Comptoir du Riz by Sparklingcosmic

Papaya Salad Revisited

2011-12-20T12:48:00.000-08:00

I think i have already told you a story about a laotian restaurant in Paris which serves the best papay salad in town, that couldn't figure out what the ingredients are. All i know is that they put a small crab alike in the dish. Well this kind of crab lives not in the sea, but in the paddy field... i used to play with them, long long time ago, when i was just 3-4, in a neighbourhood of the central Jakarta. Nowadays it is impossible to play with this small crab, there is no more empty land in the crowded but chic neighbourhood that my family is no longer residence... !!!

Well, forget about the crab, i don't know where to find them in Paris (or even if i live in Jakarta). The most important thing is that the ability to make a young papaya salad, just like they have in the restaurant.

My friend sugest me to add shrimp paste to the regular recipe (fish sauce + palm sugar + garlic + lemon + chili + dried small shrimps). And i do a little bit of research on the net, and decided to put a little bit of tamarind. And voilààààà.... i made it... (to bad that i put too much carrot compared to the papaya slices). But it is still acceptable!!!

Love this new recipe so much!

PS: crazy silly me.... i browsed my old blog , and i found the same ingrendients there for the same som tam (papaya salad)... i must have forgotton this recipe, and tried just any normal recipes proposed by the net, and i did not like them...but it seemed that i got stuck with them..crazy!

Bawang Goreng (Indonesian style deep fried shallots)

2011-08-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

To eat soto, bakso or other Indonesian cuisines, we sprinkle Bawang Goreng or deep fried shallots on it. It reveals another fine taste that the food has. So, bawang goreng, though looking so petit, holds an enormous role in our cuisine.

There are only two ingredients to make Bawang Goreng; Shallots, and all purpose flour (don't ask about the quantity of the ingredients, as we hardly take it into account). It is so difficult to find asian type shallot here in Paris, which is smaller than its European counterpart. I will have to go to Indian store to find it, but it is so far from where i live, and it is not my favourite neighbourhood either over there. So i use normal common shallots here.

Just slice the shallots as thin as possible (i admit i am not good at it), and make sure that every surface covered by flour. Don't be affraid of being royal on giving the flour. I notice that the flour helps the shallots becomes heat resistant when deep fried, thus slower the burning process. Therefore you have you enough time to gather them when they've turned golden brown.

Stir Fry of Sator (stinky beans) with dried anchovies and asam sunti

2011-08-01T14:48:00.001-07:00

Hey it has been soooo long since i posted something here..oh well, what can i say, the world keeps me busy. So many injustices in here, so i was busy making comments about it on my twitter, haha... And i stopped facebook and starting with google plus instead... what an amazing latest trend it is. Thank you google, i can still keep a little bit of my privacy for my close friends and relatives (what privacy? once you are on social media, you are bare naked!)

Lets see, what have i been doing ever since, hmmm.. we went back home to Indonesia, to family. So that parents could see what their métisse grand child look like. And we got the chance to smell the indonesian kretek cigarette (disgusting), and went to climb gunung Agung mountain in Bali (what a precious experiences). Then we went to la rochelle to attend my cousins marriage, she weds a french guy (huh poor girl!). During the party dinner, i had an awekening experience about french food.. i almost forgot how good it was, and being reminded again, hehe.

And lately, instead of recipes testing, i was busy socializing, and raising my kid: busy making her food. I have been making hundred containers of these, composing many ingredients...pfff... but i love cooking for my little lady especially she seems to adore it very very much!

I have been thinking of selling bakso (indonesian meat balls soup), to my friends. I found a fail proof Bakso recipe, and perfected it. I tested it a couple of days ago to my indonesian circle (oh this is so google plus language!), and they told me that they like it a lot! (i am over the moon, my bakso stall will launch soon, haha). Sorry since it has something to do with my future business, i cannot share the recipe here, hihi... I can make Fish Bakso and Meat Bakso.. bye bye stupid looking and funny taste bakso from the past....

Fish Bakso

And yesterday, i was just chating with a friend about the ingredients that i have in my fridge, and then i asked her what to do with it, and she suggest me this sauté food... But i just made it like that, without precise quantities of ingredients.

Fried Stinky beans (haha...it is actually not that stinky when it is in your plate, but your mouth becomes smelly -just right after you chew it, feel the odour exploses in your mouth- ..and not to mention your...hehehe..toilette..beware beware!).
Asam sunti (sun dried- sour star fruit alike, common of Aceh province), blended very smoothly. If you don't have this just replace it with tamarind pulp.
Fried small anchovies
shallots, crushed
Chillies thinly sliced
garlic, crushed
ginger powder
Cooking Oil to saute

Directions:

So just like any other indonesian sauté cookings, heat oil in the wok, put your crushed asam sunti, shallots, chilies, garlic and ginger powder together. And after, you put the rest of the ingredients. Et voilà...eat it as a compagnion of white rice!!!

By the way, i made this dish too..Let's see the ingredients, beside the shallots, garlic, and big chillies (to avoid tongue burning when eating it...en effet, big red chillies are not spicy at all!), alongside those mackerel, i put kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger and galanga. So simpel, so good.

Oh by the way, my mom gave me her easy recipe how to make a good fried shallots! But lets wait for my next post for the recipe.

Pictures

2011-03-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

I found several pictures of food that i cooked long time ago, without posting the recipes here. I don't even remember where i got the recipes from, so i am not sure if i will ever post them. But i share the pictures anyway...

Sari Kambing (Indonesian)

Nasi Goreng Kambing (Indonesian)

Japanese Style Grilled Potatoes

sushi with bahn trang

spicy squid salad (Korean)

Loenpia (chinese style)

ayam panggang bumbu hijau with acar (chicken with green paste and condiment - Indonesian)

tahu berontak (Indonesian)

And yeah, recently i made this: matcha stuffs...

Tod Man Pla, Thai Fish Cake

2011-03-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

I think people who follows my blog know very well that i am very into Thai food. Yesterday, i tried to make this fish cake from Thailand. I think this is the first time i made the red curry paste on my own, and oooooohhhh... how i am completely head over heels for this red curry paste.. so fragrant and very appetizing! I think i am just going to use this paste for daily use (if you know the indonesian habits of eating sambal i think you will know what i mean).

I used my personal block of cabai sambal (chili and shallots sauté) that i made and froze inside the freezer to make this red curry paste. The basic recipe is taken from Marabout chef cuisine thai pour débutants, but i replaced the long beans with carrot.

Step 1:

blend until a paste is form the following ingredients (you can blend seperately, of course)

1 Carrot
white Fish filet (I used 400 gr colin alaska type)
2 tbs red curry paste
1 kaffir leaves chopped coarsely
1 onion
3 tsp fish sauce
lemon juice from ½ lemon
2 tsb of coriander (chopped)

Step 2:

Form several galettes form with your hands, continue until you finish the dough.

Step 3:

Deep fried them.

Red curry paste ingredients (sauted, and ground)

sliced shallots, chilies and garlic
coriander grains (in powder)
coriander stems and leaves
cumin (powder)
kaffir leaves
ginger (powder)
lemon grass stem
grilled shrimp paste

I did not make the cucumber relish (too lazy).

Recipes Testing (again) - Bagelen and Opera Cake

2011-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, i baked opera cake, recipe from this awesome blog. The result was not that bad, but for the assembling and the ganache part, i created it using my personal touch (that's why it looked messy, and lol ...failed). It was my first time making opera cake, and i am loving it. I served the cake as the dessert for my friend Shello who went to my house for lunch, and as a consolation for being alone: Gorilla is away for a business trip to Israel. How sad being in the small apt. alone (euh if it was bigger, i would be sadder?) Luckily there is our daughter Tiarra who keeps me busy and entertained (yeah gorrila's presence was just like a circus too.. so entertaining!).

By the way, maybe in the future i would try this recipe.. sounds easier and more affordable...

And i also trie to make Bagelen...my fav. "cookies" when i was a kid. It involves a childhood memory with my grandma who lived in Kebayoran area in Jakarta. I remember her house there, i also remember that she used to have bagelen in her cupboard very very often... Suddenly i miss her but we were never close. She had many grandchildren from her 6 sons, and i am one of the youngests among the grandchildren, so she was already old when i was around. Recipe from the same site. I used several pain de mie (which is the same as Indonesian roti tawar) to make them.

Update 18-02-2011:
Last week, i made the same opera recipe. This is the result..well..better i guess, because i finally succeed making the buttercream...

Myulchibokkeum

2011-01-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, long time no see.. happy 2011 everyone! Life has taken me again... A couple of days ago i was craving for Korean food... I got fed up eating european food for the year end's fiestas. So when we return home, i just want to cook asian stuffs. Suddenly I thought of Maangchi and her site... you know how i love Korean food, and her site is so adorable and she makes Korean cuisine seems so affordable in just 30 minutes....

So here it is... my myulchibokkeum.... anchovy side dish...thanks maangchi!!!

I am still alive!!

2010-10-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

..and i was delivering another life to this world, by giving birth to a beautiful baby girl 2 months ago. I cooked less for the first month, but now i think i am half going back to normal. I cook more and more, but unfortunately I do not take picture of what i have cooked, because we really do not have the time anymore. Trying to find a time to cook is already uneasy, especially with the baby's screaming as the background,....so you can imagine, that this picture that we succesfully captured stays as an exceptional occasion, and i am too lazy to post the recipe of course.

It is Thai yellow curry shell... very spicy.. i am sure you can find the recipe on the net, hehe...

Testing Recipes

2010-08-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

I am sooo happy... i tested several recipes (Caramel Sauce, Ice cream and Macarons), and they work very well. It is the first time ever i made caramel sauce, i heard that it is difficult, but hey, it works even from the first time, unlike my macarons trial and error. Mr. Gorilla got jealous as my caramel does not have the burnt taste, and stay soft even kept in the freezer.

My problem with Macarons was, it is extremely difficult to obtain the smooth shells. Now i know the reason behind this failure: i did not use the correct recipe, nor do i know that the almond powder need to be smoothen by processing it again through the food processor. And since mr. Gorillo bought me one for my birthday, i have no other excuse not to try the macarons recipe anymore, beside i got so jealous for all the Indonesian mothers out there who haven't even eaten the macarons and tried out making ones and got successful during the first trial. Shame on me that i can only know buying it at La Durée, or any close-by boulangeries (bread and pattiserie shops can be found easily in every corner of the street in France). Normally their macarons are not as good as La Durée's; too sweet. Macarons has really got into my nerves. So i got so motivated to try again and again. Now i have another problem though: It's difficult to peel the shell from the bread sheet. I guess my oven does not work the same as the oven of the writer of the recipe's, i will need to bake a little bit longer next time.

Here are several pictures:

glace à la framboise et au caramel mou

Les macarons

sauce caramel recipe click here
basic vanilla ice cream recipe click here
Macarons recipe click here

Last but not least, i found this picture... i don't even remember that i have ever made this dish, neither remember the name of it, altough i am quite sure that it is Indonesian, and i grilled it wrapped in a banana leaf. Is it Pepes Ikan (fish in banana leaf packet)? I wonder. If so, what style, Balinese? Javanese? Which recipe did i use? Well, this is what happen if i keep on cooking - trying new recipes and taking pictures but forgetting to do updates to my blog...

Just Food Photos

2010-08-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last week was My gorilla's birthday (time passes quickly!), and as always he asked me to make a (tumpeng) Nasi Kuning to celebrate it. I was too lazy to make it actually, so i made it as simple as i can (i think as long as he sees the yellow rice, it's ok, he's happy): ayam goreng (crispy chicken), and kering kentang. Both are must haves in our version of Nasi Kuning.

And yesterday, i made mpek mpek Palembang again, just to test a recipe and testing a food processor which he gave me for my birthday present (it's nothing fancy, but i am so happy with the result!!). The recipe (i printed it from the net) is using Hakao starch as one of the ingredients. Bizzarely, the recipe does not have salt as one of the ingredients, thus, the taste is not that good. But the mpek mpek is very tender, so i decide using the same recipe, but will add more ingredients in the future....in the mean time i am still looking for the best cuko (mpek-mpek's sauce) recipe which suits France's condition.

PS: I successfuly made mpek-mpek kapal selam, which for me is very difficult to make in the past. I made 3 mpek-mpek kapal selam, 2 lenjer, and 2 balls type.

click here for another mpek mpek recipe (in indonesian).

Cheese Cupcakes

2010-08-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

It is inspired by detik.com site. It is so easy and tastes very good. But i am sure you all know the recipe...:))) (to lazy to translate it into English, but i know there are so many muffins and cupcakes recipes out there in the world which are delicious!)

Crispy Duck à la Bebek Bengil Restaurant, Ubud (Bali-Indonesia)

2010-08-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Balinesse fried duck is probably the best type of duck dish in the world. Okay that probably goes together with peking duck...oh who cares.

There is one restaurant in Ubud Bali which is very famous with its fried duck, The Bebek Bengil Restaurant (dirty duck restaurant), what else? The ambiance of the restaurant is excellent (you can chose to eat in a small individual hut next to the paddy field) , and the most important is, of course, the main menu, crispy duck.

I found its recipe on this site, many many thanks to its writer by the way. But i just follow the instruction slightly different. I skip the marinate part, and boil the duck with all of the ingredients before frying it, and then eat it with rice and spicy sambal terasi (condiment made of shrimp paste).

Crispy Duck

Ingredients :

2 duck tighs, marinate for 15 minutes with fresh lemon juice, and grilled in your oven for 10 minutes
water to boil (aprox. 1500 ml)
Cooking oil for deep frying
3 goose of garlic, chopped
3 salam leaves (indonesian bay leaf)
½ tsp kencur powder
1 tsp of ginger powder
1 tsp of galanga powder
1,5 tsp of coriander seed, in powder
½ tsp of pepper
1 tsp of salt

Method:

Sprinkle the lemon juice on the duck, set it aside for 15 minutes.
Grill for 10 minutes.
Boil all of the spices and the duck tighs until the duck is tender.
Omit the greasy part of it, and deep fry it.

Sambal Terasi

Ingredients:

1 tsp of shrimp paste
1 tsb of cooking oil
1 chopped tomato
2 or more chilies
50 ml of water

Method:

Heat the cooking oil in a small pan. Add the remaining ingredients before adding water in the end. Continue cooking until the tomato turns into paste.

Poffertjes

2010-08-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

yippy... finally i am able to make this dutch sweet snack..It was my favourite one, when i was still living in Bandung, but the price was quite expensive for a student's pocket (sold in Tizi's bakery Bandung - Indonesia. I am not sure if the bakery is still there or not, considering how much Bandung has changed for the past 15 years!). When i found out what the ingredients are, i was quite surprise and still wondering why the price was high. Huh, reaally, Indonesia is getting more and more unaffordable for me, i feel like i don't want to live there again... ha.. i have never thought that i'd say that. Anyway, i think poffertjes taste almost the same as blini, Indonesian martabak manis , Indonesian Kue Cubit (yum!! the best petit cake from childhood), or Belgian waffle. I found a picture on flickr , showing that they also eat it in the same maner as Belgian Waffle... hmm.. i am actually not a big fan of BW, too sweet that it hurts my teeth (and heart!).

Anyway, i made the poffertjes using takoyaki pan, which result turned out satisfying for me (although the form is probably too round). The recipe is taken from this beautiful site. But i think i will try another recipe next time.

Spicy Chicken Wings

2010-07-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile isn't it? Well apart from my famous laziness actually there isn't much that i do. I stopped drawing, as i found another hobby, which is sewing. My, i begin to sound like Martha Stewart, don't i?

I made Asian way chicken wings recently, it is extremely quick and easy. The original recipe was taken from a magazine called Modes & travaux, July 2010 edition.

Spicy chicken wings (for 2)

6 chicken wings
orange juice from 1 small orange
2 chives, thinly sliced
½ teaspoon of ginger powder
200 ml soya sauce
1 table spoon of sambal (Asian hot sweet) sauce
1 table spoon of cooking oil
salt and pepper

Method:

Heat the oven for 220°C, clean the chicken wings, omit the extremities.
Line them up in a oven plate, sprinkle with salt and pepper and a little bit of cooking oil. Grill in the oven for 20 minutes, take them out and put all together in a big salad bowl.
Make the spicy sauce by combining all of the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl.
Coat the chicken wings with half of the sauce, and put them back in the oven plate.
Grill for another 3 minutes. Serve with the remaining sauce.

Stewed Hijiki Seaweed with Carrot

2010-05-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

Just like Maki, i am in love with Jujiya. I often visit the small bento restaurant in Paris whenever i crave for jap food. It is cheap, and i think it is quite original and hommie compared to the other japanese restaurant in the neighbourhood. Thanks to her recipe, i finally know how to make it and know the name of this fav. dish!! hehe.
Go directly to her site here for the recipe and the address.

Sambal Goreng Udang

2010-05-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

Previously, I posted Nasi Langgi recipe. One of the side dish of nasi langgi is Sambal Goreng Udang (Fried Shrimp savored with spices). Yesterday evening i cooked this delicious sambal, and ate it as a side dish to the normal white rice. Here is my recipe.

Ingredients:

250 gr shrimps, omit the head, wash, and marinate with lemon juice and salt for 15 minutes.
2 kaffir leaves
1 salam (indonesian bay) leaf
2 big shallots (thinly sliced)
2 gooses of ail, crushed and sliced
1 tsp white sugar (optional)
1 tsp shrimp paste, coarsed
4 sliced chili (you can eventually add more)
salt, depending to your liking
Cooking Oil

Method:

Deep fried the shrimps for around 5 minutes (or less), oozed.
Saute the rest of the spices, add the salt and sugar before droping the shrimps.
Continue cooking for another 1 or two minutes.
Serve for two.

Nasi Langgi

2010-05-29T04:05:00.000-07:00

Hiatus again... too lazy to post something here. Too busy, too tired, but i still cook every now and then, but then again i am too lazy to take a very good picture of the foods!! I have been so into painting these days, i am kinda having our small apartements upside and down with my stuffs, we do not have any other space to work on the food pictures and the decorations!

I made this Nasi Langgi thing, a couple of weeks ago. Nasi Langgi is a set of rice dish accompanied by miscellaneous side dish, such as Kering Tempe Teri, Sambal Goreng Udang (shrimps savored with chili), Dendeng, (Irisan telur dadar) thinly sliced omlet, kerupuk udang (shrimp crisps) and sambail petai (petai with lots of chilies).

