And so I bake up a debacle. Last time it was butterfly cakes. It seemed like a good idea – little wings of cake nestled in a pile of cream, glace cherry on top. Premium product, right? The cakes were fine. I was pleased with myself. They had chocolate chips. I had decided to use dairy whip instead of cream. I told myself that this was because it would save me time and mess but really I just wanted an excuse to hide behind the fridge door squirting tinned cream product down my throat. The cakes were duly creamed and taken to school. We literally live across the road from this marvellous institution but by the time the cakes had been delivered the “cream”, which is of course 99% air, had subsided and was flowing across the surface of the cakes in a greasy slurry. Cherries slumped forlornly on the plate. I placed my cakes on the communal table, comfortable in the company of a stack of nuggety offerings that had been crammed into old cereal boxes and strapped up with masking tape. The only person who purchased a fairy cake that day was The Child, bless him.

Scenario 2: I find out at the eleven and half-th hour that the kinder is having a working bee. A BBQ and beer  will be provided (yipee!) but a salad is requested. I never know what is happening at the kinder because my husband is the President of the Kinder Committee. This makes me assume that he will tell me the information I need to know in a timely and helpful fashion and so I don’t bother paying attention to anything the Kinder actually tells me. Therefore, between our mutual failures, I never know anything. But salads? Salads I can do, even at frighteningly late notice. Salads I understand. Salads I can not only happily provide but can actually use to impress and provide subtle indications that maybe, just maybe, I am one of the good mums. This lentil salad is a miracle of cooking, able to be conjured up out of next to nothing from stuff I nearly always have to hand, easy to prepare and so startlingly delicious that every time I make it I am inundated with requests for the recipe for weeks afterwards. Plus, despite being completely free of animal products, it has the remarkable quality of tasting like bacon.

Brown lentil salad

This recipe comes from Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion where she describes it as a classic French dish. As such, it should ideally be made with Puy lentils (and they are much better, being nuttier in both texture and flavour). You can now get Puy lentils from major supermarkets but the readily available green or brown lentils (just different names for the same thing) are just fine and I use them 99% of the time. The trick is in the soaking time – they need 2 hours. Less than that and the skins won’t soften, more than that and the salad goes soggy. It is very important to soften the skins so that when salt is added at the beginning of the cooking time, they don’t toughen.

• 375g brown lentils
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (extra)
• Black pepper

Wash the lentils and soak them in plenty of water for 2 hours. Before you drain the water off, reserve a cup of the water – you will need it for cooking. Heat the oil over a moderate heat in a heavy based pan (not non-stick!). I use an enamelled cast iron frying pan and it’s perfect for the job. Add the onions and fry gently until golden. This may take several minutes. Add the garlic and continue to fry for 1 minute. Then add the lentils, reserved soaking water (or tap water, if you forgot) and salt. Cook the lentils for about 25 minutes until the water has evaporated and the lentils are cooked. If the water evaporates too quickly, turn down the heat and add a little more. Don’t let them get mushy – they should still be a bit crunchy. Tip the lentils out of the pan into a bowl and stir in the the remaining ingredients. It’s best to do this while the lentils are still warm to take the edge off the vinegar and allow the flavours to infuse.

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.

Secondly, its insanely cheap to make. For many people who have managed to pull off a largely more mature adult lifestyle and possess such things as homes and proper cars this won’t matter much but for me, it’s really important. As a family comprising a self employed student and a community-sector worker, when the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis hit my first fear was that my family would be able to afford nothing other than bad white bread and cheap carbs. Then I remembered the brown lentil soup. And, yes, the Dreaded Global Financial Crisis did hit us hard and, yes, the brown lentil soup was with us and is with us still. If you make this from scratch it will probably put you about $10.00 out of pocket but I nearly always have some or all of the ingredients floating around. Its smell-of-an oily-rag health food. Yay for brown lentil soup!

And of course, most importantly, it is really delicious. It’s warm and wholesome and nourishing and deep. It’s easy to eat and it always makes me feel the love. This recipe has been adapted from Kurma Das. Remember Cooking with Kurma on SBS? Certainly the only Hare Krishna show on prime time and one of the few vegetarian cooking shows I’ve seen on TV. Apart from the whole replace-the-garlic-with-asafoetida thing (and I’ve made it clear before exactly how I feel about that), Kurma sure knew his way around vegetarian cooking. I’ve adapted this recipe over time, and so here it is:

