Green Chilli Sambal

Here is a very simple recipe for a green chilli sambal. The level of spiciness can be adjusted by the number of chilli padi added - more if you like it spicy, less if you prefer a milder version.

Ingredients:

10pcs of green chilli

4-5 pcs of green chilli padi (more if you want it more spicy, less if you prefer is milder)

3-4pcs of shallots, sliced thinly

3pcs of kaffir lime leaves, julienned after centre stalk removed

salt
sugar
lime juice

oil

Instructions:
Steam green chilli and chilli padi for about 5 minutes till it softens. Remove and roughly blend in a food processor, or pound it using a mortar and pestle.

Heat up oil with high heat, add the chilli paste, shallots and lime leaves. Reduce heat and keep stirring. Add salt, sugar and lime juice to taste.

Oh Such Joy! - Simple Granola Bars

Found a very simple recipe online for making no-bake granola bars. This was perfect because we do not have an oven at +3's place, and the ingredients required were quite minimal.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1 cup almonds

1 cup pitted dates (I'll reduce this next time)

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup honey

parchment paper to line

Instructions:

Chop dates finely. You can use a food processor but I just chopped them up with a knife on a chopping board.

Add peanut butter and honey to a small pot and heat it up to melt. Mix thoroughly and remove from heat. Add oats and peanuts and chopped dates and mix thoroughly till the dates are well incorporated.
Line a small tray with parchment paper, and put the granola mix on. Cover with parchment paper and use a rolling pin to roll it flat. The mix should be packed quite densely.

Leave to cool and place in the fridge overnight. Remove the next morning and cut into bars.

Penang Assam Laksa

TNP published a recipe for penang assam laksa! I think I will try to make it next week. If the results are good, I don't need to go to Nex to satisfy my cravings anymore!
Posting the recipe here, for reference when I want to make the dish. It looks simple enough. This recipe serves four.
Ingredients:
500g laksa noodles
6-8 Indian mackerel or 10 short mackerel (a comment on the recipe said to use 8-10 Indian mackerel or 15 short mackerel for a thicker texture)
1 torch ginger bud, halved lengthwise
1/2 rice bowl laksa leaves
2.5cm lengkuas / galangal
150g tamarind, soaked in 300ml hot water and strained
1/2 cucumber, julienned
150g pineapple, julienned
1 red onion, sliced thinly
3-4 stalks mint leaves
2.5l water
1tsp sugar
salt to taste
Rempah:
10-12 dried chillies, soaked till softened
12 shallots
3 stalks lemon grass, use only 7cm from the root part
2.5cm penang belacan
- Blend all to a paste
Prawn paste:
2tbsp prawn paste
2tbsp hot water
Instructions:
Bring 2.2l water to a boil. Add fish in and boil at low heat for 10 min. Remove and set fish aside to cool.
Once cooled, pick out the fish meat, making sure that there are no bones. Meat from the stomach area may be bitter, so avoid those parts.
Strain the cooking liquid and bring to a boil, adding ginger bud, lengkuas and laksa leaves. Boil on high heat for 10 minutes.
Lower the heat, and add the tamarind water, rempah and fish meat. Let simmer for 30 minutes.
Add sugar and salt to taste.
Boil a pot of water and cook laksa noodles for 2-3 minutes. Strain and put in a bowl. Add sliced onion, pineapple, cucumber and mint leaves. Pour soup on top and drizzle with prawn paste.

Almond Butter

I've been talking about making nut butters for the longest time (think peanut butter but with other nuts) and today I finally did it. This is what happens when a planned photoshoot gets cancelled because of rainy weather, and you're too lazy to go out or do anything else.

Making your own nut butters is ridiculously easy. And the best part is that it's 100% natural, so you know that no preservatives go in it. A perfect excuse to finish it all up quickly. Not that you need an excuse, it's that yummy.

