Seafood Minestrone with fried fish fillet

The inspiration was loosely Gordon Ramsey's seafood minestrone with salmon.Only I did it with 0.5kg of venus clams and 0.5kg of the smaller clams and an approximately 1 kg red tilapia.

Fairly pleased with this one. Hence the detailed record.

1. The fish was bought for $8. I filleted it into 4 portions, and set the fish bones aside.

2. The clams for about $4.80.

3. In a large pot, toast a generous handful of dried fennel. Then add a mirepoix of sliced onion, carrots and sliced celery.

4. Saute for a while until fragrant, then add garlic (about 4 cloves sliced).

5. Turn to high heat. Add the fish bones and stir it around till fragrant.

6. Add a generous dollop of white wine and let it boil. Then add about a litre of water, boil. Then add the clams. Squeeze a medium lime into it, and add the lime flesh and all.

7. When clams start to open, pick them out of the stock. Let the remainder simmer for another 20 mins or so.

8. Remove the clam meat and refrigerate.

9. When the stock is done, sieve it to get the semi-clear stock.

10. step 1-9 can be done ahead of time.

11. Prepare a minestrone mix. In my case, frozen green peas, frozen corn kernels, frozen brocolli, some shredded wong bok, diced bell pepper, halved cherry tomatoes, and small sliced celery. Squeeze more lime juice to taste.

12. Bring the stock back to the boil, add the minestrone mix, and noodles. Boil till noodles are soft.

13. When stock is done, turn off heat and add back the clam meat.

14. For the fish fillets, dry comprehensively with paper towels, then salt both sides, keeping skin side up. When sweat beads the skin from the salt, wipe it down with a paper towel. Score the skin (longitudinally - head to tail). Heat pan to high heat, lower fish fillets. After a short while turn heat down to medium high and cook until skin is browned (approx 6-7 mins). Turn over and briefly cook the other side.


15. To serve, ladle noodle soup into dishes. Grind black pepper. Then layer fish fillets over. Squeeze more lime juice over the fish.

mushroom soup

Mustapha sells a 1.3kg packet of portobello muchrooms for about $20. Quite cheap. Bought it to try mushroom soup.

Used homemade vegetable soup stock.

1. Cut mushrooms roughly.

2. In a big bowl, thoroughly mix dill pesto, olive oil, butter, dried thyme, and rosemary leaves.
(dill pesto recipe: from https://www.thespruceeats.com/lemon-dill-pesto-with-scandinavian-twist-2952900 - found it a bit overpowering by itself, but using it with the mushrooms seems ok. Dill is really cheap - can get a huge bunch from Mustapha for $2).

3. Spread on tray and roast mushrooms at 200C until mostly dry (about 40 mins), taking out the tray and stirring the mushrooms around halfway through.

4. Use the vegetable stock and pressure cook with dried mushrooms for about a few mins (buy from Chinese medicine shop - get the fragrant tea leaf mushroom or other - do not use shitake).

5.Put roasted mushrooms, stock with soaked dried mushrooms, and a dollop of plain yoghurt (creme fraiche for the richer version) into a blender and blend till fine. Add more water if necessary to thin it out.

Roast Chicken Redux

Updated and improved version of roast chicken. Recording this.

Chicken Thighs have improved - juicy and tasty with a not too tender texture.

Breasts very slightly drier because of the slightly higher ending temp than last time - not a breast man, but mw is.

Skin is delicious and crisp, though not shatteringly so.

For further improvement, I'd try kampong chicken to see if the less fat chicken affects taste. The skin is much better now, but I suspect hard to improve because of the wet brine. I'd keep the wet brine, as opposed to injection, coz I like the coca cola brine.

Recipe for repeatability.
1. Brine chicken 10 hours in 5% brine solution composed of 0.5 litre water with 100g salt and 1.5 litre of classic coca cola.

2. Take out chicken, dry it out with paper towels as much as possible. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight to dry the skin out further.

3. Carefully use fingers to separate skin from meat starting at the breast without breaking the skin.

4. Insert longish rosemary twigs under the skin. The purpose being to keep the skin away from the meat as much as possible. During the slow roast, this bit of skin will turn translucent and during the high heat phase, will be paper crisp.

