Fish curry

I used to make this dish with Garnisha Masala Paste which is a low-sodium mild curry paste. Garnisha looks like it has gone out of business, so I just tried making my own curry-paste from the recipe here. I duplicate it here so I can add adjustments and in case the original goes away.

Ingredients:

Curry Paste:

• 2 red chillies - sliced (recipe says birds-eye - I just got small hot red chillies)
• Approx 1 inch piece of fresh ginger - peeled and finely grated
• 5 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 lemongrass stalk - finely chopped
• 4 shallots (recipe says 4 - mine were large bulbs with two "body" sections - think garlic cloves - I used 4 of those sections instead of 4 whole bulbs)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tablespoon paprika

Fish Curry:

• 2 medium sweet-potatoes (kumara) - peeled and sliced
• 1 eggplant - 1-2cm cubes
• Plain flour or cornflour
• 2 blue grenadier fillets - cubed
• 1 red capsicum - sliced
• 2 440ml cans coconut milk
• Oil

Directions:

Make the curry paste:

1. Chop all ingredients and combine. My kaffir lime leaves were dried, so I soaked them in water first.
2. Put into food-processor/barrel blender. Blend into a paste.
3. I refrigerated the result overnight - I don't know if this helps develop flavours, it did firm the texture a little

Make the fish curry:

1. Slice the peeled sweet potatoes into "discs". Heat a sauce-pan and fry about a table-spoon of curry-paste until fragrant. Add the sweet-potato and enough water to cover. Bring to boil and simmer until just about tender.
2. Meanwhile, shake the eggplant cubes in a bag with the plain-flour. In a large frypan or wok, fry the eggplant in oil until browned. Remove from pan.
3. Fry the remaining curry-paste until fragrant. Add the red-capsicum and stir-fry.
4. Pour the sauce-pan of sweet-potato and water/curry into the frying-pan, add the eggplant and coconut milk.
5. Bring the liquid to a simmer and add the fish
6. Allow to simmer for 2-3 minutes until the fish is cooked
7. Serve over instant noodles or rice.

This is a variation on an old recipe we used before going low-sodium from a pack of Ayam instant noodles. Although their sodium content has increased a little in recent years we still quite like it served on instant noodles.

You can probably skip the simmering of the sweet-potatoes if you don't mind them being a little undercooked.

You can adjust the heat by adding or removing chillies. This two chilli recipe was fine for my 10 year old who is being introduced to spice.

Tuna Pasta Bake

This recipe is from Best Recipes, but I have altered it to be low sodium.

Ingredients:

• 300 g pasta
• 40 g butter
• 2 tbs plain flour
• 2 tsps garlic
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tsp vegetable stock powder
• pepper
• 2 cups of Nimbin low sodium cheese
• 425 g can of tuna in springwater, no added sodium
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1 zucchini, grated
• ricecrumbs or polenta
• Optional: 1/2 can of no added salt corn kernals, mushroom or any other veges

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Cook pasta according to directions
3. Melt butter in a saucepan and add garlic.  Cook for a minute.
4. Stir in flour and cook, stirring for one minute 
5. Remove from heat and gradually stir in milk
6. Heat until mixture simmers and thickens. Remove from heat, stir in stock powder and pepper and then 1½ cups of cheese.
7. Combine cheese sauce, tuna, drained pasta and mushrooms and place in a large casserole dish
8. Sprinkle with ricecrumbs or polenta and remaining ½ cup cheese
9. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until browned on top
   

Another Bread

This bread recipe comes from lowsodiumcooking.com. After Tanya had some up and down results I messed with what she did and it came out very well. Here's me trying to capture what I did.

Ingredients:

• 300g Water
• 35g milk powder
• 30-40g unsalted butter - room temperature
• 2 tablespoons honey (TODO - convert to weight)
• 540g bread flour
• 1.5 tsb yeast (I think its ~6g - need to check)

Directions:

1. Mix up the milk-powder with the water as per the milk powder instructions.
2. Roughly slice/dice the room temperature butter - don't melt it. Chopping it will melt it a little if its not quite at room temperature.
3. Add the ingredients as per your bread-maker's instructions (in our case, top to bottom).
4. Cook on normal bread setting.

