Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton

Spring is here. (What, no exclamation mark, you say? I thought I might spare you one this time.) I hope you all had a lovely long Easter weekend. I am having quite a busy few weeks and it’s only going to get worse, but it’s all been good. Yesterday was the best day. We had lunch with my family (I made stew, which is sort of a tradition in my house, and took it over to my parents’ place.) Then we drove to Ħad-Dingli for a walk along the cliffs, and on our way back home stopped over to the wonderful Diar il-Bniet for a great coffee and something sweet. I took some snapshots with my mobile – no camera this time unfortunately – and will be tweeting some of them on Twitter later on.

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Mock Pizza with Spring Onions and Eggs

I don’t know whether I’m going to give Mr. Daniel Young a fit if/when he reads this! Let me start by apologizing profusely if I did, but this mock of a pizza is something I quickly whip up when I’m either in a hurry or when I have run errands all morning and just want to chill out when I return home. Better than grabbing some greasy concoction from anywhere I say. These days I admit I would make soup or the traditional Maltese minestra (a richer version of the Italian minestrone) which fills me up until dinner time, as long as I have made it beforehand. When I slack on the prep, or when only pizza will do – without the time it takes to make a decent dough, I make this or anything similar. Before I go on, as I very often do I have recently posted an updated version of my proper pizza recipe here, so give it a go if you have some time to spare today.

Pizza

During the past few weeks I made quite a number of pizzas, reason being I’m still testing out my oven. I didn’t want to bake before making sure I wasn’t about to burn anything. A couple of friends whom I visited last Saturday are still waiting for a lemon drizzle cake. And this morning, when I actually had some time on my hands, I ran out of sugar, so the cake just has to wait. My mum came over for a short visit though and we made some pizzas for lunch.

Yogurt with Cucumber, Garlic and Dill

So I promised you I would be back in September. A little later than I had planned originally before J and I moved back to Malta, but better late-ish than never. I am so happy to be back with my blog. I missed writing and I missed cooking. I still miss it to a certain degree to be honest, because only yesterday we managed to set the kitchen up properly, so until then meals were modest and simple. Not that I regret that. The produce here is generally very good and the heat doesn’t make me that enthusiastic to be in front of the stove! I am still getting used to the markets and shops, and the best places to buy ingredients, so I’m finding planning meals to be one of the many little challenges since the big move. I won’t bore you with the details. All I can say is this: it was stressful and I can almost promise myself not to do it again. Ever. Almost. I cannot count how many times we did that and it becomes tougher every single time. Change can be a good thing though.

Recipe: Beijing Rice

This is one of the simplest recipes you can imagine. It’s tasty, salty (my weakness in food; don’t let my sweet tooth fool you) and made with pantry ingredients. I just love this stuff. I saw this first on Chinese Food Made Easy but it was J who suggested we try it after we both arrived home one evening after a very tiring day.

I bought the book primarily because I wanted to learn how to cook Chinese food, or a version of it, at home, without resorting to unnecessary trips to the takeaway. The good thing is that we don’t do that often, but once in a blue moon I do get that annoying urge for something very salty. Instead of rushing out to get food containing who-knows-how-many-extra-grams of salt, which quite frankly I don’t need and I would guess other unmentionable things, J and I opt for this either alone or as a side. It definitely hits the spot.

Serves 3 to 4 as a snack or side dish.

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or rapeseed oil
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup thai rice, cooked
• 3 large ripe tomatoes, sliced
• 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• pinch of pepper
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• a sprinkle of fresh coriander

Heat up a wok, or a non-stick pan over very high heat and add the vegetable oil into the pan. (You must work quickly but carefully from here on, so take a deep breath and go for it.) Add the beaten eggs and scramble them for a couple of minutes.

Next add the rice and stir well to break it up. Add the tomatoes and stir-fry everything for a few more minutes. Everything is practically already cooked so you don’t really need more than five minutes I would say.

Pour in the soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and spring onions. Give the rice another good mix and serve immediately. Sprinkle some coriander on top of each serving.

Enjoy!

Rob x

(Recipe adapted from Ching-He Huang’s Chinese Food Made Easy, HarperCollins, 2008.)