From my kitchen - Botok-botok

Ingredients
I- Any kind of fish - I used Spanish Mackerel - cut into small pieces to fit in square banana leaf.

II- Pound or blend till fine:
     Coriander
     Cummin
    Anis seed
   White pepper
    Dried chillies
    Tumeric
    Lemon grass
   Galangal
   Ginger
   Shallots
    Garlic

III- Tamarind juice
      Coconut milk
      Kerisik
      Chicken stock, sugar and salt.

IV- Banana leaves to fold the ingredients - cut into 7x 8 inches-depending how big the fish portions are,
       Young Mengkudu leaves
       Young Tapioca leaves
        Young Papaya leaves
        Pucuk Teh Belanda
        Daun Semangkuk
        Daun kesom
        Daun selasih (Thai Basil)
        Daun kunyit (tumeric leaf)

1. Mix ingredients II with III forming a paste
2. Clean and cut banana leaves into big rectangles - fits for how many portion of fish you cut.
3. Daun kesom, selasih and daun kunyit chopped finely
4. Arrange Mengkudu leaves on the banana leaves follow by Tapioca leaves and Papaya leaves, Pucuk Teh
    and Daun Semangkuk.
5. Put the blended  paste on top of the leaves.
6. Put a bit of the chopped leaves on each fish. Same steps to be done on each portion of fish.
7. Fold banana leaves like you are folding lepat pisang.
8.Steam the fish for 2 hours.
9. Served with white rice.

Tapioca leaves

Daun Semangkuk

Daun kesum

Daun Mengkudu

Papaya tree

Pucuk Teh Belanda

Daun Selasih (Thai Basil)

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Another order

I slept at 3.30 am this morning. And I wasn't late for work today :)
It certainly is different when you are doing something you love. I felt fine when I woke up this morning, no dizzines which will usually occured when I sleep late.

for the children

I made 1 set (16) of size 8 cupcake for my husband's children and 1 set (25) size 12 for Nani who ordered a week ago.

 

                                       
Some new lesson learnt :
1. Size 12 is big, so make sure the icing is used for them first. I found out that I  was out of icing when I did the 16th cuppies! Fondant saved the day!
2. Do the ordered ones first. You will be in trouble if you can't finish them as you promised
3. Cuppies needs extra handling. When traveling, you need to make sure that they were placed on a stable spot. I have to covered them with whatever cloth (clean ones of course) I have to make sure that they are not affected when my car went through the road humps or holes.

Time to get back to work!

Cupcakes made last night

Some new lesson learnt while doing cupcake:

1. I am not good with noozles :(
2. Need that digital weighing machine to have same size of cupcakes
3. Do not panic if the cake expand twice its size. After a few hours it will shrink a bit.

Made these till 2 am this morning. They are chocolate cupcakes topped with butter cream.
Apologise for the quality of picture- I used my phone again. So lesson no 4. Get a good quality camera!

Lunch today

1. Gulai tumis lada hitam ikan pari
When talk about gulai (I think best translated as sauce or gravy), in Malaysia gulai means different kind of dish depending on the location you are at.
If you are in Northern part of Malaysia, gulai means Curry - the color is brownish.
If you are in some part of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan or some places in Malacca, gulai means  Gulai Lemak Cili Padi (Coconut sauce with bird eye chillies) and the color is greenish whitish--closer to white.
In Kelantan or Terengganu or maybe Pahang too, gulai is orangy red similar with curry but the spices is different.
When you are in Johor, if you are true Johorian, the gulai is usually reddish.
So if someone tells you that they ate gulai, ask them which color :p

The recipe:

Gulai Tumis Lada Hitam (Fish in pepper and chilly gravy)
I -  Main Ingredient
Fish (I used ikan pari "stingray") cut in  rectangles according to its bones
Daun kesom (kesom leafs)
Tamarind juice

II - Pound or put the following into blender
5-6 Red chillies
20-30 Dried chillies- depends on whether you want it hot
1 tsp Peppercorn
1 tsp curry powder
Shallots
Garlic
Ginger
Tumeric
Shrimp Paste
1-2 shallot slice thinly


1. Heat pan. Put in the thinly sliced shallot. Let it brown.
2. Pour in the pounded mixture. Let the ingredients cooked until its own oil comes out
3. Squeeze tamarind with a cup of water. Pour juice into the pan. Stir and add according to how thick or thin we want the gravy. If you want it thinner then squeeze more tamarind juices. Let it simmer.
4. Once boiled, put in the fish and daun kesom. Let it cooked for awhile.
5. Served with hot rice. Best eaten with hot rice and soya sauce.




2. Sayur turi masak lemak
 I haven't eaten this vegetable for ages. Sayur turi is not easy to find.

                                            This is how pokok turi looks like.
I always bought some other vegetable mistaken as turi before. But this time I saw it's white flower and I confirmed  it is turi.

