Lidah Kucing

2009 June 5
by linda

Do you have left over egg whites stocked in the fridge? Then it is time to test your baking skill. Lidah Kucing is very popular during the Idul Fitri, Chinese New Year and Christmas back in Indonesia. It is pretty much a crunchy sweet cookie. You can make a little variation while making this cookie by grating cheddar cheese on top of the cookie mixture just before baking them.

Mapo Tofu

2009 June 5
by linda

Mapo Tofu is a spicy chili and bean based tofu dish originated from Szechuan province, China. According to Wikipedia, the name Mapo (麻婆) is thought to refer to an old pockmarked-face lady by the name of Chen, who invented and sold the dish. Ma stands for “mazi” (Pinyin: mázi Traditional Chinese 麻子,) which means a person disfigured by pockmarks. Po (Chinese 婆) translates as “old woman”. Hence, Ma Po is an old woman whose face was pockmarked. Legend says that the pock-marked old woman (má pó) was a widow who lived in the Chinese city of Cheng Du. Due to her condition, her home was placed on the outskirts of the city. By coincidence, it was near a road where traders often passed. Although the rich merchants could afford to stay within the numerous inns of the prosperous city while waiting for their goods to sell, poor farmers would stay in cheaper inns scattered along the sides of roads on the outskirts of the ancient city.

It is said that the first people who tasted the old woman’s cooking were a farmer and his son who arrived late to the city during a terrible rainstorm. They were forced to find shelter in the old woman’s home having found that all of the inns were full. Pleased with the company, the old woman prepared them a meal, including the dish now known as Ma Po Dou fu. The dish was so delicious that soon each time the father and son passed the old woman’s home, they would stay for a meal. In this way, the old woman’s renown spread as others joined the father and son in visiting and staying at her home. These visitors would often bring the ingredients for her dish so as not to burden her larder. As time passed, the dish evolved.

I am not really a big fan of tofu myself, but since my husband and my son loved them so much, I started to search for various tofu dishes in the web, including Mopo Tofu. I used to buy those Japanese ready mix Mapo Tofu sauce available in the Chinese groceries because buying a Mapo Tofu take away is so damn expensive. However, since I found some great recipes of Mapo Tofu on the internet, I tried to ‘mix and match’ so the flavor suit my family’s taste bud. I never scrambled the tofu as what it is supposed to look like because my toddler loves the tofu as well. If they are scrambled, the sauce would immerse in the tofu and it will be too spicy for a 2 years old. Thank God a little bit of chili never bothers him.

Mapo Tofu

Peanut Butter Chicken

2009 June 2
by linda

I never know that satay sauce could be made from a jar of peanut butter that I used to eat by spreading them on toast or bread. They are a good spread, but for the satay sauce… I don’t think so. Probably I am too narrow minded of how new style of food could be created from almost everything that you could imagine and never think of.

The first time I came across with peanut sauce made from peanut butter was about 9 years ago. My flat mate was having a girls cooking day in one of her mate’s home. They were making a chicken ragout risoles, and the dipping sauce was satay sauce made from peanut butter and the mixture of other things. I am guessing the other things was probably mince garlic, mince chili, vinegar or lime juice, salt and palm sugar. They taste really good.

I haven’t actually made the satay sauce purely from peanut butter. I did once though made a satay sauce by adding peanut butter to my puree roasted peanut mixture. I was forced to do it because I had a catering order for around 20 people and the sauce was just too little. It was 3 hours till the delivery time and I had no time to go shopping for the raw peanut, roasted, and then blend it. I still had too much things to do and only got two hands. I had no choice but to add the whole jar of peanut butter in order to increase the quantity. Thank God, it still tastes good, and the review was great. They love my satay sauce.

I remember the first time I tried Peanut Butter Chicken was when my ex boyfriend (currently husband) was cooking dinner. He bought an instant ready mix peanut butter chicken from the supermarket. When I tasted the meal, it was pretty good for the standard of boys who are living overseas, far away from home, and wanting a cheap economic home cook meal. Then I started to search for the recipe online, finally I found the recipe in his cookbook (funny hah???). Anyway, this recipe is really great if you want something different from Satay Chicken the Indonesian style.

Peanut Butter Chicken

Karage

2009 June 2
by linda

Japanese food will always be one of my family favorite dining out. Whenever we eat Japanese food in a restaurant or sushi bar, my husband almost never forget to order his favorite fried chicken Japanese style. He just seems can’t get enough of Karage. However, I noticed that the taste of Karage in every Japanese restaurant in Sydney never the same. It seems like every restaurant has their own Karage style and taste. One of the sushi bar in Sydney, Sushi Train even has their new flavor of Karage, that is Cajun Karage. I guess I never know the true taste of Karage unless I visit Japan (psst a hidden message for my husband).

Since my husband loves Karage so much, as usual I started to search on the web to find out the best recipe of Karage. I read all the reviews and comments from almost every single Karage recipes that I stumbled upon. This recipe is like a compilation of few Karage recipes that I found. I love the distinct aromatic flavor of the ginger combined with the subtle taste of the soy sauce. The fried chicken came out really crispy without me double frying it.

Karage

Egg Tart

2009 June 1
by linda

I love Saturday, because it means I got extra help from my hubby to look after my super active toddler and we are always going out to have family brunch or dinner together. We love going to Chinese yum cha restaurants to have brunch at Chinatown or Bondi junction. Although the queue needs extreme patience, but the experience of eating them is worth the wait. Apart from the nightmare of looking after Nathan who is never been able to stay still at the dining table, eating out is fantastic.

