Chempedak Fritters

I do not know the english name for chempedak, but it looks a little bit like jackfruit but smaller and sweeter. It has a very strong smell almost as stinking as durian. To me it smells a little like gasoline if it is not opened. But once you open up the fruit, it doesn't smell as bad.

My mom gave me one medium size chempedak yesterday and I ended up making fritters out of it this morning.

The fruit

The final product :-D

Crispy on the outside but soft and sweet inside

Ingredients
chempedak
3/4 cup rice flour
2 tbsp self raising flour
1/2 tsp limewater (you can omit this)
pinch of salt
1 to 1 1/2 cup water
Enough oil for deep frying

Method
1. Mix flours and salt
2. Pour water into the dry ingredients slowly and stir till batter is somewhat like pancake batter
3. Add limewater and stir mixture till well-blended
4. Heat oil in a wok
5. Coat chempedak with batter and deep fry till golden brown
6. Serve hot with tea

Strawberry Yoghurt Ice-Cream

I was reminded of my tub of yoghurt and a small box of whipping cream in my fridge by Gina (KC) after she made her yoghurt ice-cream. A good idea to clear them and at the same time free some fridge space, I made this in the morning using my ice-cream maker.

I sort of cheated using strawbery paste instead of fresh strawberry puree but added some chopped strawberries into the yoghurt ice-cream. The ice-cream came out perfect for me. I like it a little sourish, so I added more yoghurt.

Ingredients
450gm plain yoghurt (less if you don't want it to be too sour)
200gm whipping cream/pure cream
1/4 to 1/2 cup powdered sugar (more if you like sweet)
4 strawberries, chopped
1 tsp lemon juice, added to the chopped strawberries
1 - 1 1/2 tsp strawberry paste/emulco*
pinch of salt

*you can use fresh strawberries puree. Take about 4-6 strawberries and blend it into puree and add some lemon juice to it

Method
Using ice-cream maker
1. Mix yoghurt, cream, sugar, salt and strawberry paste/puree and blend till well mix. Keep them in the fridge to chill it.
2. Assemble the ice-cream maker, pour the chilled mixture into ice-cream maker and follow the instruction of the manufacturer.

Manual
1. Whisk yoghurt, cream, sugar, salt in a chilled bowl for about 1 min
2. Add strawberry paste/puree and continue mixing till well blended
3. Pour into a container and store it in the freezer till set.

Sambal Goreng Pengantin ala Zu

This is one of hubby's favourite dish. One of the least healthy dish, it is generally made of some cow's organs like liver and lungs, prawns, beef/mutton or even tripe. This is my mom's recipe which I am soo used to eating and to me, it is so far the best sambal goreng. I modify her version slightly by adding beancurd and tempe which are my hubby's favourite. It took me awhile to get used to the combination but I am pretty alright with it now.

I hardly make this dish because of the amount of time needed to prepare it. Firstly, the cutting, everything has to be cut into bite size followed by the frying of every ingredients - that is why I said this is one of the most unhealthy dish around.

For this version, I only used beancurd, prawns and lungs (yeah lungs).

dumped all the ingredients after frying

Ingredients
4 firm beancurd, cut into bite size/cubed
200-300g fresh prawns, remove head and shell but leave the tail
200-300g lungs, cooked and cubed
5 large fresh red chillies, thinly sliced
4 large onions, thinly sliced
3tbsp chilli paste (more if you like it spicy)
4cm belachan (shrimp paste)
tamarind juice from tamarind pulp about the size of a small lemon
4 large clove garlic
3cm ginger
4cm galangal
3 lemongrass
100-150ml coconut milk
100-200ml water
salt & sugar to taste
3-5 tbsp oil