Okay i only accompanied my nas langgi with Kering Teri, Irisan Telur Dadar and the shrimp crisps. It's noway that i can find dendeng or petai easily in France, thus i made my nasi langgi minimalistly. But hey, Nasi Langgi is so similar to Nasi Kuning, doesn't it? Well, It does have the yellow color, and almost the same taste.

I got the original recipe from the book Resep andalan Resto Indonesia, Nasi Lengkap (Indonesian Restaurant trusworty recipes, the complete rice dish), by Wahyuni Mulyawati and Ilse Harahap, Gramedia 2008.

Ingredients:

500 gr rice
600 cc coconut milk
2 lemon grass stalks, bruised
2 salam leaves
1 stub of galanga, bruised

Spice A:

1 tbs coriander powder
1 tbs ail, sliced
3 tbs shallots
1 stub of turmeric, grilled, soften (i used 1 tsp of turmeric powder)

Method:

Wash the rice, and in a cooking pot, cook together with the coconut mil, lemon grass, salam leaves, galanga, and Spice A. Cook with medium fire until boil, stir well, until the milk is well absorbed. Lower the fire, and put the lid on, and continue cooking until 45 minutes (the original recipe says 60 minutes, i reduced the time, afraid that it will be burned on the bottom).
Serve with the side dish.

Matcha Frappucinno

2010-04-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am glad that spring time is finally here. It is getting hot and hotter here, but i cannot complain since we experienced a very long hot winter just now....we really need this sun, and we hope it stays.

And in the time like this, when the flowers are blooming, there is nothing better to do than trying to get a lot of inspiration of spring time love, flowers and drinking fresh tea. And green / white tea is so perfect to celebrate this moment because i feel that the arome difuses very well with the air... I feel like i am blending into the time also when smelling it... ah...l'air du printemps....

Anyway, here is the recipe of matcha frappucinno, which recipe is from my friend, Yunike, who just recently welcomed her dearest baby girl. Congratulations anyway!!!

Asian Dumplings

2010-04-24T08:06:00.001-07:00

I have been absent again. But i have been busy making dumplings. I think i am in love just to make them, but not in love to eat them. I feel deezy after eating it, except after the takoyaki effect. I finally bought the takoyaki pan, and i feel so happy with it, as i have been dreaming on having it for ages.

Indonesian style bakpao

Here are the pictures of the dumplings that i made recently, i am sure that you can find the recipe easily on the net, as for me the success of making asian dumpling is not about the recipe only, but finding and using the right ingredients (i never really follow the recipe, you know me, hehe... but for making the skins, i do... - just for the filling, i do free style). I used the recipe of Andrea Nguyen for the skins, and for takoyaki recipe, a lot of people recommend this one from youtube, cooking with a dog.

Lemon Frosted Lemon Cake from Joy of Baking

2010-04-04T11:22:00.001-07:00

Okay, here i go again, back to my old hobby. It does not mean that i am fed up with the new one, is just that lately, i am getting my cooking spirit back. Yes, i am 5 months pregnant, and i lost my appetite for the first tri-semester, and now i am getting it back, slowly though (i still hate the smell of onion, shallots what so ever).

I have been doing a lot of cookings, but i did not take pictures of it. Too lazy, or it was just a repetition of recipes that i have made long time ago, such as somay, mpek-mpek, ayam goreng kalasan, opor ayam. Today, i tried to cook lemon Frosted Lemon Cake from Joy of Baking, and it is successful! How proud i am since i think i have tried at least 3 recipes before and it does not work very well. But this one is so light and yummy (just that i was mistaken with the frosted thing, hehe, that is why it does not want to spread, hihi). I let you all go clicking their (or her?) site.

New Blog

2010-03-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

I am having a problem lately with my cooking hobby, too lazy as usual. I discovered (or rediscovered to be more precise) another hobby, which is drawing. I just realize that this activity eases my mind... i think i am in love, especially with water color paint. I love it when the watery brush touch the paper, and just like magic that the paint and water unite altogether, expressing themselves.

For my new hobby, i make another blog just for it, and it is on
http://sparklingcosmic.estreme.net

tell me should i give up my day job? hehe.

Cah Kailan

2010-01-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

My mom used to make cah kailan (Kailan Sauté / Stir Fry Kailan), which recipe, i think, is originally from China. She knows that among all legumes that i hate (i hate all veggies), i hate Kailan less. But that does not mean that i love it of course, that is why she often put this on our menu. Recipe is based on my trial and error, of course, trying to remember what she put in the wok....

Ingredients:

3 Garlics
0,5 tps sesame oil
3 branch of Kailan, cut
250 gr tenderloin beef
2 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs sweet soy sauce (Indonesian soy sauce)
1 tps ginger powder
1 tbs cooking oil

Bring it on!

Heat oil in a wok, fry the garlic and ginger powder.
Add the meat and cook until half done.
Add the sauces, mix well while continue cooking.
Drop the kailan inside the wok, and continue cooking for around 2 minutes (don't cook the kailan too long as it is better when it is not wilty).
Serve.

Rujak Bali

2009-12-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

Rujak is generally an Indonesian word for fruits salad, with spicy palm sugar sauce. In most parts of Indonesia, we use crushed peanuts as part of the sauce's ingredients. But in this recipe, there is no peanut at all and it has shrimp paste (terasi) inside , and I was really wondering if it is very typical of Bali's rujak that the sauce is without sauce. It is too late to call home now, to ask my mom (she is balinese) about it, well anyway, I still enjoy the taste, although I prefer the sauce with peanuts, of course!

I added dry shrimp and dried chili inside, and for fruits, i used pamelo (jeruk bali), pineapple, but i was so wrong to use green papaya because you really have to use ripe papaya for this kind of sauce (however green papaya for the peanut rujak, tastes very good).

Asem-asem and Pindang Serani

2009-12-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

My mom used to make a Javanese meat soup which i loved. As you all probably know, that i did not like Indonesian dish when i was a kid, bu t her meat soup which is called "asem-asem", (asem means acid) ugh, j'adore! But that was before she started adding curcuma (turmeric) inside that asem-asem to give it the yellow color, she said it is another variation. I told her that i don't see the difference between that and the regular meat soto if she makes it like that. Beside, i did not like turmeric (only when i live in france that i start to like it and coconut milk as well! Imagine being Indonesian, and does not like those two things, you can picture how stupid i was when i was young!).

Anyway, i made "Pindang Serani" yesterday, and i love the smell of the spices inside, which reminds me of my mom's yellow asem-asem. So i decided to make the asem-asem, but i add other spices so that i can call it my own version of asem-asem? Hehe...

Anyway, sometimes she made pindang-serani-kind of dish too at home, and as you might guess it, i did not like it either, so i hardly ate it.

Ingredients:

2 cm curcuma/turmeric, peeled and minced
5 cm galangal, crushed
1 tps ginger powder
1 tbs dry shrimp crushed
1 chili (or more) thinly sliced
½ tps andaliman or schezuan poivre
1 lemon grass thinly sliced
1 big shallots thinly sliced
2 garlic thinly sliced
2 tomatoes cut in wedges
1 tps raw salt
1 lemon, (for the juice)
1 spring onion thinly sliced
750 ml water
500 gr beef, cut

How to....?

Boil the beef in the water. Take out the residue resulting from the process (add water if necessary).
Add the remaining ingredients (except the spring onion).
Cook until the beef goes tender, throw in the spring onion, continue cooking for 1 minute.
Add the lemon juice and serve as rice's companion.

To make Pindang Serani:
The same spices as above, (except the andaliman, lemon, spring onion, shrimp and lemon).
Replace the beef with fish.
Boil the spices altogether, and then add the fish in the end, and continue cooking for about 10 minutes.

pindang serani

Stir-Fry Chicken

2009-12-14T12:45:00.000-08:00

Tonight, i cooked Chinese food. Mr. Gorilla told me that he liked it a lot, while i actually am not a big fan of Chinese dish, especially tonight's dish. He told me that it had the same taste as what he ate once a week when he worked in Shanghai, and then he kept on by saying that maybe it was my cooking that he felt in love with, not with who i am (oh that nasty mouth of his!). He even told me that i am getting better and better on cooking compared to what i did 4 years ago when we just moved in to our small apartment, that i often spoiled dinner time with my fail cookings, haha.

Well, i actually wanted to cook something like schezuan chicken, unfortunately, the red pepper is what i have, not have the schezuan pepper, and at this moment, i am still trying to find where i can find it in Paris. I have not yet looked for it in the biggest Asian supermarket in Paris, Tang Frères, i am really really hoping that they have it. In the mean time, here is my recipe.

Ingredients:

250 gr chicken fillet, cut in small pieces
1 tsp red pepper (Peruvian pepper)
1 tbs dry chili
1 tbs rice vinegar
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tbs soy sauce
2 crushed garlic
sugar (according to your liking)
1 red spicy chilly (discard the inside part and slice thinly).
A bunch of coriander leaves
1 tbs of cooking oil
2 carrots, thinly sliced
a bunch of bean sprout

Method:

Heat your cooking oil in a wok.
Add all of the spices, stir - fry until golden brown, or until it releases all of the aromes.
Stir in the carrots, soy sauce and vinegar.
Add the chicken, cook again until it takes all of the coulor of the seasoning.
Turn off fire, add bean sprouts, and sprinkle with coriander leaves.
Serve with rice.

Bolu Kukus

2009-12-13T15:22:00.001-08:00

It is so difficult to make my husband to love Asian desserts. I notice that the French are chauvinist when it comes to their dessert and wine, they think that theirs are the best. Mr. Gorilla does not like something with jelly such as pudding, or agar-agar thing, and then he is not a big fan (or i can say dislike?) the relish of glutinous rice flour in the dessert, so only pisang goreng, kolak pisang, kue lapis legit (i have never tried making this, i heard it is sooooo difficult!) which stay as my chance to make him to like Indonesian dessert. But there is another dessert that he likes when i made it a year ago, Bolu Kukus muffin, one of the famous snack cake in Indonesia, which resembles a lot to muffin or cup cake. You can always easily find this cake everywhere in Indonesia.

Well this post is an old post, that i have on my old blog (in Indonesian) more than a year ago. Someone told me that she did not succeed making it, so i visited my old blog. It was my first time and I hope it is not my last time making it. Apparently it is quite difficult to make it, as many people does not have the blooming cake result in the end, but there is only one secret: do not open the lid of your steamer during the steam process. I used Melani's, (my friend) recipe to make it. I repost here and translate it into English. You will need the special molds to make it, (which picture she posted on her site) i bought 'em on the net, but i forgot which site. It was a Dutch site, quite expensive, but i was so eager to make it thus it was worth it!

Ingredients:

5 egg yolks
1 white egg
250 gr sugar
250 gr flour
125 ml sprite
chocolate powder or other colourant
bread paper, cut in squares (size enough to be put inside the mould)

Directions:

mix the eggs together with sugar until thick and well developed
Add the flour and the soda, part by part (not all once), and stir well.
Take half (or less) of the dough, and add the chocolate powder.
Pose the bread paper inside the moulds
Fill them with the white dough, and end it with the chocolate dough on top
Heat your steamer until the water boiled.
Cover it with a napkin, let it steam during 20 minutes (at this point i dont really remember if i really follow the recipe like it is written, because you know that i don't like doing it.... i don't remember if i just cover it with napkins, or i used the lid of the steamer to cover it and had it wraped with a napkin to avoid the steam fall down to the dough - however vaguelly i remember that i really followed the recipe).

Update March 2010:
I made this cake again, just before i went to Belgium to visit an Indonesian friend who lives there. I made her this, and i made it just having the casserole closed with napkins, with no lid above it. And it works.

Tom Yam Goong

2009-12-12T12:52:00.000-08:00

It seems that i am obsessed again with Thai food. After spending an afternoon at a friend's place in the north of france, where she prepared a chicken tom yam using ready tom yam paste, which made me addicted after.

I went to Asian store today, and found out that the ready paste contains sodium glutamat, euh... i wonder that my friend's has the same chemical ingredients which caused me head over heels? Anyway, long time ago, i made this soup based on a Laotian cookbook. And before that, i also made my own version of this soup. Now it is time to search for a Thai version recipe then...alrightie.

Anyway, since the paste is MSG contained, which indirect/directly attacks my health i decided to make everything from scratch, including the nam prig prow paste, of course (click here for the recipe). It does not have the same taste as my friend's but it is not bad at all (i got addicted too, but i kept my head on my neck as the flavour is just natural, but very good). I learn that the spicier it gets the better it is, the more lemon juice and fish sauce you put, the merrier it gets, so be generous when adding the ingredients. I added galange roots, because i like the relish and i just bought them at the asian store :))

Fragrant Fish Soup

2009-12-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

This recipe is a combination of periplus recipe and tom yam goong in general. Et voilà, it is not bad at all...(am happy, mam!)

Ingredients

700 gr Fish (fish with white chair)
5 cm of turmeric, peel and minced
1 tps ginger powder
1 tps galanga powder
1 tps shrimp paste
2 lemon
1 lemongrass bruised
2 kaffir leaves
2 shallots, thinly sliced
2 chilli sliced
700 ml water
a bunch of asian basil
2 tomatoes, sliced
2 green fresh plum, (bruised)

Method

Marinate the fish with lemon juice, set aside.
In a big wok, heat 2 tbs of cooking oil, and saute the turmeric, ginger, galanga, shrimp paste, lemon grass, chilli and kaffir leaves.
Add the fish inside, cook for 5 minutes.
Add water and shimmer it. Add tomatoes and young plum, cook until they are tender.
Add the lemon juice and basil, continue cooking for another 3 minutes.
Serve.

Tofu and Broccoli Soup with Soy Paste

2009-12-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

I am baptising this dish as my other lender of the last resort when i am running out of ideas of what to cook, but craving for good simple (oriental) food. It will remind you of miso soup of course, but this one is my creation, thus very rustic unline the fine miso taste.

Ingredients:

Korean soy bean paste (soenchang doenjang)
1 tps dashi powder
1 tbs korean/japanese soy sauce
tofu cut in dice or even bigger (next time I will use soft tofu so it would be even closer to miso soup)
1 broccoli, cut and washed
1 tbs mirin
700 ml water

Method:

Except broccoli, boil all ingredients, until the tofu takes color.
Add the broccoli, and cook to your liking.

tips:
If you want the soup's color to be clearer, took out the soy sauce, and do the inverse of cooking, boil the broccoli first, then tofu later.

Love in a Piece of Bread

2009-12-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

"Love in a piece of bread" (Cinta dalam Sepotong Roti) is an old film by the famous Indonesian director, Garin Nugroho. But to tell you the truth, i have never seen the film, even though i am so looking forward to see it. I was only a young teenager at that time, and from what i read from Hai Magazine (haha..now you all know how old i am - yes i am from that generation), the theme of the film is very much controversial, but i forgot what it was all about. Anyway, i invite all the readers of my blog, should you have a copy of the film, don't hesitate to offer me one...eheheh...

Anyway, this bread (brioche) was made by my husband. He loves making breads and co. He made it with love by the way, hehe. Ages ago, when i was still teenager, i slightly heard that Frenchmen are romantic, and when i married mr. Gorilla, i never thought about the stereotype and hoping him would be as romantic as the stereotype which i had completely forgotten about. But anyway, he is quite romantic, although i am not sure if it has something to do with his nationality (maybe more related to his culture- haha). And if you think that i love living in France because the men are romantic, you are wrong... Well, my life in France has been quite a drama i am still thrivingly struggling here. When i was in Nz, i met a French who told me how difficult it is living here, now i understand very much of what he was talking about.

Well, anyway, above are the pictures about his raisin brioche. I am sure that you all can find the recipes on the net.

Acar Kuning

2009-11-29T08:59:00.000-08:00

Acar or pickles was never my favorite. But so were many other Indonesian food when i was still young.

I found this Acar kuning (yellow pickles) on the net, and i am very willing to try since i have all of the ingredients in the cupboard. You can eat acar as your grilled fish companion, salty martabak, or nasi/mie goreng (fried rice or noodles).

Ingredients:

1 cucumber, cut as you like (i followed the original recipe)
2 carrots, cut
200 gr pineapple
300 ml water
1 tbs vinegar
lemon juice from ½ lemon

spices, using your pestle, ground the following:

2 cm curcuma, grilled,
2 shallots
1 garlic
2 chillies
sugar
salt

Methods:
boil the water together with the spices
Add the pineapple, carrots, cucumber, vinegar and lemon juice.
Simmer until the veggies go tender.

Pindang Ikan and Ayam Betutu

2009-11-28T15:05:00.000-08:00

Periplus is a name of a publisher based in Singapore (i think), which produce good books. When i was still in Jakarta, i collected some of their recipe books, that i keep dearly and use as top reference even today. I could not be happier when i realized that someone posted some of Indonesian recipes coming from Periplus on the net (who said that piracy is a bad thing?!).

I tried their recipe Fish simmered in Fragrant Soy, today. I remember that when i was still living in Jakarta, my mom made very rarely this dish because my father does not like fish (because of the strange smell, he says), while at that time, i don't like any soup based on fish meat (i don't know if sisters and brother really like it, but anyway, we did not live in the same roof for so long, so i don't know well their favorite food).

Anyway, today i wanted to make a simple soupy dinner, since it is very cold outside (bad weather experience in Paris), and i also remembered that i still have mahi-mahi (dorade coryphène in French),fish fillet in the freezer. I don't know what mahi-mahi means but it seems that this fish lives in pacific ocean, and the taste is very distinguish while the meat is quite firm.

This recipe is just perfect to make the used of the mahi-mahi fish, and unlike usual, i have curcuma roots (normally i use powder - works just fine for me, i don't complain). I replaced the carambola fruit with green acid plum.Now, about ayam betutu (roast chicken in banana leaf), it is a balinese (and lombok) dish that is very famous. I found the recipe posted here, which i tried several time, and i am never bored with the result. Of course, i replaced the duck with chicken. I cooked this when father in law came to visit us because he had a business trip in our neighbourhood about 3 months ago, and he said it was delicious. Now that is a compliment, considering he is a very difficult man when it comes to food.

Oseng Teri

2009-11-26T12:22:00.000-08:00

Oseng means sauteing in English (or is it in France?), while teri means the small anchovy fish. In the past, I made sambal lada mudo, which is not that different from this one. The recipe is just my creation, and I love the taste of the lemon juice in it.