Brown lentil soup

• 375g pack of brown or green lentils
• couple of potatoes, peeled and diced into about 1 cm cubes
• couple of sticks of celery, diced (include leaves if you’ve got them)
• couple of carrots, diced into about 1 cm cubes
• Couple of cloves of garlic, crushed or finely diced
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Handful of spinach (optional)
• Bunch of coriander, preferably with the roots on
• Half a teaspoon of tumeric powder
• 2 tablespoons ground coriander (yes, that is the correct amount)
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1-2 teaspoons salt
• 1 – 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Put the lentils in a medium saucepan with plenty of water. I’m no good at quantities but fill half way up to begin with. If you have coriander roots, wash them well and add a  few now. Bring slowly to the boil and cook until  mostly softened – this will take around half an hour. In the meantime, heat some olive oil in a pan and when its hot throw in the black pepper and tumeric for a few seconds. Add the potato, carrots and celery and fry until the vegetables are starting to colour and soften. Add the vegies to the softened lentils and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cumin and coriander and simmer another 10 minutes. You’ll find you have to keep topping up the water. The cooking time isn’t critical – just make sure that the lentils are really starting to break down as the soup will be thicker and tastier like this. Finally, add the salt, lemon juice and spinach if using and wait a few more minutes before serving. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and some yoghurt or sour cream if you have any.

Summer 2010 – 2011, in terms of weather, was a complete fizzer: grey, wet and cold and so there has been an absence of the usual signs that the season has turned. The strongest evidence for the arrival of autumn has come from what I have been producing from my Friday Surprise Box: maple-syrup roasted vegetables, soup made from honey roasted carrots etc. My must-have dish of the season though has undoubtedly been an incredibly simple salad made from rocket, pears, walnuts and Parmesan. These ingredients all have a deeply warming and sustaining nature and this dish is a reminder of the joys of cold-season salads when you tend to forget that it is still possible to “eat light”. In Chinese medicine, walnuts support the kidneys which is a fine thing in the cooler months.  With this salad on board, you can make a sensational dinner in 15 minutes and wallow in that glow of smug self-satisfaction that comes with feeding the family something  tasty,  nutritious and cost-effective. Or maybe that’s just me.  You could serve this salad with heaps of different things but it doesn’t get any easier than sausages.  In these parts we are able to get a tray of 6 lovely sausages from Birregurra Farm Foods for a handful of dollars and this feeds the 4 of us just fine. The salad, which is tangy and peppery, really cuts through the fattiness of the sausages. Have it with a glass of stout and swan about in the golden autumn light for guaranteed happy times.

Pear and parmesan salad

• 1 -2 pears and/or apples, cored and thinly sliced
• Few handfuls of rocket or other peppery greens
• A handful of walnuts, very roughly broken up (I just crumble them into the bowl with my hands)
• Freshly shaved Parmesan
• Finely sliced fennel bulb and fennel leaves (optional)
• Couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper

Mix the rocket, pears or apples, fennel and walnuts in a bowl. Make a dressing by mixing the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper well. Dress the salad and then add as much shaved Parmesan as you like. It may not surprise you to know that I like a lot of Parmesan. Eat it with meat, eat it with pies, eat it with frittata. Eat it on its own. It will please you.

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.

Strained Greek yoghurt with banana, honey and cinnamon

On day one I used it as the basis for an embarrassingly simple yet incredibly tasty breakfast: one sliced beautiful banana from my weekly Birregurra Organics box, some lovely dollops of yoghurt, a drizzle of raw organic honey and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Just too easy, and I can’t even tell you how good it was followed by an especially good triple espresso from my beloved Bialetti Brikka (temperamental as a racehorse but when it’s having a good day you won’t get a better coffee anywhere, especially if it’s running Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, but that’s a whole other story…).

My standard breakfast coffee - not really relevant but oh so tasty...

On day two, I noticed that some of the above mentioned organic bananas were getting too brown to eat. What’s a girl to do but make banana muffins? Breakfast on day three is basically a repeat of day one except that the bananas are now in muffin form…that’s OK, isn’t it?

Day 4 sees a return to healthy usage: a dollop of yoghurt on top of a bowl of brown lentil soup. Its a yummy soup and a popular favourite, laden with vegies, full of coriander, cumin and tumeric and blasted with lemon juice and handfuls of rocket at the end. The yoghurt makes an already lovely soup deeper and creamier.  Day 5 saw the re-appearance of the yoghurt at dinner and still no-one in my family is indicating  that my new culinary friend might have outstayed its welcome. Tonight it was made into tzatziki to be smeared on minted zucchini and sweetcorn fritters and mixed through wilted beetroot greens. I love beetroot greens and these were a luscious armload from my very own garden. A really lovely vegetarian meal.