You get to control the amount of salt and oil that you use (I didn't use any, and yet my almond butter glistens oh so deliciously), and also the consistency. Do you like it chunky or creamy?

Anyway, here are the ingredients for the almond butter.

Ingredients:
Almonds

I kid you not. Ok, as mentioned above, you can add some salt to taste and use a bit of oil to make the whole thing smoother. But all you need are almonds (or the nuts of your choice) and a blender.

Instructions:
Put almonds in blender. Blend until the almonds become almond butter. Listen to November Rain in the meantime.

Yup, that's it. No fancy steps. Just a press of the button, the occasional opening of the lip to scrape down the sides, and the lyrics to November Rain so you can sing along while waiting.

When the song is done, you're pretty much about done. Stop if you like the consistency, keep blending if you like it smoother and creamier. Ta da!

Sticky Date Pudding

Because it's been such a long time since I posted any recipe, I thought I'd blog about what I made today: sticky date pudding. Ahh, I remember the first time I had it. I was at the Marmalade Pantry with LGG, and when I took my first bite, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It was divine, and every mouthful was pure joy.

That was many years ago, and my obsession with sticky date pudding has somewhat waned. However, during my recent trip to Perth, my sister-in-law had made a batch of the stuff and all my long-forgotten memories of how much I loved it resurfaced. I got the recipe from her and came back and decided to try my hand at it.

And yes, making this was really as easy as my SIL said it would be. In fact, the hardest part was probably chopping up the dates (so sticky la).

Ingredients:
1 cup pitted dated, chopped

1 tsp bicarbonate soda

300ml boiling water
(mix and leave to stand)



1 cup castor sugar (I used less)

60g butter

2 eggs

1 cup self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Instructions:


Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and mix well. Fold flour into batter. Stir in date mixture. Add vanilla. Bake at 180 degrees celcius for 30-40 minute. 



If you want to make a sauce for the sticky date pudding, here's a recipe. I didn't think it was very necessary though.

Sauce: 150ml cream + 150g brown sugar + 50g butter. Combine all in saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.

Om nom nom nom

Pineapple Coconut Balls

Here's the recipe for the pineapple coconut balls we made the other day. Hmm actually I just looked at the picture and realised they aren't really balls and are more coned shaped. Lol. Anyway they were a success, and even my picky dad loved them.



Pineapple Coconut Balls Cones
Ingredients:
1 can of crushed pineapple (20 oz can)
1 cup of sugar
3 1/2 cups dessicated coconut
3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius.
In a non-stick pan, add crushed pineapple together with the syrup, and sugar and cook till brown and dry.
In a large bowl, combine dessicated coconut and cooked pineapple mixture and mix well.
Once the mixture has cooled slightly, add the egg whites and vanilla essence and mix to form a wet dough.
Roll dough into little balls (or cones), about 1 inch in diameter and lay on a baking tray.
Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.

Can't Go Wrong With Sugar And Cream, Just Ignore The Calories

One of the things I remember my mom baking quite often when I was young was bread pudding. It's a perfect way to use up stale bread, and a lovely and hearty dessert. Felt rather nostalgic and was hankering for something different, so I asked her how it was done. "Very easy!" was her reply.

Made it last night, and wow wow wow it was so good. I polished off maybe 1/4 of the pudding!

Very Easy Bread Pudding
Ingredients:
1 loaf of sliced white bread, preferably "stale"
600ml cream
4 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 160 degrees celcius. Grease a casserole dish.

In a medium bowl, mix cream, eggs, sugar and cinnamon together. Tear chunks of the bread into the mixture and let it soak. Pour into casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve warm.

Mama's Apple Crumble

Every time I come back to my parents' place, my mom always seems to have an apple crumble baking in the oven. Turns out, both mom and sis have been trying to "perfect" their apple crumble recipe (hence all the experimenting). They've finally succeeded.


Excuse the crappy pic. Using my phone camera and poor lighting.