Ingredients:

200 gr deep fried anchovies
cooking oil
juice from ½ lemon

Spices:

2 shallots sliced
2 garlics crushed
2 chillies (discard the seeds and the white inside part), sliced thinly
2 kaffir limes
1 Indonesian bay leaf (omit if you don't have it)
1 tsp galanga powder
5 cm curcuma root, blend smoothly
1 lemon grass crushed

Method:

heat oil in a pan and cook the spices until wilt.
Add the anchovies, stir well.
Add the lemon juice, and stir once again.
Serve with steamed rice.

Meatballs

2009-11-25T08:53:00.000-08:00

Making meatball is one the things that i cannot do properly. The taste is not the same as the one that they sell in Jakarta, Indonesia. I hope this is just a matter of finding the right recipe (and good motivation to blend the meat, haha).

When i was a kid, i went to a school which canteen sells very good meatball soup (a family runs this canteen). I heard that even our former woman president and her rival in politic (a daughter of an ex Indonesian president) go there every now and then to find the nostalgic of the meatball soup together with their big family who went to the same school (guess which school i went to?). But frankly speaking, I never return to the school ever since i graduated from my junior high school there. Glad to hear that the same family still runs it, and the taste is just the same as they were when we were still attending school there. Cool!

Anyway, the picture is quite sombre... it is very difficult to make food porn if:

My meatballs have this messy looking and scream that they were just being soaked in a polluted soup (this is a fish meatball, I used mackerel, i did not use any blender i just used my stupid hands to mince and shape it...dirty job!)
The table cloth has a dark blue character (wonder why i bought this colour though i hate it so much).

Result: blah and bof à la français (not happy smile on my face).

Recipe: I am sure you can find zillions of it on the net, this one is one of them, i used it to make these meatballs. Click herefor my old recipe of bakso (indonesian version).

Kumquat Salsa and Photo Experiments

2009-11-22T11:22:00.001-08:00

I am still in the mood for trying fellow bloger's recipe, and I tried the Salsa Recipe from Cookingetcetera, as I bought kumquat yesterday, and were not sure if I liked to eat it just like that (too sour for God's sake). This is a very easy and original recipe that I am sure I will not be the only who who appreciate it.

By the way, bellow are the photos from my photo experiments. My one third French- one third gorilla and one third Kingkong husband (thank goodness for the gorilla part who makes him a very good looking species hahah) bought a low quality second hand studio flash light. He had already bought a set of low quality photo studio lightning (again second hand), but it is quite difficult to set them altogether in our small apartment. I am a big fan of the last item accquitted, for the result and for the practical reason: it is easy to use, and it is not space consuming. I used my G10 canon. I said: Finish with his Canon SLR, I want to do it on my own and getting familiar with my stupid camera that I have been having for quite awhile but rarely being used – Yeah G10 is rather so so. After that, I retouched a little bit with lightroom program, like I always do, and then GIMP program.

So what do you think?

Indochina Food

2009-11-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about the net is that i can always follow other people's food blogs, and then I go drooling in front of the monitor screen caused by the beautiful pictures posted therein, and then I can follow their recipes.

This blog from Ravenous Couple is one of the ones that i often follow. I am a big fan of Indochina food (fortunately there are so many indochina communities in France, so i wont have problems finding ingredients or restaurating if i need to), and their blog expand my view about Vietnamese dish in general. I followed their Bo Loc Lac and Ga Kho recipes. Two thumbs up for their easy to follow recipes.

Bo Loc Lac

Ga Kho

Anyway, here are the pictures of sea food salad à la Thai. I used frozen agrume (citrus) cocktail ready package from Picard so that i wouldn't have problems cutting all of the citrus fruit to make the salad. I made the same salad long time ago, the basic vinaigrette (sauce) consists of the following ingredients:

crushed palm sugar
2 tbs fish sauce
½ brown (palm sugar) crushed
2 tbs green lemon juice

Main ingredients:

cooked (or grilled) seafoods such as calamari/shrimps/salmon
citrus fruits in dices

Additional Ingredients:

crushed peanuts/cashew nuts
coriander leaves
sliced chillies (optional)
sliced red onion/shallots

Tongseng Kambing

2009-11-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

More than a month of absent from blogging? That is really something for me (for a cook wannabe and who is thinking that cooking releases stress, an illness that very often catches me). I have been busy doing nothing as usual. One of the reasons that i do not cook often lately, is that we decided to cut on our food budget (lawyer ..eh...liar). We also try to stop eating beef for environmental reason (ask the net why?!). But even today we still eat it, in a less quantity, of course. We just cannot imagine how we torture the planet by eating more and more beef. What we eat is a kind of our responsibility to the planet (ahum... but forgetting rendang? no way jose!).

Anyway, here is something that i made long time before my absent. Tongseng Kambing (some kind of Lamb curry from central of Java), is one of my favorite dishes ever. I think i have already told a story about the best Tongseng Kambing sold alongside the road in Bandung, which i used to visit during my student years with my boyfriend at the moment (wondering where he is now, hehe).

The recipe is taken from Masakan Indonesia book, Yasaboga, Gramedia, a different recipe than those i have tried, simpler, but not less appetizing, it is on the contrary!

Tongseng Kambing

400 gr lamb, cut in dice
2 big European shallots
2 garlic, crushed, chopped
5 leaves of cauliflower, chopped roughly
3 chillies, sliced thinly
pepper
salt
3 tbs kecap manis (Indonesian soy sauce)
1 tbs lemon juice
cooking oil for sauteing

Method:

Sauté the garlic, chillies and shallots until golden brown.
Add the lamb until the color changes.
Add 500 ml water, kecap manis, pepper, salt.
Cook with low fire until the lamb is cooked
Add the cauliflower, stir well.
Turn off the fire, serve by adding the orange juice.

I have been doing anything but cooking (or posting recipes to my blog)

2009-10-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, i have not been cooking...I found another hobby which is better than shopping, and maybe a little bit better than preparing food or posting recipes to my blog, though i have many recipes that i like to share in my blog (too many that i am getting far behind compared to my photographied food file on the computer actually).

Lately, i need a « drug » to ease my troubled mind, because i was sad to know that mr. Gorilla would go to the middle east for duty. Nope, my husband is not American, and he is not a soldier, so i would not have to be that worried with all of the war and strange sentiment against the americans all over this world...

A month ago, he bought a second hand wacom, a graphic table for his photograph project, and i see the opportunity to dig in my old hobby: drawing! ... Art is one of my gateway activities, and if i have all the time and money in this world, i would love to learn to become a lawyer and an artist...but unfortunately (very very unfortumately) i can't have them all... damn (hopefully i can still do it again next year).

Drawing eases my mind ... so do playing music instruments, listening to music, taking pictures, reading news, and facebooking... (unfortunately the last hobby sucks all of my time....big time!). There are so many things that i want to do (or at least accomplish) in my life such as learning French grammar (i am planning to go back to law school next year), attending Spanish lessons, and doing Balinese gamelan at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris. What's next? Learning Microsoft excel maybe (don't laugh, this thing is VIP, Very Important Program for those who wishes to succed in cubicles), but lack of time is the most classical prombel a human being can have.

Anyways, here are the drawings that i made using the graphic table. I made 'em within 1 week. And i still have at least 2 canvas that i have not yet finished using arcylic paint. The motivation to finish it, is not as high as if i use the wacom table. Sigh...

me, talking about my new hobby

kecombrang (Nicolaia elatior)
flower power
BB Queen style

The plants and I, are waiting for him to water us on thursday when he comes home

Lamb Satay

2009-09-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

I loooove lamb, especially when they still have that greasy part attached to it. And if you grill the meat, oh, it is melting inside your mouth... i am loving it!

Anyway, this is another quick and easy recipe. In my youth days, i did not like Sate, (except Sate Padang), as i hate their peanut sauce... It started one day, my house mate in Bandung introduced me to a restaurant in Cipanas Puncak area, called Sate Sinta. Ever since i could not forget their juicy lamb sate, and i could slowly, but sure, start eating lamb sate, as long as the sauce is not made of peanut sauce. In my small brain, i thought that every satay tastes the same, including their sauce; the companion sauce is no other than the peanut. But it is also weird, because i do like gado-gado, or somay, other Indonesian food which use peanut as their sauce.

A couple of years ago, i accidently discovered this site, i also found out that the owner has the lamb satay recipe which tastes the same as Sate Sinta Restaurant's (but of course, the ingredients are not that various either, how much taste bud combination that you can have from it?). I was jumping of joy to find out that it is very very simple to make it, and Mr. Gorilla loves it very much (oh yeah i took him to the restaurant in Cipanas the last time we visited Indonesia last year, it seems that they are doing very well judging from the number of branch they have, 3 restaurants in the same area, and one branch in Bandung...wow).

This recipe is like my lender of the last resort; whenever i am too lazy to cook, i make this sate...

You will need:

Bamboo skewers
500 gr lamb meat, cut in dices
1 tbs olive oil
Indonesian soya sauce enough to marinate all of the meat ( around 4 tbs)

Kecap Sauce, mix the following, before serving in a small bowl:

1 tomato cut in dice
1 shallots and 2 chillies, thinly sliced

Let's bring it on!!

Soak the bamboo skewers in water for a couple of hours
Marinate the meat, olive oil, soya sauce, during 1hour (or overnight, as you like).
Pass the meat through the bamboo skewers (around 4 pieces)
Grill.
Serve with the Kecap Sauce.

Beef Rendang

2009-09-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

Rendang is a typical dish from west Sumatra which travels all over the world that even several countries in South East Asia adopted it and think that it is their original dish. The delicious dish is quite long to be made, stays in bottom of the heart of 220 million Indonesian population, therefore it becomes one of our national dishes alongside Nasi Goreng, and make it as one of our national treasures. We are even thinking of taking care its Sumatran originality be guarded in an international museum, thus that everybody recognize it as Indonesian's.....hehehe...jokking.

There are several types of Rendang recipe, where every house has its own. I have made several Rendang beefs during my stay in France, but this recipe that i found from Masakan Indonesia book, Yasa Boga, Gramedia, 2008, is the simplest and tastes quite fine too. I added the star anise to the original recipe.

As I said, it is easy to make Rendang, but you need to be patience to stand in front of the stove when cooking it, as it takes at least 3 to 6 hours to make it, and you will always have to stirr it occassionally.

I made this one using the curcuma's leaf, which we planted in a small pot in our apartment, and the end result is superbe...my rendang is more fragrant, and taste very fin. But of course, if you don't have the curcuma's leaf, you can always omit it. I also cook my beef rendang using my claypot, that way, the beef and spices don't stay on the bottom or easily burnt.

My ideal of Rendang is made the day before you serve it, thus the spices are very well absorbed into the beef. I do not believe the words of a great chef who once said that "If you say that a dish tastes better the following day, you don't know how to cook.!" Well, if by that he meant that you have to prepare it long time before, then for me it is just the same as prepared a day before and he is a dork, hehe. Rendang is preferable to be eaten as rice's or ketupat's (rice cake) companion.

Beef Rendang (for 2)

500 gr beef, cut 4x4cm
1 turmeric leaf, clean and make a knot
3 kaffir leaves
1 lemon grass, bruised
1 pinch of tamarind
salt
pepper
500 ml coconut milk
1 star anise

Ground Spice:

3 big shallots
3 garlic
2 tsp ginger powder
3 red chillies (you can eventually add more)
1 tsp turmeric
3 tsp galangal

Method:

In your clay pot (or you can just use any casserole with heavy bottom), boil all the ingredients, except the beef. Stir occasionally. Lower the heat, and add the meat.
Using small heat, cook the beef until the sauce is dry (it takes minimum 3 hours until it really dries. Don't forget to stir it every now and then to avoid burnt /stickiness at the bottom).

Kolak Pisang

2009-08-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

it's a habit that the Indonesians eat Kolak Pisang (Banana) to break their fasting during Ramadan month, therefore, Ramadan equals kolak pisang, as it equals to many other things actually. There are so many things that we do or dishes that we eat only during Ramadan, so that we actually try to avoid to eating 'em otherwise, just to have a deeper meaning and the real Ramadan ambiance. I made kolak for the first day of Ramadan. It makes me think of home; the smel of boiled coconut milk mixed with pandanus, just several minutes before the iftar time arrives.

There are several recipes of Kolak Pisang existing in the world, and i am sure this is one of the best, the most well spread south east Asian dessert. I was just lucky enough to find a can of jack fruits and palm seed fruits in my cupboard on the first day of Ramadhan. Hmmm..i must have bought it looong time ago, a yea a go maybe? Bahaha....i never learn, i always forget what i bought until i discover it months later. (and got poisoned just after eating it).

By the way, I actually hate French (surely imported from elsewhere) big banana (plantin – large ones) as they are too hard, and not sweet enough; i always have to cook them a little bit longer, hoping that they will melt in the end. Nice try Jackie, it happens very rarely, instead, i have my coconut milk broken, because it is too 'well done'.

Ingredients:

2 big/large bananas (plantin) chose the ones which ripe, slice.
1 can of jack fruit slices and palm-seed fruits (wash and discard the heavy syrup)
1 pandanus leaf, make a knot
50 gr of sugar palm (less or more according to your liking)
400 ml of coconut milk
½ tsp of salt.

Methods:

In a saucepan, bring the coconut milk to boil together with the pandanus leaf, sugar and salt. continue stirring slowly to avoid the milk cracked (use medium heat). Cook until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Add the banana slices, continue cooking until the bananas absorb the milk (turning mushy).
Add the jack and palm seed fruits, continue cooking until a little while.
Serve warm or cold (according to your liking).

Kolak Pisang Recipe in French, click here

Grilled Fish Packets

2009-08-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a Laotian dish, Kanab Pa Sa Ngoua, grilled fish in banana leaves. The problem was that I didn't have the respected fish and neither I eat pork so I substituted them with the fish that I had in the freezer and ghee for the pork fat.

Ingredients:
3 fillets of mackerel fish, minced
1 tbs of minced shallots
2 tps of minced garlic
1 stalk of lemon grass, discard the hard part, and sliced thinly
chilies, sliced
2 tps of fish sauce

Other ingredients:
banana leaves to wrap
coriander leaves

Methods:
Mixed all of the ingredients, and put 2 tbs in the middle of a square formed banana leaf. Wrap and secure it (I used stapler). Do it with the rest of the paste and banana leaves.
Heat your grilled pan, and grill the packet for about 10 minutes using medium fire (or until the banana is brownish/black).
Serve by sprinkling coriander leaves.

Sauté of Sea Bass with Goji

2009-08-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

Lately i have been crazy about living healthy. Okay i lie, because i have been eating ice cream everyday for the past 6 months. Everyday! I was thinking, damn, i could get a cancer or something i imagine, because i heard that milky product caused cancer... well, i read it somewhere. Talking about reading it somewhere, i also read it on the net, that the Chinese eat wolf berries (or red ningxia, or goji) to maintain their health, because it contains more vitamins and full of antioxidant, more than any traditional fruits such as kiwi or orange. So i thought, well, i will have to eat more healthy food to balance eating unhealthy food, haha.

There is noway i stop eating ice cream as it is tooo good, and to relaxing. By the way, i also read it that nowadays, it is the revange of sweet cakes, full of fat and sugar. The reason behind this is because the economic crisis leaves people in stress, and they just want to eat something relaxing and good such as sweets, which make them forget about the sorrow. Euh, did i read it somewhere or it is my unconscious mind talking to myself? Well..the point is, i am not going to stop the bad eating habit, but i will also try to balance it with good habits too (sports!!! how about sports?!).

Mr. Gorilla loves this goji thing (he tasted it before during his work in China), and could not be happier to find out that the Asian store in Paris sells this precious thing, and declare that we should eat it everyday, 1 table spoon at least. So i browsed some recipes trying to cook or eat goji in a more stylish way, and came out with this idea, Sea bass sauté.

Ingredients:

3 Sea bass fillet, cut in width
1 tbs of dry goji, wash, and soak in hot water
1 tbs of cooking oil
1 tps of ginger powder
1 tps of garlic powder
1 tbs dark soy sauce (you can of course use light one, it is just that i don't have one)
1 tbs red wine vinegar
1 tps sesame oil
1 tps of sambal ulek (Indonesian traditional chili paste, or you can use normal ground chili)
long coriander leaves (as seen in picture) as garnish (which is edible, of course, taste good too!).
1 scallion, sliced
pepper and salt

Methods:

Heat oil in a wok, saute the garlic, ginger, sambal ulek until golden brown.
Add the sea bass and goji, stir well, add the rest of the sauce, continue cooking, until the fish is ready, add pepper and salt if necesary.
Add the scallion right before switching off the fire.
Serve with long coriander leaves.

Duck Fillet with 5 spices

2009-08-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

Just one of my creations, when i am not in the mood to cook (or to take picutre of my dish actually, but i had to, for documentation purpose, just in case it is really good and i want to share it or retrieve it in the future - turned out it is really really good!).

Ingredients:

200 gr of Duck fillet, cleaned
2 tbs of 5 spices powder (available in Asian food store)
2 tbs of honey
1 white onion bulb, sliced (or sliced scalions)
t tbs cooking oil

Methods:

Spread the 5 spices powder to the filet. Set it aside for 2 hours.
Heat the cooking oil in a wok, add the duck and honey, cook until caramelised.
Add the onions just before you switch off the fire.

Surimi Sticks in Curry

2009-08-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago, i had the urge to eat laksa, but wanting it to be different, and without the noodles since i don't have the rice vermicelli. Laksa is quite typical South East Asian dish; each country has its own version of Laksa, a type of curry rice-noodles, thus i guess it should not be called laksa anymore if it is without the rice noodles (too bad i don't have that vermicelli, the taste of it in the curry is so kicking!).

I used Surimi sticks, cut in rounds, as the meat ingredient, and i also added small shrimps in it.

Basically, the main ingredients are:

250 ml coconut milk
2 Indonesian bay leaves
2 kaffir lime
1 lemon grass stalk, crushed
1 tbs oil
2 tbs small shrimps
10 surimi sticks, cut in rounds

Ground spices:

1/2 tps fenel
1 tps shrimp paste
big pinch of tamarind
1 tps galange
1 tsp cilantro powder
1 tps chilies
1 sdt salt
2 sdt sugar
4 shalots
1/2 tps cumin powder
1 tps ginger powder
1 tps curcuma powder

Other ingredients:

Basil leaves
bean sprouts
fried shalots
lemon juice

Methods:

Heat oil in a pan. Put the ground spices until brown, add the shrimps.
Put the rest of the ingredients, boil till ready, take out from fire.
Serve with "other ingredients".