Zucchini and sweetcorn fritters, beetroot greens and tzatziki

So all I can say is, go to the Supermarket. Buy a big whack of Greek yoghurt. Strain it and see where your fancy takes you. I predict you, too, will fall in love with this lovely Mediterranean culture.

Pasta with Broccoli

You need to use the orecchiette or shell style pasta to catch all the garlicky oily yumminess.

• Orecchiette or shell pasta
• 2 heads broccoli
• 4 cloves garlic,finely chopped (do not use a garlic press)
• 6 anchovy fillets (drained and minced)
• Handful of black olives, pitted and lightly bruised
• Cup of breadcrumbs, fried in olive oil until golden brown
• Parmesan cheese.

Break the broccoli into small florets and blanch in salted boiling water until just cooked. Drain, splash with well flavoured olive oil and set aside. Warm a splash of oil in a low to moderate frying pan. Saute the garlic and anchovies gently until the garlic is fragrant and the anchovies have melted. Toss through the olives, stir for a moment and then add the broccoli. Toss the sauce through the cooked pasta and serve sprinkled with breadcrumbs and Parmesan.

Pasta with lentils and yoghurt

This (somewhat modified) dish comes courtesy of Jill Dupleix’s New Food. It may sound odd but is actually really, really delicious and well worth a try. 

• Cooked thin spaghetti
• 1 cup brown lentils
• 1 litre of water
• 1bay leaf
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp each of ground cumin and coriander
• generous pinch of smoky paprika
• About 1 cup of passata
• small tub of natural yoghurt
• Chopped coriander and parsley

Put the lentils in a pan with the bay leaf and cold water. bring to the boil and cook for around 20 minutes or until tender – DO NOT salt the water as this toughens the lentils. Drain, but reserve around a cup of the lentil water. Saute the onions in olive oil until golden, then add the spices, lentils and salt to taste – I need a lot of salt to make lentils work for me and would use about a teaspoon for this recipe. Add the passata. If it’s too dry, add either more passata or some of the reserved lentil water. Warm through and then toss with the cooked pasta. Stir through the yoghurt and serve with the coriander and parsley.

This recipe is for a dish I’ve been making for some years now, vaguely inspired by (although nothing like!) an avocado curry I once had at a Balinese restaurant. It’s very simple, very tasty and great for meat-free nights. Best of all, it’s totally adaptable. Basically it’s steamed rice surrounded by a few different ingredients and smothered in a sweet curry sauce. I use slices of mango,  avocado halves and deep fried blocks of tofu. You could also use hard boiled eggs, slices of tomato and cucumber or whatever else you fancy. I guess it’s basically a nasi campur style of eating – a buffet on a plate and so the joy of it is that you can chuck whatever ingredients you want on the plate and everyone gets something they like. My kids will only take a small amount of the curry sauce, but that’s just fine for now.

Look, I just completely made this dish up so please consider this recipe a guidleine only. Put whatever ingredients you want on the plate and whatever spices you want in the curry sauce. I can’t imagine that I’ve ever made this dish the same way twice but I do like to keep the spices on the sweet and fragrant side as they go so nicely with the fruit.

Mango rice with sweet curry sauce

• 1 onion, finely diced
• 2 ripe tomatoes, finely diced
• half a teaspoon of tumeric powder
• quarter of a teaspoon dried galangal powder
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves
• 6 cardamon pods
• Kaffir lime leaf
• 1 teaspoon good quality curry powder
• stick of lemongrass, bottom part only, bruised
• tin of coconut milk
• Tablespoon fish sauce
• 2 teaspoons palm sugar
• 1 – 2 ripe mangoes
• 1 – 2 ripe avocados
• Block of firm tofu cut into 1 cm slices, each slice cut in half to make a square (does this make sense??!), dried with kitchen paper and sprinkled with salt, fried in 1 cm of hot oil until golden and crispy on both sides.

Gently sweat off the onion in small pan with just enough oil to stop it from sticking. When it’s starting to soften, add the tumeric, galangal, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon and curry powder, give it a stir for a minute or two, and then add the tomato. Fry this gently for a good ten minutes until it’s a sticky pink mess and then add half of the coconut milk (reserving the rest), the kaffir lime leaf and the lemongrass stalk. Simmer for another 10 minutes. Add the fish sauce and sugar, stir well and simmer for another couple of minutes. Taste and adjust the fish sauce / sugar balance accordingly. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve, pushing the pulp through with a fork. Set aside – this can be made well in advance. Just before you are ready to serve, reheat the sauce, adding the remaining coconut milk (this just freshens it up nicely and allows you to taste the coconut).