Method
1. Fry beancurd, prawns, lungs, sliced onions and chillies till cooked, without over cooking it and put it aside
2. Blend garlic, ginger, galangal and lemongrass into a paste
3. Add belachan with the tamarind juice and put it aside
4. Heat oil in wok and add chilli paste
5. Stir fry the chilli paste till oil separates then add the garlic/ginger/galangal/lemongrass paste
6. Fry till fragrant
7. Add coconut milk followed by tamarind/belachan juice and stir well
8. Add 100ml of water, you can add more water if you prefer to have more gravy
9. Add salt & sugar to taste and simmer till gravy is slightly thickened
10.Add the fried ingredients, and stir till all the ingredients are well coated with the gravy
11.Simmer till slightly dry - there should not be too much gravy
12.Serve hot with steamed rice

Light & Fluffy Banana Cake

I have tried numerous banana cake recipe and this is so far the best. The end result is just like what the name says - light & fluffy. I used the recipe shared by one KC member Joanne but I modified one of the ingredient. The sweetness is dependent on the bananas you use. For this cake, I used the del-monte like bananas.

Close up

Ingredients
6oz butter/margarine
6 oz castor sugar/brown sugar
2 lage eggs
3 1/2 tbsp yoghurt
3 large banana, mashed
8 oz self raising flour, sifted
If you are using plain flour, use 8 oz plain/cake flour with 1tsp baking powder and 1tsp bicarbonate soda

Method
1, Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius
2. Cream butter & sugar till light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well
4. Add yoghurt and banana mix till well blend
5. Fold in flour to mixture and pour into a greased baking pan
6. Bake at 180C for 45min - 1hr or till skewer comes out clean

Homemade Coleslaw

We had fish and chips for lunch today. Unfortunately, we ran out of salad mix and only then I realised that I still have cabbage and carrots in my fridge. So I ended up making a coleslaw from scratch. It is an easy dish except for the shredding. But it took me less than 15mins to chop up the cabbage and carrots since I made enough for lunch. I should have thought about it yesterday since coleslaw is best eaten chilled and tastes even better overnight.

The chips were also homemade too but I will talk about it another time.

The recipe is just an estimation. It is totally up to you whether you like sweet or slightly sourish. For me I like it slightly sourish. Some recipes use milk and sugar, but for me, I shortcut the ingredient and use condensed milk instead.

Ingredients
cabbage and carrots, shredded
4 heaps tbsp mayonaise
3 tbsp lemon juice (less if you don't like it sourish)
1-2 tsp condensed milk (more if you like it sweet)
salt & pepper to taste

Method
1. Mix shredded cabbage and carrots well
2. Combine mayonaise, lemon juice, condensed milk and salt and pepper. Stir the mixture well
3. Pour coleslaw mixture into the vege mix and using a spoon, mix it thoroughly until all the vege are covered with the sauce
4. Chill in the refrigerator before serving

Cheese Roll

Made these rolls using the cheese slices that I have stocked in the refrigerator. My dad keeps buying them for the girls and we could not keep up with the stock. Some of them ended up in these rolls and I was soo surprise with the beautiful swirl effect it gave.

The dough I used for this is the same as the sweet bun recipe. For this, you will need to roll out the dough into a square or rectangle, arrange the slices side by side till it covers the rolled dough. Slowly roll it up like a swiss roll and cut them up. Arrange them close to each other, let ir rise till double in size and bake them.

Roasted Plum Sauce Chicken & Stir-fry Vege

Feeling a little bored with plain steamed rice, I decided to cook chicken rice yesterday with simple side dishes. Malay style chicken rice is usually served with deep fried chicken which I truly, honestly hate to do. I avoid deep frying chicken like a plague because of the amount of work I had to do cleaning the grease although I used a pot to fry them. Another one is the oil, what to do with the balance oil? I don't cook alot everyday especially frying and I don't like wastage. So, the obvious alternative is to roast it.

Roasting chicken is not difficult, just need to have good marinade. I am not really particular about the measurement when preparing the marinade for the chicken. The basic stuffs I use would be garlic, ginger, mustard or whatever spices I have lying around, ketchup, soya sauce and honey. This time round, I used the plum sauce which I bought a couple of months back and totally forgotten about it. I only used these 3 sauces for this chicken.

