Sometimes, blissfully ecstatic experiences arise unexpectedly. It’s 40 degrees outside, or so they say and it sure feels like it. Our cheaply – built little house with it’s token gestures to insulation is an unbearable sweat-box by midday. The pool, farcically, is closed due to the New Year’s Public Holiday. Oh, the humanity! The northerly wind is blowing in hot air from the central desert and whipping sand up along the Apollo Bay Main Beach. One of the few places left to retreat is the relatively protected mouth of the Barham River where it flows into the open ocean. The Barham is a perfect Otways River. Flowing down from the rain forest, the water is clean (if not clear) and lovely. Before the river discharges into the Southern Ocean it opens out into a large, still pond at the back of the beach.

Duly we inflate the lilo, slather ourselves in sunscreen and drag ourselves out there. We are by this stage semi-comatose with heat. Dazed, confused and sweating we are concerned the winds are going whip the sand up into a frenzy of exfoliation but by the time we arrive they’ve dropped off and the place is a blissful oasis. The kids are ecstatic. The water is just warm enough to be cooling and comfortable and deep enough to be fun without being dangerous. The frolic. They embody joy. Pete and I take turns to head down to the surf, running across the burning sand to where the wild and immaculate Southern Ocean comes pounding onto the beach. The ocean is always cold here, even in this heat, and the waves are big and the undertow strong at the river mouth. We stand up to our knees watching walls of aqua blue swell up before us, golden sunlight dappling across the crest before they crash down and drench us to our chins in pure white foam.

I am already thinking about dinner and at mid-afternoon we head home. Pete has a projection shift at the local cinema so we’re having a late lunch / early dinner. I dump the wet towels on the porch, strip out of my bathers and head straight to the fridge for a cold cider to keep me company while I cook: stir fried chicken with heaps of fish sauce, sugar, Thai basil and mountains of fresh red chili in a coconut milk sauce. It’s so simple and so good: quick, clean, hot Thai food. Sweet and salty. Sweat drips from Pete’s forehead and I am nearly knocked sideways with sunshine, cider and chili.

After dinner, Pete heads off to work and the kids and I head back down to the river. The light now is pure gold and a glorious haze has settled over the beach. I’m sitting on the sand with my notebook while my two small ones dance in the river and make friends with the kids who have come to holiday in this incredibly beautiful place I now call home. I guess we’ll head back to the house at some point. The night will be a scorcher and sleep won’t come quickly. Pete will work late and I will wait for him, just like I did 20 years ago when at 17 I found myself a 26 year old projectionist. Then, he worked in a big Melbourne cinema, now he’s working summer holidays at a small seaside movie house. If I could have imagined so distant a future back then, I could not possibly have imagined a life better than this.

Chicken with Thai basil and red chili

• 2 Chicken breasts, thinly sliced
• 3 cloves of garlic, chopped or finely sliced
• couple of handfuls of green beans, trimmed and cut into 1 inch pieces
• couple of handfuls of snow peas, trimmed
• 1 tablespoon canola, peanut or vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 2 red chilies, minced
• Cup of finely sliced Thai  Basil (Apollo Bay locals, I got this from the egg man!)
• 1 cup of coconut milk
• Steamed rice, to serve.

Heat the oil in a hot wok and add the chicken, garlic and vegetables. Toss until the chicken has sealed, making sure to keep it moving quickly so it doesn’t stew. Then add the fish sauce, sugar and basil. Toss for a few seconds before adding the coconut milk. Toss until the coconut milk boils. At this point, serve out for your kids if (like mine) they don’t do chili, then add the chili, heating it through briefly until ready to serve. Serve with steamed rice.       

I have a deep admiration of women who are comfortable in their own bodies. I have never been. Self-Esteem and Ego have been slugging it out for as long as I can remember. Always a pointless and exhausting state of affairs, having children caused the whole thing to spiral out of control. My pelvic bones spread (as I suppose happens when you force a child through them), my rib cage was pushed up and out to make room, my breasts turned into behemoths and stayed that way, never to experience the post breastfeeding shrinkage I was promised. Then of course came the exhaustion and the sugar hits and the quick meals and finishing whatever the kids left on their plates and the absolutely no time or energy to do anything for myself. Size 12 became a size 14, 14 started to trend towards 16. Things were looking grim. Self-Esteem was waging a highly successful guerrilla campaign that was destroying my self-confidence, Ego was busily placating me with self-righteousness and lollies.