Mama's Apple Crumble
Ingredients:
For the filling:
8 granny smith apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

For the crumble:
1 cup plain flour
1 cup instant oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
125g butter, melted

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease a casserole dish.

Peel, core and slice apples. Add brown sugar, ground cinnamon and balsamic vinegar to apple slices and mix well.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, oats, brown sugar and ground cinnamon well. Add in melted butter and continue to mix. Mixture should look like wet sand.

Place apple mixture in casserole dish and top with flour mixture.

Bake in oven for one hour. Let it cool slightly before serving.

The Much Anticipated Beef Rendang Recipe

Woohoo! Finally. So here's the recipe for beef rendang, except it isn't really a recipe with exact measurements.



Beef Rendang
Ingredients:
1 kg beef, cut into cubes
1 kg coconut milk



Fresh red chillis (about 2 or 3 pieces), chilli padi (about 3, or more if you want it spicy), shallots (about 6 pieces, I used 2 red onions), garlic (about 4 pieces), langkwas/galangal (I estimate it was about an inch long), ginger (about 2 inches long), fresh tumeric (about 2 inches, or maybe a bit less) and one candlenut.



Dried red chillis (about 5 small pieces), soaked in hot water and "squeezed" to remove the seeds.



Tumeric leaf (one piece, remove the hard middle part of the leaf), lime leaves (about 4), one stalk of lemongrass, one cinammon stick, four cloves and a teaspoon of peppercorns.


Instructions:



Cook the coconut milk in a pot / wok over low heat and stir constantly for about until the oil starts to separate.



While the coconut milk cooks, blend all the spices except the tumeric leaf, lime leaves, lemongrass stalk, cinammon stick, cloves and langkwas/galangal. Make sure you remove the shell from the candlenut and pound the seed before blending.



You should get a nice, fragrant spice mixture like this.



Marinate the beef cubes with the spice mixture and leave it till the coconut milk is done.



The coconut milk should start to look grainy and you can see the oil. How long this takes depends on how much coconut milk you have, but for 1 kg of coconut milk, I reckon it takes between 30-45 minutes. Remember, slow heat and constant stirring!



Once the coconut milk is done, throw in the beef. Pound the lemongrass and langkwas/galangal and throw them in as well, together with the tumeric leaf, lime leaves, cinammon stick and cloves.



Stir well and cook over low-medium heat. Cover it once it starts bubbling so that the oil doesn't splash all over the place.



Cook for a couple of hours until it's dry and you're done. I think I could have cooked this for a little bit longer than when the picture was taken, but the house was filled with the aroma of the beef rendang and we just couldn't wait.


Anyway, we started off with 1kg of beef but I'd recommend making this in large batches (3kg of beef perhaps? Just multiply everything accordingly) because beef rendang is one of those dishes that just tastes better a couple of days later. And like most malay-style dishes, this is very unhealthy so just ignore the fact that you're consuming enough cholestrol, fats and calories for your month's intake and just concentrate on how yummy everything is.

The Weekend of Sin, aka The 10,000 Calories Weekend

Ah, finally. I've not posted pics in the longest time (took a while to remember my username and password for my photobucket account) and it's been yonks since I last posted a recipe. Anyway, stayed over at my parents' over the weekend and went mad making utterly sinful desserts. The last time I was over, my mom made apple crumble. This time, my sis and I decided to satisfy my curiosity and craving for the key lime pie.

Well, I'm not sure if the limes we used were key limes, but who cares. We used the calamansi limes (are they the same? No one knows) and spent a bloody long time squeezing the juice. And after that, we decided to make a frozen cheesecake since we had leftover crust material. (It's midnight, sentence construction isn't my strongest point at this time of the day.) Anyway, to make up for the many months that I've not posted anything, I've got two recipes!


Excuse the poor quality of the pics. Was taken with my camera phone while balancing a fork in my mouth.
Left: Frozen cheesecake. Right: Dunnowhatlime pie.

Hmm. Make it three. One more for the crust. Lol.