Telor Penyet

2009-08-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

This dish is so F***in easy to be made (sorry, I am in the mood for cheap talk), especially at the end of the month, when our account is closed to minus (on the red zone). So cheap, so easy, and tastes very Indonesian (but Indonesia is far from being cheap, it is my precious). Source is from Masakan Indonesia, Yasaboga, Gramedia.

Telor Penyet (Pressed Eggs)
Ingredients:

4 boiled eggs, peeled
2 chilies
1 tsp shrimp paste
a pinch of tamarind
sugar and salt

Methods:

Put all of the spices in your mortar, and grind them roughly.
Put the eggs on it, and slowly pressed it using the pestle, until they are slightly broken.
Serve with Asian Basil.

Tumpeng Nasi Kuning

2009-08-12T14:31:00.002-07:00

My Gorilla got a year older yesterday, and he, understanding the signification of Tumpeng Nasi Kuning - a big plat consists of yellow rice and side dish, a plat typical from Indonesia, asked me to make one for his closed friends + one, that he invited for dinner. So from August 10, on my spare time after work, i cooked kering tempe, one of the side dishes (i made my own tempe), and the ayam goreng kalasan (central java's fried chicken). While on the D-day i cooked the rice and the vegetables salad. I actually did not want to do so much or not even want to have the dinner considering that it is held during weekdays, we (including the couple) work and i know they are a very busy couple, so i guessed that they would be too tired and have less appetite for a spicy dinner.

But Gorilla insisted that he wanted to invite friends. Okay, knowing that my sweet Gorilla does not have lot of friends, and beside it is his birthday, and it is at least the couple that we know well; a) the guy went to the same tech school with Gorilla, b) is from the same city where he grew up, 3) was our witness during our marriage.

And back to the first reason, i finally agreed. It had been a long time since the last time we invited them for dinner, it is very important to keep friends and food could open many doors. From many ways to more friendship and knowledge for example.

During the dinner the guy asked me what was the signification of the dish. I answered that Tumpeng (the cone) is about « going up » and a must exist dish in every celebration, be it an opening of a boutique, or an opening ceremonial of building a house/batiment, Tumpeng Nasi Kuning is never absent. I was explaining to them that we believe, that the top is the place where we always want to be, the aim in life, i was actually thinking of somekind of Nirwana. I also explained that the person who gets the top part in his/her plate should be the most important person, since it symbolizes the most important part of the tumpeng itself.

To know the excact meaning, i did a little bit of research today, actually each compagnion of tumpeng nasi kuning (nasi kuning means yellow rice, literally), represents many different things. Thank God that i made kering tempe teri (made of deep fried tempe and anchovies), while the anchovies represents peace and friendship. The yellow color of the rice actually symbolises richness. It is very interesting to know what the meanings are behind each element. Unfortunately i did not do a deep research before making the Nasi Kuning. But the most important thing, our guests seem to enjoy our food, because it is not that spicy. I used thick chilies (Marocan chilies) for my kering tempe. I know that western people have less tolerance toward hot spicy burning food, so, i want my food to be able to meet their standard too.

Unfortunately i did not take a picture of the real tumpeng. This afternoon, i took this picture using what were left from yesterday's dinner and tried to make a small version of tumpeng. But my rice went too dry already to hold still, thus, it is a bit wrecky...

For the tumpeng nasi kuning's, kering tempe dan teri's, fried chicken's recipe, click here (french version).

kering tempe and teri

Kroket and Amsterdam

2009-08-09T13:21:00.000-07:00

Recently, we went to Amsterdam for a weekend, just to kill the boredom of summer, since there are people in this world who do not (yet) have their right for vacation (me!!). I actually wanted to visit a new city that I have never been to, such as Marseille to visit a good friend of mine, or all the beautiful cities in Spain. But it is just too long (the distance) for a weekend. It is easier to go to the northern countries. While northern part of france is out of the question for me (I have never been there, but I save it for other boring summer with no choice at all), and going to the low lands such as Belgium and Netherlands does not actually interest me either. I mean I have been to Brussels, it is a nice city, but I only spent a day there and it seemed boring, while Antwerpen, the city of diamonds seems to be out of the plan either, I saw some pictures of Mr. Gorilla about the city...hmmm...i could be wrong, but it seems less interesting and less sensational, and pretty much ressembles to other european cities that i have visited.

So, I said to myself, if I have to go north, let it be to Amsterdam, which was onced my ideal city, where I spent a year of my living misery there as well, with boys who made me went through hell (and back and went inside again...accckkk..over and over again). I picked up Amsterdam because the weather forecast supports the thought of going there, and i thought: this could be the perfeck weekend gateway!

I meant, Amsterdam is one helluva city, very different with the rest of the cities of Europe. My ideal of a city; it has characters, different ambiance, attitude, just like Paris. For me, not even other cities in Holland could match the beauty of Amsterdam with its remarkable canals, the home of my favorite painters, Van Gogh and Rembrandt, especially Van Gogh, whose story and paintings made me want to become a painter (yeah, I had to bury this dream, hehe).

So there we went, to Amsterdam by car, with our bike hung up on our bumper Yea, I told Mr. Gorilla that I would show him the different side of Amsterdam by bike (he went to Amsterdam several times during his student years, but he always went high and did not even give a damn what the city has to offer culturally). We did camping in Amstelveen, a town situated around 12 km of the south of Amsterdam, (to save money), and to redo the biking session to the central city which i used to do when i was studying there. During our way to Amsterdam from Amstelveen, I told him my version of the city. I pointed him where I used to live, what I used to do, and we even passed my old campus. Life felt good during that weekend, because the sun shined, and we really enjoyed Amsterdam, although the city could be too bustling with tourists activities!

Apart from biking, what we did was visiting the museum of Van Gogh, and then visiting several restaurants. Amsterdam is quite good for Asian food (as explained before, I did nostalgic thingy by going to Wagamama Japanese Restaurant in Max Leusomething plein, and Nam Kee in China Town), especially those from Indonesia, which have more value in taste and theme, than those who are located in Paris. We went to Kantjil en de tijger, an Indonesian restaurant, which is quite famous in the heart of Amsterdam. But we just went to the "take away" part, not the restaurant itself, as we wanted to eat outside, next to a plaza, to enjoy the sun (and the gay parade, hehe). I am amazed of the concept of the restaurant, I know they are not the first one who invented a take away like this, but still, their packaging is a very good marketing. And during dinner time, tourists (not just the Amsterdam locals) are actually queuing to buy stuffs from this take away. I dream that one day i would open a take away Indonesian restaurant in Paris...oh but when? Anyone with lots of money and wants to donate? hehehe

Well, in general, nothing has changed a lot to Amsterdam (even the Malaysian restaurant where I used to work is still there with the same decoration) the city is still too busy and noisy. But I still have a dream that I would someday live there for real, as I really enjoy the quiet part of Amsterdam (not the central station part, I hate it, while I used to love it, hehe – how I change and loves nature more!), where people houses seem so neat and very well decorated. I love the idea how people rent a boat for a canals-promenade, and having drinks over there.

A week has passed since our Amsterdam weekend trip, and I think I left my heart in Amsterdam. Here bellow, is the picture of kroket that i made this afternoon, the typical national food of The Netherlands, and which is also quite famous in Indonesia (they influenced us with their food because of the colonisation, but we influence them more with ours, that is why they have a lot of Indonesian restaurants over there).

I introduced Mr. Gorilla to Kroket long time ago when I made it for the first time here in France, and he liked it (but he hates the Febo ones, he said...maybe because he was too high to eat – while I think Febo is just fine). I remember I told him many times that Kroket is typical Dutch food, but I actually got curious why it is called kroket, because it sounds very French, ( Croque or Croquette)... well, I did a little bit of research on the net, says that Kroket is from France. Strange that Mr. Gorilla does not know about it, said that he has never eaten things like that before (before I made the introduction years ago). He said that deep fried thing is not so French (except the disputable French Fries, which is claimed to be Belgian Fries, depend to whom the questioned is asked - while the French are normally don't care that much about this thing- not a single valid research can prove the origin of the so called French fries). One thing is for sure, apparently, that thanks to Marie Antoinette, European people eat potatoes.

Kroket Recipe is taken from here, and I used 2 chicken fillets which I boiled 30 minutes. I was quite surprised that they don't use potatoes for the ragout. I thought that every kroket is made of potatoes. Nah, it is probably Indonesian version of Kroket, which is very closed to Perkedel Kentang, Indonesian potatoes fried patti.

Anyway, Amsterdam, i'll definitely be back....to do biking, cultural things and restauranting for sure!

Crispy Duck

2009-08-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Facebook must be this century's most useful invention. One of the reasons is i found a high school friend named Lia, who owns a small restaurant in Jakarta's outskirt, and gave me her crispy duck recipe. I have never been to her restaurant, but i definitely will, when we are in town!

I tried her recipe, but i was using 4 pieces of duck that i could get in carrefour after work. She told me that she got this recipe from a friend when she was still living in Borneo island. The recipe itself seems very chinese, but it is not surprising at all, there are many chinese imigrants in borneo, and of course, they influence the locals with their food.

Here is the original recipe (i add several information inside brackets of how i did it).

Crispy Duck
ingredients :

1 duck
1 tbs of salt
2 tps ground pepper
2 cloves of garlic, grind smoothly
2 tbs angciu (i forgot what this is, i think it is a chinese arak used in cuisine, but i substitute it with sake)
ginger, crushed (i used 2 tps of ginger powder)
(chopped) scallion
cardamon (powder)
cinamon (powder)
(2) bay leaves
2 tps tapioca
2 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs honey

Methods:

Clean the duck (wash) and pat dry using a paper napkin.
Combine salt, pepper, garlic and angciu in a small bowl and spread to the surface of the duck, including the inner (stomach) part of it.
Put the ginger, scallion, cardamom, cinamon and bay leaves into the inner part, and put the duck inside a heat proof bowl, and steam during 1 hour.
Drain the duck, add around 200 ml of water to the stock forming from the steam process, combine with the oyster sauce, honey, tapioca (dissolved with 1 tbs of water), and boil in soft fire set aside.
Heat oil in wok, deep fried the duck until dry.
Serve with sauce.

Choco Banana Shake

2009-07-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

Did i ever mention that i hate european banana which is imported from unknown source and the taste is so yucky? Everytime i bought it, i am never excited, since they are very acid, not sweet, but then i always buy them because there are not many affordable and easy to be peeled fruit either in France. However, after buying them, i often forget that i have them, thus they are always consumated half spoiled already, hehe. This morning, i got this bright idea (it does not come very often anyway) I was thinking, why not making a banana milk with cocolate and sugar (or honey)?

So this choco banana shake is my friend at today's brunch...

Ingredients:

2 bananas
1 tps choco powder (i use Van Houten powder)
500 ml milk
sugar (or honey, to your liking)
mint leaves and lemon (optional)

Directions
Blend all together, serve by adding a drop of lemon juice or mint leaves.

Pho (à la moi)

2009-07-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

For the past 1 month, i made 2 times this noodle soup from Vietnam. After i made the first one, where i took this picture from, i remember that i had a heavy fight with Mr. Gorilla my plongeur, because of perception differences. He, who had been to Vietnam and ate this soup in the original country, wanted me to cook the beef just like they do it in Hanoy, while i just wanted to follow the recipes (i followed 2 recipes from the net). Gorilla told me that in Hanoy, just before they serve the pho, they soak the beef around a couple of seconds in the stock, that way the beef is not really too cooked, while the two recipes that i followed are just placing the raw beef in the big bowl, together with the noodle, then pour the hot beef stock into the bowl. That way, the beef is hardly done and keep the juicy natural beef taste. I wanted to do the recipes' way, while he wanted to do the Hanoy way. Thus, we sweated over this small thing, which put us in several hours of cold war, and it went until the following evening (because in the morning we work, and our wake up time is not the same, hehe - i woke up later than him).

The reason of fighting over small things was because we both was tired that evening after long working hours, and i asked (or ordered?!) him to cut thinly the beef (faux fillet), which requires patience. He got so pissed with the idea of slicing it thinly, but he did it anyway, and then our tonation when we talked was inacceptable from each other's point of view, thus it is quite annoying.

So the first pho caused a war... which stimulated me to do the second, just by curiosity, if the second will create war as well. I mean, the first pho incident annoyed me really, as pho is one of my favorite food, i mean, i cannot let pho spirit dies in my kitchen, if making it will cause battle between me and the other half each time.

Well, nothing so special about the second one, i followed his command, and no beef cutting scene before cooking, because i bought sliced beef destined to make carpaccio (Italian cuisine, thin raw beef thing), so we both ended very happy and satisfy with our dinner.

Pho (Instant, my way)

Ingredients:

2 tbs chinese five perfumes seasonings (a mixed of cilantro roots, fennel, anise, cinnamon, dark pepper, cloves)
4 litter beef stock ( or add 3liter of water + 1 or 2 blocks of beef stock)
2 star anises
2 tps ginger powder
2-3 tbs fish sauce
400 gr beef, very thinly sliced – use tenderloin / steak thing (tips, you can use carpaccio cut beef)
1 grilled onion (devide 1 onion by four before grilling)
2 chopped scallions

Other Ingredient:

Thick Rice Noodles, follow the preparation suggestion on the package

(more than just) Garnitures:

cilantro
bean sprouts, soaked in warm water
1 thinly sliced onion
sliced chilies.

Directions:

In a big pot, boil all together the ingredients, except the scallions, should be add in the last minute.
Prepare the garnitures and noodles in big bowl.
Drop some of the beef slices in the hot pot, quickly take it out, and put it in the noodle bowl. Add the beef stock as much as you like.

Source of inspiration is from this site (if you can speak French).

Samkyetang

2009-07-25T15:04:00.000-07:00

Samkyetang is a Korean soup based of chicken which keeps the natural taste of the chicken itself. It reminds me of our 'soto', Indonesian soup, but minus the curcuma, while both are very good to help the body gets warmth. I bought a package of dry seasoning of Smkyetang (ACE supermarket for less than 2€). It is quite practical but the thing is the instruction guide is in Korean... thus i kind of put everything in the chicken stock, and the gingseng is very hard to be bitten.. According to the Koreans this soup is highly recomended to keep the vitality.

Btw, i did not have a whole chicken so i just use chicken legs.

SAMKYETANG
Ingredients

2 chicken tighs
50 ml sticky rice
3 cloves of garlic
1 scallion, chopped
1 package of ready to use samkyetang ingredients (or use 2 ginsengs, 3 dates, 3 water chestnuts)

Methods:

Clean the chicken, take out the greasy part. Boil it in around 3 litres of water, for 15 minutes.
Using a ladle (or small sieve) take out the formed foam, add more water if necessary), add the sticky ice, and garlics, boil for another 15 minutes and include the samkyetang ready ingredients. Cook another 1 hour using small fire.
Add pepper and salt, mix well. Just before you put off fire, put the chopped scallion.
Serve as rice and kimchi companion.

Kimchi

2009-07-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

Back to Korean food.... yes, i am amazed with this country, thanks to their food (okay i am also amazed with their liking of plastic surgery, hehe).I made Kimchi last week, based on Maangchi recipe. I did not use oyster (not the season yet in France), thus i used half block of maggie beef stock (crushed) that i added to the chili paste.
The result is de-li-ci-ous! Mr. Gorilla told me that Korean Chilli powder smells very good, it gives a very good appetite if combine with the smell of just cooked rice. I could not agree more!

Hansa hamida Maangchi (she is my héroïne!).

Bloody Jackie

2009-07-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

I am not a cocktail person, nor a beer person...well, bref, i am actually not into alcohol beverages that much. The only thing that i probably adore most from that departement is wine. And yeah, i can be chauvinistic to my sweet gorilla's country; i drink french wine most of the time, although i must admit that Portugal, Italy and Spain productions are not bad at all.

In a hot summer like this, i dream of something fruity (wine is fruitty to, to think about it again), but something new. So i peek into my fridge and found this cold watermelon and i took only 3 minutes to change it into fresh juice. And to add small explosion in the mouth, i peek into mr gorilla booze collections, i found Malibu (classic) and Soho. So .. in my glass, i add 1 tsp (or two) of each, and add several balls of melon inside (optional i used frozen melon, tout prêt, and very refreshing). Et Voilà, a very original cocktail drink for your summer apéro party. The water melon takes out more the taste of Soho and Malibu! Your coctail becomes fragrant!

Minced Beef Salad à la Thailand

2009-07-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

I have been dreaming to go to Thailand and the rest of Indochina, and while enjoying my stay there, i would indulge my tongue with the best local food, surrounded by smiley people (as i was told by friends). Yeah, because in Indonesia, people have becoming too materialistic, you don't get that sincere smile like you used too 10 years ago.

Despite their materialistic brain and attitude, i would prepare 10 millions forgiveness for my own country. A country where in the past, all the south east Asian kingdoms would dream of having an ally with, but now is drowning in poverty, degradation of moral, attacked by terrorists and natural disaster. A country which capital was being exploded by 3 bombs yesterday. ....Suicide bomb by terrorist.

Again..... and there was this moment of silent of me, in the morning just after i found out about the tragedy through my friends' statuses in facebook. How? Why?...... Bastards!!!!

But as far as i know, the Indonesians are strong, they will get by and survive like it was never happened. Turn out the following day (today), all the malls in Jakarta are already full again, because of this is a long weekend. Experts predict that we will get on our feet again, and the stock exchange will not be strongly effected as it is still closed until Tuesday.

I am really sorry for the victims. I remember that my junior high school friend was one of them years ago, at the same hotel which they bombed yesterday. I did not know him that well, but i read from a newspaper that he had to reschedule his wedding which was supposed to take place 15 days from the explosion day. I think he postponed it during a year, for his recovery and all of the plastic surgeries, but now they have a twin boy-girl. Don't we all believe that good things come to those who wait?

