Unusual Inspiration - Grilled Barramundi with Thai Mango and Cashew Sauce

I read a review of a Thai restaurant that described a mango-ey and cashew-y fish dish. Their description of the dish sounded amazing, and I was intrigued. They called it a name in Thai, that when I googled, yielded zero results. I was a little disappointed, but then set to trying to make something myself, using their flavours. This is by no means what I think their dish would’ve been. This is just a simple sauce topping grilled fish. But the combination of the mango and cashew was definitely a hit with the trademark Thai balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot.

I served this with barramundi, but any firm white fleshed fish would do. Salmon would work ok, too, but I think the barramundi would be better.

Seeing as we are now well and truly at the end of mango season, I used frozen mangoes for this dish. These were still from my tree that I froze when they were in abundance, but you can quite easily by frozen mango cheeks in most supermarkets for a  reasonable price. It’s like a little piece of summer in times when you need the spark.

So here you have a delicious dish, inspired by a restaurant I've never been to, a dish I've never heard of, let alone eaten. Just some words on a screen.

 

 

Grilled Barramundi with Thai Mango and Cashew Sauce

2 barramundi fillets

2 mangoes
¾ cup roasted, unsalted cashews
1 bunch coriander and stems
1 thumb-size piece of ginger, peeled and grated
2 long green chilis, minced
2 tbsp fish sauce
Juice of 3 limes

Pat fillets dry, then season and sprinkle with zest of one lime. Set aside.

Roughly chop the cashews either with your knife or a processor. Vary the pieces so you get some bigger chunks, and some is very finely chopped. Cube the mangoes, add to a small saucepan with the cashews, ginger, chilis and coriander stems. Cover, then simmer over a medium-low heat until the mangoes start breaking up 5-10 minutes.

Add the fish sauce and lime juice and if needed, a splash of water to loosen the mixture to a more sauce-like consistency. Stir well, then check for seasoning. If your mangoes aren’t particularly sweet, you may need a teaspoon or so of raw sugar to get the right balance. Leave simmering over a very low heat while you cook the fish.

Heat some grapeseed oil in a frypan of medium-high heat. When the oil is nice and hot (but not quite smoking) place the barramundi skin side down and cook for 2 minutes. Flip over and cook for a further 2 minutes or until almost cooked the whole way through.

Serve the fish topped with the mango cashew sauce, with a salad and/or steamed rice on the side

 

Work Lunches - Smokey Mango Barley Salad

Not working in the CBD means my food options are extremely limited unless I take a drive to buy something. This is both a blessing and a curse. I see some Instagram feeds of the amazing food options in the city and it makes me sad that I have to really put in the effort to go into the city for them. But it means I have a better control over the food I do eat, making me eat healthier and more cheaply. So it has it’s plusses too.

To help me be prepared for the next day’s lunch, whenever I have the oven on for dinner, I’ll roast a few extra veges. Likewise, whenever I cook some grains, I will cook extra to use in lunches. This is one of my favourite take-to-work lunches. The best part of it is the combination of textures. Silky roast eggplant, soft sweet potato, chewy barley and crunchy bean sprouts all smoky and sweet and savoury and delicious. It is best served at room temperature, rather than cold. I made this batch and it lasted in the fridge for 3 days of work lunches.

Smokey Mango, Sweet Potato and Eggplant Barley Salad

1 small sweet potato
1 small eggplant
Generous splash of olive oil
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp chipotle Tabasco
1 cup cooked pearl barley
Handful basil leaves, torn
1/2 cup mixed bean sprouts (mung bean, adzuki bean, blue pea and lentil is the mix I use)
1/2 mango
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to season

Dice the sweet potato and eggplant make the sweet potato dice a bit smaller than the eggplant dice so it cooks evenly. Put in a bowl and pour over the olive oil, maple syrup and Chipotle Tabasco sauce. Stir well to coat each piece. Roast for 30-45 minutes until soft. Set aside to cool.

Roughly chop the mango, add a tablespoon of butter and season. Put in a small saucepan and bring to a gentle boil over medium heat and simmer for 5 minutes or until the mango has broken down. Stir well with a fork to help break it down, or puree if you can be bothered.

Combine barley, sweet potato, eggplant and stir through the mango sauce. Gently fold through the bean sprouts and basil leaves. Eat! Or take to work and eat!