Chinese yum cha always have various dim sums, steaming foods and vegetables, all those fried little yummy stuffs, and lots of variety of sweets. I never have a clue on what the waiters are talking about, either they do not understand on what you are saying, or they do not know how to answer your questions in proper English. So what I do is doing the hand gesture or simply ask them to open all the bamboo steamers in their cart, and hand pick everything that interest me. And I never forget to order the egg tart, or what they called ‘tan tat’.

I never try to find this recipe until my hubby’s sister visited Australia. She has a fussy eater son who loves eating the egg tart filling when they were transiting in Singapore on the way to Sydney. They also bought couples of egg tart while holidaying in Sydney. I thought to myself, I probably just surfed the web and might just get lucky to bump into a genuine egg tart recipe (http://cikciks.multiply.com/recipes/item/10/Egg_Tart). And I give this recipe a try and the result is pretty good, except the filling is too sweet and the pastry is not similar to the usual egg tart at yum cha. The egg tart at yum cha has a crusty layers of pastry with a jiggly custard filling inside, and this one is just like a short crust pastry, but the filling is the same though. Anyway, he only loves the filling.

I still have not find the recipe for the pastry up till now though, and have not trying to. It only cost me $ 1 AUD each and I could only eat two, also no one at home loves it like I do. But, I will try to find out the perfect pastry recipe for this egg tart and post them as soon as I succeed.

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Chocolate Mouse

2009 June 1
by linda

I am a dessert lover and will always be a big fan. It is posibly one of the main reasons why it is so hard for me to lose my love handles, apart from my Polycystics Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) of course (another excuse of mine of why it is so hard to lose weight). PCOS is a hormonal disorder in a reproductive age of women and currently it only affects 5 – 10 percent of the women population regardless of race and nationality, and I am one of them.

Anyway, back to my finding of this great recipe of Chocolate Mouse. I found several genuine and very convincing recipes of the mouse, but too unsure which one of them is actually works (not collapse) and tastes better. So, I started by eliminating the recipe that use butter. No hard feeling to butter, but you need a really good quality of butter if you want to use one because it is a ‘no bake’ recipe. You could really taste and smell the butter. According to my past experience while baking a chocolate bun, although I used a good quality of butter (or at least I think it is), I could taste the yucky oily after baked butter in the bun. I thought to myself, the chocolate mouse is not baked, so I would not want to risk it.

I still have several failures and heartbreaks while trying this recipes though. So here is some tips to keep in mind before you start making your chocolate mouse.

  1. Always make sure to use the eggs on the room temperature.
  2. Cool down the chocolate before putting the egg yolk in, and stir it fast when the yolks are in (the mixture will be come vey heavy and thick).
  3. Put the clean bowl for beating the thickened cream for at least for 30 minutes in the fridge. It will help the beating of the cream to make it whipped nicely.
  4. Make sure that the bowl for beating the egg whites is clean without any fat and oil residue, or otherwise the beating of egg white will fail.

Another habit of mine involving melting the dark chocolate ala au bain marie, I am always to lazy to do it the old way. So out with the old and in with the new, I always melt the chocolate in the microwave, quick and easy. The only thing that you should keep in mind is that remember to set your microwave power down to 50 %, and just do it for 40 seconds at a time. Stir it with metal spoon. And do it for another 40 seconds and you are done. If the chocolate is still chunky, do it for another round.

Chocolate Mouse

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Pizza Dough

2009 May 31
by linda

Pizza is considered a high class cuisine back in my country, Indonesia. It is like having a fine nice meal in a five star hotel or restaurant. No, I am not describing it as if the meal is the five star restaurant standard nor the only place for having them is only in the five star place, but if you could afford eating pizza, you are considered as “the rich group”.

I still remember when I was about 11 years old, my family used to have dinner in a fried chicken outlet once or twice a week. The fried chicken outlet is new in town and everybody just want to try something new, as well as the ‘needy kids’. So, I was eating my dinner with my family while watching the ‘needy kids’ rushed in to those empty tables for those chicken leftovers. They really seemed to enjoy their meal although they have to pause and wait for another tables to clear to finish their meal.  It just like having a three course dinner where you have to pause and wait for the next course to be served.

If we look at the developed western countries, it is completely the other way around.  What is considered as a high end cuisine in a third world country is a junk food here. It is high in calorie, full of bad fat, and pack in salt and sugar. People like to eat it because it is fast, convenience, and affordable. Junk food is considered as a ‘decent’ meal to get if the people are uncertain about the taste of meals in the  surrounding restaurant. When my husband and I were away on an out of town adventure, we usually make our pit stop at ‘familiar’ burger or fried chicken outlet till I was sick of it. We were too unsure to try something new on local restaurants and just stick to those obvious one.

Anyway, back to Pizza. My household members are a big fan of pizza and loves to order pizza for take away once in a while. Me myself, I am not that big lover of pizza. I don’t like the after taste of that oily fat that tends to linger in your mouth and throat even after you tried to wash them down with a can of soda. I know what you all thinking, another junk food’s best friend. All those reasons sort of driven me to search for a good quality of pizza dough recipe.

So, I found this great recipe on the web couple years ago (created by Sarah Hobbs) and loving it since then. This recipe is really easy to work with and once you’ve mastered the dough making, let’s your imagination go wild and create your pizza with your favorite toppings and sauces.

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