5. Stuff cavity with orange or lemon. Tie or sew up any exposed flesh as much as possible.

6. Roast in oven at 90C for about 1.5 hours until temp of flesh near skin is about 50-55C. Then turn the heat down to 77C and roast for about 2.5 hours. The idea being to bring the meat temp up as quickly as possible while still at low temp roast. Then at 50-55C, you want to really slow roast it.

7. Once the chicken temp hits about 64-65C or so (the 2.5 hours in step 6), turn the heat to 69-70C. You want the chicken meat to slow roast in the region of 66-69C for 1 to 1.5 hours. Even with the heat equalised during the slow roast, you still need a bit of temperature gradient.

8. Take out chicken and rest a bit. If this was all done right, there will be very little dripping because the moisture has been retained in the chicken.

9. Turn oven temp as hot as it will go. Mine goes to 275C convection.

10. Pop chicken in for about 4 mins or so. Watch it very carefully to avoid burning.

11. Take out chicken. It may be unevenly browned. Complete the browning with a blow torch.

Beet bread

Instead of using water, just use slightly diluted beetroot juice.

Looks rather like a root vegetable itself....

Ang Mo Chap Chye

Trying to get rid of the excess food in the fridge, so adapted a Italian classic called Ribolitta. Otherwise known as ang mo chap chye 8-). Its not classic Ribolitta, but close in concept. Cooked so much I had it over 3 days. Day1 - as a meal by itself with crackers. Day2 - as a side to a fish dinner. Day3, browned 2 small chorizo and rendered its spicy oil, and added the soup to turn it into a more meaty dish.

Stuff I wanted to get rid of that I had in the larder or freezer: can of cooked chick peas, half a brocolli, homemade chicken stock, packet of fresh sweet corn, carrots (small diced for mirepoix and chunks), bell pepper, a small remnant of barley, remnants of frozen corn, onion, garlic, celery, 1/3 cup rice, one sausage (frozen) and one small lump of marinated minced pork.

I also had a left over baguette from Cedele (not nice at all, tasteless and dry, but repurposed for ribolitta. Got lazy and bought bread - regretted it), and one piece of frozen you tiao. Remove crust from baguette and large dice everything.

Added: a small head of cabbage, 1 can of italian plum tomatoes, leek, thyme. Rosemary and basil from the balcony garden.


1. add meat and brown.
2. add and saute a mirepoix of onions, celery, leek, diced carrots, and bell pepper with a little fennel.
3. add can of tomatoes, break it up and cook a little more, with a generous bunch of sliced garlic.
4. Put herbs in basket (or whatever) and put in center.
5. Layer sliced cabbage, barley, rice, chickpeas and other veg.
6. Pour in mix of chicken stock and water. Not too much coz veg will cook down.
7.Bring to boil and simmer about 25 mins.
8. Push in diced bread and cook about 10 mins.
9. Let it sit for at least half a day.

Day 3 re-rendition of the dish

roasted white bait

1. Rinse dried preserved white bait through water and soak 10 mins, then drain dry.
2. Deposit white bait evenly on a large plate with an absorbent paper towel. Squeeze dry on both sides.
3. Spread evenly on tray and insert into oven at 90C for about 20 mins until dry to touch.
4. Increase oven to 150C and roast till browned.

fish head curry

Tried one for the first time. Kind of improvised, so non-std recipe.

Verdict: ok'ish. Fish was fresh anyway. The curry was a bit lacking in depth. Possibly should use a good fish stock next time if I can get it.

Used whatever veg was available in my fridge + yong tau foo from the market.

1. saute half an onion with a pinch of fennel and cumin.
2. Then add packaged fish curry powder. Continue sautee'ing
3. Add stock/water with garlic pieces.
4. Add coconut cream + 3 lime leaves + dried crushed tamarind (just broke off a small chunk).
5. (attempt to add flavor). Add dried white bait and some frozen mussels.
6. Lower the half fish head into the curry. Bring to boil and then simmer on very low for 30 mins.
7. Take out the fish head.
8. Cook the yong tau foo and veg in the curry.