Clinging on to the Heat - Chili and Barley Stuffed Pork Rolls with Mango Sauce

A few years back now I received the Readers’ Digest Kitchen Garden Cookbook as a Christmas present. It’s quite a fun little cookbook, divided into sections by food plants that grow easily in backyard gardens in Australia. It gives you a rundown of when to plant, what climate it works best on and then a handful of recipes that use that plant. One of my favourite recipes from that book is chilli stuffed pork fillets with raita. This is an adaptation of that recipe, using a mango sauce to provide a sweet contrast to the heat of the chillis, rather than the cooling raita. I also added barley to the stuffing to make it a more filling meal, rather than make a separate side dish.

 

I used two jalapenos and didn’t remove the seeds, as mine weren’t particularly hot peppers. My bush (tree? Shrub?) provides really inconsistent heat in each peppers, so I have to taste them individually before adding to a recipe! Feel free to take the seeds out depending on your own heat tolerance.

I used my own mangoes, but feel free to use frozen mango cheeks, given we're not in the right season anymore.
 

Chili and Barley Stuffed Pork

200g pork fillet

¼ cup cooked pearl barley

2 jalapenos, finely diced

1 cup finely chopped coriander, basil and mint.

Salt and pepper to season.

1 tbsp olive oil.

Mango Sauce

2 mangoes, diced.

2 tbsp dark rum

1 tbsp butter

½ tsp salt

 

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the mangoes, rum and salt. Mix well, turn the heat up to bring to the boil, then lower and leave to simmer while you make the rest of the meal. Stirring here and there to make sure it’s not sticking to the bottom.

Slice your pork fillet into two, lengthwise, to make two thinner fillets. Cut each of those into 3 pieces, giving 4 rectangles. Season on both sides.

 

In a small bowl, mix the barley, jalapenos, and herbs. Place a tablespoon or so on each piece of pork and roll up tightly. Pin together with a toothpick.

Heat the olive oil in a frypan to medium-high heat. Carefully place  the pork rolls into the frypan and cook for a few minutes on each side, until nicely browned. You’ll need to rotate around 4 times to brown the entire roll.

 

Serve with the mango sauce and a side salad

Easy Meals - Roast Mushroom & Mangoes

Having bucketfuls of fresh mangoes has made me use them in ways I wouldn’t ordinarily, if I had to pay for them individually. This was one of those ways that is a bit different, but delicious. I bought a bag of mushrooms from The Nanna Shop with the intention of making a mushroom sauce for some roast lamb. I kept the same basic principle that I was going to – roast with some rosemary and garlic, but added chilli and mangoes for a fresher kick.
 The result was delicious. It lightened up the meal on a day when it was cool enough to serve the roast lamb with salad instead of vegetables. I had the leftovers on toast the next morning, which was also delicious. But it’s as simple as simple could be. Just chuck everything in a roasting pan, throw it in the oven and grab it out in half an hour. To make it even easier, I processed all the veges to save on chopping. Give it a go while there's still the last mangoes of summer floating around the shops.

Roast Mushroom & Mangoes
2 mangoes
500g mushrooms
2 shallots
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp minced rosemary
2 tbsp butter
¼ cup lamb stock
2 red chillis
Generous black pepper grinding
Big handfuls parsley for serving.

Preheat the oven to 180C
 
Peel and de-seed the mango. Cut into cubes. Peel the shallots and garlic cloves, and put them into the processor. Pulse until finely chopped. Remove garlic and shallot and set aside. Add the mushrooms in batches and pulse until roughly chopped. Finely slice the chillis, mince the rosemary.


Put the mushrooms in a big roasting pan, stir through the mangoes, shallots, cloves, rosemary, lamb stock and chillis. Place the butter on top, seal with foil and place in the oven. 

After 20 minutes, take the foil off, stir, then roast for a further 10 minutes. Stir through chopped parsley.
 
Serve as a sauce with roast meat, or just some crusty fresh bread

Fusion Food - Curried Mango and Black bean Pizzarepa.

Ok, let me preface this post by saying I know this whole thing sounds weird. Even when I was putting this dish together in my mind, I wasn’t 100% sure it was going to work. But it does. The original idea was born out of two things; one, what weird random things are left in the fridge (remedied this weekend gone after a hugely successful visit to the farmer’s markets). And two, Lance making an offhand comment that he thought I would’ve made something a bit more interesting with a few of the mangoes from our tree, like a curry. This was after about a week of mango salsa and tacos. So in my mind I’m picking up and rejecting ingredients and flavours and just the general ‘idea’ of what to cook for dinner. And I came up with this. So a Mexican-Cuban-Indian-Italian pizza. Fusion food at it’s most-fused!

