Day off means Domus gets gourmet affair for Friday night fodder.

One of our favorite sidies is this Green Bean Salad With Sesame Dressing. The reason we love it so much is because it has tahini in it. Mmm. It's meant to have asparagus in it too but we didn't have any handy and given the cleaning lady hasn't been in the hood for two weeks, the toilet didn't need additional offensive smells thrown into the mix, so we went without.

To make it blanch 250g green beans and 2 bunches of asparagus and throw them onto a lovely red plate. It's important to have contrast. It tastes better. Then stir together 2 tbs of soy sauce, 1/4 cup tahini, 1 tbsp of caster sugar, 1 tbsp of rice vinegar, 1 tbsp of finely grated ginger and 1 tbsp of water. Drizzle it over the greens and then top with 2 thinly sliced Asian eschalots. Boom. Fabulous side dish.

Then to go with this, i picked out a dead easy Asian-Style Fish Bakes in a Bana Leaf from the June 2010 delicious mag.Couldn't be assed hunting down the banana leaf so we wrapped it in baking paper and foil instead. Not as easy on the eye, but whatever. The recipe is not on the website yet and i can't be fagged tying it all out so i'll update this post when i can give you a link. I'll give you the ingredients. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out how to smack it all together. We always have quarter cups of different home made curry pastes in the freezer so we don't have to drag out the cook time by making paste as well, or worse yet, need to buy ready-made shit. Ew.

Serves 2

• 1 large fresh banana leaf

• 800g whole snapper cleaned (get the fish man to do this. Cleaning/scaling a fish sucks balls)

• 1 tbs Thai red curry

• 2 tbs coconut cream

• 2 tbs finely shredded ginger

• 8 kaffir lime leaves thinly shredded

• 2 tbs coriander springs

• 1 long red chilli sliced on angle

• 2 cups steamed rice to serve

* Coriander and chilli get sprinkled over the fish once it comes out of the oven.

Another freaking good looking/tasting meal AND i have picked up a new trick to get rid of the fishy smell from my oven. 2 drops of vanilla essence in half a cup of water and put it in the oven for an hour at about 150. It's toilet spray for the oven.

Greens.

We made a bean and asparagus salad with Tahini dressing. I threw is some chick peas because i was told vegetarians require fiber or they'll keel over and die. Unfortunately my camera died when i went to take a photo of the final ensemble. This is evidence that vegetarianism is no good for people (sorry Benny). Or inanimate objects. 

Lunch rocked.

Menu selection was tough. Dad doesn't eat seafood or pig or spices so all options either had to be dad-friendly or easy to separate out the bad bits. We decided to return to the open Swedish burger from last week's trial - huge success. Dad didn't even notice the ground caraway seeds. Think they were masked by Domus's beet-root mandolin skillfulness. Then we did the opposite colour thing with the tahini beans and asparagus and threw in a splash of summer with watermelon, haloumi, pomegranate, prawn and burghul salad. Each dish had completely unique flavors and was devoured in second and third rounds. No doubt everyone is now suffering with spary-wee and crimson poo.  Dessert was Autumn salad of pomegranate, pear and fig in rhubarb syrup. (see previous post for failed attempts at the rhubarb) with King Island vanilla yogurt. Mmmm, Food coma to the max.    

 

Green bean and asparagus recipe:
• green bean and asparagus salad with sesame dressing • 2 bunches asparagus 

• 250g green beans

• 1/4 cup Asian sesame paste or Tahini

• 2 tbs soy sauce

• 1 tbsp caster sugar

• 1 tbs rice wine vinegar'1 tsp finely grated ginger

• 2 red Asian eschalots thinly sliced

Blanch veg in boiling saulted water for 2-3 mins, then rinse with cold water. Stir paste, sauce, sugar, vinegar, ginger and 1 tbs water in a bowl to dissolve sugar. Drizzle greens with dressing and top with eschalots. I also put fried eschalots on top as well.

Asparagus wee, you're killing me.

Within a half-hour of asparagus consumption, some people notice their urine has acquired a very pungent odor, often compared to rotting cabbage,ammonia or rotten eggs.  Thanks wisegeek.com

Bill's burghul fluffed up my tabouli

The standard supermarket burghul reminds me of dandruff. It's dry and flakey and looks like it needs a vitamin booster. Quinoa is our usual grain of choice but when Don's dad sent us a burghul care package, our picnic lunches changed for the better.