Remove the mango cheeks and score the flesh into 2cm slices along the length and gently remove. Halve the avocado, remove the kernel and skin. Starting about 1.5 cm down from the skinny end, slice each half in 2cm along it’s length. If you leave it intact at one end you can then fan it out into a nice attractive shape.  Put a neat round mound of rice in the centre of a plate. Place an avocado half, slices of mango and pieces of tofu in little separate piles on the plate. Douse the whole lot with spoonfuls of the curry sauce. Fresh herbs and crispy fried shallots make a delicious little mouthful of extra fun on top if desired.

The big culinary revelation of Cambodia for me came about in an unexpected fashion. Pete and I had left Alex with our friend Andy (who was living in Cambodia at the time) and gone to ancient city of Angkor Thom. It started to pour with rain so we sheltered in a little food stall overlooking the surreal madness of the Bayon temple. Pete ordered a dish  described as “beef and potato” expecting it to be some sort of curry. It turned out to be good old steak and chips. The steak was from stringy Cambodian cows but had been marinated to soften and flavour it and the whole thing was served with a lime and black pepper sauce for dipping.

This sauce  is a sensation. I’ve made it a few ways but I like the method described by Wendy Hutton: you get an individual dipping dish for each person and  make a little pile of salt mixed with whole peppercorns pounded in a mortar and pestle and add a couple of wedges of lime. Each person can then squeeze the lime into the dish and  balance the sauce as they  please.  We did manage to get hold of some Cambodian pepper  which has a distinctively  mellow flavour that makes it much  more authentic but ordinary black pepper is fine. You could serve anything with it – fish cakes, tempeh, plain rice but this is how I like to eat it:

Cambodian steak and chips

The best thing about this is that you can make a perfectly ordinary steak and chips for the kids and serve the loc lac on the side for those who want it.

• Steak – whatever cut, and cooked however you like and sliced thinly to dip in the sauce
• Potatoes  for chips
• Oil for deep frying
• Finely  shredded iceberg lettuce
• Finely sliced tomato
• Finely  sliced cucumber
• Asian herbs (optional)
• Dollop of good quality mayonnaise
• Lime sauce (lime, salt and black  pepper)  as described  above

Basically all you are doing is assembling the salad ingredients  on  a plate with a nice dollop of mayonnaise and then serving with the steak and chips. If you are deep frying the chips yourself, make sure you do the double fry. That is, fry them on a medium heat until just cooked through. Remove from the oil and drain on a paper towel. Pump the oil up to extra hot and cook the chips in batches until golden. Oven cooked chips are of course easier and healthier but not nearly so much fun. Serve the chips and the sliced steak with the salad with the bowls of loc lac sauce on the side for  dipping.

I think this could be a great vegetarian dish if you replaced the chicken with deep fried cubes of  tofu. I omitted the chili (which the kids aren’t crazy for and which Pete and I don’t eat, other than on special occasions for traditional Chinese medicine reasons)- but it would definitely be even better with. I’ve cooked extra rice tonight and spread it out on a tray to dry in the fridge – fried rice tomorrow night.

And while I’m on the subject of Vietnamese food, if you haven’t had a look at Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam on SBS (Thursday 7.30),do so now! Last week he had a whole Mekong Delta fish, the scales of which puff up and turn crispy upon deep frying, drenched in a ginger sauce. Just totally sensational, really.

Stir-fried chicken with mango and cashews (Wendy Hutton, Green Mangoes and Lemongrass)

• 2 large firm ripe mangoes  – cheeks sliced off, scored diagonally into 1 cm wide slices and eased out of the skin.
• 3 tbs fish sauce, 1 tsp lime juice, 1 tsp sugar, half tsp salt, quarter tsp black pepper, mixed together until sugar and salt dissolved
• 250 ml vegetable oil
• 500g boneless chicken breast cut into 2cm squares (or replace with a block of firm tofu cut into cubes and fried until crispy)
• 2 tsp finely minced garlic
• 1 tsp finely minced large red chili
• 200g trimmed snow peas
• 1 medium ripe tomato
• Half a cup of dry roasted cashews

Heat the oil in wok until very hot. Cook half the chicken, stirring frequently for 2 minutes, remove with slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Repeat with remaining chicken. Take the wok off the heat and remove all but 3 tbs of oil. While the wok is off the heat, add the garlic and chili and stir fry for a couple of seconds. If you keep it off the heat, then you’re less likely to burn the garlic which will make the dish bitter. Return the wok to the heat and add the snow peas, stir fry for 1 minute. Return chicken and add fish sauce mixture. Mix well, then add mango, tomato and cashews. Stir gently until warmed through.