Thai Basil Mince Beef

I am actually a big fan of Thai food. Thai food has very complex flavour that somehow works so well together. The combination of palm sugar, fish sauce, tamarind and various herbs just makes such perfect combination that the moment you have a bite of your favourite Thai dish you just get immediate satisfaction out of it. Regardless of what dish it is, whether it's green to red curry, tomyam, Thai food is definitely one of my favourite cuisine of all time. I am yet to find a dish I don't like.

This dish is one of my favourite. I remember first having it at one of the most popular Thai restaurant here in Melbourne, Ying Thai. The moment I had my first bite I immediately fell in love with this dish and wanted to recreate it at home.

Hope you will enjoy this recipe as much as I do. You can put some chopped red chillies in this dish if you like hot food.

And oh ya, I saw some leaves coming out of my herb garden. So exciting. Hopefully it will start to sprout soon. I planted some sweet basil too. Hopefully it will grow well and I can just take some basil from my herb garden and use them in my cooking anytime I want. =)
Thai Basil Mince Beef

Ingredients:

• 400grams minced beef ( again, if you don't like or eat beef, substitute with any kinds of mince meat)
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 1 red capsicum, sliced thinly
• 1/2 cup basil leaves
• 1/4 cup water
• 3 birds' eye chillies, finely chopped ( optional)
• 1/4 cup chopped spring onions
  

Seasoning:

• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons ABC kecap manis ( thick soy sauce)
• 1 tablespoon palm sugar ( you can use regular sugar as well)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Methods:

1. Heat up oil in your wok.
2. Once the oil is hot enough, add in the shallots, garlic and chillies (if you are adding them)
   
3. Stir fry until fragrant
4. Add in minced beef
5. Stir fry until the beef is cooked. Then add in water, capsicum and all the seasonings
6. When the capsicum is cooked, add in the basil leaves and chopped spring onions, and stir fry for another 1-2 mins until the leaves have all wilted
7. Adjust seasoning.
8. Serve with warm rice.
   

Thai Style Beef Patty

I was in the mood for Thai food yesterday. Just got back to Melbourne from Ballarat and was thinking of what to cook for dinner. Kinda miss having Thai food, haven't had it for a while so I decided to cook Thai basil mince beef and this beef patty. Will post the recipe for basil mince beef tomorrow.

Just for your information, I have just started my herb garden. I actually grow them in pots. Really looking forward for it to grow. Will keep you posted on the progress. Nothing seen yet so far as I just sow the seeds last week. Hopefully will start to see something in the next few weeks.



Thai Style Beef Patty

Ingredients:

• 400 grams mince beef ( you can use mince pork or chicken as well, even fish paste will be nice)
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped and stir fried till soft and fragrant. I always stir fry my garlic to cook it a little bit before mixing them into patties / meat balls mixture because I don't like the raw taste of garlic. So by doing this you will avoid the raw taste from garlic when you cook the patties.
  
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped spring onion
• 10 green beans, cut to 3-4mm pieces
• 1 stalk lemongrass, white bottom part only - finely chopped
• 3 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoon tapioca starch
  

Seasoning:

• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons ABC kecap manis / thick soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon salt

Methods:

1. Mix all the ingredients for patty together with seasoning. You can add a bit more tapioca starch if the mixture is too watery.
2. Form mince beef mixture into small patties of 10-12 cm diameter. You should be able to make around 10-12 patties


3. Pan fry on frying pan until cooked through or you can also use your grill pan if you want.

I made a side dipping sauce for this, but you can omit this. It's actually really nice with thai chilli sauce.

Dipping sauce:

• 1/4 cup ground peanut
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1.5 tablespoons lemon/lime juice

Mix all the ingredients together and serve with beef patties.

Hope you enjoy it. Bon Appetite. Basil mince beef recipe coming tomorrow.

Christmas Lunch

We had a great time on Christmas Day. Thanks to everyone to came and made it such a special day. As mentioned earlier we celebrated my brother in law's 21st Birthday as well.

These are some of the photos for the food that we had on that day. Surprisingly was not too difficult/hectic preparing the lunch. All thanks to my colleague who allowed me to have my Christmas Eve off so that I made all the preparations the day before. And of course my husband, mother, father and brother in law who helped out with the preparation as well.

I am going to share a couple of recipes that I prepared for the lunch. As usual and expected from me, too much food. We had left over for dinner the next few days. I didn't mind it though.....as long as everyone had a good time and good meal as well.

The menu for the lunch was:

Entree:

Cheese platter with homemade sweet onion dip

Rice paper roll with hoisin peanut sauce



Sweet and spicy asian style meatballs




Main

Asian style pasta salad



Red wine beef stew



Shepherd's pie




Beverage:

Raspberries cocktail with mint and lime - Sorry didn't get to take the photos for this one

First recipe that I would like to share is my Red Wine Beef Stew. This dish is so versatile that you can serve it any time with ANYTHING. It's great with bread, pasta, mashed potatoes or rice. And it's dead easy to prepare. You just need your slow cooker, or if you want to save time, use your pressure cooker.