Crust Material
Ingredients:
1 pack of digestive biscuits
125g butter, melted.

Instructions:
Crush digestive biscuits. Add melted butter. Mix.

Final product should look like wet sand.

Simple Frozen Cheesecake
Ingredients:
Crust material (half of what was made in the above "recipe")
2 blocks of cream cheese, room temperature
1 can of condensed milk
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Instructions:
Place the crust mixture in a 9 inch pie pan and press down firmly.

Beat cream cheese, condensed milk and lime juice together in a large bowl till nice and smooth and creamy. Pour over crust. Lick bowl.

Freeze in freezer till set. Approximately, 4 hours?

Dunnowhatlime Pie
Ingredients:
Crust material (half of what was made in the above "recipe")
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons of lime zest
4 egg yolks
1 can of condensed milk

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius.

Place the crust mixture in a 9 inch pie pan and press down firmly.

In a large bowl, beat egg yolks with lime zest. Mix in lime juice, and then condensed milk. Make sure everything is mixed together thoroughly. Pour on crust. Lick bowl only if you aren't worried about salmonella.

Bake in oven for about 20 min, till everything is set. Then let it cool before putting it in the refrigerator for about 4 hours or overnight.

..

Yummy yummy yummy. The cheesecake was nice and creamy, but depending on how you like your cheesecake, it wasn't very dense at all. And it tended to soften if you didn't finish it up fast enough.

The dunnowhatlime pie was tangy and delicious, but I don't think the recipe would suffer much if you didn't use all 1/2 cups of lime juice. This is not for people who do not like sour stuff though. Hehe.

Bite Sized Pieces of Love a.k.a. Cornflake Cookies

The last recipe I used to make cornflake cookies wasn't too popular- the results were too sweet and sticky. This recipe uses flour, which helps to make everything nice and crispy when done (I think). Again, the only thing I found tiresome about making these was that everything had to be done in batches, and waiting (45 minutes! compared to 5-7 minutes in the other recipe) was quite a bore. But they taste divine- definitely something I think a lot of people will enjoy. Slurp.


Lousy image because I took it sneakily with my camera phone. Don't want to look too weird taking pics around the house, lol.

Cornflake Cookies
Ingredients:
500gm butter, softened
8oz castor sugar
20oz plain flour
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 1/2 boxes cornflakes

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius.

Cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Add in 2 egg yolks and vanilla essence and continue to mix. Add in the flour and mix, and then add the cornflakes and make sure everything is mixed evenly.

Using a teaspoon, spoon out the cornflake mixture into small cupcake holders, and bake till golden brown and crispy. Approximately 45 minutes.

Cool before keeping in an airtight container.

Cake Lapis!

We made kueh cake lapis (apparently kueh lapis is something very different) today, and it was yummy. I'll probably make some for Chinese New Year for my family.


Excuse the lousy pic, I took it using my camera phone

Cake Lapis
Ingredients:
7 egg whites
17 egg yolks
17 oz butter, softened
3 tablespoons condensed milk
8 oz castor sugar
5 oz self raising flour
1 tablespoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon rempah kueh (spice mix)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius.
Cream butter and condensed milk, set aside.
Whisk egg whites till slightly stiff, add sugar bit by bit and continue whisking. Once all the sugar has been added, add the butter, and continue whisking. Add the yolks one at a time till fully incorporated, and then add in the vanilla essence. Add the flour and then finally the rempah kueh. (*note: I need to reconfirm the order of adding in the ingredients.)
Grease and flour a 9x9" square cake tin, and pour enough of the batter to thinly coat the bottom layer. Place in oven with the top heat on, until brown. Remove from the oven, and press the cake down lightly with something flat. Pour some batter on the top, again to thinly coat the bottom, and put in the oven until brown.
Repeat until you finish your batter and are at the last layer. When placing the last layer in the oven, switch the oven back to top and bottom heat, and take out when the top layer is a nice golden brown.
Remove from oven, cool and slice to serve.

