home cooked perth noms

The other thing I do when I'm in Perth is eat things that people cook especially for me.



I don't know how to describe my levels of excitement when these Welsh cakes appeared in front of me! I went for afternoon tea with the Ex-Laws, and Nan went to experimental lengths to make me vegan Welsh cakes, and apparently they were just as they should be! Certainly I found them just as they should be (delicious), and had to fend off non-vegan interlopers who could have had their pick of the raspberry slice she'd brought, or the cupcakes already there, and instead tried to eat all my Welsh cakes. They were SUPER DELICIOUS, I will have more please!



On my first night at my parents' house I was way too tired (after five days in the con hotel with (surprise!) not a lot of sleep) to actually go out for dinner, so I requested my mother make CKT for dinner. Which she did! I love it when my mum makes CKT, she makes a portion for every person because everyone wants it slightly different. But this means sometimes she forgets things from batch to batch: in my case, chilli.



On my last night staying with my parents, we decided to cook some curries and things. Featured here are a vegetable curry (cooked by mum); a chana masala (cooked by me); and some gailan and mushrooms. OH YEAH this is one of my favourite meal sets.

Thanks, Perth! As always you were delicious.

curries + recipe by my mum

So I was staying with my parents! And my mum loves to cook for me. SO SHE DID. Not heaps, because I was only in town for almost but not quite five days, but every cooking was a delight.

Because we're super Malaysian, it was mostly curry. And that's totally okay, because my mum makes some really great curries.



On Saturday night she cooked a pumpkin curry and a mixed-vegetable curry. OH YEAH.

On Tuesday, I was concerned that maybe I would be eating bread all day (toast, then sandwiches, then more sandwiches on the plane), so my mum cooked me a delicious eggplant curry for lunch.



There's something about a good eggplant curry that's just really awesome. Done well, the eggplant falls apart and is all squishy and kind of fatty, and it soaks up all the flavours and it's delicious. And my mum does a good eggplant curry. Which I am going to attempt to share with you! I say "attempt" because I sort of kept looking over to see what mum was doing, but my mum very rarely actually measures things out so it's all a bit of guesswork. Just go with what works best!



eggplant + mixed vegetable curry

Slice a couple of Lebanese eggplants lengthwise into strips. They don't have to be super thin. In a little bit of oil, fry these until they colour, then set aside. You'll add these in again at the end.

Pound together two large shallots and three large red chillis, and in the remaining oil, start to fry this. As it becomes fragrant, add some water and two lengths of lemongrass. After five to ten minutes, add two diced potatoes, one diced carrot, and two diced tomatoes, as well as some fresh beans (if you're using them - or add them in ten minutes if you're using frozen). At this point, also add a bay leaf and some fresh lime kaffir leaves. Add some more water, and some garam masala (you will need to make your own if it needs to be gf), and leave to boil, lid on.

My mum has a lime kaffir tree, and at this point I'm pretty sure I stared at it, longingly.

After twenty or thirty minutes, the vegies should have softened. Add one small can of coconut milk, and the eggplants. Leave to simmer, lid off, for another ten to fifteen minutes.

Serve and eat.

steph's mum's pumpkin curry

Since I've moved away from my mum, I've been trying to make a more concerted effort to cook the things she used to cook for me, that I never bothered learning to cook. This pumpkin curry only entered her repertoire after we went vegan, but it quickly became a favourite so I was inspired to try cooking it recently.



steph's mum's pumpkin curry

ingredients
500g/halfish a small butternut pumpkin (cubed, skin off)
2 shallots
1 piece ginger
1 short length lemongrass
2 red chillies
2 garlic cloves
half tsp garam masala
half teaspoon mustard seeds
5 cardamom pods
4 or 5 vietnamese mint leaves (daun kesom) or curry leaves
cup of veggie stock

method
Pound the red shallots, ginger, lemongrass, red chillies and garlic
together. Then add garam marsala, mustard seeds, cardamom pods and
Vietnamese mint or curry leaves. In a small amount of peanut oil, fry this paste until fragrant. Add in the pumpkin, mix through, then add the veggie stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer on medium for about half an hour, until the pumpkin is soft, almost starting to go to mush. Check the curry occasionally, you may need to add a little bit (only a little!) more liquid.

This makes a good dish with something else. Serve warm.

sunday night curry with my parents

"I'm getting much more adventurous with vegetarian cooking," my mum said, which was news to me, because she's already pretty fantastic with her vegetarian cooking. This bodes well for me and D, especially as we are now at T-19 sleeps until the big feast and mahjong party on the eve of Chinese New Year.



Wandered out to my parents' house on Sunday afternoon, stopping for an icecream at the Junction Icecreamery on the way. I got passionfruit soya and chocolate soya, which is always the best. It's nice to be living that little bit closer to my parents, but I did need to stop for the snack because it's still a forty minute drive!

Mum as always cooked a lot of great dishes, all of which were vegan! The pumpkin curry is one of my favourites, sometimes quite spicy and sometimes just flavoursome without a heavy bite, usually heavy with potato and snake beans. The gai-lan and mushroom dish featured three sorts of mushroom. The roti was the usual delicious flakiness. Finally, there was a moderately spicy eggplant curry, very creamy in texture and super tasty. Dessert was a fruit salad of melons, stonefruit and grapes, with an assortment of icecream from the Junction.

Then I had to do the dishes, but it was worth it.

homemade birthday food

It was my birthday recently.



On Friday D’s mum tried some new things, a green split pea soup and a kumara peanut coconut thing. I saw her recipe books lying around but I forgot to note down which ones they were, so I can’t tell you where these were from. The peanut thing was really tasty. This doesn't mean that the soup wasn't tasty also (I know that she will read this and fret)! But the peanut thing was the highlight.



On Sunday my mum cooked a whole lot of my favourite food, a sweet pumpkin curry, a chunky dahl (filled with vegetables) and pad thai. Not pictured: delicious, flaky roti. For dessert we had a fruit salad filled with my favourite fruits, watermelon, papaya, banana, lychee, orange, mangosteen. Not exactly fruits that are in season, but fruits I love a lot. If only there was also rambutan! We also had some lime sorbet and some mango sorbet from a local store. The lime had this delightful, tart taste, I really liked it.



Then we played mahjong, and I felt really lucky to be fed all this food and then able to play my favourite game (which is played at birthdays, weddings, etc, so appropriate to the day).