I somehow settled on wanting pizzas. But I didn’t have any pizza bases, or Lebanese breads with which to make them. So I immediately went to making my own. But a lot of recipes for pizza dough are yeast driven, and I didn’t want to wait for it to proof. When I thought of arepas. These are flat breads made out of cornflour the same kind as you use for tortillas. I also remembered the half tin of black beans I had in the fridge leftover from tacos a few nights earlier. Add a little mango, a little curry powder (I went the lazy route and used a pre-made curry powder blend – feel free to mix your own). A little cayenne for an extra kick, then grilled chicken, sliced mushrooms and some cheddar cheese. The black beans I used were actually pre-seasoned frijoles, so in the recipe I’ve just put salt to taste for if you use plain cooked black beans which are so much easier to come across in Perth. And the saltiness also depends on what is in your curry powder, if you use a pre-made mix.

This sauce made more than required for the pizzas.

Arepas
(makes 2 individual size pizzas)

1 cup corn flour (masa lista)
1 cup warm water
¼ tsp salt
oil to fry

Curried Mango and Black Bean Sauce

½ tin black beans

1 mango
3 tbs curry powder
¼ tsp ginger
½ tsp cayenne
¼ tsp turmeric
Salt to taste

Toppings

2 mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 chicken thigh, grilled, then sliced
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
Baby kale leaves, olive oil and lemon juice to serve

Mix all of the arepa ingredients together, knead until a smooth dough forms, the set aside for 15 minutes.

Mash the black beans and mango together in a bowl until completely combined, add the curry powder, extra ginger, cayenne and turmeric then check for seasoning. Salt if needed, or add more cayenne or spice if desired.

Preheat the oven to 180C

Heat a tbsp of oil in a frypan to medium-hot. Divide the arepa dough into two, and roll each into a ball. Place between two sheets of baking paper and roll out to form a disc just under 1cm thick.

Carefully place into the hot pan, cook for 2-3 minutes or until golden on that side. Flip over and sprinkle arepa with black pepper. Cook for a further 3 minutes or until golden.

Slide onto a lined baking tray and repeat for the second arepa.

Spoon and spread the curried mango and black bean sauce, then layer the ingredients and sprinkle cheese on top. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is golden and melted.

Serve topped with baby kale leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and a wedge of lemon for squeezing.

Breakfast of Champions - Coffee and Mango Chia Pudding

You’ll remember I was coffee-soaking oats for breakfast a while back. I still do that. It’s still delicious. You should still do it. (And incidentally, with these colder Autumn mornings, you should cook your oats in coffee). But my feeds were full of chia puddings, and so was my pantry so I thought I would just slightly alter my work breakfast of choice. Our mango tree was amazingly prolific this season. At final count we got 56 (!!) mangoes, so I knew that this would be an ingredient. Mango and coffee match really well even though at first thought they might seem odd together – the smoky bitterness of the coffee complements the sweetness of the mango. The ginger and cinnamon just round out the flavours and create quite a complex flavour profile. I don’t have a lot of sweet foods in my diet – I naturally crave salt – so the sweetness of the ripe mangoes was sweet enough for me. But feel free to add honey or maple syrup to sweeten things up.

I also eat mine with plain greek yoghurt for the same reason, substitute with a sweeter style yoghurt, or even cream or coconut cream for a more decadent breakfast. And finally, you can substitute whatever crunchy add-ons you have. I’m currently addicted to bee pollen. I first had it when I went to Germany around 16 years ago and am so glad it’s fairly readily available here now. I often just sprinkle some on nut butters on fruit toast, or on top of smoothies. Divine

 

Coffee and Mango Chia Pudding
(one serve)

¼ cup chia seeds

1/3 cup cold-brewed coffee
1 mango, finely diced
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ginger
Dollop greek yoghurt to serve
Toasted walnuts, coconut and bee pollen to serve

Mix the chia seeds, ginger and cinnamon (I shake it in a jar). Add the coffee and mango, stir well. Leave to sit at least 15-30 minutes for the chia seeds to swell. Add more coffee if it looks like some of the seeds didn’t turn gel-y. (I usually make this before bed and take it to work in the morning)

Serve with yoghurt drizzled with your crunchy add ons