We Love Cooking!:
lettuce

As you might have guessed, if you are a regular reader of the blog, I have a major thing for zingy Asian food! It all started when I was a lot younger, when my grandmother bought me a simple Chinese cookbook. At that stage I had already worked my way through most of the cookbooks in our house but had never tried to cook any sort of Asian food. Ingredients like ginger, lemongrass, coconut milk, and the rather peculiar looking star anise were all foreign to me, as a curious youngster. I took it upon myself to become immersed in this little book, being brave and cooking the most strange sounding dishes first, in order to get a taste for the vast landscape of this cuisine. From fortune cookies to spring rolls, from Thai green curry to sushi, I really gave everything a go and even though they may not have all turned out quite to plan, the process in itself was totally enjoyable and left me with a fascination for Asian culture and recipes.

I have still never been anywhere in Asia and it is my absolute dream to travel, eat and photograph my way across the continent, well maybe that's a little ambitious, maybe just the main places to start with. I don't know when it's going to happen, but it will, and when it does I want to be ready for it so, I'm putting together a hit list of places to visit, people to see, and food to eat. If you have any good suggestions for recipes, stunning places to visit, interesting stories, photos or all of the above, let me know in the comment section or drop me a mail.

Mini Aromatic Duck Salad
This a slightly adapted version of one of my favourite recipes from my cookbook. It's fairly similar, the only difference really being that, I serve the salad in mouthful portions on baby gem lettuce leaves here. Apart from the duck don't be too concerned about the salad ingredients, anything goes here really, things like bean sprouts, shredded Chinese cabbage, finely sliced snow peas are all perfect also. You can get amazing aromatic duck breasts in the frozen section at good Chinese supermarkets, which only require roasting time in the oven for delicious results.

Serves 4
2 aromatic duck breasts, cooked and shredded
2 carrots, thinly sliced
6 spring onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 red pepper, thinly sliced
Baby gem lettuce leaves, to serve

Dressing:
3 tablespoons of sunflower oil
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 teaspoon of fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce

Add all the ingredients for the dressing to a bowl and whisk to combine.
Add the duck, carrots, spring onions, and red pepper to the bowl and toss with the dressing to combine.
Arrange baby gem lettuce leaves on a serving platter and add spoonfuls of the duck salad to them.
Serve straight away, or refrigerate the duck salad and assemble when required.

Unfortunately, the convenience of picking up a pre-washed bag of designer salad leaves has quickly become common place in our modern lives. In fact in 2005, the bagged salad market was growing at 7 percent a year and was estimated to be worth over 1.2 billion dollars a year in the US. However success stories aside, the gases and chemicals sometimes used in the production of these bags, add unnecessary toxins which our bodies can seriously do without. A normal salad leaf will last about 4-5 days in the fridge where as some of these cut salad leaves can keep on looking fresh for a whopping 10 days! That just can't be right!

There is nothing more satisfying than preparing your own salad leaves which you know were produced locally. It's a much greener kitchen practice, and it tastes so much better. I actually got the idea to write a post about this because Sofie had never seen anyone washing salad leaves before me, (she has led a very sheltered life in Sweden ;) and thought maybe there were a few people out there like her who didn't know the easy process to do so.

There are so many exciting salad leaves you can choose from, so be adventurous, it'll make the difference when it comes to plating up! Here's my quick and simple steps to preparing salad:

1. Fill your sink with cold water.
2. Remove any packadging from your Salad and cut out the core or seperate the leaves from the stem.
3. Submerge the leaves in the water and give them a good swill, allow to sit for about 10 mins. (This will allow dirt to settle to the bottom, and the cold water will bring wilted leaves back to life.)
4. Take a handful of leaves out of the water at a time and spin in a salad spinner until they are completely dry. (Salad Spinners can be picked up relatively cheap, I got mine for 5 Euro. Moisture is not your friend here as it will shorten the life of the stored leaves, so make sure they're dry.)
5. Store the leaves swaddled in a dry tea towel, or in an airtight zipper bag, in the bottom crisper drawer of your fridge . The leaves will last anywhere between 4-6 days depending on the leaf.