But across the border, in a more distant part of my psyche, a third party had been planning a campaign to take control of my body. Reason had for some time been amassing notes and now it had compiled a complete dossier. The notes concerned the many health risks associated with being overweight: heart disease, stroke, a wide variety of cancers, Alzheimers, Diabetes and other delights. It attached these notes to pictures of my children and reminded me of a good friend from Primary School whose mum had dropped dead of a heart attack in front of her. Not yet a teenager, she’d had to go live with the father from whom she had long been estranged. Reason also reminded me that the greatest indicator of obesity in children is having obese parents. Reason had of course attempted sorties previously but with limited troops behind it had quickly been pushed aside by far more experienced adversaries.

Suddenly and unexpectedly Reason found an Army. My mind had been taking more notice of Reason since a First Aid Course had put the fear into me about what I was doing to myself. It was with wonderful timing, then, that I came across my masseur down the street. He was looking great and I told him so. He told me about a diet that he and his naturopath wife had been on and Reason seized advantage. Now is the time, it said, and immediately booked an appointment. In no time at all, Reason had assembled an army and crossed the Rubicon. No turning back, in 3 short weeks it has shaved close to 7kgs off the territory previously held by Self-Esteem and Ego. An extreme diet, 500 calories a day from extremely limited food groups for 23 days. There have been civilian casualties: my poor husband and children who have borne the brunt of my out of control rage, my ability to speak in properly formed sentences and my singing voice. But it will be over soon. When I finish this phase, I spend another 23 days on a normal calorie intake but free from carbs and sugar to stabilise my weight. I am dreaming of scrambled eggs, bacon and avocado. There will be spoils of war, however. I plan to write an eBook of very low calorie recipes because, despite the battle raging around me, I have still managed to eat really delicious food. Here’s a taste.

Chinese – style chicken, tomato and chilli soup

This is a really satisfying and delicious soup and so very simple to make. I suspect it will become standard repertoire for me. In case you’re interested, it contains about 170 calories. 

• 100 gm chicken breast
• 2-3 cups fat free Asian-style chicken stock (see below)
• 1 tablespoon julienned ginger
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 300 gms tomatoes, each tomato cut into about 8 pieces
• 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh coriander
• Dried chili flakes

Place the chicken breast in a pan with the stock, ginger and garlic. Bring gently to the boil and then remove from the heat for about 20 minutes. Remove the chicken and shred finely. Return the pan to the heat, return to the boil and again remove the pan from heat. Add the chicken, soy sauce, coriander and tomatoes.  Sprinkle with chili flakes to taste.

To make the Chicken stock, trim the fat off some chicken chops and throw them in a stock pot with a stack of slices of fresh ginger, a couple of roughly chopped onions, some crushed garlic and about 6 peppercorns. Don’t be exacting about quantities, just make us much as you like. Bring gently to the boil and let simmer for 2 hours. Strain the stock and place the liquid in the fridge. As it cools, the fat will float to the surface and be easy to scrape off.

For me, one of the main problems with winter is the food. I like a bit of comfort food: a slow cooked shank, or a great casserole or a steaming bowl of miscellaneous carbohydrates. These things are all OK, but only OK. Winter foods for me are ultimately spiritually (and of course physically) heavy and a little monotonous. I always feel like my cooking goes into creative hibernation during these months and I really struggle for inspiration. With the coming of spring I re-emerge into the culinary light to rediscover my favourite things: galangal, lemongrass, coconut milk, lime & fish sauce dressings, crunchy sweet and sour salads, little things char grilled on sticks to be cooked on the deck on a hazy evening with a drink in hand. Lovely.