The result

Ingredients
1 chicken (about 1.4kg)
1 thumb size ginger, blend into paste
3 cloves garlic, blend into paste
2-3 tbsp plum sauce
3-4 tsp worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp ketchup
2-4 tbsp honey

Method
1. Clean and pat dry chicken
2. Mix all the marinade ingredients together and rub the marinade on the chicken
3. Leave the chicken in the refrigerator for at least 2 hrs
4. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius and roast the chicken for about 40-60 minutes or till the skin turns brown and crispy. Baste the chicken with the leftover marinade in between the roasting and turn the chicken over during the last 10mins
5. Cut chicken into bite size and serve hot

My chicken rice is never complete without any vege. I made a simple stir-fry vege omitting soya sauce or stock. I added slices of sotong balls and surprisingly, that gives the vege some flavour. On top of the that, the nice combination of vege made the dish taste refreshing, topped with fried shallots.

A peek at the final product.

Easy Baked Salmon

I love salmon be it raw or cooked. However, for the latter, I am a little bit fussy - I like grilled/pan-fried salmon to be juicy and not dry. The experiences I had dining at restaurants, the salmon fillet has the tendency to be a little dry, hence I hardly order grilled salmon. If given a choice, I would rather eat it raw.

Salmon being a superfood, I make it a point to bake it at least once a week usually on a weekend. My dds love them and can finish a 200-300gm fillet at one meal. I have tried pan-frying, steaming and baking and find baking gives me more flavour. I also realised that adding white onions and fresh tomatoes make the salmon juicy and flavourful.

This was what I baked last Friday for dinner. No fuss, just need chopped the tomatoes and onion. The fish was marinated in the morning before I went to work.

Ingredients
1 salmon fillet (about 200-300g)
1 plump tomato, chopped
half white onion, sliced into rings (you can use yellow onions too)
a few sprigs spring onions
1-2tbsp olive oil
parsley flakes

Marinate
salt
black & white pepper, freshly ground
a few dashes of worcestershire sauce (4-5)
1 tbsp lemon juice

Method
1. Clean and pat dry fillet
2. Rub fillet with salt and pepper
3. Splash a few dashes of worcestershire sauce and lemon juice, making sure that it covers the fillet
4. Leave it to marinate for at least 2 hrs in the refrigerator
5. Preheat ove to 200 degrees celcius
6. Place marinated fillet on a aluminium foil and pour the leftover marinate over
7. Place chopped tomatoes, onions and spring onion on top of the fillet, splash olive oil generously over the fillet and wrap it
8. Bake it in the oven for about 15mins, take the fish out and open the top of the aluminium foil and bake it further for another 20mins or till the top browns a little
9. Sprinkle some parsley flakes or dill
10. Serve immediately with steamed rice

Easy Peasy Cheese Toast & Cheesy Potato Bake

I was a little lazy yesterday and didn't want to have rice for dinner. I remembered that I still have some potatoes to clear, made this for dinner with salad at the side.

I used Ratna's recipe for the cheesy potato bake. You can get it here. Mine didn't look very brown because I didn't bake it long enough and I didn't have chives, so subsitute with spring onions instead.

For this, I had some leftover bread expiring soon so might as well do a cheese toast to eat it with the potato. Very simple to do, you can even get your kid to help you.

Ingredients
4 slices bread
butter/magarine
shredded cheese
parsley flake

Method
1. Spread butter/margarine on the bread
2. Sprinkle shredded cheese and topped with parsley flakes
3. Toast it in the oven toaste for about 4-5 minutes or till the top browns
4. Serve immediately

Fried Noodles

This morning while sending my girls to school, a delicious aroma of someone cooking sambal was lingering in the morning air. The smell soo delicious that I could not resist thinking about fried noodles. It has been a while since I had a plate of hot fried noodles, malay style. I like my noodles to be a little moist with succulent prawns and plentiful of greens. So during my lunch break, I went to Cold Storage to get all the necessary ingredients and earlier today, we had this for dinner 8-D *burp*

A big plate of noodles

Close up with juicy, succulent prawns

This version is not the exact malay style fried noodles because I used Masters Barbeque Sauce to replace the ketchup and soya sauce.

You can purchase this at Cold Storage or NTUC. The sauce is quite tomato-ish but with more flavour than ketchup.