Okay, back to food and recipe....this is a recipe that i made the day after my birthday. As usual, i forgot to post it. The original recipe is using minced duck meat (i did not have any thus i replace it with minced beef meat). To celebrate my birthday, Gorilla and I went to Paris to see the tropical carnival of Paris, where later on that day, they announced that Indonesian delegation won for the best decorated truck. Then he bought me a netbook, which i have been longing for quite a long time, as my birthday presents (this guy gave up giving surprise presents, for the stupid reasons that it did not work well). Then to finish the day, we went to our fav. Thai restaurant, and he ordered this duck salad, which tastes like heaven. I found the recipe in the Thai recipe book that he gave me also for my last year birthday (Laap Pet,Thaïlande Saveurs du bout du monde, Michael Lafon,2007)

LAAP PET
Ingredients:

1 tbs Thailand uncooked rice
200 gr minced meat
2 tbs of green lemon juice
1 tbs fish sauce
1 lemon grass, take the hard skin out (outer leaf), sliced thinly the white part.
2 big shallots
2 leaves of kaffir, chopped
3 white onions, sliced
3 Asian chillies, sliced thinly
1 tbs mint leaves (i used dry simply because i did not have the fresh one)

Ingredients:

Heat a pan, add 1 tbs of cooking oil, and add the rice, cook until they turn golden brown. Using your mortar, grind them until smooth.
In the same pan, cook the meat, lemon juice and fish sauce, until the meat is dry.
In a serving bowl, mix all of the ingredients before serving.

Yoghurt Lemon Ice Cream

2009-07-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

A successful story! Inspired by the recipe of Susana Tee (Glaces & Sorbet, Parragon 2005).

Ingredients:

a juice of 1 lemon
2 cups of plain yoghurt
100 ml of thick cream
30 gr (or according to your liking) of sugar

Methods:

Mix all of the ingredients, put it in a container before puting it in the freezer.
Take it out after one or two hours, and blend it again.
Put it in the freezer again (for 3 hours).

Gado-gado, The Famous Indonesian Mixed Salad

2009-07-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

It has been awhile, again?! Yes again. Have been busy with life outside blogging, but not outside the internet. I just realized that i have so many food pictures which recipe i have not yet posted. That i am not sure that i still store the modified recipes in my head, as i never really follow the original recipes.

Okay, lets see...if i can still call back what i made... as i have made 2 gado-gado recipes for the past one month. Gado-gado is typical Indonesian food, which means mix. It is kind of salad with mixed veggies, depending to your own taste. Every house has its own recipe, but they always use peanuts as the main ingredients. I used peanut butter as ingredients because i am too lazy using the real peanuts, breaking up the skins, it hurts!

What makes it so special about gado-gado, like i implicitly said, is the sauce, of course, while you can use your fave veggies to be mixed. You can use blanched water spinach, spinach, sliced cauliflower, cut Asian long beans, sprouts, batavia, sweet corns, boiled eggs, etc.

Almost everybody in Indonesia loves Gado-gado, thus it is a very common food that you can find everywhere, while in Indonesia, they have their own local name to call it with several modifications of ingredients for the sauce of course (kupat tahu in Bandung, tipat tahu in Bali, Karedok- Sundanese and Pecel for the Javanese for other modification of gado-gado).

What is common about gado-gado is that you eat it with rice cake. (lontong or ketupat). As usual, i am also too lazy to follow the real complicated rice cake recipe, thus i just boil a bag of instant rice for an hour (until they fill the bag tightly), and cool it in the fridge for 1 hour to make it hard.

Gado-gado Version 1.0 (inspiration from Masakan Indonesia, Gramedia 2008)

2 tbs peanut butter (smooth)
1 tps shrimp paste
1 tps palm sugar
3 chillies
a pinch of tamarin
5 tbs warm water

Directions:

Using your mortar, grind all of the ingredients except water. You can add water occasionally if you think that it is too thick (according to your taste, and it depends on your peanut butter.
In a big bowl, mix the peanut sauce and the veggies, fried shallots, boiled eggs.

Gado-gado Version 2.0 (inspiration from the net, sorry, i printed this 3 years ago, without the source)

2 tbs peanut butter (smooth)
250 ml coconut milk
1 lemon grass, bruised
2 kaffir leaves
1 tomatoes chopped
Indonesian sweet soja sauce
3 sliced chillies
2 sliced shallots
1 crushed garlic
1 tps kencur (indonesian galange)
salt
cooking oil

Directions:
In your pan, heat the oil, and saute the chillies, shallots, garlic. Add the rest of the ingredients until the tomatoes are melting (tenderly cooked).
In a big bowl, mix the peanut sauce and the veggies, fried shallots, boiled eggs.

Red Fruits Home Made Ice Cream

2009-07-02T15:34:00.000-07:00

It is getting hot here, and the best way to pay every sweat that we made is to treat oneself with ice cream or sorbet! I am not trying to complain here, i know a person who always complain about the weather, too hot, too cold, and even though i feel the same thing, i try not to be that person, just be thankful for the weather, especially if it is something normal, i mean it is summer, it is normal that we feel like we are in a giant oven box.

Well, industrial ice cream (especially Ben and Jerry, also Hagen Dasz ) are great, but, nothing can beat home made ice cream is you know how to do it well!

2 years ago, i tried making one, but i just hate the egg yolk color domination which does not put the synchronization between the color, and the taste that our brain perceive, beside, since i did not have sorbetière (ice cream maker), the result was full of small crystal, which made the ice cream tasteless. But this time it works quite well...maybe it is just a matter of patience and the fridge as well. I mean we changed our fridge since the last time, so this ice cream has quite a nice taste with less crystal than the last time. And the color of red fruits that i used, covers the color of the egg yolk.

For the original recipe, i used Glacé marbrée au Cassis by Susana Tee (Paragon 2004), i modified it as usual (she uses cassis - black currant and whipping cream).

Ingredients

50 cl of milk
2 tps vanilla syrup (liquid)
205 gr white sugar
4 egg yolk
350 gr red fruits (i used the frozen one from Picard)
6 tbs water
50 cl thick cream

Methods:

Into a thick pan, heat the milk and vanilla, until it is close to boiling. Take it out from the fire, and set aside for 30 minutes.
In a recipient, using your mixer, mix half of the sugar together with egg yolk, until you obtain a mousy ribbon. Add the previous milk vanilla to it, and mix with wooden spoon. Pour it into a pan, through a sieve. Cook it in a small fire for 10 – 15 minutes, constantly stir using the wooden spoon, until the liquid covers the spoon when you take it out. Don't let it boiled!
Take off from fire, set it aside for 1 hour, stir it every now and then.
Make the puree of the red fruits. Blend smoothly the fruits, water and the rest of sugar, add it to the egg yolk cream..
Blend your cream very well put it in the fridge.
Put the egg yolk cream in the freezer for 1- 2 hours. Blend it using your blender, and add the thick cream, and put it back to the freezer. Wait for another 1,5 hour, and blend the cream again. Freeze it again until it is completely hard.

Mousse Cake

2009-07-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last post... I had some guests from London, coming over for weekend, so, we were quite busy. Busy means cleaning the small shoe box (our apt), busy arguing with Mr. Gorilla about what needs to be taken out from his cage, although when the guests were here, we always had our apt cleaned by them, which makes me start missing them a lot now, hehe. But we passed a very good moment together, we went to Giverny, the inspirational garden of Monet, and then we went to Fontainebleau, the mystical forest not far from Paris. I have never seen a forest like that in my entire life, but then again, which forest have i ever been to? Not a lot! Broceliande forest in Bretagne – West France (where they made the legend of King Arthur's sword, Vivianne and Merlin) was superb, and full of mystery too. There are also many graves of the druids, the old habitants of France (okay, i am not sure, if they are the gauls or not, i am too lazy to do research again, sorry).

So, now that i am lonely again, i am cheering myself by cooking and cooking. This post is about what i made the day before yesterday. Lately, i have been obsessed with the mousse cake, i wonder how to make the smooth looking thing that shares the resemblance to ice cream.

I got the idea of the recipe from Tartlette's (Hélène) site. But since i don't eat gelatin, i had to opt in for agar-agar powder. Luckily it is not difficult to find agar-agar powder in Paris, just that i have trouble converting the gelatin quantity to agar-agar powder. So i am really not sure about it....

The first trial following the whole recipe but using agar-agar instead of gelatine was a mess, because the mousse was too liquid, it wont hold the form. Then i remember in my old foodblog, i made a stupid looking cake with mousse. Anyway, at the second trial, i used the mousse recipe that i made on that silly posting (inspired by joy of baking), but changing it with citrus fruits, but i kept Tartlette's olive oil sponge cake, because i really love the taste of it; sweet and acid. My entremet is not round (10 x 10cm), it is rectangular, but i am quite happy with the second trial's result, although i must admit that it is not yet perfeck, as it is still a little bit too liquid. Maybe i should add 2 more grams for the agar-agar.

Anyway, here is how i do my cake.

For the sponge cake, follow the recipe of tartlette's site.

The Mousse:
Ingredients:

230 gr smooth-blended (puree) citrus fruits (or berries)
120 ml whipping cream (I used crème fleurette)
9 gr powder agar-agar

Directions:

Devide the puree in two bowls heat resistant.
In one of the bowls, add the agar-agar powder, mix well, let it for 5 minutes, and then heat it in the microwave (high heat) for 2 minutes. Mix with the rest of the puree, set aside.
Mix the whipping cream until firm, add the puree, cool inside the fridge for 20 minutes, until the puree is firm. Mix again.

Assembling:
Follow tartlette's recipe for assembling; cut your cake according to the size of your entremet, add the mousse (I used 2 tbs for each entremets). Cool it overnight in the fridge.

Kyoja Chojang

2009-06-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

Sometime in last week, I experienced a food poisoned because I ate something that has passed its due date. I bought an instant jelly fish in an Asian store, and used it for one component for my Korean salad. I ate jelly fish salad in a Korean restaurant like a year ago, and I could not forget the taste of it, would mean the world if I can make it my own. So I was very happy to find out that the Asian store located in the neighbor city sells this kind of jelly fish. Even though it is instant jelly fish (with industrial seasoning, just like any normal instant noodle package), I thought that I could just use the jelly fish (which is said to be preserved by salt only, but I would not buy this nonesense, hehe), I discarded the instant seasoning.

I did not check about the expiration date (as always), so look what this practice leaded me to (toilette!). And to think about it, the most stupid thing was that, I poisoned both of us, with the food that is prepared by me. I swear, should I ever buy something from this store again, I will check the expiration date. I don't know if telling the owner of the store about this problem would do any good, since I don't think it is the first time they do this. Vaguely I remember that this could be the 2nd time that we found something like this (buying an expired product or a product which storage does not confirm with the regulation). But heck, I still need this Asian store, because it is quite close to our town, where I don't need to go as far as to Paris to fill my Asian-spice rack.

Anyway, the Korean Salad that I told you about, is using wasabi dressing. I got the recipe of the dressing from my Korean Cookbook, but I found that the 2 teaspoon of Korean wasabi powder that they asked is too strong. I think next time I will have to reduce the quantity. 1 teaspoon would be enough, I say. From the recipe (which use the word raifort, a French word for the plant to produce mustard, a family of the wasabi root), I know that mustard is actually typically Alsace's food component. I have tried using French mustard before, now I want to try with the wasabi powder. This sauce is good for raw veggies salad.

Kyoja Chojang (Korean Mustard Sauce)

Ingredients:

1 tps wasabi powder
2 tbs vinegar
2 tbs sugar
0,5 tbs kikoman sauce
200 ml peer juice ( I Used the real thing)
1 tbs juice of garlic

Directions:

In a heat resistant bowl, dissolve the wasabi powder with a little bit of water, cover it with cling plastic film, boil it in a “au bain marie” way for 2 minutes.
Add the rest of the ingredients, mix well.
Serve with raw veggies, such as carrots, cucumber, etc.

Claypot Chicken Rice

2009-06-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time in Bandung, when Indonesia was just starting to get hit by monetary crisis, (i was still a student in one of the best law faculties in the country, yay!), and when i thought that i had met my Mr. Right (turned out to be mr. Right at that time only), we love to go cruising Bandung with my red car, to find a new place to dine in with cheap budget. We would try any places with the following criterias : new exotic food (exotic for us can mean foreign as far as european), cheap, good.

Due to the crisis, a lot of restaurateurs, caterers had to close their expensive and good looking cafés and restaurants because there were not enough clients who owned a lot of money to dine at their place. At that time, a lot of people (including people in the banking industry of course) lost their job, and many of them then decided to open a street hawker cafés alike, with their low budget and more affordable food rate in the horizon to keep their personal kitchens steamy, so that their kids can continue studying, etc etc. As a consequence, there are many small cafés formed under a tent (café tenda), alongside Dago street, the main street of Bandung. The idea is to move the expensive cafés which were always frequented by white colars, to the bord of the street of Dago. Thus, they are using tent to protect them from sun and rain, and by the end of the day, they will have to get the tables and chair flustered, yet they still tried keeping the versatile ambience and café décorations (complicated? It's Indonesia, anything is possible!).

The food are various, normally they are international cuisines such as steak and pasta, just like all the cuisine served in their previously expensive restaurants in more fixed and fancy locations. (we consider steak, pasta things are expensive and versatile... fug, i now prefer asian food really, especially when they cooked it in a n'importe quoi' way). They used candles to gleam their tent, and to give a romantic ambiance. It kinda worked.

In the end, the amount of the café installed, alongside Dago area was getting too many and out of hand, as they caused traffic jam (especially weekends), and pissed the local residents, because they could not sleep anymore during night (the tents closed very late, of course). And Darwin's theory prevailed, because amongst those tent restaurants, only a pretty plenty that really served good food. One by one, they closed down caused by the previously mentionned reason and, among other, is because Indonesian people as usual, got bored with things that are too banal, and always crave (searching) for a new trend.

As always, as anything else in Indonesia, tent cafés were an instant phenomenon, where everybody was doing it, and by the end of the day, it sounded just like a cliché: we just didn't want to be seen in those tent cafés anymore. Yes, we used shade or hiding under the table if necessary, though we were there because we are hungry not because we wanted to be seen just like the begining of the tent café trend. Branded as “Dago kid” was not a flattering anymore, you know.

One tent café that we really liked was a café situated in the heart of Dago Street, just in front of Aquarius, (an Indonesian leading cassette/CDs store). The café sold rice, cooked in claypot as their commodity. I love the form of the claypot itself, and I got amused chewing the dried and almost burnt rice cooked inside it, especially the crust of rice in the bottom of the claypot. I think it was the first time i ate something from a claypot. Okay, maybe long time before in the 70's, but i hardly remember that...

Unfortunately, the price of a portion (one pot) is quite expensive for a student's pocket. It was from Rp. 5000 to Rp. 7000 depends on the companion of the rice. Accordingly, if it is seafood or meat, it is more expensive (huh, how come that shrimp is expensive in Indonesia, don't we produce them abundantly?). Okay, it is still less than one Euro, but come on, we were jobless at that time, but we are not living with European standard with European salary hey!

Anyway, not long after the café was opened, it got closed again, I guess due to lacking of customers. I remember that I went there for like twice or three times only.

Now that I love to cook very much (sometimes I think I am losing my mind because that is what I think about almost every hour), I do think that it is expensive. Chicken rice claypot, for example, it is very easy to make it, and for European standard, the ingredients are cheap, though they are imported from Asia. Now how come they sold it for a price which is probably equal to more than 2 Euro nowadays (my own false calculation of course), which is still expensive for Indonesian standard?

Anyway, I just bought a fire diffuser, which diffuses evenly the heat of my gaz stove to my claypot, prevent it from cracking easily. I already have several fractured on the cheap claypot (which I bought for only 3 Euro in an Asian store in Paris). And yesterday, Mr. Gorilla the plongeur told me that there is a thing which can prevent my kitchen pottery utensils (such as tajin, claypot, poêlen à escargot) if they are exposed directly to fire.Huh, how come that he did not tell me that this thing exist, because I almost cried when I saw the first fracture, and it was enough to make me stop using it, because before I used it almost everyday, hehe. Well, it is also my fault that I almost never soak the claypot before using it as it is supposed to be.

Tonight, I made the chicken rice claypot. For the ingredients of the recipe, I followed this site (I used the cider instead of rice vinegar and I let the shitakes rested in one piece, not sauced hoping that it keeps the natural flavor) In addition to that, i did not use the real chicken stock, i used chicken stock powder. But on directions, I went with another site. And if the chicken in the end was not yet done, I added a little bit of water just to give more steam effect to my claypot, to help my chicken cooked, and avoid the rice went too dry. And of course, i opted out for the chinese sausage, i don't have it. I think next time, i will add fish sauce and cilantro.

Shrimp and Algae Salad à la Japanese

2009-06-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

The idea was taken from Maraboutchef, sushis et compagnie 2001.But since some of the ingredients I don't really have, such as green algae, I decided to use the me hijiki algae. And I also added avocado fruit, and altered almost all of the measurement. Well, it is not that I want to brag about what I made, but it tastes sooo good, that I finished my portion, within 5 minutes. Hehe...

Ingredients:

300 gr cooked medium shrimps, (I used frozen package)
1 avocado fruit, peeled, slice
½ cucumber, cut length in two, discard seed using a spoon, sliced thinly, and sprinkle salt, set aside for 15 minutes. And wash it under running tap, and drain well.
100 gr me hijiki algae, soak with hot water, drain.

Sauce, in a small pot, boil the following:

60 ml Rice vinegar
2 tbs kikoman sauce soja
½ dashi powder
½ tps ginger powder
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs mirin

Direction:

Combine the algae and shrimp in a big salad bowl, pour the sauce, set aside for 15 minutes.
Add the cucumber and avocado, mix well, serve.

Gangan Udang

2009-06-14T01:48:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of dish that i really like, and hold a special place in my heart. I use to make it quite often during my second year in France. Before, i did not like coconut milk curry & Co. And this food contributed a lot to my today's deep liking to coconut milk curry.

I don't know the meaning of gangan, but udang means shrimp. Bellow is my version of any Gangan recipes in general, i added Indonesian bayleaf and shrimp paste. I adore the combination of both, makes my dish so fragrant.

Gangan Udang

Ingredients:

500 gr medium shrimps, peeled heads, leave the tails
0,5 tps ginger powder
1 tps galanga powder
0,5 tps curcuma powder
1 tbs of cooking oil
1 tomato, sliced thinly
1 lemon grass,bruised
2 kaffir leaves
1 Indonesian Bay Leaf
250 ml of coconut milk

Ground the following ingredients:

1 tps of shrimp paste
2 chillies
salt
pepper
3 shallots
2 cloves of garlic

Directions:

In a wok, heat oil and saute the ground ingredients, lemon grass, kaffir leaves powdered spices, and bay leaf, until golden brown.
Add the coconut milk and slices of tomato. Cover the wok, let it shimmer.
Add the shrimps, cook for another 3 to five minutes.
Serve with rice.