And of course, spring has a launch event: Father’s Day. The first weekend of the new season, traditionally celebrated with the giving of home-made presents and eating of home cooked food. Typically, the eating starts with the early morning force-feeding of luridly decorated biscuits brought home from kinder several days earlier, before moving on to some sort of curry – based breakfast doused in yoghurt, coriander and mango chutney (we had to skip this this year because Pete had to go to work). Pete lies on the couch for an hour as the kids incessantly wish him happy father’s day and then we drive around to mum and dad’s place, make some variety of intoxicating drink (this year it was mojitos) and I cook lunch for the four generations of my family that live in this little town.

The Father’s Day lunch is particularly fun. It’s for my dad and my children’s dad so I can cook South East Asian food with impunity because that’s what they (and I) both like. And it’s spring, wonderful spring, so food like this just seems right again. I marinated lovely green prawns in all the delicate fragrances of Thai food,  and barbecued them to be eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves with mint and coriander. A pungent pineapple salad dressed in shrimp paste and toasted coconut pounded into an oily paste was served on the side. And when you’re standing on the deck in the Otway spring sunshine listening to the ocean with a mojito under your belt cooking prawns, it sure as hell is a happy Father’s Day.

Galangal prawns

• 1kg green prawns, shelled
• 2 pieces of finely chopped lemongrass
• 2 tablespoons of finely minced fresh galangal (I buy fresh pieces at the Asian Grocer when I’m in Melbourne and keep them in the freezer – they grate up beautifully and you can just return the unused portions to the freezer)
• 4 shallots, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons palm sugar
• Zest and juice of 1 lime
• 4 kaffir lime leaves, very finely sliced
• 4 coriander roots, roughly chopped
• 1 tablespoon vegetable or peanut oil
• 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry

Blend all ingredients (other than the prawns) together to form a wet paste. It doesn’t need to be too smooth. Toss the prawns through the marinade and leave for at least 2 hours. Thread the prawns onto skewers and cook on the BBQ. I imagine these prawns would be just fine tossed in the wok, also. You can eat them as they are, but they are lovely wrapped in crunchy lettuce with mint, coriander and finely sliced red chillies.

The cuisines I most like to cook for people are all Asian, specifically south east Asian, Indian and Chinese. I love these foods, they are my culinary heartland. I love the cunningness of Chinese cooking, the mad combinations, the double cooking, the peculiar textures. I love the delicacy and balance of south east Asian food, finding the perfect balance on a narrow flavour profile where the slightest mis-step is the difference between sublime and banal, or even downright awful. I love how food from this region is created from stinking, pungent, difficult ingredients and transformed into something beautiful and sophisticated. It’s like starting with Courtney Love and ending up with Audrey Hepburn. I love the huge variety of spices and methods in Indian food, the profound sense of satisfaction in creating a curry paste from scratch and the total sensual immersion required to cook it well.

I love to cook bog-standard b-grade meals for my family on a nightly basis, to know that they are well fed and a bit more educated about the world of food. I love to cook for guests. When Pete has people to stay (usually old friends or Kendo players) I’m always seeking an opportunity to make them sit down for a meal I have cooked. But most of all I love to cook for special occasions and this is where I really shine – in the kind of meals that take at least a day to make. Blissful, complicated hours of dedication to food to be destroyed in a single act of consumption like the dissolution of a sand mandala. And here I have added a new weapon to my arsenal: I have all but mastered the art of making beautiful, light flaky south east Asian style Roti.

Roti take time and patience, but otherwise they are not too complicated. I have not yet mastered the art of throwing the bread like a proper roti-wallah, and given the way I nearly broke my wrists and dislocated my shoulder in the first attempt I probably never will. The tragically unskilled white girls way of doing it is serving me just fine so far. I should probably stop perving at the roti guy at Rich Maha, however. My interest may be misinterpreted. The secret is in the oil bath. The little balls of dough like to relax covered in oil. They need at least 4 hours. Seriously, don’t even bother trying less than this. My experience suggests they don’t like too much more than 8 hours, though, or they become too relaxed and can’t focus on the task at hand. Give these a try – they are delicious, impressive and will cause sighing, shivery delight among those you love.