Ingredients
500g hokkien noodles
1 ikan bilis stock cube (Maggi, No-MSG)
1 large onion
3 large fresh red chillies, remove seed if you don't want too spicy
200-300g prawns, deveined
1 piece fish cake, sliced thinly
1 bunch chye sim, washed thoroughly and chopped to 3 inches long
4-6 tbsp bbq sauce (more if you like)
3-4 tbsp olive oil

Method
1. Blend onion and chillies into paste
2. Heat oil in a wok and fry blended paste till fragrant
3. Crush the stock cube and add to the chillie paste, stir till well blend
4. Add fish cake slices and prawns and mix till they are cooked
5. Add bbq sauce and a little bit of water. Make sure there is some gravy so that the noodles will not be too dry
6. Add vegetables followed by noodles and stir them well with other ingredients
7. Serve immediately

Pilau Biryani

I was lazy to cook something from scratch today - still feeling a little tired from yesterday's outing. I was browsing my kitchen cabinet when I realised that I have 2 box of Shan's rice and spice mix I bought a couple of months back. I usually stock a few boxes for 'emergency' cases. I highly recommend this brand for those who do not have the time nor the skills to come out with a great tasting biryani. The package I bought comes with the rice, spice and also the colouring (in powder form). You can get this at Mustaffa.

the packaging

Instructions can be found at the back of the package. But I will just write down how I made it. I only used half of the rice.

Ingredients
1 packet pilau biryani rice & spice mix
500-750g beef/mutton/chicken
1 medium onion, thinly sliced and fried in ghee or butter
1 tbsp garlic paste
1 tbsp ginger paste
1-2 glass water
1-3 tbsp
1 cup evaporated milk (original uses yoghurt but I didn't have any)
Small handful mint, chopped

Method
1. Wash and soak rice for 30mins
2. Put water, ginger paste, garlic paste, meat and spice mix into a pot and cook over the stove until meat is tender
3. Add milk or yoghurt into the meat gravy and simmer till the gravy thickens
4. At the moment, boil about 6-10 glasses of water in a pot and add soaked rice
5. Add 1 tbsp salt into rice mixture and boil till rice is almost half cooked
6. Drained rice and put aside
7. Transfer meat gravy into a deep casserole dish
8. Cover the meat with the drained rice
9. Sprinkled colour powder (provided) over the rice
10. Sprinkle fried onions over, cover the casserole dish and cook in the microwave oven for about 5mins. Check for doneness as different microwave oven has different power
11. Use the rice paddle to mix the rice and meat
12. Sprinkle chopped mint and serve with salad/raita and pappadums

Assorted Sweet Bun

I was in a mood to bake some sweet buns after a long rest of baking. I made these buns last weekend and managed to baked 3 types of buns. I used the sweet bun recipe taken from the book 'Make Your Own Bread' by Novum Organum publication. Because I used a large egg (60gm), I reduced the water to 220ml instead of the original 260ml.

Butter buns, Sausage & Mayo buns

Top right hand : Sausage buns

The filling of the buns is entirely up to you. The following is the recipe for the dough. Unused dough can be kept in the fridge up to 4 days after the first rise. Wrap it with cling wrap or keep it in an airtight container. Thaw the dough to room temperature before use.

I used my breadmachine to knead the dough. The only difference is that I melted the butter.

Ingredients
220ml cold water (use 260ml if you are using small eggs)
1 egg, lightly beaten
50g butter
500g bread flour, sifted
7g instant yeast
100g sugar
5g salt

1. Mix bread flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl
2. Add cold water and egg to mixture and mix well
3. Add butter into dough and knead dough until elastic
4. Place dough in a mixing bowl, cover with cling wrap and let it rise to double its size
5. Cut dough into small portions of about 40-60g and let it rest for another 10-15minutes
6. Shape dough into desired shapes and let it rise to double its size
7. Glaze buns with egg wash and bake till golden brown

Lemon Sourcream Pound Cake

I have yet to attempt a pound cake and finally decided to try this simple pound cake recipe (shared by one member at KC) with some modification. I have never baked a lemon cake before so I made up my mind to try one out since I have all the ingredients. The original recipe uses butter but I was very interested to try shortening instead. I may have eaten a cake made with shortening without my knowledge, hence the decision to bake one myself. In this recipe, I used the butter flavoured one and the result was really good, soft and moist. I hardly noticed any difference - it was just like using butter.