Pasta with Herbs

2009-06-13T01:14:00.000-07:00

Pasta is everyone's favorite. I personally think that the pastas that i buy here taste better than those i buy in Indonesia. And the sice is so fine, thin, while in Indonesia they only have 1 size. This Italian food staple has gone international that even people in small town of Indonesia, they like it (yeah, people with big cities background, hehe).

Everybody knows how to make spagetti right? This one is my own recipe, tomatoes as basic (sauté with garlic), add English sauce, and the herbs that i love;

dried oregano,
dried chives,
basils (not the asian ones),
powdered fennel.

(i forgot to add thym and bay leaves, oh well...next time?) and a little bit of lemon juice and sherry inside. I did not use salt, as i added halal bacon- alike, which i found sooo salty! (i am not a big fan of these kind of things, apero meats... too salty!).

Tiramisu au Matcha

2009-06-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

Tiramisu is the best dessert in the world, despite all of the French's effort to be the country of desserts. A lifetime standing ovation for the Italians for making the most beautiful dessert in the whole wide world. And this is what happen when japanese and italian colide: Green Tea Tiramisu.

I used rose biscuit of Reims (a town in France), because i am not a big fan of boudoir or the french lady fingers sold in any supermarkets in general; they have white sugar spread on top, makes it doubled sweet! Using rose biscuit of Reims, it gives a value added colour to the tiramisu, and the combination of that with the good sake that Mr. Gorilla brought from his business trip to Japan, gives a new dimension of taste. A taste that i cannot describe, so you need to make it yourself.. so this dessert is a combination of french, italian, japanese? yummmm.... in my opinion, are ones of the best countries in the world (for their best culture and food, after my own country of course, hehe).

Recipe is taken from this site.

Rujak Serut

2009-06-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

Rujak Serut is one of the best Indonesian traditional salad (rujak) dessert made of grated (serut) fruits. Originally it uses red sweet potato as one of the elements, but since i did not have it, i replaced it with carrot. You can actually use any young acid fruits as the basic ingredients. I tried to make it as simple as it can be, because i am a lazy bum.

RUJAK SERUT
Fruit:

1 or 2 medium Carrot, julienned.
a bunch of young papaya, julienned.
50 gr of pineapple, cut in bits

sauce:

3 ground chillies
3 tbs of nuts
2 cups of water
1 palm sugar
1 tps shrimp paste

Directions:

Boil the water, shrimp paste, palm sugar, chillies and nuts until the sugar dissolved, switched off the gaz.
Add the fruit, covered, set aside.
Cool in the fridge.

Smoothies

2009-06-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

It is all up to the hand of the chef to make it as thick as he/she wants or as sweet as kids in general like. But making smoothies is a child's play, all you need to do is to use your imagination, which fruits combination that you want to put inside your blender.

Strawberry smoothies

Blend the following:

13 (not more not less) hulled strawberry ;)
2 cup of white cheese (fromage frais/blanc)
sugar
200 ml fresh milk

Calamari Heads Salad

2009-06-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

My own version of sea food salad, inspired by Korean food, of course.

Ingredients:

200 gr of calamari heads (I used frozen ones). Blanched for 2 minutes.
1 tbs of sliced green onions
1 tbs of kochu jang (korean red chili paste)
1 tps white sugar
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tps of sesame oil
1 tbs of sesame seeds
2 tbs of lemon juice
1/2 tsp of ginger powder (optional)

What to do?
Combine all of the ingredients in salad bowl. Mix well.

Fried Kwetiau

2009-06-05T17:00:00.000-07:00

Hi, I am back again, after going idle for quite some times. Lately I have been having problems with time management. It seems that time passes so quickly, and the weather is starting to look good in every angle, so I take my time pedaling my bike from work, and when I am home, I use my free time watching tv, replying emails, chatting with friends, phoning those who suffers chronic broken heart problem, or simply just shopping, hehe (oh yeah, i don't have time to go to spanish course, nor to driving theory course: too tired and too busy man!).

This one is an easy to make Chinese noodles kwetiau. Kwetiau is chinese noodle dish, one of my favorite dish (normally I love them all, hehe). I don't really remember where I ate it for the first time, but my second or third time was in Bandung, in a small restaurant named Vitcoria, jalan Pagar Gunung. Victoria is one of the best (and the oldest) cake and pattiseries/cafés and restaurants in Bandung (yeah i think they cannot decide if they are café or restaurant or what ever). I remember that i used to buy chocolate dipped merinque there, which was quite expensive (now i know how to make merinque - so easy and cheap- i am quite dissapointed that they sold it over priced (certainly according to the student pocket). Beside that, they also sold other good stuffs, such as yoghurt, and their Kwetiau and Ifumie are the best items (yet expensive).

I also used to know a very special small restaurant called 89 (oh so chinese!) in Gardu Jati area, who sold Kwetiau (I don't know if they are still there or not). Back in the old faculty hey day, almost every Saturday night (the night of lovers, that is how we call it), I went to the restaurant with my boy friend à l'époque. We used to take my car (yes, that red memorable car), with my house mates and their boy friends...I miss those Saturday night fever.. (but no, I don't miss him, although we break up nicely, I am glad that we broke up, hehe).

Anyway that is about Bandung. So many good restaurants over there, in the old days. Bandung has grown to be a city full of cafés and restaurants, but i don't know if they are any good. I hardly visit Bandung after i graduated from my university situated over there, only when my faculty friends got married. For me it was not my ideal of city. Apart from the restaurants, the great house mates that i used to have, i despise the town.

Nowadays, Bandung's restaurants are just followers to the first exisiting ones, and most of them sell food that are unlikely originally from Bandung, such as spagetti and steak things. I mean even Kwetiau is not originally from Bandung, yet it is still a city where you can easily find good chinese noodles, and yamin noodles (noodles with sweet soy sauce).

Inspiration of the recipe is taken from this site (the woman which picture is there has passed away a couple of years ago, but her recipes are still there on the net, treasure!!)

Ingredients:

white thick rice noodle, soak in hot water for 6 minutes, drain, put it in salad bowl, add Indonesian soy sauce (two people portion)
1 tbs seasoning soya sauce (salty)
1/2 tbs ginger powder
200 gr chicken breast, cut
1 tbs spring onion, slice thinly
2 tbs oyster sauce
pepper
salt
sugar (optional)
1 tbs cooking oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
2 garlic, crushed
1/2 tbs sesame oil
50 gr bean sprouts (do the same thing as what you did to the noodles)

Directions:

Heat oil in a wok, saute the shallots, garlic, and spring onion until golden brown. Drop the chicken, oyster, soya, ginger, sesame oil pepper, salt and sugar, cook until tender.
Add the noodle and bean sprouts, stir it well.
Serve.

Note:
Shrimp is actually the best ingredients to be used in kwetiau beside chicken. Do not hesitate to improvisized in this case.

Tak Sup Sanjok and Mu Saeng Ch'ae

2009-05-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

Tak Sup Sanjok (left) and Mu Saeng Ch'ae (right)

Help, i am really addicted to Korean food!!!

By the way, insipiration is from my korean cook book, 120 recettes de cuisine traditionnelle Coréenne, Grancher 1998. Modified by me.
By the way, if i see how Maangchi cook, i conclude that the Koreans love to mix the ingredients using their bare hands straight to the dough, instead of using other utensil such as spoon. If my mom knows about this, she would never want to eat Korean food.. oh, her loose by the way..hand is the best utensil, really!

For the Tak Sup Sanjok, the original recipe demand for "tubu", as i don't have it, i omitted it.

Tak Sup Sanjok

Using your food processor, smooth the following ingredients:
250 gr chicken,
1 small carrot,
2 dried shiitake mushroom, soak with boiled water for 30 minutes before

Seasoning:

2 tbs Korean soja sauce
1 tbs sugar (i read the recipe wrongly, should be 1 tps, hehe)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp powdered garlic
0,5 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp powdered Korean chili

Directions:

Heat oven for 150°C.
Mix all of the ingredients in big bowl, alloy them using your hands.
Pour it in an anti-heat pan, make the mixture flat with the help of your spoon.
Grill it in your oven for 20 minutes.
Serve

Mu Saeng Ch'ae

Ingredients:

½ of parsnip (peel and cut julienne)
1 granny apple (peel and cut julienne and soak with lepon juice from ½ lemon, to prevent it getting oxidated)
3 green onions, slice thinly

Sauce:

3 tbs Korean soja sauce
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sesame grains (the original recipe asks it to be crushed, i did not)
1 tsp powdered Korean chili
1 tsp garlic powder

Directions:

Soak the parsnip in salt for 15 minutes. Wash it with running water, and using your hand, squeze it to drain the juice out. Mix the apple and the parsnip together with the onions, and the ingredients for the sauce, again mix well with your hand.
Cool it in the fridge.
Serve.

Roti Cane

2009-05-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Roti Cane (cha-ne) is originally from India, and quite famous in Singapore – Malaysian -Indonesia (Sumatra part), and is a companion of goat curry. This is the type of dish that i look for in wedding parties in Indonesia. I don't know what would be the reason of most weding couples choose Roti Cane as one of their wed buffet, but i noticed that it happens more likely if the couple is from Sumatra, or at least one of them. Ah silly me...the reason is simply because it is good... even if we eat naturally without the curry!

Inspiration is from the same usual book Masakan Indonesia, Gramedia, 2008. Modified deliberately by me...I did not add too many butter as i thought that 125 gr as written in the book is too much..

Roti Cane

Ingredients:

180 gr flour
0,5 tsp salt
100 ml warm water
60 gr butter, melted

Methods:

Combine the flour, salt, water in a big bowl, mix well. Add the butter, mix again.
Divide the dough into 8 - 10 parts, round each of them. Let it for 15 minutes.
Flour your hand, and the flat surface where you will work your dough.
Using your patisserie roll, flat each of the round dough.
Heat a small quantity of oil on your pan, fry the dough, turn it now and then till it's ready.
Serve it as acompanion of goat curry

Fried Rice with Turmeric (Nasi Goreng Kunyit)

2009-05-21T14:44:00.000-07:00

I looked at this site, and got very interested with the fried rice with turmeric recipe.: it is very easy, quick, not so much ingredients, and mostly because it has Kencur, the Indonesian galange as one of the ingredients... cool, the taste must be very Indonesian then. The owner wrote that the spicier the better (or at least that is what i understand, hehe). I modified the recipe, as usual, and make the vegetarian version, hehe...yeah, i felt like i 've had enough of meat in one day! Too much McDonald's cheese burger in a day..yuck yummm, hehe.

Ingredients:

3 bowls of white rice (leftover from the previous day)
2 shallots, chopped
1 tomato, cut in dices
1 tsp tumeric powder
1 tsp kencur powder (Indonesian galange)
1 tbs of chopped chilies
a bunch of Asian basil leaves
salt
pepper
1 tbs cooking oil

Side Veggies:

cucumber, thinly sliced
sprouts, blanched

Directions:

Stir fry the shallots, tumeric, kencur, chillies.
Add the rice, stir well until it is covered by the turmeric color.
Add the tomato dices.
Drop the basil leaves
Pull from the stove.
Serve with side veggies.

Godong O Jorim

2009-05-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, Mr. Gorilla, the plongeur was away to meet some friends from tech school. So i thought that I would have the time alone in the apartment. It is not that i don't like his company, but ever since i am living with him, he was hardly away meeting them without me. He always tagged me along in those kind of meetings (which happens very rare though), though sometimes his friends are without their companions. On the contrary to that, i often go out without him seeing my friends (sometime a guy that he has never met, hehe), which is a bit weird actually. Normally i would having lunch or having a drink with friends during his work hours.

This week, he has been taking a week off from work (just like two weeks ago), it is quite sad that we cannot just pack our bags hop on a plane or hope into our car, going camping to finish his days off anymore, just like we used to. It is a bit the other way around, i am stuck with my stupid part time job, and don't have the right to ask for days off (yet) since i am new. So when i heard that one of his friends is in town, and he would love to see him, i could not be happier for him. I was ready to accept that he would have guys night out, including dine out with friends, coming home at 2 A.M. But nope,... he said that he would come home to have dinner with his wife.... well, okay, coincidently, i am cooking something extravagant and dining with him tonight did cross my mind.

I thought that being home alone with the fridge filled (that it is ready to explode) is a luxe, and ça tombe bien; lately I cannot control my lust for cooking. So, i ran through my cook books for about 0,5 hour just to pick the best recipe. I was already hungry before actually, but then i did snacking a lot, which is good, because cooking for yourself when your stomach is full is a good choice since you are not in a rush to finish it quickly..... so i really took my time on deciding on what i am going to cook. So many choices, and i have so many ingredients in the fridge (we did shopping to Asian store and Picard yesterday, and it was a blast, ...Picard, i love you), the concequence is : I was a bit confused on what to decide...But then when I opened my Korean Cook Book, my eyes falls on a recipe without picture, which ingredients are all complete in the fridge/cup board. So i made this one, and the result was hmmmm.... very delicate....

Godong o Jorim

Ingredients:

4 pieces of mackerel fish (I used the ones from Picard, the supermarket specialized in frozen products, ready to cook, already cleaned, and cut in length, almost without bones)
1 tbs red chillies, chopped
0,5 onion, chopped
a bunch of leek (from Picard, already cut and cleaned)
4 cloves garlic crushed
1 tsp of ginger powdered
3 tbs of soja sauce
1 tbs of sugar
1 tbs vegetable oil
½ parsnip (peeled and cut into dices)
pepper
salt
400 ml of beef stock
5 tbs of white wine (I used Riesling, I love Alsace's white wine, and I love Alsace as a region!!) :)

Directions:

Except wine, salt and pepper, put all of the ingredients in a saucepan, boiled it with strong fire for 5 minutes.
Add the wine, salt and pepper, let it shimmer (small fire) for 20 minutes.
Serve in soup dish.

Tangsuyuk

2009-05-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

Maangchi's site is one of my valuable sources for Korean recipe. Check her site here, and if you are a big fan of Korean food just like me, you will be amazed how you are so magnetised (?) to what she posts over there... My God, I realized that I have taken part in 'the citizen of international food city!' thanks to … Paris, the city of love (that i am getting fed up with) which is one of the melting-pots of world's cultures. I get to know more about other countries' food since i live here, though in my opinion, Jakarta is still more well equiped with Japanese and chinese restaurants. But for those who are longing for the best Indochina, Arab, French restaurants in one city, this is the place to be!

Here is Tangsuyuk, and the recipe is from her site. Mr. Gorilla had to pressed the beef in his palms in order to keep the starch stick to the beef. I used potato starch, and it taste really really ... g g good...

Cendol Bandung

2009-05-16T02:29:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite desserts from sweet childhood in Jakarta. The watery dessert consists of the cendol itself, (the green wormy stuffs), coconut milk and Kinca (palm sugar). But I honestly forget how and where I tasted this for the first time. I read from wikipedia that it is originally from Java. I was quite surprised because I was quite sure that it is from China. But anyway, who can trust wikipedia when a lot of citations are needed for each phrase? :)

There are several kinds of Cendol, but the one that I like is the one which is sold by street hawker in Jakarta, not the one from Bandung. I am not quite sure the difference between the two (as you can see my knowledge about the history or the food of my own country is very shallow), I think it is the flour used (either mung bean or rice flour), and in Bandung they use tiny bits of jack fruit.

Too bad that I am not good in reading recipes. I cannot dilute the flour, as in the beginning it tasted very floury (starchy) like the flour does not want to dissolve. The original recipe is posted on this site (in indonesian), it is not bad at all. Did I use the wrong flour or what? Maybe what she meant was sticky rice flour? Because it does not work in the beginning i had to use my hand mixer to mix the dough evently. Then I tried to contact her by clicking the “contact” link, but it leads me to nowhere. I did not use the jack fruit thing, as I don't have it. I added a pandanus leaf, as I explained before, I like the effect of this magic leaf. This one is cendol bandung, altough i dont like it, but any cendol type is o.k for an indonesian woman who is madly in love with asian food like me.

Very tasty if consumed under a very hot sunny day.

Cendol

125 gr rice flour
1 tbs tapioca flour
250 ml water
1/2 tsp salt
a drop of green food colorant

Coconut Milk

400 ml coconut milk
2 tbs sugar

Kinca (palm sugar)

50 gr red brown (palm) sugar
100 ml water
1 tps maizena, dissolve with a little big of the water.

Utensil:
A Cendol most (you can use your big colander made from metal, which have big holes inside, like this):

How to Make the:
Cendol

Mix the flour, and disolve with part of the water.
Boil the rest of the water, add the dough, stir well using medium fire, drop the food colorant.
In a big salad bowl, put water and ice glass inside.
Position the colander above the bowl, and drop all of the cendol dough inside, and press using a big spoon to make all the dough pass, and fall inside the bowl. Drain the water, set aside.

Coconut Milk

boil all of the ingredients, cool it in the fridge.
Mix the cendol and the coconut milk.

Kinca
Boil water and brown sugar. Add the maizena to the consistency, stir very fast, switch of the fire. Chill.

Serve all the three main ingredients: Cendol, Kinca and coconut milk in a glass.

Sriracha Sauce

2009-05-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

In my country, people say that we need to paint life with different tastes to make it more colorful. And the most interesting taste is from spicy hot sambal (Indonesian word for condiment sauce).

This one, is home made sriracha, hot chilly sauce from Thailand (or Indochina?). It is usually being sold in plastic bottles. In Indonesia, people are utterly maniac with this kind of Sambal, we call it sambal botol, because it is sold in bottles. One mark that people seems so attached to is sambal botol ABC. Many people are addicted to add this sauce in their plate, just to have the chemical taste of it, haha. I used to be a fan of this sambal in bottle thing, but not anymore. Since i moved to France, i have completely forgotten the joy of adding it to most of my plate... nowadays, i try to eat healthier (huh, but i am still hooked to Indomie, a brand of instant noodle from Indonesia - an accused of the responsible for the health problem of many many poor Indonesian people).

