Over Christmas, I decided to splurge and buy myself a cookbook highly recommended by the New York Times. I generally do not buy cookbooks. However, ‘The Korean Vegan Cookbook’ by Joanne Lee Molinaro looked interesting. I knew there would be recipes using soy products, fermentation and grains which I am not interested in but I thought I might learn about new foods and methods of cooking. After I glean all its lessons, I intend to pass it on.
I noticed a few interesting additions to soup stock I eagerly wanted to try. In order to do so, I needed to find a few new ingredients, namely seaweeds commonly used in Korean cooking and a few other ingredients I normally have but ran out of. Yesterday, while it rained, I went to Chinatown and perused the aisles of a large supermarket that stocks loads of Asian foods. I found large bags of dried shitake mushrooms at a fraction of the price I usually pay, kelp and kombu seaweeds, sweet potato vermicelli noodles and dried anchovies known in Malaysia as ‘ikan bilis.’
This morning, as the rain continued, I prepared Homemade Vegetable Soup Stock with a few notable additions. I started by soaking about 6 large, dried shitake mushrooms for a couple of hours. (Next time, I will soak them overnight and add the water and mushrooms to the stock). Then I added all my vegetable cut offs with about 5 large cabbage leaves, chopped and 5 cloves of garlic, unpeeled and 1 tbs black pepper corns. As usual, I brought the stock to a boil and simmered covered for an hour. Then I added a sheet of kelp seaweed, torn in to several pieces and continued to simmer for another 45 minutes. I turned off the heat and let the stock sit until it was room temperature before sifting out the vegetables. I like to make my stock without any salt or fats so that it is as versatile as possible. The shitake mushrooms, kelp and peppercorns added depth and robustness to the broth. Thank you Joanne!
Living in Malaysia for many years changed my food preferences. I left the country enjoying fish for the first time. I particularly loved the crunchy, fried anchovies (ikan bilis) served on every plate of nasi lemak, a Malay dish consisting of rice, crispy ikan bilis, sambal (chilli paste), a hard boiled egg, slices of cucumber and fried peanuts. Traditionally Malays eat it for breakfast. Recently, I have bought dried anchovies and fried them in oil until they were crunchy. Consciously trying to reduce the fat I cook with, I realised I could bake them on a low heat without any oil and still achieve a mighty crunch! That works a treat!
To make Crispy Dried Anchovies I set the oven at 100 c, rinsed 200 grams of dried anchovies until the water ran clean, drained and lay them evenly out on a baking sheet. I cooked them for about an hour checking every 15 to 30 minutes, tossing them and checking to make sure they were not getting brown too quickly. I took them out of the oven, cooled to room temperature and stored them in an airtight container in my cupboard. Crispy Dried Anchovies are delicious to snack on, to serve as a side for veggies, ‘rice’ or to garnish a soup! A little goes a long way and elevates whatever it adorns!