Roti

• 3 1/4 cups plain white flour)
• 1 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tbsp milk
• 3/4 – 1 cup water
• About 1/2 cup of peanut oil, plus extra to cover. You could also use canola.

Sift the flour, salt and sugar into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Make a well in the center and add the egg and milk before folding them into the dry ingredients.  Add  the water slowly while working the flour with your hand to form a moist, sticky dough. Knead for 5 to 10 minutes until the dough is soft and elastic. You’ll know when its there – if you’re having doubts, you’re not there yet and need to keep going. Cover the dough with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and let rest for a couple of hours.

When its had a nice rest,  pull off enough of the dough to form a round ball about the size of a lime. Knead until you get a smooth, creaseless ball. Place on a tray greased with oil and continue until you get about 12 balls. When you’re done, place them in a large shallow bowl and cover them with oil. Cover them with gladwrap and place them in a cool place for 4 – 8 hours. If they go into the fridge, take them out at least an hour before you plan to cook them. They will be much more relaxed and elastic at room temperture.

Oil a work surface and press a dough ball into a flat disc. The trick now is to stretch it as thinly as you possibly can, pulling, stretching, whatever, until it is  big flat sheet of super thin dough. You will find that it pulls back quickly and is thicker around the working edges. I guess this is where the proper roti throwing techniques would come into their own. When you’ve got it as thin as you can, hold it one hand so it hangs down in a long string and swirl it into a snail-shell like disc. Place on an oiled surface and continue until you have completed them all. Heat an iron pan or griddle over a medium heat and when hot pour a splash of oil on it.  Pick up one of your discs and flatten it out until its about 6 inches across. Remember they are very elastic and will contract very quickly. Shrinkage is completely normal. Fry on one side and then the other until golden brown.

The last and most fun step is to tale a piece of paper towel in each hand and hold the edges (not the surface) of the roti between your hands, resting it on the work bench. Then you are basically going to clap your hands together while rotating the disc around. Smash it this way a few times until it becomes flaky. You’ll figure it out.  Place the bread in a bowl lined with kitchen paper in a warm oven and repeat until finished.

Last weekend we took the kids fishing down at the pier. It may have been the crappy bait, it may have been their excited screams, it may have been our total lack of skill. Whatever. We got nothing. Walking back to the car we passed a large group of Chinese people fishing in an unusual spot and as we were heading over to check it out, a man reeled in a crab on his line.  It was just a smallie, a little native sand crab not more than 10cm across the shell. I took my son across to have a look and lo and behold, they lifted the lid off their bucket and it was chock full of sand crabs. Now they had little English and I have no Chinese but we knew enough for them to offer me a bag of crabs and for me to accept. And that’s all I needed to know.

The Australian Sand Crab. Yes, you can eat it and (even better) yes, you can apparently also catch them. I am now officially harbouring a fantasy of catching a mass of crabs and making Chili Crabs for all when the Apollo Bay Kendo Club hosts its inaugural seminar. They lived a little while in the fridge, squeaking and bubbling and waving their wee claws, before I popped them in the freezer for half an hour. Preparing and cleaning them was pretty intuitive after cleaving them down the middle. The yucky bits are obvious but you really have to get your fingers under the shells to clean them out. They don’t have much meat in them at all but what there is incredibly sweet and delicious and the shells are great to suck on. The recipe that I’m about to give you comes from Wendy Hutton’s Green Mangoes and Lemongrass and its a really, really great one. I have made some adaptations based on the availability of ingredients late on a Saturday night in Apollo Bay.  This was an amazing dish: hot, visceral, interactive and celebratory.  So here it is: Singapore style chili crab, lah!

Singapore chili crab

• About 1.5 kg live crabs (prepared as per the description of sand crabs above)
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 finely minced red onion
• 4 large red chilies, minced
• 2 tbsp finely minced ginger
• 6-8 large garlic cloves, minced
• 3.5 litres chicken stock
• 1/4 cup bottled chili sauce
• 1/2 cup bottled tomato sauce
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp Chinese rice wine
• 2 tsps salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp cornflour mixed with 3 tbsp water

Ginger Chilli Sauce

• 4 large red chilies, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp finely minced ginger
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp water

To make the chili-ginger sauce, blend all the ingredients in a small food processor or spice grinder and set aside.