The original recipe is from this site. The sriracha that i make, actually reminds me of sambal Lampung (a hot chilly condiment from Lampung, a city in South of Sumatera, Indonesia).I used only 6 of Thai chillies, 3 chopped tomatoes (i don't use canned tomatoes, as..well.. i just want my sambal to be purely homemade. And the vinegar that i used is only the normal white one, and after having them all cooked, I blend to have a smooth sambal texture.

And you know what? I dropped half of my sambal on the floor by accident when I wanted to blend it with my hand blender. This accident was thus followed by a big drama between my big mouth-big attitude and my mr. Gorilla's... huh >:( but anyway, thanks to the photo session, which result you can see above, things between us were back to normal again as if there were nothing going on. The drama was neutralized, no damage done. I think he was greatly seduced with my settings for the photo session that he wanted to participate in and forget the stupid sambal drama. He installed the lights, and voilà the picture is there...(i put the 'before' and 'after' having it blent. Guess which is which!! :p)

My conclusion:
drama = sambal in our life! ;°)

Bibimbap

2009-05-14T13:05:00.000-07:00

My plate is full of colours, thanks to the Koreans, hehe. I love this dish, since it tastes good, easy to make, and healthy (yea yea, i know, if you are very much looking for healthy food, this is not the blog to be). I got a very lazy attack on the day i cooked it, so excusez-moi for using powdered garlic. I did not use the scrambled eggs either, as i think we had enough on our plate (it was just a normal dinner, come on, enough with big feast almost every night, hehe).

Bibimbap (original recipe is from 120 recettes de cuisine traditionnelle Coréenne, Grancher 1999)

ingredients and methods:

2 bowls of rice (for 2 people)
Sesame seeds

Minced meat, mixed all together the following ingredients, and stir fry it;

250 gr of minced meat
1 tbs Kikoman sauce soja
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp sesame oil
black pepper

Cucumber:

1 cucumber, thinly sliced, add 1 pinched of salt, set it aside for 10 minutes. Throw away the water. Add sesame oil, stir fry it for 5 minutes.

Turnip

1 turnip, julienne sliced, marinate with ½ tps of salt.
Drain the water, add 1 tsp of powdered red chilly + ½ tsp of garlic +1 tsp vinegar +1 tsp sesame oil
(i added also 1 tsp of Korean red chilly paste, gochujang – yeah, i kinda love this paste), mix very well

Soja Beans

70 gr soja beans, blanch with hot salty water for 5 minutes. Drain water, add 1 tbs of soja sauce and 1 tsp of sesame oil, drain it.

How to serve it?
In one bowl contains of rice, put each ingredients, until they cover the rice. Sprinkle a little bit of sesame seeds on top. Eat the rice by mixing them all together in your bowl.

Coconut Milk as Dessert

2009-05-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

Having been in love with South East Asian food, i notice that most of the desserts coming from this region of the globe use coconut milk as one of the ingredients. There is a kind of dessert that exist in many countries of South East Asia, such as Kolak Pisang, a "soup" of sweet coconut milk and banana (plantin) slices. In Indonesia, the coconut milk is boiled with palm sugar and pandanus leaf.

As i mentioned before, in my web page (the old and the new one) i am in love with Laotian food. There is a laotian restaurant in Paris, which i visit frequently, that serves 'three treasuries' dessert, consist of 3 main ingredients; chopped jack fruit, cendol [i dont know the name in English, but it is made of rice flour forming many small worms (!) and the colour is green] and another ingredient which name i forgot, really..(ah it is actually too late to write a blog, i am too tired...hehe..Sorry for my standard English). Anyway, it is not that important, because what interests me is that the coconut milk tastes very different than our coconut milk dessert used in Kolak Pisang.

For 2 years, i could not figure out what the components that makes it different than our coconut milk in our Kolak Pisang. But yeah, i do admit that i was very shallow... they are just using the normal white sugar and a little bit of salt, which makes the milk tastes more savory. Damn... where have i been, why did not i think of that before?! Anyway, i have a good reserve of pandanus leaves in the fridge, and i know that adding it to my coconut milk dessert would enhance the taste, and is making it more... euh...dainty? And after having them all frothed (coconut milk, white sugar, salt, bruised pandanus leaf), i added slices of banana, and japanese pearls (take out the pandanus leaf first please). You can add crushed ice glaces when serving it. And voilà a very simple (quick and easy) dessert is ready on the table within 10 minutes...

Cakwe (You Char Kwai/ You Tiao)

2009-05-10T02:20:00.000-07:00

This food is the most difficult one to be prepared, according to my opinion. I am not sure what is missing from the recipe, but i never succeed making ones... I have tried different recipes, but i never seem to make it. Although the taste is the same, but the form is far from the ones they sell in Asia, whereas they are softer just like pillow, with a lot of holes..I heard that in order to make it like that, you need a powder called aluminum something (?!), which i don't know where to find it, and whether it is edible and good for health. My other problem is to form and fry it, as they always seem ugly... :)

Originally from China (with a specific name that i forgot and a very nice history behind it), it is one of my favorite things since i was a kid. In the beginning of the '80's, my big brother was still doing taek won do sport (pretty much the same as karate) in the sport field in Kapten Tendean area Jakarta (now it is the big tall building of Trans TV) every Sunday afternoon. My parents would take the whole family to pick him up by car, where we, the sisters, would sat nicely on the back seat (i still remember our silly looking green car which then sold to our neighbour which he turned into a taxi later on, haha). And on the corner of the sport field, there was always a Cakwe street vendor with his cart full of cakwe, which we would love to buy from, as we wait till my brother taek won do session finished. That was the time i recognized eating this pillow cake in my life for the 1st time.

As my brother grows older, so does Jakarta by the way, he stopped doing this Taek Won Do thing. And the field became a bit abandoned, no taek won do session anymore, while at hand, the surroundings were on the fast track of highways being built, housings for office policer situated behind the field were soon flatted on the ground, etc etc. And the vendor was nowhere to be found (not that we were really looking for him by the way). I think Cakwe as food, was a bit erased from all over Jakarta's scheme (maybe you can only find in in China town which is far away from my house - me being small kid going to Kota area alone? No Way!), whereas only Sate and Nasi Goreng vendors which prevailed. I remember at that time, the type of food being sold on the pedestrian sidewalk of Jakarta was quite monotonous).

The next time i ate Cakwe again was in Bandung, more than 15 years later. I used to live in Jalan Dago, just beside a primary school, where in front of it, a lot of street vendors gathered to sell their stuffs to the 'poor' kids (they are not always healthy nor delicious for them). The food sold are just like a 'canteen' for the schoolboys/girls. They love to buy silly stuffs/food (i don't know why, i think the spirit of dine out has been vested since we were still in tender age). One of street vendors sold Cakwe, and quickly i found a sweet childhood memory o'mine (mon bonheur quoi?).

I got the recipe from my friend Yami, who probably had it from the Internet, which i paste part of them below. (Sorry that i do not quote the source of real the recipe.). She told me that she mixed it all together (unlike the original recipe), and i followed her suggestion.

CAKWE
Ingredients:

250 g low protein flour (plain flour)
1 / 2 tbsp baking powder
1 / 2 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate soda)
1 1 / 2 tsp instant yeast
150 - 200 cc water
3 / 4 tsp salt
1 / 4 tbsp very finely chopped garlic

Directions:

Mix all of the ingredients using your bread maker machine.
Let it sit for 2 hours (i apply cooking oil to the surface of the dough to moist it)
Roll dough quite thinly (about ½ centimeter thick) to desired length. Cut into pieces ½ centimeter wide
Take two cut pieces of dough, lay one on top of the other and make an indentation in centre along entire length with a bamboo skewer. Stretch formed dough by hand until long.
Deep fry it in a wok until golden brown.
Serve with the sauce.

For the sauce, i used sweet Thailand sauce that i mix with sliced pineapple.

Sach Ko Cha Manor, my first adventure in Cambodian Food

2009-05-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

There is a new challenge in town, which is unwittingly launched by my one and only french best friend JM (not easy to be friends with the french, but that does not stop you from marrying one of them, hehe) and it is about Cambodian cuisine. His passion about South East Asian culture (surely women and food - the major and the best import comodities from there, haha) and the fact that he is dating a Cambodian woman where she used(!) to cook him Cambodian cuisines makes me wonder, how come he could not tell if he has already tasted the famous South East Asian smelly shrimp paste or not (which is inseparable from our cuisine). And one thing that he was so sure about, is that his girlfriend always uses oyster sauce in her cuisine. It is obvious that he knows only eating but not cooking....(that is soooo guys, while most of Indonesian women thought that western men are good in kitchen...but men will always be men – they become effortless when they know that their women can act better in front of the stove).

So i browsed the net, to find the cuisine of Khmer. And i found THIS SITE, consisting very comprehensive easy to make Khmer recipes. What a hard work to make this site, since it has a vaste recipe collection, with pictures! Standing ovation to this woman (or guy?).

I thought that Cambodian cuisine would be more less the same as its neighboring countries, such as Vietnam, Laos or Thailand. But i was wrong.... In my humble opinion, it is closer to Chinese, as they use a lot of Oyster Sauce (i have been having this opinion since in Indonesia we only use oyster sauce to cook Chinese food). Laotian food is closer to Thailand in this case , whileVietnam has another kind of taste, which sometimes (but not all of the time) closes to Thailand too. Anyway, Thai food benefits from the fact that this world is full of Thai cook books in different languages with awesome pictures, (while i had not yet found super excellent Laotian cook book for example - or maybe i did not put enough endeavor to find it), which makes it looks more gastronomy and makes other South East Asian cuisines (including Indonesia) look less appetizing. That is why, my adventure (and i guess this applies to most people) in Indochine food, started from Thai dishes (which never fall short in cheering our tongue!).

Back to Cambodian cuisine, so far, i did not find the use of shrimp paste in their recipes but i could be wrong. And they do not use that often shallots, which again, (imho) makes them closer to Chinese cuisine because in Indonesia, yellow onion is rarely used. In general it's put in service when we want to use chinese food. Sometimes, they use lemon grass or turmeric. But most of the time it is about fish, oyster and soja sauce. Nevertheless, looking at those recipes make me want to try one by one starting tomorrow, hehe. So this is a new beginning of my Cambodian adventure....and it starts with Sach Ko Cha Manor (i omit the bell pepper - hate it- and i only have chinese cabbage instead the normal cabbage).

My Own Version of Mi Kha Thi

2009-05-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Mi Kha Thi is Laotian cuisine that reminds me a lot to our laksa. Apparently, in South East Asia, every country has their own version of noodle soaked in curry soup. Inspiration is taken from Laotian recipe book “les meilleures recettes du monde”, Orphie 2006. The original recipe uses pork as meat, and is without turmeric, galanga, ginger and kaffir leaves. I added them for the reason that I thought it would be cool a more colorful curry soup with them inside. The result is maknyus, the beef is so tender and the soup is rich with the taste of the minced beef.

Ingredients:

400 gr minced beef
200 ml coconut milk
200 ml chicken stock
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp chili powder
1 tbs or more fish sauce
1 tsp galanga
1 tsp ginger
2 tps dried chillies in powder
3 shallots chopped
2 garlic chopped
salt
sugar
2 kaffir leaves
250 gr Rice noodle (I used thin rice vermicelli, and i used half package of leftover, brown vermicelli, hehe)
1 tbs sliced chillies
omelet thinly sliced

Additional ingredients:

Sprout beans (which is soaked in hot water for 5 – 10 minutes)
lemon juice
spring onions sliced
mint and coriander leaves (i did not add these ingredients).

Directions:

Prepare the rice noodles, soak in cold water, and then boil al dente, drain it. Drop a little bit of oil just to keep it separated from each other.
In a big pan, stir fry the garlic, shallots, salt, chilly powder; turmeric, galanga and ginger. Add the meat, mingle it evenly.
Add the liquid ingredients, kaffir leaves and sugar. Let it cook for another 15 minutes with medium heat, add the spring onions, stir for awhile, take the pan out from fire.
In serving plate/bowl, put the rice noodle bean sprouts and shredded omelet. Pour down the curry soup. Add lemon juice, curry and mint leaves.

Duck Fillet Curry

2009-05-06T13:54:00.001-07:00

It has been long time that i had not cooked a very delicious curry (haha...by saying this, i admit that i am not a good chef, nor a good recipe creator). But this duck fillet curry that i made, could, somehow make me feel better about who i am in the kitchen. And the plongeur, mr. Gorilla munched his portion and mumbled without stop how good the curry was. I think i know why it is so diffierent than the normal curry that i usually make... it uses more ingredients, which makes the taste stronger, and more Indonesian than ever :)

Btw, i used plum fruit because i don't have asam kandis, a fruit, used as an acid agent in many dish originally from Sumatera.

Duck Fillet Curry

250 gr duck breast fillet, discard the fat and sliced thinly
1 or two pinch of tamarind
1 lemon grass, bruised
200 ml coconut milk + 100 ml water (I added water to dilute the milk)
2 star anises
1 tsp ghee
2 green plums, bruised

ground (powder) spices:

1,5 tsp coriander in powder
1 tsp cumin in powder
1 tsp turmeric in powder
0,5 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp cardamom powder
2 Indonesian bay leaves
3 or 4 shallots, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbs chopped chillies
1 tsp ginger powder
pepper
salt

Ingredients:

Heat the ghee in a wok, stir fry the spices and lemon grass.
Add the duck, and cook with medium heat to let the juice dries out.
Add the coconut milk+water, star anises, plums and tamarind.
Shimmer until fillet softened.
Serve immediately with hot steamed rice :)

Ayam Masak Habang

2009-05-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

I guess this dish is one of Borneo's prides. I had a neighbour who is from the big island and used to live in Banjarmasin. It was from her that I got in touch with this great spicy cuisine for the first time.

Original recipe is from Masakan Indonesia, Yasa Boga, Gramedia, it requires the chicken to be deep fried, but I skipped the step, because I refused to be hassled with the fact that I will have to take out my big heavy wok from the shelf, and then wash it after cooking...no no no (of Amy Winehouse). But I read on the net, several recipes skip this step as well, while i am not sure how my ex neighbour does it usually. The coriander leaves is just for garnishing, but i do love the taste of it on my plate, thus... eventually it is not not only for garnishing, but also serve as the flavor enhancer... :)

Ayam Masak Habang
Ingredients:

2 chicken legs
1 lemon grass (bruised or sliced thinly after discard the outer leaf)
1 tomato, chopped in dice
1 pinch of tamarind
500 ml water
1 tbs cooking oil
salt
pepper
1 tsp sugar

Ground spices:

3 shallots
2 garlic
½ tsp of kencur (indonesian galange) powder
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp galange powder
3 chillies
1 tsp shrimp paste

Directions:

Sauté the ground spices and lemon grass with oil. Add the chicken, mix well.
Pour in water, drop tomato dices, tamarind and salt and sugar.
Let it shimmer until sauce is greatly reduced.
Serve with steamed rice.

Grilled Lamb

2009-04-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

This dish is just like my lender of last resort, my safe heaven, whenever i am running out of idea, or whenever we want to eat something good but easy and quick, and at the same time, we have lamb meat in the fridge. Did i tell you that we both are big fans of lamb meat? We just can't stop feeling good when we byte that burnt/boiled greasy part of it...(however the down side is that i always get cramps in the evening after eating it, huuh good things ask for sacrifation also, remember?).

In a bowl, mix:

400 gr of chopped lamb meat (leg part), throw away the bone
3 tbs Indonesian sweet soy sauce
1 tbs of cooking oil

Kecap Sauce:

1 tomato, chopped in dices
1 shallot, minced
1 tps of sliced chillies
4 tbs of Indonesian sweet soy sauce

Directions:

Grill the lamb (according to your liking)
Serve with steamed rice and the kecap sauce

Garang Asem

2009-04-28T00:57:00.000-07:00

Garang Asem
Inspiration from Masakan Indonesia, Yasaboga, Gramedia, 2008. Portion: 1 person!

Ingredients:

2 chicken thighs
3 cabbage, discard the bone and chop roughly
1 lemon grass, crushed
1 tbs of cooking oil

Pound the following spices till form a rough paste:

2 chillies
3 shallots
2 garlic
1,5 tsp coriander grains in powder
1 tsp caraway seeds powder
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 tsp of turmeric powder

Directions:

Stir fry all the ingredients (except chicken and cabbage) until golden brown.
Add chicken inside the pan, then 700 ml water, let the ingredients boiled, till chicken is soft.
Drop the cauliflower, let it cook for another 10 minutes.
Serve.

Shrimps and Lemon Grass Salad

2009-04-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

One evening, Nawel, an Algerian mate from school who is very interested in international cuisine, called and we talked about bla bla bla (mostly our effort to find a good decent job, hehehe)...and she closed the conversation by asking me a recipe of Thailand shrimp salad, that our Thailand class mate once made her. She said that she was trying to make it but the taste was just not the same. So i ran through my Thai cook books, and voilà i found it... and scanned it directly to her email.

Very funny, the day that she called, i went to Paris in the afternoon, and treat Mr. Gorilla in our favorite Laotian Restaurant which serves the salad, and i order exactly the same ensalada :)

Here is my own version of recipe, it was lack of many spare parts. as i had not yet gone to do groceries ...

Sauce

In a small bowl, mix the following:

1 or 2 tbs of (green) citron juice
1 shallots, minced
1 tsp of fish sauce
2 tsp white sugar
1 tbs of spring onion (thinly sliced)

In a big salad bowl, combine the sauce with the following ingredients, and then set it aside for 5 minutes before serving:

2 carrots julienne sliced
400 gr of big shrimps, 2 minutes boiled in boiling water, discard heads, tails
2 tsp of Thai sweet sour sauce (or any industrial sweet spicy-chilly sauces will do, hehe)
1 lemon grass, discard the hard part (outer leaf) trim the lower part of the stalk, and slice thinly the bottom white part only

Serve by sprinkling:

coriander leaves
sliced chillies

Other ingredients that i don't have but you may use to optimise your salad:

Salad and mint leaves
Thai industrial dry squid which has sweet salty taste, very flat form (I don't know the name for this product and unfortunately I don't have the picture either).
Sliced onion
cashew nuts

Note:

you can replace the shrimps with squid or jelly fish

Dendeng Ragi

2009-04-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Dendeng Ragi is sweet dry meat from Indonesia (i am not sure if it is typically Sundanese, or Javanese, or even other parts of the archipelago). Oh heck... we looooove!!! But this one, i tried to make it not as sweet as the original recipe, since, oh well, i was actually trying to be more healthy with food (huh, but we are never absent from eating coconut milk?). The idea of the recipe is from Masakan Indonesia, (Yasaboga, Gramedia 2008). Sweet as (i remember that when i lived in Nz, they often say these two words!)