..

As you can see in my picture, the top of my cake has blackened because my MIL and I forgot about the kueh cake lapis after putting the last layer in, and was busy preparing (a very late lunch). It tasted really good though, nice and moist and not too sweet. I'm not sure how to convert the measurements from oz to cups though, which is how I normally measure things.

It's a simple cake to make, but tedious as you need to watch the cake to make sure it does not burn. You also have to remember to press each layer down once you take it out from the oven, if you look closely you can actually see at which point I forgot that step (the layer is thicker than the rest). Hehehe.

Performing My Wifely Duties

Anyway, here's a super easy recipe (in case you haven't realised by now, I only cook easy stuff.

Spicy Tuna Pasta
Ingredients:
3 cups of twirly pasta
1 can of chili tuna chunks
1 can of tuna chunks
2 cups of pasta sauce
1 onion, diced

Instructions:
Boil the pasta till al dente, drain. In a frying pan, saute the onions in a bit of olive oil till translucent. Add the pasta sauce and tuna chunks, and mix in the pasta.

Ta da. Serve.

1 Part Veg to 3 Parts Sin

Ooooh just thinking about this makes my mouth water. Made a really simple and yummy spinach and artichoke dip last night with my sister. I'd post pictures but my notebook is dead and I'm updating this in the office, so we'll all just have to settle with using our imaginations. But trust me, this is something so sinful and so good.

Super Sinful Spinach & Artichoke Dip
Ingredients:
1 packet of frozen spinach, defrosted and drained
1 can of artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
1 jar of Alfredo sauce
1 block of cream cheese, at room temperature
1 packet of shredded mozerella cheese
1 packet of shredded parmesan cheese
1 can of nestle cream

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Mix everything together in a bowl and pour into a baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes. Enjoy with tortilla chips or bread sticks.

Personally I think this dish is rather salty to eat on its own because of all the cheese that goes in, but it tastes really good when you eat it as a dip. Easy to make and will be really popular as a party food.

*slurp*

Vietnamese Beef Ball Pho

Wendy and I, we're culinary geniuses, I say. Each time we step into the kitchen, we whip up something that not only impresses because it tastes so deliciously good, but also because it's so *bleep*-ing easy to prepare. Not that we're admitting that cooking is easy, of course. It's easy to us, because we're geniuses. But we'll help you. Watch out for our upcoming cookbook: Ridiculously Easy Dishes That Will Impress Your First Date (Of course, second dates are a whole different ballgame. Watch out for our second cookbook.)

Anyway, enough self praise and patting ourselves on the back. Here's the latest masterpiece. The picture is blurry because we were quivering with excitement over how authentic this tasted, and while we're Asian, we're definately not Vietnamese. But eating this, you can't tell!


Ooh baby

Vietnamese Beef Ball Pho
Ingredients:
For the soup:
330 ml chicken stock
660 ml water
2 beef stock cubes
2 star anise
1 stalk lemongreaa
1 knob of ginger
1 stick cinnamon or some cinnamon powder
2 - 3 tablespoons fish sauce
3 cloves garlic
chilli powder to taste

For the beef balls:
200g mince beef
1 tbs fish sauce
2 tbs starch / flour
pinch of baking powder
1 tbs sesame oil
pepper and salt to taste

Toppings / Garnish:
2 pieces of fish cake, sliced
beansprouts (as much or as little as you like)
scallions chopped
cilantro chopped
basil
lime

Oh, and the rice noodles of course.

Instructions:
Boil all the ingredients for the soup in a medium pot for about 15 minutes. While boiling, mix all the ingredients for the beef balls and roll into tiny balls. Makes about 14 balls. Throw in the fish cake and beef balls and beansprouts and continue to boil to book the beef.