Heat the oil in a wok or large saucepan (I used a large saucepan) and add onion, ginger, garlic and chilies. Keep moving  over a medium heat for 3 minutes or until fragrant. Add the Chili ginger sauce, stock, chili sauce, tomato sauce, sugar, rice wine, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and then drop back to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the halved and cleaned sand crabs and cooked for about 5 minutes, stirring the pieces through the sauce. If you are using bigger crabs such as muddies, simmer the sauce for 2 minutes and cook the prices in the sauce for about 10 minutes. Then add the cornflour mix and stir through until the sauce clears and thickens. Finally, add the eggs and stit until set. Serve with rice or crusty french bread. Good with a cooling cucumber salad and a cold beer.

But there, at last, a solution to my problems: a curry made with unripe bananas. To tell the truth, the whole concept was kind of freaking me out and the weird gray mush pictured on the asafoetida site was not helping at all. I took the basic concept (bananas simmered in coconut milk and tempered with spices at the end) and largely tried not watch as I made the dish. The (imagined) texture of the bananas was doing my head in and it was largely this that drove me to make the fresh green bean pickle to give it a crunchy lift. This was a particularly good idea, if I may say so myself, as the combination of soft and crunchy was marvellous.

In trying to imagine this dish, replace “green banana” with “sweet potato” and you’re getting the picture. The unripe bananas don’t actually taste very much like bananas – they are more just like sweet, starchy dumplings. Not sounding so bad now, is it! Coupled with the crunchy beans it was really very lovely. And while I was eating it, I had an epiphany about how we consume food in our culture. We are such selective and extravagant consumers, taking only the finest cuts and types and leaving the vast bulk of foods behind that don’t meet our exacting standards. How much food do we waste like this? We grow food plants and consume sometimes only a fraction of their edible parts (think beetroots and broccoli) or kill an animal and take only the premium meats. It’s unsustainable and its disconnected. Think about it next time you reject a vegetable that is less than perfect. Mind you, that’s not to say I’m going to be taking up tripe and jowls in the near future, no siree…

Green banana curry with fresh green bean pickle

• 6 – 7 unripe bananas, peeled and cut into chunks (you may need to cut them into chunks first and then cut the peel off)
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2  tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 3 dried red chillies, chopped
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 tin chickpeas, coarsley mashed
• 1 desert spoon fish sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsps brown or palm sugar
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 1 1/2 tbsp peanut oil
• 3 dried red chillies – additional
• 1 – 2 tsps black mustard seeds
• 1 – 2 tsps cumin seeds

For the green bean pickle:

• Handful of green beans, finely sliced on the diagonal
• 1/4 red onion, finely sliced
• Handful chopped coriander
• 3 tsp salt
• 3 tsp sugar

Start with the green beans as they need a bit of time to pickle up. So combine the beans and onions and sprinkle with most of the salt and sugar, leaving a pinch of each aside, rub to combine well. Leave to sit while you make the curry (or for half an hour). Then rinse well and gently squeeze dry. Mix well with the coriander and reserved sugar and salt.

So, the curry: quickly put the peeled and chopped banana pieces into the water with the turmeric, chillies and garam masala. They start to go black and manky looking if you leave them too long. Simmer gently for 5 minutes and then add the coconut milk, salt, chickpeas and shredded coconut. Simmer for another 10 minutes then add the fish sauce and sugar. Simmer until tender. The last step is to temper the curry. This just means heating the peanut oil in a small pan until very hot, then throw in the mustard and cumin seeds and additional chillies. Let them fry in the oil for a few seconds but don’t let them get too dark. Pour the hot oil over the curry and stir through. Done! Serve the curry with a pile of the pickled green beans on top.