Ingredients A:

400 gr beef meat, tender part, thinly slice (okay, i failed, can we move on?)
1 tsp of coriander seeds powder
1 tsp of crushed palm sugar

Ingredients B

2 tbs of grated dry coconut
0,5 tsp of salt
1 pinch of tamarind
2 Indonesian bay leaves
1 lemon grass, bruised
1 tsp of sugar

ground spices:

1 tsp coriander seeds powder
3 shallots
3 cloves of garlic

Methods:

Ingredients A: Flatten all of the meat, mix with the rest of ingredients A.
Grill with small fire, until the juice dries out, set aside.
Boil ingredients B and ground spices with 250 ml water, until the gravy dries out, and the grated coconut turns brown, add the beef, cook using small fire. Serve with steamed rice!

Bistik Daging

2009-04-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite dish from mommy's kitchen... (kata orang, buset, keluarga semua muka kayak manusia purba kok sok sok-an panggil mommy...hahaha).

But i made this based on a recipe that i got from a book... I don't really like the taste, as maybe i did not use the best indonesian sweet soy sauce..or maybe it is just not mom's. Have to call her tomorrow to ask her recipe...

Bistik, maybe it is an indonesian version of Beef steak... which was misspelled, or simply because this steak is bisexual, hehe...

Krengsengan

2009-04-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

I am soooo tired today. After working, I dashed to Paris to meet a long lost friend from junior high school, madame RA, who happens to be in Europe for her husband's art exhibition. One of the advantages of living next to the ville of tourist, is that I get the chance of meeting several friends who want to sip the beauty of Paris. Funny that most of them have other friends too living there. And madame RA, said that she wanted to get to know her French root from her mother's side, that is why she is here. Anyway, I had a very good time, though fatigue did not want to escape from my "illy" body.

And when I went home it was quite late already, hubby was already home, hungry and impatient. So I had to prepare a dinner which is quick and easy. Lucky that I found this Krengsengan recipe from a book, (Masakan Indonesia, Yasa Boga, Gramedia 2008) that another friend, Lita, brought me last week when she hit Paris town. I bought this lovely useful book when I visited Indonesia last year. But stupidly, I left it at my mom's place. So when Lita, in a very short notice, told me that she would arrive in the city of love, within 4 days I quickly phoned my mom to transfer the book in the good faith of her (huh, why suddenly I used the language of law here? WTF?!).

Lita is a friend that I knew through the net, because we shared the same passion: Cooking. Unfortunately, she had to shorten her visit in Paris since her father had passed away a couple of days after she arrived in France. Luckily, I had the very good chance to meet her for a couple of hours. I found a short free time before work, to lunch on Saturday afternoon , a day before she received the nightmare (my deepest condolences for her and her family).

Meeting beautiful Indonesian ladies in one week, makes me very happy..and missing Indonesia quite deep now...Darn... now I find my brain telling myself: “M-U-S-T not fall into infatuated tragic feeling of missing my home country...” repeated 2 x.

Krengsengan

Two slices of lamb's leg meat, cut
1 tsp of sliced chillies
1 tomato cut in dices
1 tsp of petis paste (a black paste, mixed of Indonesian sweet soy sauce, ground palm sugar and shrimp paste, 1 tbs :1 tsp: 2 tsp)
1 tbs of kecap manis (indonesian sweet soy sauce)
1 tsp of ghee
500 ml water

Spices

1 tsp of ginger
3 shallots sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic crushed and sliced thinly
0,5 tsp of salt
0,5 tsp of white pepper

Directions:

Stir fry the spices with the ghee, add the lamb and tomato, let it cooked (till the stock is dried), add the remaining ingredients.
Let it cook until gravy is thickened, and there is less of it in your pan (I used medium fire, which i had to stir every now and then, to avoid the sauce burnt on the bottom of the pan)
Serve.

Sponge Cake

2009-04-20T10:03:00.001-07:00

I made this bûche type cake just after i thought that i was gooing to loose my dear precious oven because i had been producing nonedible cakes lately.... But i had been deadly wrong. It works very well, and i feel relieve now...so the previous hard raté cakes was just my fault for not following well the recipes...(one of the disadvantages for being too rock and roll). Bye bye expensive oven service, i hope i won't be seeing your web page nor to dial your phone numbers any time soon!

I am sure that most of ppl have already known where to turn to for the best sponge recipe, either in English, French, or Indonesian (edition spanish is comming soon...hehe), so i don't need to repost it again. (click here for recipes that i have been always practising, if you speak Indonesian).

Lula Jakarta

2009-04-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

Be bop a lula, she's my baby... what a funny name this dish from Jakarta, reminds me of a rock and roll song by Gene Vincent.

I just discovered another cuisine which name i have never heard of before. It has the same look as the famous beef rendang from Minang, but this one is from lamb with less spices than Rendang, and it tastes sweet...as sweet as my husband's love for me, though he is going to leave me tomorrow for several days, heading to a city in France, where i heard, full of Philippines women there... cool..must be easy to find good asian restaurants there!! :))

LULA JAKARTA
Ingredients

3 pieces of lamb leg cut in lego bits form (hehe)
2 tbs of grated coconut
1 tbs ghee
3 shallots, ground smoothly
1 tps coriander powder
1 tps caraway seeds powder
0,5 tps sugar
1 tps white pepper
1 tps salt
200 ml coconut milk

Directions:

In a salad bowl, mix all the ingredients, except the coconut milk and ghee.
Heat ghee in a wok (or pan), stir fry the mixed ingredients until the lamb is cooked.
Add the coconut milk, let it shimmer until water is greatly reduced, don't forget to stir every now and then.

Gangsa

2009-04-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

The recipe is taken from the 1010 Original Recipes of Indonesian Cuisine, and seemingly, this dish is from Banjarmasin, a city in Borneo island (oh...hey..one my best friends is from there, how are you bro?)

Anyway; nothing beats my own wild idea, going rock and roll in the kitchen while listening to The Doors screaming from the speaker of Mr. Gorilla (should be read= i do mic mac with the original recipe). And yea, silly me, i forgot to add chillies!! Grrr.. but anyway, the result was heaven on earth, which put end the fight between me and Mr. Gorilla over the erased pictures (read the previous thread). I told him before that he was so not worth the foood that i was about to serve him. He tasted it, and agreed with what i said, which then made me laughed...

He seemed to enjoy it a lot, and asked me if the cuisine was Indonesian, and i answered, "Yes! Very!!" Frankly speaking, i don't remember having eaten this dish before tonight. How we are trully blessed being Indonesians, there are so many things to be discovered from our own country!

Gangsa

500 gr beef meat (the best one is ...euh the one to be used for shimmering)
1 tbs coconut oil for cooking

Crush the following:

1,5 tsp coriander powder
4 cloves of garlic
0,5 tsp kencur (lesser galanga)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 pinch of tamarind
0,5 tsp salt
1 tsp shrimp paste

Directions:

Boil the meat until tender, sewage, slice thinly, and drop it again to the boiling pot.
Stir fry the ground spices with the coconut oil, add it to the pot of meat, let it shimmer until the water reduced greatly.
Ready to be served (oh why do i think of Steffi Graff, each time i hear the word Serve!!)

Oxtail Soup

2009-04-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Do I fall in love with my butcher next door? It seems true, because they fulfill my standard of the perfect butcher as they sell only halal meat, cheap price for good quality (qualité/prix, which is the term the French always use, I love it, lol) , and...sometimes they sell difficult spare parts of cow such as tail, intestine, liver, which probably are not worth to be sold in the supermarket, apart from making clients disgusted by their looks (if looks could kill, hehe) and their bizarre taste.

I am too lazy to put the recipe, actually, well, i got the recipe from the net...they are more lest the same..

Ingredients:
1 Oxtail, boil around 15 minutes, change the water, boil again till soft
150 gr beef meat, cut
2 potatoes, peeled, cut
2 carrots, peeled and sliced thinly
1 spring onion, slice thinly
2 tbs of parsley
4 tomato wedges
lemon wedges
cooking oil

grind smoothly,
3 shallots
2 cloves garlic
1 ginger powder
0,5 nutmeg
white pepper

directions:
stir fry the spices with cooking oil, and drop it to the boiling oxtail and meet, add the potatoes, carrots. Cook till the veggies turn soft (shimmer it till the water reduced greatly) , add the parsley and tomato wedges, cook a little bit, and add the spring onions. Turn off the fire, transfer to a serving bowl, and serve with lemon juice.

Well, you know what, no photo for this thread, because my smart mr. Gorilla erased his camera's memory card, and thought that he had already transfered all of the data to the computer, et voilà there goes the cute picture of my oxtail soup... fait chier ce mec.... putain!!!!!

Pineapple Fried Rice

2009-04-09T13:24:00.000-07:00

Fried rice is very easy to be prepared and a everybody's favorite. And thanks to the Thai for dropping pineapple bits to a lot of their dishes, which add the variety of fried rice existing in the world!

Ingredients:

3 bowls of cooked rice
400 gr of seafood of your choice (i used small silver fish, anchovies alike)
2 tbs of coriander leaves
300 gr pineapple cut in bits
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs sugar
0,5 – 1 tsp of white pepper
1 tbs of cooking oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 spring onion, sliced thinly (yeah i forgot to add this, baa aaad!! small head, yes i am)

Directions:

Heat oil in a wok and sauté the garlic until brownish. Add the seafood, cook until golden.
Drop the rice into the wok, season with fish sauce, mix well. Add the sugar and pepper, before you add the pineapple bits into the wok.
Combine the spring onion with the rice, stir, let it cook for another 1 minutes and add the coriander leaves, stir again.
Transfer to serving bowl and ready to be served!

Ayam Bakar dengan Saus à la Blora (Grilled Chiken with Sauce à la Blora)

2009-04-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

Blora is a city in the central of Java, which is famous not only for their newly discovered fossils, (apparently it is paradise for antrophologists) but also for their satay. The peanut sauce is different than the normal peanut sauce used in most of satay in other part of Indonesia (or South East Asia). I read that the meat used is not beef, but it is water buffalo meat. My guess is that it has something to do with the history of the spread of Muslim religion during its early years in Indonesia. Long time ago in Indonesia when Hindu ruled Java, there were several saints (Muslim missionaries) who tried to convert the Hindus to become Muslims. In order to win their sympathy and gain followers, the saints, among others, refused to eat beef, a believe (or a belief? huh..my lousy english) which is uphold by the Hindus, and taught this to their followers.

It is quite difficult to find a place where you can buy satay Blora in Jakarta. When i was a kid (the time when i did not like satay, and many other Indonesian food) there was one small market in Cikini called Hias Rias Market, where you could find a small restaurant situated in the heart of the market which sold satay Blora. I think it was from this restaurant i ever heard the name Blora for the first time, which sounded funny in my kiddy ear. Now whenever i hear the name Satay Blora, i would think of the small market called Hias Rias next to my elementary/junior high in Jakarta, and that small restaurant situated in the middle of the bazaar, among bookshops (where I used to search for school books and stupid typical 80's stickers), shops for hobbyist (philatelists,) but never really packed with women searching for sewing and knitting kit although the market was actually destined for women and their related hobbies. Even at that time there were only small numbers of passers by, and most of the time, I remember that the sellers were bored waiting for costumers.

Nowadays, the name Hias Rias is still there, i guess, but ever since they renovated the market, more than 20 years ago (they put a small building name Hias Rias Cikini to replace the more traditional ensamble of shops), the 'mall' is always as dead as the cemetery. I have not been there for ages. I don't know if there are still sellers over there, if it is still open.....Hmmm...Suddenly I miss that good old days where my mom would make us pass it, because she always parked her car behind the market. I miss the ambiance of my city in the early 80's and I miss my mom! :((

Anyway, I did not have beef...neither buffalo water meat. Thus I use chicken thighs instead. The inspiration is taken from the net, from Tabloid Nova page.

Ingredients:

4 chicken thighs
50 gr (or twice) peanut, grind smoothly (we ground it coarsely, bad idea!)
400 ml coconut milk
cooking oil

Crush the following:

1 tsp coriander grains
2 shallots
1 garlic
1 tsp Indonesian lesser galanga (kencur, if you don't have it, omit or use galanga instead)
white pepper
salt

Directions

Boil the chicken until cook. Pat dry, set aside. Save the chicken stock for other use.
Heat oil in a pan, add the ground ingredients cook until the aroma got out. Add the peanut, mixed well, and add the coconut milk. Cook until the sauce thickens.
Brush the sauce all over the boiled chicken.
Grill until brownish and serve immediately with the peanut sauce.

Tom Yam Koung Laotian Version?

2009-04-04T15:29:00.000-07:00

A recipe of Tom Yam Koung version Laotian? Why not? Unfortunately my small knowledge about Indochina culture prohibits me understanding where the original of Tom Yam Koung is. Is it from Thailand, or this is the kind of food that you find everywhere in the rest of the region, just like Nasi Goreng or Laksa in other countries in South East Asia?

I added lemon juice to have more acid taste. Original recipe is from my Laotian cook book recipe: Cuisine du Monde: Laos (Orpi). I did not need to add salt as the fish sauce makes it too salty. But i do regret that i forgot to put white pepper; i am a big fan of the taste of this ruling spice.

Tom Yang Koung
Ingredients:

400 gr of frozen shrimps
1 lemon grass sliced thinly (I should have just let it bruised as I am not a big fan of sliced lemon grass, they are better not eaten I guess, though the aroma is priceless!)
2 shallots
2 garlic
1 tbs of sliced chillies
1 tps galanga powder
1 spring onions sliced thinly
1 tbs tomato paste
1 tomato, thinly sliced
1 pinch of tamarind
500 ml chicken stock
cilantro
1 tbs of thailand sweet sour sauce
3 leaves of kaffir limes
1 tbs fish sauce
lemon wedges

Directions:

Stir fry the shallots, garlic, chillies and lemon grass. Add shrimps, cook till half done.
Add tomato, paste, galanga, tamarind, sweet sour sauce, fish sauce and kaffir leaves. Stir well.
Add stock; cook until the shrimp turns completely white pinkish.
Add the spring onions and cilantro.
Serve by sprinkling lemon juice.

Ikan Jambal Sambal Tomat (Dried Salted Fish with Tomato Sambal)

2009-04-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

Jambal, if I am not wrong (yeah, I could be misleading sometimes), is a dried salted fish coming from the type of Cod or Morue fish in French. Somewhere in West Java, this is the local supremacy side dish. I remember I passed this region by car with other trainees during my training period in the law faculty, but I don't remember where... We stopped and bought them, because we were seduced by the smell and the abundant quantities of dried salty fish, being displayed by the street hawkers within kilometres long (but I remember at that time, I was not a big fan, but one of us were so into this smelly stuffs so it was her idea that we stopped, actually!).

Now, it becomes one of my favourite dishes in Indonesia. When the chillies strike my tongue, my defence is to eat more rice and no wonder why many Indonesians are overweight :)) No...stop blaming my uncle Ronald Macdonalds for that, blame that tiny picky thing called chilly instead! And the best way to eat sambal with rice is by using our hands. Forget your silver spoons, God gives us not only rock and roll (yea..i love that tube from Kiss!), but also our hand!

INGREDIENTS:

Dried salted Cod Fish/Morue, soaked in water (I soaked it for more than one day, and I changed the water more than twice, to reduce the saltiness), drain and deep fried until dry, set aside.
1 bruised lemon grass
1 Indonesian bay leaf
2 kaffir lime leaves
2 tomatoes, cut in wedges
2 tbs of water
lemon wedges
cooking oil

Spices, ground Coarsely the following ingredients:

2 shallots
1 garlic
3 red chillies
2 green chillies
1 tps sugar (optional, I omitted it since I like my sambal not too sweet)

DIRECTIONS:

stir fry the spices in a frying pan, and then add the kaffir bay leaves, and the lemon grass. Then add the tomatoes. Stir well, add the water, reduce heat and close the lid of the pan. Let cook for 3 – 5 minutes.
Open the lid, add the cod, stir, turn off the fire, and serve immediately by sprinkling lemon juice on the dish.

Sayur Tim Saus Asia (Your Choice of Steamed Veggies with Asian Sauce)

2009-04-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

The original recipe is taken from one of my bibles, my guide to the kitchen world; Marabout's Tout Vapeur (Marabout's All Steam). Then I thought we could always add our own favourites steamed veggies, thus I also added two slice of steamed fish fillet (marinated with lemon juice, salt and pepper). It is quick and easy to have good food on your table, put your veggies and fish on a plate and pour over the Asian sauce. Enjoy!

Asian Sauce, on a small bowl, mix the following:

1 clove of garlic, crushed and chopped
½ cm fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tsp sugar
1 tbs japanese rice vinegar
1 tbs japanese soy sauce
1 tbs lemon juice
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp peanut oil

Note:
I used sweet corn cob and chopped chives, as mentioned by the original recipe. It marries very well with the taste of the asian sauce!

Hainanese Salmon with Rice

2009-04-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

I tried this recipe of my friend, Yunike from Foodtravelblog.com. It is really worth to try. Hers looks much better in pictures ...Oh dear, we fall short each time, when it comes to pictures we are always dissapointing!

I cooked my salmons using 7 chillies (sliced) mixed with the soy sauce (your guess is right, I need to finish my wilting chillies, hehehe). Thanks for sharing the recipe Yun!!

Chicken and Pineapple Curry

2009-04-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Ingredients:

300 gr chicken filet, cut
1 cup of cut pineapple
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tps palm sugar (or white sugar)
200 ml coconut milk
1 tbs cooking oil

Spices:

6 bird eyes chillies
1 lemon grass sliced
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 tsp grains of coriander
1 tsp galangal
3 fresh kaffir leaves, shredded
a pinch white pepper
3 garlic, chopped
1/2 onion sliced thinly

Direction :

In a pan, stir fry all the spices with cooking oil, reduce greatly the fire, and put the lid of the pan. Let cook for 3-5 minutes.
Add the chicken and pineapple, and cover the pan once again to let the chicken cooked.
Add fish sauce, and coconut milk, stir well..let shimmer for 10 minutes.
Servir sans attendre, to be eaten as accompagnion of rice.