Duck and hoi sin party bites!

Yum yum yum, i do love this time of year, it gets my creative ideas going, so this image im about to show you is not mine but sparked an awsome idea! Who out there loves duck pancakes from the chinese takeaway?? Look no further than one bite with this delicious canape, hoisin at 1.5 syns per tablespoon goes a LONG way. so again you COULD class this dish as negligible, or you could work out how many appetisers you get from one dish.

You will need 2 duck breasts,
cucumber maybe 1/4 then if you need more you can cut it, (2cm chunks)
2-3 spring onions. (cut into about 1 cm chunks)
cocktail sticks
1 grated garlic clove
1 tablespoon of hoisin sauce

Yes.. thats it :D

So remove any visible fat from the duck, cut into cubes of the same size maybe 2-3 cm
heat a pan and chuck in the duck, sear it.
mix the hoisin and garlic and add into the duck, stir until the duck is coated and the sauce thickens.
take off the heat and leave to cool.
While the duck is cooling onto each coctail stick add a chick of cucumber THEN the spring onion, then stab a duck chunk, the duck chunk will add as a foot AND as it is still warm will slightly wilt the spring onion which will reduce any strong flavour. THAT IS IT! :)

P.s or you could be greedy and do yourself a duck breast ontop of a bed of shredded spring onions with piles of sliced cucumber them dribble over the sauce.. who needs a takeaway ? not me ;)

asian tuna 'sushi' bites

Delicious, good for lunch, a snack, or for canapes here are my tuna cucumber bites :)

All you will need is 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped into an inch pieces.
1 tin of tuna
salt
pepper
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil (1 syn if you use asda or tesco own)
1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp grated garlic and ginger.
1 finely chopped spring onion

scoop a little bit of the seeds out of the  middle of the cucumber, dont scoop all of it out or you will have nothing to hold the tuna,
Mix the tuna with every thig but the spring onion and cucumber.
spoon the tuna into the cucumber cups and top with a little bit of spring onion.

(you could always serve with a small dipping bowl of soy sauce, if you want some evtra crunch and flavour finely chop a red pepper and stir through the tuna aswell, ALTERNATIVELY you could just slice the cucumber thinly and top with the tuna but i find it goes a little wet and mushy because of the seeds)

You could use different toppings like below, for example mix a little quark with salt, pepper, a little grated horseradish and stir through some finely chopped smoked salmon with a little lemon zest.

Asian 'Dim sum' appetisers

Low in syn, these tasty little balls of yummyness disappear pretty quickly, the best part? once they are cooked they can be frozen then bought out for stir fries, soups or even again for canapes!

You will need: 500g extra lean pork mince,
 6 raw prawns (can be frozen and defrosted, if you want you can go to the fish counter and just use 3 of those huge tiger prawns!)
3 spring onions,
1 large stick of celery,
2 large grated garlic cloves (or tsp of garlic paste or one of those frozen blocks),
 1 tsp grated ginger,
3 tbsp water,
2tbsp soy sauce, pinch salt, generous pinch of black pepper,
2 tsp sesame oil (i use asda or tesco own brad which is 2syns per tsp, really this dish has negligible syns as you could not eat this many in one go)
(sometimes i add some finely diced water chestnuts for some extra texture but lets stick to the basic mix today!)

So you can make this in a food processor, if you are going to do it that way, add the spring onions, gelery, ginger, garlic, soy, sesame and water with the prawns to the processor and pulse until the prawns are finely chopped. add this into the pork mince and mix really really well until it almost goes a little pappy. (cover and set in the fridge.)

if you are doing this WITHOUT the processor (my preffered method) grate the celery into the pork mince and stir in with the water and soy sauce. sprinkle over the soy, salt, pepper, ginger, garlic and sesame oil stir throuroughly. finally chop the prawns intp small pieces i usually butterfly then chop finely from there. Add into the pork and stir through. (you may think adding water to mince is very odd BUT it helps with the texture and the meat really absorbs it all, it also helps to absorb the flavours)

After resting your 'meat dough' i usually use my smallest ice cream scoop (similar to a large melon baller or about a tsp of mix) roll into a ball and place on a baking tray (my preferred way or you can boil or fry them)

I bake mine at 190oC for 6 minutes, turn them over and cook for another 4-5 minutes. i usually serve mine on a platter with some cocktail sticks  with some chilli sauce OR you can use 1tbsp of soy sauce to 1tbsp white wine vinegar (or if you have it chinese black vinegar yum yum)