The second option is to buy them precooked and then just simply not cook them again. Now personally I find the whole pre-cooked seafood served straight up thing quite confronting. It makes me think of those embarrassing occasions when people excitedly tell you they have a platter of prawns and then serve up a pile of things that were cooked at least a day or two earlier. They usually smell wrong, have an odd texture and come with something completely hideous such as Thousand Island Dressing. Nasty.

So anyway, it’s Chinese New Year and I always like to cook for my loved ones at this time. Crays are still relatively cheap down here, they’re a local product supporting local people and so it just seemed right. What to do? I completely fancied the idea of a classic Crayfish stir- fried with ginger and spring onion. I last had this dish at Flowerdrum, so fresh the flesh was practically still twitching. But you need  a live Cray which I didn’t want to get,  mainly because the other dish I was preparing was a complex double deep fried chicken dish and I needed the Cray to be something that could be put on the table with minimal fuss. Here is my solution (Gong Xi means congratulations, by the way…)

Gong Xi Crayfish

• 1 pre-cooked crayfish, halved length ways and cleaned. Larger crays have a sweeter, superior flavour
• Juice of half a lemon
• Teaspoon light soy sauce
• few drops sesame oil
• Two spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
• Knob of ginger, peeled, cut into thin strips and finely julienned
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 – 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. DO NOT be tempted to use any other sort of oil, especially olive oil  which will not tolerate high cooking temperatures.

Remove the crayfish from the shell and cut into bite sized pieces. Separate the tail part of the shell from the head part. Retain the tail and chuck the head (or preferably retain it to make stock). Marinade the flesh in the lemon juice, soy sauce and sesame oil for about half an hour. At serving time, pile the flesh back into the shells for presentation. Heat up the peanut oil in a small pan and heat until smoking hot. Drop in the ginger and spring onions, cook very briefly, then add the garlic. Once you’ve put the ginger and spring onion in, you don’t want to be waiting more than 30 seconds before pouring the hot oil over the Cray. Serve immediately. No problems with the kids eating this, by the way…

Palm sugar causes turns me into Hannibal Lecter, all tongue flicking and eye-rolling ecstacy. I love it in salads and stir frys. I love it in hot chocolate made with Balinese cocoa. I love making bujang dalam selimut (green pancakes with coconut and palm sugar filling). I love to mix it with grated lime rind and just eat it by the spoonful. And I love to use a cleaver shave off huge, crumbling sheets of the stuff for the sole purpose of letting it dissolve slowly on my tongue.

Got you interested? Now here’s a recipe for a simple, tasty but otherwise unremarkable family meal the best part of which is that you get to roll around in your palm sugar. This is just one of those throw-it-together-on-a- hot- night kind of meals: all wet and sweet and easy. It requires no real cooking skills, it won’t make you fat, it won’t break the bank and your kids will probably eat all or part of it. I dressed the salad before I added the herbs as my kids have been known to feel the need to scrape every bit of chopped mint and coriander off a salad. I then just put a herb-free portion aside for them. I also cooked some rice for them ( just to bulk it out a bit) but for myself I just had a pile of salad and calamari.

Coriander rubbed calamari with pineapple salad

For the calamari:

• 2 calamari hoods
• 2 teaspoons of finely chopped coriander roots and stalks
• 1 teaspoon grated palm sugar
• about half a teaspoon of salt
• splash of light soy sauce
• 4 cloves finely chopped garlic
• tablespoon of olive oil

Open up the calamari hoods and gently score them diagonally to make a criss-cross pattern then cut into strips. Pound all other ingredients with a mortar and pestle (or give them a quick blast in a processor, or just chop them vey finely). Rub this paste into the calamari strip and set aside. Just before cooking, slop the oil over it. When the salad is ready (see below), throw the calamari onto a hot griddle or BBQ, cook just a couple of minutes on each side. Not too long, or it will become tough.

For the salad:

• half a pinepple, quartered, peeled, cored and cut into bite sized pieces
• 2 carrots, julienned
• 4 green apples cut into thin slices
• 2 diced cucumbers
• splash of rice vinegar, splash of fish sauce, juice of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons grated palm sugar mixed together to make a dressing
• 1 tablespoon each of finely chopped mint and coriander leaves

Surely I don’t need to explain this? I mean, you just make a salad.