Light and fluffy inside

Ingredients
2 cups self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp salt
1 cup or 1 stick butter flavoured shortening (Crisco) plus 6 tbsp water
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 eggs
grated zest from 1 large lemon
1 cup light sour cream (200ml)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Grease and flour bundt pan
3. Cream shortening plus 6 tbsp water and sugar till fluffy (about 6 minutes).
4. Add in eggs, 1 at a time
5. Add lemon zest and blend.
6. Add flour to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream and scraping down side of bowl after each addition.
7. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake in preheated oven until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean (about 40mins - 1 hour)

Lemon Glaze:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

Method
1. Mix all the 3 ingredients till well blend
2. Drizzle glaze over the cooled cake

Easy Baked Chimichanga

It has been a while since I last updated this blog. I was away on a business trip for a short 3 days and was swamped with work. To kick start again, I made an easy baked chimichanga last Friday. Chiminchanga is a deep fried borito filled with meat fillings. My version is a simple one inspired by a recipe by an online friend.

Freshly baked chiminchanga just out of the oven.

Chicken and cheese oozing out from the tortilla wrap

This dish uses mostly off the shelf ingredients. I used Tostitos salsa sauce and bought the tortillas from the supermarket. You can make your own if you like too.

This is the salsa which I used for this dish.

Ingredients
1-2 chicken fillet cut into strips
2 medium garlic, chopped
shredded cabbage or other vegetables that you like
1 bottle salsa
6 tortillas
shredded cheddar cheese
handful of basil or cilantro
1-2 tbsp olive oil

Method
1. Heat oil in a pan and stir fry chopped garlic till fragrant
2. Add chicken strips and fry till cooked
3. Pour salsa onto the chicken and mix till all the chicken are well coated with the sauce
4. Add cabbage and basil and stir till all the vege are cooked
5. Turn off the heat and let it cool
6. Pre-heat oven to 180 degree celcius
7. Take one tortilla and put some of the chicken salsa on the wrap
8. Sprinkle shredded cheese on the salsa mix and roll the wrap like springroll

Salsa topped with shredded cheese

9. Place chimichanga onto a lined baking tray and repeat with the next wrap
10.Brush chimichanga with olive oil and bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or till the top turns slighly brown
11. Serve immediately

American Chocolate Cake

This is a slightly overdue entry. I made this for dear hubby for Father's Day. A really simple but delicious chocolate cake. The recipe is taken from Alan Ooi's Easy Bake book (Thank you to one of my online friend for sharing this recipe). I made slight modification by increasing the whipping cream as the original is way too sweet and thick for me. Also it was not enough to cover the whole cake.

A slice of the cake

Ingredients
Cake
125gm butter
175gm brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
35gm cocoa powder
130ml warm water
140gm self-raising flour
Buttercream/whipped cream and fresh strawberries for decoration

Method
1. Mix in cocoa powder and water
2. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add in eggs, one at a time
4. Add in vanilla essence, beating well after each addition until well combine
5. Then add in a bit of cocoa mixture and flour slowly until finish
6. Spoon batter into a 18cm cake tin
7. Bake in preheated oven at 180degree for 10-15 minutes or till skewer comes out clean

Chocolate Ganache
90ml dairy whipping cream (original is 60ml)
110gm dark chocolate

Method
1. Heat dairy whipping cream until it comes to just under the boil, off the fire
2. Add in dark chocolate and mix well

Assembly
1. Cut cake into 3 layers
2. Spread ganache over first layer and cover with another layer
3. Repeat twice, cover the top and sides with ganache
4. Use a metal spatula to smoothen the top and sides
5. Pipe buttercream or whipped cream on the cake and put quartered strawberries on it