Peppered Meat

Ingredients:

500g of beef, cut into cubes

½ red bell pepper

½ green bell pepper

½ medium onion, thinly slice half of this 

1 Knorr cube

1 tsp of thyme

½ tsp of curry powder

½ tsp of coriander powder

1 tbs of crushed chili

3 tbs of oil

salt to taste

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400 oF.

In a bowl mix the beef, Knorr, thyme and curry and one table spoon of oil thoroughly so that the meat is well coated with the spices. Spread the spiced meat on a baking tray in a single layer and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until brown.

In the meantime, coarsely blend the bell peppers and 1/4 onion. The mixture shouldn't be smooth, you are after a grainy mixture. Heat the remaining oil in a medium pan and the fry the mixture with coriander powder until all the liquid has dried up. Add the spiced meat and mix to so that the meat is well coated with the sauce. Take it off the heat, add the sliced onion and serve.

The Plantain Chronicles!

I have always loved plantains but the current love I have for them has taken me by surprise. The past few days, I have found myself in the kitchen in the middle of the night creating recipes using plantains as the main ingredients. I blame 9jafoodie! I have been trying recreate her plantain chips recipe but something always went wrong. I can't manage to find unripe plantain in Doha. And when I do get one that in reasonably close, I can't find a way to cut them so thin. I am rubbish with the mandolin. So I decided to make plantain chips my own way.

I have developed two recipes with the same ingredients, I must admit that one of them happened by mistake! 

Plantain Chips and Puffs

Ingredients:

½ ripe plantain, small cubes
1  tbs plain flour
3 tbs dry fine breadcrumbs
½ tsp chili powder
a pitch of salt
vegetable oil fir frying

Directions:

using a hand blender, blend the plantain in a bowl until smooth. Add all the other ingredients and combine well, it the dough is too wet you can add more bread crumbs. You want to be able to roll the dough out without sticking to the pin. Divide the dough into two, one for plantain chips and the other half for plantain puffs. 

using a rolling pin, flatten half of the dough until its about as thick as a 2 pence coin and the other half should be flattened until it's about thick as 1 ½ of a 2 pence coin. Heat the oil in a medium pan and fry the chips and puffs for about 3 mins or until golden brown.

Serve with pepper sauce.

A Hungry Man...

What is it they say about hungry people again? 

A meal in my home is never a simple thing. Simple rice and stew could take longer than usual because once I enter the kitchen my brain starts to wonder what else I could do to make this simple dish extraordinary. This afternoon though was the wrongest time for me to experiment because AF was hungry. I mean H-U-N-G-R-Y!

I opened the fridge to get out the stew and check if there was any cooked rice left. That's when I noticed the very ripe plantains. I knew that if I didn't cook them then they will end up in the bin. That wasn't going to happen as I had to travel very far to buy them. I thought of the fuel I used up during that journey, ah!

However what  I was planning to do was serious risky business as I had a very hungry man waiting. I quickly put the rice to boil and set out to prepare something with the plantain. I wasn't going to fry them as they had gone past that stage. I suddenly remembered some food porn I had seen on Kitchen Butterfly's instagram page. It inspired me to create my own. She used a ricer to mash up the plantain. I didn't have one of those so I quickly chopped the plantains and as I was adding the other ingredients, I remembered that a cheese grater, the type you insert the cheese in a compartment and rotate the wheel against the actual grater. This would work perfectly.

By the time I had mixed the dough, Af had come into the kitchen twice to ask if I went to the farm to get the rice. I heard him pacing up and down the living room and at one point I heard screams. I ran to the living room to find out what was going on only for me discover he had lost in some game he was playing on his iPad. I knew then I was playing with fire. I quickly served him the rice and stew without the plantain meal, he can have that as a savoury dessert!

Plantain Stuffed Balls

Ingredients:

2 very ripe Plantains

1 tbs crushed chill

2 tbs honey roasted almonds

1 knorr Cube

5 tbs of plain flour

3 tbs of fine breadcrumbs

1 cup of medium sized prawns

Method:

mash the plantain until there are no lumps and mix in the chill, almonds and knorr. Add the flour and breadcrumbs and Combine thoroughly. What you want in a thick dough that would hold so you may need to add more flour. Flatten a table spoon of plantain dough in your palm, place one prawn in the centre and fold into a ball. Do this until you run out of dough. Deep fry them until they are golden brown and crunchy.