When I was a little girl, my mom used to buy herbal drinks or what we call Jamu in Indonesia. Jamu has varieties of drinks made from turmeric, ginger, galangal, cinnamon, and other native indigenous plants that have some weird names. They are claimed to be good for your health and well being.
Jamu is sold by women carrying a basket on her back strapped by a fabric called selendang. In her basket, different varieties of Jamu herbal drinks are stored in bottles. As she goes around the neighborhood selling her drinks, she also carries couple of small glasses for serving and a little bucket filled with water to rewash them. So you can imagine the hygiene issue of the glass drank by 30-40 people, although she still carry the water to wash them. And I am one of the drinker of that glass. Gosh I hope I understand the meaning of the word hygiene at that time. My mother on the other hand, she always pre-ordered a bottle of Jamu and store them in the refrigerator, so she could conveniently drink them.
Wedang Jahe is always my favorite Jamu. It is sweet with a spicy taste. When you drink them, you could taste the sweetness, and when it washes your throat, you could feel the warmth on your chest. It is really a warmth wintery drink for me. This recipe could last for days, and as you reheat them, the stronger and spicier it gets.
My toddler loves pasta and seem to can’t get enough of them. He loves it so much, he could eat pasta everyday and would not get sick of it. However, he tends to be choosy when it comes to the protein intakes. He doesn’t like to eat chicken, beef or pork. He likes egg, but the protein intake is not complete without meat or poultry. So I have to do everything in my power and ability to somehow feed him the protein without him realizing or knowing it. One of his protein meals is the meatballs served with skewers. Eating the meatball in skewer makes him forget that he actually eating the meat, because the way of eating them is interesting and adventurous.
I do have an important lesson to learn while making both the patties and meatballs though. Always give either your burger patties or meatballs a good squeeze while shaping them or otherwise they will break. If you are not sure, just place them in the fridge for at least half an hour, so they can retain their shape.
So, here is the picture of my burger patties. If you want to serve them with burger buns, you could make them larger to suit your buns.
I served my Skewer Meatballs with my homemade pasta sauce. If you do want to serve them with pasta sauce, you could heat the pasta sauce together with the meatballs, so that the sauce could be absorbed by the meatballs. They will taste so much better.
Nasi Uduk is a fragrance aromatic rice cooked with coconut milk. Nasi Uduk literally means mix rice. It tastes quite similar to Nasi Lemak which could be found in Malaysia or Singapore. Nasi lemak means coconut cream rice. However, both of them have a quite different mix of herbs and spices.
After cooked, Nasi Uduk is traditionally wrapped in banana leaves per portion. Banana leave really helps in enhancing the flavor and aroma of the rice. When I came back to Indonesia last year, Nasi Uduk has been upgraded in terms of serving and increasing its flavour and aroma. They were wrapped in banana leaves and just before serving they were roasted on top of charcoal. It really enhances the fragrance of banana leaves into the Nasi Uduk. I heard also from my cousin that in her hometown, Nasi Uduk was putted inside the coconut and roasted on top of charcoal. It is resulted in the creamier rice.
Nasi Uduk is usually served with fried shallot on top of the rice with fried aromatic turmeric chicken, shredded egg omelette, lalapan (vegetables such as cucumber, cabbage, snake beans, lettuce, tomato), and sambal oelek terasi (chili paste made from chili and shrimp paste).
Klepon is green glutinous rice ball filled with palm sugar and coated with fresh grated coconut and have a distinct pandan aroma. It is chewy when you bite them but be careful because the palm sugar could burst like an explosion of sweet. It is best to be eaten whole and let them explode in your mouth. Klepon is best served fresh on banana leaves. It is best eaten on the day of making it or otherwise they could be spoiled by the freshly grated coconut or the glutinous ball will be harden the next day. You usually find them in the traditional market really early in the morning because they are one of the favorites.
I guess we never really know where is the original Klepon came from, whether they are Indonesian or Malaysian. In Malaysia, Klepon is called Onde-onde. In my hometown, it is also called Onde-onde or Onde-onde Lokan as my grandmother calls them. I live in Sumatra island, to be exact Pekanbaru – Riau. Geographically, Riau is located really close to Malaysia. It only takes about 30 minutes by plane or 2.5 hours by boat to go to Melaka from my place. So, we are practically neighbors. That is probably one of the reasons why we have so much in common like languages, foods, and cultures. I am not even want to start to argue which one is ours and which one is theirs. After all we are neighbors, and good neighbors share and look after each other.
Anyway, back to the original topic of interest. Before I have a son, I used to participate in opening a food stall in several Indonesian food festival in Sydney, Australia. There will be plenty of Indonesian festivals held during the month of May up till August. I always prepared traditional Indonesian sweets and desserts like Klepon, Kue Lapis Sagu, Kue Lapis Singkong, Bolu Kukus, Cenil Sate, Lapis Legit, Lapis Surabaya, Bubur Ketan Hitam, Bubur Kacang Ijo, Biji Salak. Klepon is always the winner, because it is really easy and quick to make and the profit is outstanding. Klepon is also a crowd magnet, it has this ability to draw crowd to our stall.