One of our favourite weekend meals is chicken wontons. Tragically, you have to drive at least an hour from Apollo Bay to obtain wonton skins so I tend to get lots at a time.  I always intend to make enough to freeze some down – if you’ve got homemade stock and wontons in your freezer then you have instant wonton soup for dinner. Hooray! In reality, however,we usually eat as many as we cook. The wonton experience works like this – bowls of rice and bottles of soy sauce and black rice vinegar are placed on the table. The wontons are ferried from the kitchen and devoured in approximately the same amount of time it takes another batch to cook. It tends to become carnage; sweet, delicious carnage. In some ways, this is like yum cha.

Look, these dumplings aren’t particularly special but they are real crowd pleasers. The kids adore them and they make a really fun family meal. I strongly recommend getting some black rice vinegar for serving -its easily obtainable from Asian grocers. Use like soy sauce. Some notes on this recipe – I have no idea what kind of quantities I use, I make these very much on spec. So these amounts are a bit of a guess and you’ll have to experiment. There are a number of ways to cook them, which I’ll explain below.

Chicken wontons

• 40- 60 wonton or gow gee skins
• 500g chicken mince
• good teaspoon of minced ginger
• clove of garlic, minced
• tablespoon of finely minced spring onion
• scant tablespoon finely chopped coriander leaf and stem
• teaspoon of sugar
• splash of chinese rice wine or dry sherry
• teaspoon of light soy sauce
• teaspoon of oyster sauce

Mix the filling ingredients by hand until well blended. Each wonton skin will take about 1.5  – 2 teaspoons of filling. I have NO idea to describe the wonton rolling action but it doesn’t really matter -just as long as they are well sealed. I shape them with a flat base like a gyoza because I like to pan fry them.

Once the wonton are rolled, you can do a number of things with them. You can drop them straight into a gently simmering Asian style broth and cook for around 5 minutes to have wonton soup. You can steam them, or poach them in boiling water. I like to lightly oil a non stick pan, place the wontons on the pan so they start to fry lightly on the bottom. I then pour a small amount of water into the pan and cover it with a lid. The steam cooks the wontons but they get also get a nice crispy base. These wontons freeze very well but I do find that frozen wontons are best used for wonton soup. If doing this, do not defrost the wontons first but drop them into the stock while still frozen.

My dad and I learnt this recipe at a cooking class we took at Laka Leke. It’s a great addition to a special banquet style dinner as you can prepare the chicken and dressing in advance and toss them together just before serving. If you can’t get the fresh tumeric (promise me you’ll try), you can substitute 1 tsp of powdered tumeric and half a teaspoon of saffron. To toast the shrimp paste, wrap it in a single layer of foil and dry toast in a hot pan until you can’t stand the stink any longer, then pound it into a fine powder .

Ayam Panggang Sambal Matah (Balinese Chicken Salad)

• 2oo gm chicken breasts
• thumb sized piece of fresh tumeric, finely grated
• 1 tablespoon coriander seed, toasted and ground
• Salt and white pepper
• 6 tablespoons light olive oil (or other lightly flavoured salad oil)
• 4 shallots, peeled and finely sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic (peeled and finely sliced)
• Half a teaspoon of toasted shrimp paste, ground to a powder
• Juice of one lime
• Inner white part of a stem of lemongrass finely chopped
• Finely sliced hot red chillies to taste

Place the chicken between two sheets of cling film and pound flat with a rolling pin. They need to cook quickly or the marinade will blacken so you want them not more than a centimetre thick. Combine the grated tumeric, ground coriander, salt and pepper and three tablespoons of the oil and coat the chicken. Marinate for 1 hour and then grill or BBQ the chicken and leave to cool. Combine the remaining oil and ingredients to make the salad dressing. When the chicken is cool, shred it with your fingers and then toss it together with the salad dressing. I like to serve it piled high on a plate garnished with extra chili, finely sliced kaffir lime leaves and some grated kaffir lime rind.