Spring onion 'relish' for Com Tam

One of my favourite dishes in Vietnamese cuisine is com tam (marinaded pork chops with broken rice served with fish sauce). Vegetables accompanying the dish include sliced tomato, cucumber and lettuce. 

Spring onion 'relish', let's call it, is probably one of the simplest condiments you may add to the dish to give it that extra flavour. Recipe variations may involve soy sauce or garlic, but I could never make it like they do in the Vietnamese restaurants. Until one day, when I watched my aunt make the relish..

Here's the recipe:

1 bunch of spring onion (about 20 stalks)

1 1/2 teaspoons of salt

1/2 cup of cooking oil (I used canola)

Method:

Wash and dry the spring onion thoroughly. Chop into 1cm pieces. Add the salt to the chopped spring onion in a large glass/ceramic bowl (do NOT use plastic as we will be dealing with hot oil) and mix through. 

Heat the cooking oil in a pot until hot. Pour it into the spring onion mixture (beware oil splashing if the spring onion is not fully dried!). Stir and let it cool down for a few minutes before serving. 

Mmm.. here's the thinly sliced tomato and cucumbers

Broken rice (commonly found in Asian supermarkets), marinaded pork chops and eggs fried sunny side up served with vegetables and the spring onion relish make for an appetising dinner. Oh - and don't forget the fish sauce (more on that later).

Enjoy!

Bakerella

Durian Icecream

Along with baking desserts, I love making and eating icecream. One of my favourite icecream flavours is durian. It was mighty delightful to find a bowl full of durian flesh in the fridge - mm! 

The recipe I used: 
Durian Icecream Recipe

To cater for my family (well, ahem - me) I doubled the ingredients and added extra durian  flesh on the side whilst the durian mixture was being churned by my icecream maker. 

First off, I blended the milk and durian. In a pot, I whisked the egg yolks and sugar together. I lowered the amount of sugar by 10g as I was afraid the durian mixture would be too sweet. The mixture turned out to be a bit more sweeter than my liking, having already subtracted 10g of sugar from the recipe. I guess this depends highly on  the durian itself. The safest bet is to add about  60g of the required 90g of sugar first. 

I added the durian milk mixture to the egg yolk mixture in the pot. The stove was put on medium heat, and the durian mixture heated and whisked constantly until the sugar dissolved. To avoid the mixture burning or cooking unevenly, use the double boiler method as mentioned in the recipe as it is a safer way of melting the sugar. I'm a bit ashamed of how lazy I was to use the double boiler method, but the mixture turned out fine! As long as you keep whisking :D. I put the mixture back in the blender (this wasn't necessary though).

In the next step I whipped the thickened cream until stiff.

 Next, I added the durian mixture to the whipped cream.

Fold the mixture until consistent. 

Although the recipe did not call for an icecream machine, I churned the mixture in the machine for a good 30 minutes.

If you had durian left over, add it to your final durian mixture.

Spoonful by spoonful..

I poured the mixture into a plastic icecream container overnight. The next morning.. 

If you find that your mixture is still a bit icy, just blend the mixture again, and enjoy. :)

Bakerella

welcome

Welcome to my food blog, tried&tested. Here I will be trying and testing recipes from all over the place - books, magazines, websites and other food blogs. 

Thanks,

Bakerella