Turi is best eaten when cooked with coconut milk.

Sayur Turi Masak Lemak (Sayur Turi in coconut sauce)

Ingredients:

Some daun turi. (the leaves will shrink so you need large amount- take only the leaves and flower if any)
Coconut milk
Sweet potato - peel and cut like cutting potato for soups.
Shallot
a bit of dry shrimps or ikan bilis(anchovy).

1.Slice shallots. Clean dry shrimp or anchovy.
2. Put coconut milk, slice shallots and anchovy into the pot with sweet potatoes. Bring to boil.
3.When boiled and the sweet potatoes already softened, add the leaves. Let it cooked for a while, stirring every now and then.
4. Serve with white rice and sambal belacan.

3. Sambal belacan
This is easy but a must for most Malay home.
Red chillies or bird eyed chillies or a bit of both.
Shrimp paste-grilled a few minutes.
Lime  or tamarind juice.

Pound chillies with shrimp paste. Add a bit of salt and sugar.
Once the ingredients are fine, add the juice.
Served.

Halwa Maskat

I made halwa maskat, a traditional recipe today. It has the influence of Arab and Indian. 

Halwa usually means sweet and indeed it is sweet unless you adjust the content of sugar to your preference.And like any other traditional food, you have to stir for a few hours. Tedious and tiring. 

Sakit pinggang isk.

However, it is worth it for I have been craving for it since Eid. No chance of buying it in the supermarket, I guess because not many demand. The new generation might not even heard of  it, let alone tasting it. 

 I have made halwa maskat many many years back. When I read the recipe again, I have completely forgotten, could not figure out which to take whether the water or the flour after keeping it overnight. I figure it out today and my halwa turn out nice but still sweet though I have reduced the sugar content. Guess I have to reduce more in the future. 

Here's the recipe, its an old recipe so its not that accurate. You have to adjust things a bit. And the measurement was in kati. 1 kati = 600 gm.

Halwa Maskat

300 gm flour

500 gm lump sugar (gula batu)

200 gm sugar

450 gm ghee

10 cardamom (buah pelaga) - take off the skin

10 almond- skinned cut into small bits and put into oven for 2 mins

saffron or yellow coloring

1. This is the tedious part- Mixed and knead flour like you are making breadwith 1500ml  of water. Knead bit by bit with water under a sieve so that the sticky part of the flour stayed on the sieve.Leave the mixture overnight/

2.Boil sugar and lump sugar with 1750ml water. Put in pandan leave and the cardamom or you can put the cardomom when you cook the halwa.

3.Separate the overnight flour from the clear water which float above it.Mixed the flour  with the sugar mixture. Put mixture in a large pan.

4.Stir and add in the almond, cardamom (if you didn't add in the sugar) and yellow coloring or saffron.

5. Add ghee bit by bit and keep stirring for about 2 hours or until the mixture didn't stick to the pan.

6. Pour into baking tray 9.5 x 10 inches and let it cool. Cut into squares and served.

There is another recipe which includes lime juice. I didn't use it. If you wish to, you may add in step 3.

Halwa Maskat

Important note: I just found out that you must not put  halwa maskat in the fridge. The oil will be frozen and the shiny color will fade. The taste will be different too.Therefore you have to keep it under room tempreature . It can last for a few days.

Harisa

I woke up this morning feeling like making something traditional. And I thought of "Harisa". Been a long time since I made "Harisa". But the thing is, not many knows how to eat/appreciate it not even me hehe. Whenever I made this dish, I have already planned who to give it to. That was when I'm in JB. From where I am staying now, I don't think it worth stirring for hours. (You have to stir for at least 2 hours under low fire).

Harisa is an old traditional arab savoury  which has been taken by Johorian especially the palace as their traditional dish. Even the arabs from arab countries frown when asked if they knew what harisa is. When I looked in google I found out that it is a name for some sweet dish from Tunisia which is totally different from what my harisa is. And when I google arisa or arissa I ended up looking at some girls picture of that name huh!

Anyway, here is the recipe for harisa. I have the picture somewhere, will put it here if I can find it.

1 kilo of meat (chicken, mutton or beef )
800 gm quaker oat (you can use terigu to replace this. Not sure what terigu is in English)
2 packet of kurma spice or beriani (the small 50sen each)

1/2 tin of milk

225 gm ghee

a bit of cinnamon, star anise, cardamom, clove

salt to taste

Pound:
2 garlic
a bit of ginger
some shallot


1. Boil meat with cinnamom, star anise, cardamom, clove and salt until cooked.
Tear the meat into fine bits (do not blend the meat in blender as it will lose the taste).
Keep the stock and throw away the cinnamon, star anise, cardamom and clove which has been used.
2. Soak oat and meat in the stock for an hour.
3. Stir under low fire and add in the pounded ingredients with kurma or beriani spice and milk.
4.Add in salt.Stir until the meat blend with oat and cooked.
5. Add ghee. Stir until ghee blended with the rest of ingredient for about 2 hours. The whole thing will become oily and you will smell the strong smell of ghee. Take out some of the oil to reduce it from becoming too oily.
6. Put the cooked harisa into a tray or mould. Make a small hole in the middle.Add some oil taken from it before into the hole. Garnish with fried garlic.
7. Two ways of serving - i) with honey  or ii) garam lada or just chilly sauce.

