CookingAndRecipeTips.com

Silverbeet is a lovely leafy green vegetable that contains lots of iron, folate, vitamin A and vitamin C. It can be cooked or eaten raw.  Sometimes it can be difficult to get kids to eat it so I like to cook it with a few things added to give it a little more flavour. When cooked, silverbeet reduces quite a bit.

Here are some suggestions on different things you can do with silverbeet. Of course, you don’t have to do exactly as I suggest. Use your imagination and whatever you happen to have to hand.

Wash and roughly chop the silverbeet.

Then chop and lightly fry some onion and/or garlic in a large fryingpan . Add the chopped silverbeet and fry over moderate heat stirring occasionally. I like to cover it initially so that the steam helps to cook the upper layers of the silverbeet to get it to reduce in size a bit quicker. Otherwise it is difficult to stir without it falling out of the frying pan.

I usually add a sprinkle of salt as well.

Sometimes I do it with egg. Fry the chopped silverbeet (with or without the onion) until it has mostly reduced in size and most of the liquid has evaporated. Lightly beat one or two eggs. Clear a little room in the centre of the frying pan  and add the egg. Allow the egg to cook awhile and then stir it into the silverbeet.

If you have mushrooms, you can chop these and cook them with the silverbeet to give a nice flavour and a variation in texture.

Leftover silverbeet can be added to other dishes. I have used it in fritters, stir fries, polenta, stews etc.

And if your kids watch Popeye, you can tell them that silverbeet is related to spinach and that might encourage them to eat it!

This is suitable for BBQs and tastes great.

Honeyed Chicken

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts
pepper
¹/₄ cup chablis (or other dry white wine)
2 tsp french mustard
4 Tbsp honey

Method:

1. Cut each chicken breast into 4
2. Season chicken breasts with pepper.
3. Gently add chablis to mustard and mix until smooth.
4. Add honey and blend well.
5. Place chicken breasts on greased foil on the barbeque, cook over medium heat. Brush with honey mixture during cooking.
6. Cook 12-15 minutes or until cooked, turning frequently and brushing with honey mixture.

Tips:

You may find it easier to combine the honey if it has been warmed first.

Chicken and corn go together very well whether as a BBQ chicken with salad, corn, pineapple and beetroot, or as a soup such as described here.

Chicken And Corn Soup

Ingredients:

1 kg chicken pieces or 1 small chicken
1 large onion
8 cups water
2 cups hock (or any dry white wine)
2 tsp salt
¹/₄ tsp saffron
1 large can (440 g) whole corn kernels
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 egg yolks
150 mls cream
chopped parsley
bread croutons

Method:

1. Simmer the chicken pieces and onion in water, hock, salt and saffron for 1 hour.
2. Remove chicken, allow to cool then shred meat from the bones.
3. Remove onion from stock.
4. Replace meat in the stock and add drained corn kernels. Simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Remove excess fat and season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Lightly beat egg yolks and add cream. Stir a little of the soup into the beaten egg yolks and cream, then stir back into the soup.
7. Reheat but do not boil.
8. Serve garnished with parsley and bread croutons.

Serves: 10

Preparation time: around 1 ¹/₂ hours

Tips

If you do not have 90 minutes to prepare this, you can cheat a little by buying a barbecued chicken and using chicken stock. Add the stock powder to the water and hock etc and bring to the boil. Strip the meat off the chicken and add it to the stock.

Unless there is a real reason to use just yolks or whites I tend to use the whole egg. Otherwise I end up with a collection of whites or yolks that gets thrown out a few weeks later when they are discovered at the back of the fridge. So, although this recipe calls for egg yolks, I use the whole egg. The saffron already gives it the nice rich yellow colour.

Variations

You can also use crab meat for this recipe. You can use chicken stock and then add the crab meat at the simmering stage.

There are many variations in spring roll recipes. This one originates from Vietnam and makes truly excellent spring rolls. The spring roll shells or pastry sheets used in this recipe are quite large and so are cut into quarters.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

Ingredients:

1 pkt spring roll shells – quartered

Filling:
1 kg finely minced lean pork
3 cloves garlic – finely minced (or crushed)
250 g carrot – grated
8 dried mushrooms – soak and sliced finely
2 medium onions -  finely minced
1 cup soaked mung bean vermicelli
2 ¹/₂ Tbsp sugar
1 ¹/₂ tsp salt
¹/₂ tsp pepper
oil for deep frying
a little plain flour and water made into a paste

Sauce

6 Tbsp Fish sauce
2 Tbsp sugar
juice of 2 lemons
6 Tbsp water
3 cloves garlic – finely minced
2 red chillies – finely chopped
1 small carrot – cut into fine julienne strips

Method:

1. Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water until soft then drain and slice finely.
2. Mix all of the sauce ingredients together in a bowl until sugar is completely dissolved and let stand for around 30 minutes.
3. While the sauce is standing, mix all filling ingredients together in another bowl.
4. Take approximately 1 tablespoon of mixture and roll up in shell.
5. Seal the edges with the paste made from water and flour
6. Deep fry in hot oil until golden brown (around  7 minutes).
7. Serve with the sauce as a dip

Variations

If you don’t have mung bean vermicelli, you can substitute rice vermicelli.

There are many recipes for  rissoles but this is one of the tastiest I’ve found. I think that is possibly because the onion is cooked before it is added to the rissole mixture.  It is a fairly healthy meal since the rissoles include lots of veges so it’s one way to get the kids to eat veges.

Rissoles

Ingredients:

500g mince
2 onions, diced
1 cup grated carrots
2 cups shallots cut into small pieces
1 cup diced capsicum
2 Tbsp parsley finely chopped
6 slices bread broken into small pieces
2 eggs beaten
1/3 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
oil for frying (not canola)

Method:

1. Fry chopped onion till translucent.
2. Combine bread, eggs and milk in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly. You can use your (clean) hands to mix everything and ensure it is at a good consistency.
4. Shape into rissoles and fry.