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (150g) plain flour
•  2 tsps Salt Skip Baking Powder
• 1/3 cup (50g) cocoa
• 1 cup (220g) caster sugar
• 1/3 cup (80g) butter, softened
• 1/2 cup (125ml) milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

     
    Chocolate Icing

• 1 1/3 cups pure icing sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 20g butter, softened

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan-forced). Grease and flour or grease and line a 24cm cake tin and set aside.
2. Place all ingredients into a bowl and using a mixer, mix on high for 4 minutes.
3. Pour into cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched in the centre.
4. To make chocolate icing sift icing sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl. Add butter and 1 tablespoon of boiling water. Stir until smooth. Spread icing over cake. 

Oat Cookies

Makes approximately 12 cookies

Ingredients:

• 75g wholemeal flour
• 75g oats
• 75g sultanas
• 50g brown sugar
• 75g butter
• 1 tbs milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.  Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Mix flour, oats, sugar and sultanas.
3. Melt butter and add butter, milk and vanilla extract to the premixed dry ingredients.  Mix until well combined.
4. Shape into walnut-sized balls and flatten them onto the baking tray.
5. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes.

Sausage Rolls

This recipe is adapted from Taste.com.au

Ingredients:
Filling

• 300g Beef mince
• 1 small onion
• 1 small carrot
• 1 small zucchini
• 1-2 tsp dried mixed herbs
• 0.5 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic - crushed
• 1 egg

Pastry

• 2 sheets frozen low-sodium puff pastry (Pampas butter puff pastry)
• Milk to brush

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to ~200 degrees
2. Take the pastry out of the refrigerator - lay out to defrost
3. Chop the onion in a food-processor
4. Grate the zucchini and carrot in the food-processor
5. Put the onion, zucchini and carrot in a blender or stick-blender chopping barrel - chop within an inch of its life. What you want is "slurry".
6. Return the slurry to the food-processor (you can squeeze out extra water if you want first).
7. Run the food-processor on slow; add the herbs, garlic, herbs, pepper and egg and let the food-processor mix them in
8. Add the mince and run it on the slowest or second slowest for a few minutes to thoroughly combine and break the mince down into a much finer sausage-meat like consistency.
9. Cut pastry sheets in half
10. Shape one-quarter of the mince mixture into a sausage and place along 1 long edge of pastry. Roll up pastry to enclose mince mixture. Cut roll into 4. Place, seam side down, on prepared tray.
11. Brush sausage-roll tops with milk.
12. Repeat with remaining mince mixture and pastry.
13. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden and puffed.

Chicken, Leek and Mushroom Pies

Adapted from 1 Busy Mum


Plugs:
Some low sodium products are hard to find - so I'm going to give some plugs

• Pampas Butter Puff Pastry - the only low sodium pastry we can find
• Rosella Variety Dash Garlic - the only low sodium jar of crush garlic we can find

Ingredients:

• 750g chicken breast - diced
• 2 medium carrots - sliced
• 5ish mushrooms - sliced
• 1 leek - sliced
• 2 cups low-salt chicken stock
• 1 clove garlic - crushed
• slosh of white wine
• Fresh thyme - if you can get it
• 3+ sheets of low-salt puff pastry
  • 2 is enough for "pot pies"
  • 3 is barely enough for "full pies"
• Plain flour
• 1 egg - mixed

Directions:
Filling

1. Add some oil to a pan over medium-low heat and slowly soften the leeks
2. When almost soft add mushrooms and carrot - stir for a few minutes, maybe raise the heat a little
3. Add in chicken, stock, garlic and herbs
4. Simmer
5. When chicken is almost cooked add the wine
6. When everything is soft add in a few tablespoons of flour and stir to thicken.

Pies

1. Heat oven to 180 degrees
2. As filling is almost done take the pastry out to defrost. Don't let them over-defrost as they will be hard to work with
3. Lightly grease some ramekins
4. Trace out ramekin bottom, side-strips and tops on the pastry. Nip out a little hole in the middle of the top, so the steam can escape while cooking.
5. Press the bottom circles into bottoms of ramekins, add the side-strips and press into the bottoms
6. Spoon in the filling, and press the top on
7. Brush top with egg
8. Bake for 20-25 mins (pretty much until you like the look of the pastry)