 

Couldn't find my harisa pic :( So I curik someone else's pic online huhu. Hope orang tu tak marah!

Roti Naik ku hangus!

I was like a few second late when I found out that the roti naik (local type of bread) that I made burnt in the oven. About 30% of it, brown on the top and black at the bottom! And that is all there is! I purposely used the bigger oven to accomodate the whole 25 of them so that I din  have to make two baking trip...and the whole 25 of the bread burnt. Adoi! Who's gonna eat them! They do taste nice though!

Anyway here's the recipe for "Roti Naik". Dont worry, if you keep track of the time, those breads will come out fine.

400 gm high protein flour
100 gm Hong Kong flour
250 ml coconut juice (can be replaced with plain water)
50 gm milk powder
3/4 tsp bread improver
180 gm brown sugar
100 gm butter
11 gm yeast
1 tsp vanilla

Put everything into breadmaker  and let the breadmaker do all the working. After an hour and half the alarm will beep and you will find a nice dough which has risen twice its size.
Shape into round small dough and leave on a butter glazed tray covered with wet towel for an hour.
After an hour the dough will rise for the second time.
Bake in oven under 180C  for 20 minutes or until cooked. Glaze the bread surface with butter while it is still hot. Let it cool on the rack before serving.

My roti naik hangus!

Cupcakes

                                                         My first cupcake order

 Lesson learnt:
1.Sieve your icing sugar before used otherwise you can feel that you are biting sugar when you eat the butter cream.
2. Weigh your cupcake so that each has same size! ( Nigella doesnt have to do this!)
3. One pack of premix (500gm) can produce more than 50 cupcakes size 8.
4. It is not easy to get a nice cupcake box for 25 size 8 cupcakes. You will ended up with plain white box.
5. Mint and chocolate chip doesn't mix!
6.Time taken for my first order is 3 nights from 7-12pm. All together -15 hours. Need to improve on time management!.
7. Using fondant is much easier and neater than butter cream. But sometimes fondant cracked due to room tempreature. Not sure how to deal with it (guess I have to ask my cupcake guru, Lynn Hassan when I meet her), I just cover the cracks with more decoration.

Laksa Johor

I made Laksa Johor for Estate's Hari Raya gathering a week ago. Managed to get pictures contributed by my  friend, Maziah, thanks to her.
                          

The laksa which is actually spaghetti (Johorian have not been using the normal home made laksa for the past 40-50 years I think. Hence we thought we have Italian blood running in us)

The sauce is made of ikan tenggiri (Mackerel), prawns and some spices.

The condiments - bean sprout, cucumber, onion, pickled radish, bunga kantan, thai basil, daun kesum and limau kasturi

In quest for "Pastry Pro"

I was on a day off today (my birthday today, so why work!) when I decided to make a trip to Pastry pro.

What is Pastry pro? Well it is supplier of bakery goods. My cupcake guru, Lynn Hassan, mentioned this supplier's name every time she introduce some bakery product for us to do the cupcakes. I imagined the Supplier has all the things we need in baking which we could not find elsewhere. Names like "ganache" and fondants have crossed my path as my many cookbooks (God knows where my good ole Mrs Beeton cook book gone to) but never rang a bell until I went to Lynn Hassan's class. God bless her, she taught us a lot!

My google map did not work in this pc. Luckily there is a map provided in their website. At about 10 am I went for my quest of  Pastrypro. I reached Kepong at almost 12.00 with the map beside me. I saw Petronas and Shell several time as I turned around and around Manjalara unable to find the location. 

After awhile, I noticed the word Puspakom on the map and stopped at Shell station to ask the exact location. The man told me to turn left which I did and ended up in the highway yet again. It's like going in a round place which ends up at the same time. One last try I went straight on Jalan Taman Bukit Maluri and end up in some school of Taman Bukit Maluri itself. The name of the road changed from numbers to some name of flowers. I have already thought of giving up and make a U turn.

It was almost 1.30  pm when my husband called and I told him what happened. And then suddenly I realised that I have not tried the road on the left where there are  factories instead of shoplots. And the road is similar to Pastry Pro address. Finally, I heaved a sigh of relief. There it was no 8 . 

And I managed to find all that I want, there...and become a member as well!

Birthday celebration at Bagan Lalang tonight with my beloved husband, cayunk.