Soak rice noodles in hot water till soft (about 10 minutes). Drain, and add chopped scallions, chopped cilantro and basil on top of noodles in your serving bowl. Ladle soup, beef balls, fish cake and beansprouts on to noodles. Squeeze lime.

Enjoy and gloat.

Ridiculously Easy, Utterly Sinful

You know how sometimes you come across a recipe that just sticks in your mind, and you keep thinking about it until you finally cave in and just decide to make it? Well, after reading about this, I kept talking about it till the HTB (and quite a few other friends as well) told me to just shut up and do it. *grin* I'm so glad I did. Only thing missing was the maple cream sauce or a nice cold scoop of ice cream.



Peach Crumble
Ingredients:
1 can of sliced peaches, drained (you can obviously use fresh)
1 cup of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of castor sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/2 cup of butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

Mix the flour, castor sugar, brown sugar and ground cinnamon in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into small squares and add to the flour mixture. Mix the flour mixture and butter together until it resembles wet sand.

Place the drained peach slices in the bottom of a baking dish. Cover peach slices with the flour and butter mixture and bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

Enjoy with a scoop of ice cream.

Baked Chicken Pasta

Ohh I can't believe I forgot to post about the baked chicken pasta dish I made on Monday. It was something I just threw together. I don't have any measurements though, but it's really simple (I think I'll make something up haha).





Baked Chicken Pasta
Ingredients:
1 packet of pasta shells / pasta twirly things
2 boneless chicken breasts
1 carrot, cut into cubes
1 medium onion
1 punnet button mushrooms, quartered
2 cans of cream of chicken
1 can of water
salt and pepper to taste
vegetable oil
1 packet of shredded mozerella cheese
1 packet of shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:
Boil a bot of water, add salt and some oil. Add the pasta and cook till al dente. Add the carrots and cook till soft.

Cut the chicken breasts into cubes and marinate with some salt and pepper. In a frying pan, heat up some oil and stir fry the onions. Add in the chicken and continue to stir fry till the sides are cooked.

Drain the pasta and carrots and add them to a baking dish. Add the onions and chicken, and throw in the mushrooms. Mix two cans of cream of chicken and one can of water. Stir it into the pasta mixture evenly. Cover with mozerella and cheddar cheese.

Bake at 180 degrees celcius for 30 minutes.

Bean Salad

As requested, here is the recipe for the bean salad.

Healthy Bean Salad
Ingredients:
One can of garbanzo beans
One can of kidney beans
One can of corn kernels
One small onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, diced
Juice of one lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Drain the beans and rinse them and throw them in a big bowl together with the onions, garlic and lemon juice. Mix. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Risotto

Risotto Topped With Chicken And Mushrooms
Ingredients:
2 cups of Arborio rice
6 cups of chicken stock
2 small onions, diced
olive oil
one knob butter

Instructions:
Drizzle some olive oil into a saucepan and add the butter. Saute the diced onions till translucent. Add the rice and saute with the onions for about 5 minutes. Add 1 cup of stock, stirring the rice until it is almost dry. Repeat, one cup at a time.

You can use anything for toppings, here we used some sauted mushrooms and diced chicken.

Fresh Cherry Tomato Relish

I was reading / watching Food Wishes and came across a recipe that I just couldn't get out of my mind. Just like I made mayonnaise and kaya just to see if I could actually make it at home, this was one of those moments that have no actual reason other than simple curiosity. Plus, it felt easy enough to make. All I needed was to find out if it tasted as good as it sounded. And oh it was so yummy. I did tweak it a bit, using lemon juice instead of red wine vinegar, and added onions too. My version below, click on link for original.


Actually I'm not sure how this is different from salsa. Heehee.

Fresh Cherry Tomato Relish
Ingredients:
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, quartered (about a bowl full)
1 clove of garlic
1 small red onion
Juice of half a lemon
3 tablespoons of olive oil (I think? I just winged it)
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper

Instructions:
Ha, so easy. Mix everything in a bowl. Put in fridge for half an hour to chill.