Red Wine Beef Stew

Ingredients:

• 1.5kg Beef Short Ribs ( I did add some cubed chuck steak as well because short ribs take lots of space in the slow cooker and I can't cook big amount with it. Adding chuck steak is okay, but personally I find beef ribs are much more tender)
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1 whole onion, chopped
• 300gr of bacons, cut into 1/2cm strips
• 1.5cups red wine
• Beef stock
• Bunch of rosemary and thyme
• 3 pieces of bay leaf
• 4 tablespoons honey
• 500gr carrots ( cut into big chunks)
• Plain flour for dusting and some extra to thicken the sauce at the end
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Methods:

1. Put carrots into your slow cooker or pressure cooker
2. Dust beef ribs with flour and brown with a little bit of olive oil on both sides in frying pan
3. Once the beef ribs are browned, put it on top of the carrot in your slow/pressure cooker
4. In the same pan that you used to brown your beef, put a little bit more of olive oil and chuck in the bacon
5. Once the bacon is browned and slightly crispy, put in the chopped onion. Cook until the onion is soft.
6. Then, put the red wine into the same frying pan
7. Cook for 10 mins until red wine has been reduced slightly
8. Put the whole mixture into the slow cooker
9. Top up with beef stock until it covers the top of the beef
10. Put your herbs ( thyme, rosemary and bay leaf ), garlic and honey into the slow cooker. Mix slightly.
11. Season with salt and pepper
12. If you are using slow cooker, cook on high for about 8-10hours. If using pressure cooker, cook on high pressure for about 30 mins
13. Once its ready, now THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. SKIM OFF THE LAYER OF FAT.
14. There'll be a layer of oil built up on top of the beef. This is because the ribs have pretty high fat content in it. So take off the layer of fat. I use a meshed skimmer like this one to do the job. It's a great item to have in your kitchen. YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THE LAYER OF OIL, or else you'll feel like you've just drank a whole cup of oil when you eat your stew and it's probably not good for your arteries too. =)
15. Once that's done, if the sauce is not thick enough, mix a few tablespoons of flour with water and mix it into your stew to thicken it slightly.
16. Season with more salt/pepper/honey according to your liking
17. Serve with bread/pasta/rice, whatever you fancy

There you go, my family loves this stew. I hope yours will too.

Another recipe I'm going to share is sweet onion dip to go with crackers/cheese platter.

I got this recipe from userealbutter

Again it's easy to prepare and tastes great.

Sweet Onion Dip

Ingredients:

• 250grams cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup mayonnaise ( I used Japanese Mayonnaise just because I like it better..=) )
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon sugar

Method:

1. Beat the softened cream cheese until smooth
2. Stir in the mayonnaise, parmesan, onion, black pepper and sugar
3. Pour the mixture into 4 ramekin dishes
4. Bake in oven 180 degrees celcius for 35-45 minutes until the tops are browned and bubbly
5. Serve with crackers.

Serving tips:

• You can also serve this dip with crostinis and top with smoked salmon/salami.
• Try making small pancakes and top them with this dip and smoked salmon and a little bit of herbs. Serve it as an entree at your dinner party. Im sure your guests will be impressed.
  
  

The last recipe that I'd like to share today is the sweet and spicy asian style meatballs. Well the thing with my cooking is I often don't measure everything exactly. I go by feeling. Or Malaysians/Indonesians like to call it "agak agak". Which means you just put the estimate amount that you think will make the dish tastes good.

People have different threshold for taste and tastebuds anyway that my idea of sweet might not be sweet enough for another person. So the measurements for the sauces in my recipes are according to how I like it, you can always adjust the seasoning based on how you like it yourself.

Sweet and Spicy Asian Style Meatballs

Ingredients:

• 1kg minced pork
• 1/2 cup chopped spring onion
• 1/2 cup chopped coriander
• 1 cm knob ginger, chopped finely
• 1 tablespoon tapioca starch
• 1 small can of water chestnuts, finely diced

Sauce mixture:

• 5 tablespoons tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon sweet chilli sauce ( I used Lingham sweet chilli sauce)
• 1 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon chinese wine
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar ( you can use lemon/lime juice instead of vinegar if you want)
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with water ( to thicken at the end)

Method:

1. Mix all the ingredients for the meatballs and form into small balls around 2cm diameter
2. Place the meatballs on baking tray lined with baking paper
3. Bake in oven for 20-25mins, 200 degrees celcius until cooked through. Set aside.
4. Mix all the ingredients for the sauce except the cornstarch/water mixture
5. Heat up a frying pan, put the sauce mixture into the frying pan
6. Once heated through, put in the cooked meatballs
7. Thicken the sauce with the cornstarch mixture to coat the meatballs thoroughly
8. Adjust seasonings according to your liking. You can add more sugar/vinegar if it's not sweet/sour enough.

Tips:

• You can serve this with rice as well.
  

Well that's it for now I suppose. Do leave any comments/questions if anything is not clear. If you want any of the other recipes, just leave your email address with your comment and I will email it to you or maybe write up another post for it.

Have a great new year celebration. Happy New Year everyone!!