So, here is some tips before making your Klepon:
- Back in Indonesia, I always make my own pandan paste. It is really worth the effort. Although they have a splendid unique aroma, their extract will never give a bright leafy green colour like pandan pasta, so you have to use Suji leaves. Honestly, I can’t really tell the difference between both of them from the appearance, but Suji leaves have no aroma. I like to use just pandan leaves despite the dull green colour, because I love the colour and extra aroma. In order to do that, I have to use generous amount of Pandan leaves. On the other hand, I couldn’t afford to do that here in Australia.
- Using freshly grated coconut really makes a different to your Klepon. However they are not always conveniently available, so I have to use dessicated coconut. Remember though, if you are using fresh grated coconut, always steam them first and sprinkle some salt on them, it will help to make them last till the end of the day.
- I always make my palm sugar balls the night before. Making round palm sugar balls by using your hands really help speed up the making of Klepon. The other advantage is that you could avoid the contamination of palm sugar to the surface of the uncooked Klepon because palm sugar always stick to your fingers, and it could make the cooked Klepon looks like it has a leakage of palm sugar.
- Honestly, I never measure the water to mix to the flour. Just add your water a little at a time while you mix them and stop adding the water when the mixture has turn into a dough consistency. When your dough is cracked because of long time exposure to the air, you could add a little water and knead them again.
I am an apple pie lover. I love the crunchiness of the cooked puff pastry and the sweet and sourness of the apple, not so much on the cinnamon though. I used to buy those fried apple pie from a junk food outlet, because it is cheap and always available everywhere whenever I crave for it. Few months ago, I bumped into apple turnover in a Chinese bakery Chinatown and I loved it ever since. They are so much healthier because they are baked and not fried like the the cheap one.
Few days ago, I had a ready rolled puff pastry left over in the fridge and I thought ‘why not making the apple turnover for my toddler’. I always want to give him a variety of foods to try on, so he could learn to love and appreciate healthy food. So I did the apple turnover my style. I mix the diced apples with honey instead of sugar, spread some ricotta cheese on the ready rolled puff pastry, put a spoonful of apple mixture, fold them into triangles, sprinkle some sugar to make the top sparkly appetizing, and they turned out to be a hit.
Introduced with beef mice pies around 10 years ago, when I was first arrived in Australia. I went to the famous Harry’s de wheel in Wooloomooloo, so they said that if you are in Sydney, you have to try their pie and hotdog varieties. Honestly, I don’t like the pies. It is not the actual pies that I hate but the extra strong smell of the beef meat itself. Gosh it smells like a goat that has not take bath in a week. I still love Harry’s de wheel hot dog though, especially the one with extra cheese sauce or chilli dog.
I don’t understand why, but the beef meat in Australia tastes very different to the one that I used to eat back in Indonesia. Probably it is because of the way of how Australian cooks them. They love their beef to be cooked as simple as possible, rare to medium rare, so they still can taste the actual beef. In comparison, Indonesian loves their beef to be transformed into a cuisine like Curry or Rendang. Curry or what we called Gulai is cooked for around 1 hour. Rendang is worst, it can be cooked for up to 2 hours, because the meat need to be so tender and soak all those herbs, juices, and coconut milk. You can’t really taste the beef that much, but you could enjoy the soaking herbs that immerse into the beef which are bathed in the thickened coconut milk. I guess, Australian or westerners really appreciates the taste of originality, and Indonesian prefers their meal to be a delicacy.
Originally I made beef mince pies because my toddler is a fussy eater. I want to make his meal interesting and different from the usual stuff that he had, but the most important is that I could put lots of vegetable goodness in it without him even noticed and I succeed. He loves the pies so much. Although making the pies could be time consuming especially if you don’t have ready rolled shortcrust pastry available and have to make everything from scratch, but it really worth trying. To eliminate the smell, I included the Rendang herb ( I did not write it down on the ingredient list) or what we called ‘bumbu rempah daging’ that I brought from Indonesia. The gravy powder also help to disguise the smell apart from smoothing up the mixture.
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Kue Lapis Sagu is a multi-layered steam sweet with a tapioca starch flour based. Kue lapis Sagu could be found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and some other Asian countries. Similar stories to Klepon, it is really hard to know where the exact country of origin is. This recipe is the Indonesian style, but I guess the taste is pretty similar to other Asian countries of Kue Lapis Sagu.
Kue Lapis Sagu could also be made from a mixture of tapioca starch flour and rice flour. However, it depends on your liking. I love mine to be as chewy and elastic as possible, so I used only tapioca starch flour. You could use your imagination in terms of the layer coloring. It could be original, pandan, cocoa, or any artificial food coloring. I like mine to be as natural as possible, so I usually use original and pandan, or original and cocoa.
The first time I made Kue lapis Sagu was 6 years ago. I was not that familiar with the word ‘cooking’. I tried it anyway and made a big mistake. I did not cook each layer long enough and each layer was still raw in the middle, and I realized that after the cake was out of the tin. Big disaster and I panicked, so I throw them back to the tin to steam them again. It was useless really, I steamed it for more than half an hour and nothing really happened. They are still raw and I could see it on every layer. I tried another way to rescue them, which was to cut them into slices, and bake them every time I want to eat. Too much work, and I gave up and just eat them slightly raw. It was still good although you could taste the floury part. I couldn’t handle the reality of throwing them out in the bin. Time passed by, I ended up with selling them in few Indonesian and Malaysian festivals in Sydney a few years ago, and they turned out to be a hit. So I am really pleased of myself.
