegetables over them.
And to make the transformation complete, add these for toppings as much or as little as you fancy :

• Chilli slices
• Rice vinegar
• Tomato ketchup
• Soy sauce
• Coriander leaves
• Fried onion

Mmmmm warm, comforting and yummy. Just don't blame me if you feel like eating chocolate cake after that!

Moroccan-inspired fish with lots of memories.

I seldom cook fish for the simple reason that fish is either expensive or not fresh or both. But the Turkish supermarket that we always frequent happened to have fresh sea bass on that day there so my lovely husband, knowing how much I love fresh fish, bought one.

But alas, when I unpacked it, there it was - glassy eyes staring at me, scales gleaming, gills red and tummy full of innards. Alamak, as the Malays say it. OMG, roughly interpreted.  So now I have to scale and gut the fish and the only times I've seen it done, were when I was between the ages  of 6 to 9, when I accompanied my mother to the wet market while I was still living in Singapore. Back then, Singapore was full of wet markets and I still remember vividly, the one in Ghim Moh where I grew up (and looking at the Google images brought me right back to the thick of it) - vegetable-sellers standing on stools, shouting and waving their green offers,  Indian women in their vibrant saris sitting cross-legged chatting with each other surrounded by their colourful spices, live chicken squawking in their cages and friendly fishmongers scaling and cutting up fish caught a few hours before and who gave my mom fish roe for free knowing that I love them. Just opening up that package and staring at that fish brought back all those memories. Something that opening a pack of frozen, square-cut salmon fillet could never do.

But memory alone is not enough to scale and gut the fish and so I had to youtube it.  Suffice to say I managed. But what became of that fish after being cleaned is even better. It got to be smothered with a Jamie Oliver's Moroccan-inspired spice paste for his Moroccan Sea Bream dish (from  Jamie's 15-minute meals) that went really well with the couscous (though I must admit that my children preferred to have the fish with rice and corn kernels and a side of vegetable sticks to dip into the sauce). You will notice, however that after all my substitutions, it has become neither Jamie's nor Moroccan. But deliciously so and I'm proudly owning this one.

Ingredients

For the spice paste :

50 g parmesan cheese
2 tbsp ground nuts (or use pine nuts)
1 whole roasted capsicum or bell pepper
3 fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
A pinch of salt and pepper
A dash of garlic powder (or half a garlic for a stronger taste)
A squeeze of lemon.
Half a cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 fresh chilli (optional)

Put everything in a blender/food processor and blitz to a smooth paste. Adjust the taste accordingly.

Short-cut tip - You can also use a jar of pesto and blitz that together with the ingredients, minus the nuts and parmesan.

For the fish :

1 whole fish, scaled and gutted (or 4 white fish slices with skin on)
Salt and pepper for to taste
100ml hot water or hot seafood/vegetable broth
A pinch of saffron strands

Heat a frying pan with a little bit of oil in it. Meanwhile, season the fish with salt and pepper. When the pan is hot, add the fish, skin down and leave for about 2-3 minutes, to cook and crisp up the skin, depending on the thickness of the fish. Then flip the fish over. Drop the saffron strands into the hot water/broth and stir until it becomes yellow. Add 2 tablespoons of spice paste. Then pour everything into the pan, around the fish. Cover and let it simmer on a low flame for about 7 minutes until the gravy has thickened to the consistency that you like. Add more water/broth if it gets too dry.

Sprinkle some coriander and serve with couscous or rice, with roasted or steamed vegetables and more spice paste (and extra chilli slices if you wish for an extra zing) on the side.

Sedap kawan-kawan! (Malay : It's really delicious my friends!)