Now, two months after that, I thought I have to do something with the meat. It has been a long nap and they had to get out of the freezer. They did take a lot of space to store. I had been thinking to make this Dendeng Balado for quite sometime now but I always think about the hefty amount of work involved in making this dish. Now I convince myself and it is worth the effort.

Dendeng Balado is a traditional Indonesian dish. It comes from West Sumatra, Padang. West Sumatran cuisine is rich with its spice especially chilli and coconut. My family background (my grandmother) was born and brought up there, and she was the one who look after me when I was a kid. I was literally brought up eating the spicy and rich Padang cuisines and I absolutely love it.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg gravy beef
• 1/2 tbsp whole coriander seeds, press them using the tip of knife
• 2 tsp salt
• water just enough to cover
• 500 gr red chilli, set aside 5 chillies for cutting
• about 5-10 small red chillies, depending on your preference of spiciness
• 20 gr shallot, 3-4 pcs extra depending on the size, for slicing
• 4 cloves garlic
• oil for deep frying and stir frying
• lime juice
• salt and sugar to taste

Instructions

1. Slice the gravy beef into 5 mm in thickness. Lightly salt and mix until combined.
2. Put the sliced beef in a pot and cover with just enough water (barely covering the top of the meat). Throw the coriander seeds on the pot. Bring them to boil and then turn the heat to medium low until the meat is tenderized.
3. Meanwhile, puree red chillies, shallot, and garlic in a food processor until fine. No need to achieve a perfect puree. Set aside.
4. Slice the shallot and cut the chillies into long strips. Set aside.
5. When the beef slices are cooked, take them out and reserve the juice.
6. Get the frying pan ready and heat the oil for deep frying. When the oil is hot, throw in the meat slices and browned for few seconds. The idea of deep frying is to brown the surface and dry them off slightly. Set them aside.
7. Get the wok ready and heat generous amount of oil for stir frying. Add the chilli mixture puree to the wok and turn the heat to medium low. Keep stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
8. Add the sliced shallot and chillies, stir to combine.
9. Add salt, sugar and lime juice to taste. Add them a little at the time and keep tasting. They should have a balance between sweet, salty and sour.
10. Add the beef and stir to combine.
11. Add about 1/2 cup of reserve juice. Depending on how wet you want them to be, or you could ignore the juice totally.

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

To satisfy his craving, I tried to make the chilli myself. I remembered my mom used to make this when she was visiting few years ago. The recipe is pretty simple anyway. So far, he loves it. When I made this chilli relish, I put it in the jar and store it in the fridge They could last for few weeks, but they never last that long in our fridge

Ingredients

• Grilled Chicken/Fried Chicken
• 1 small to medium size onion, peel
• 250 gr red chillies
• 20-30 small red chillies (more or less depending on your preference)
• 30 gr garlic, peel
• 60 gr shallot, peel
• 3 small to medium size tomatoes
• 25 gr terasi (shrimp block, you can get from Indonesian groceries), grilled on the pan for few minutes until the colour changed
• lime leaves
• lime juice
• sugar to taste
• salt to taste
• 2 tbsp oil

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok.
2. Do not cut or dice anything. Add onion, chillies, garlic, shallots, tomatoes to the wok. Stir fry them until they soften and changed in colours for about 15 minutes or so.
3. Using a hand held blender, blend everything plus the terasi until puree.
4. Then add sugar, salt and lime juices. Add them a little at the time and adjust the taste.
5. Cut the lime leaves into tiny pieces straight into the puree mixture.

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

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My tips to this dish:

• Soak the satay sticks in the cold water for at least 30 minutes to prevent the stick from burning.
• Reserve the chicken oil whenever you cook the marinade chicken, so you can use it for grilling satay. You can freeze the oil too.
• It is best to marinade the chicken overnight.
• When you sticks the chicken onto the skewers, try to alternate the meat with the fat.

I haven’t include the peanut sauce recipe yet, simply because I never measure them every time I cook them. In fact, I rarely measures when I cook (don’t rely to much on my measurement ) Here are the step for making my peanut sauce (without measurement):

1. Using a wok, roasted peanut with skin on with low heat. It could take up to 30 minutes, depending on how much you have.
2. Peel the skin off the peanut. Try to rub them with your finger. The skin should fall pretty easily.
3. Puree the peanuts. You could leave some of them crush not puree.
4. Puree the bumbu (garlic, shallot, chilli).
5. Heat pan with oil. Fried the bumbu, lemon grass, lime leaves, bay leaves until fragrant.
6. Add the peanut and water (add as you need).
7. Add tamarind (diluted in hot water) and palm sugar and salt.
8. From this stage, you adjust the taste as you go along. They should be sweet and spicy with a slight saltiness and sourness.

Ingredients

• 500 gr chicken thigh fillets, cut into small pieces
• 5 cloves garlic
• 3 pcs shallot
• about 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 5 pcs candlenut, roasted
• salt
• chicken oil for brushing
• sweet soy sauce (kecap manis) for brushing
• satay sticks (to prevent the sticks from burning, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes or so)
• peanut sauce

Instructions

1. Using a blender, pureed garlic, shallot, ginger, and candlenut.
2. Marinate the chicken pieces with the pureed mixture overnight. Stick the chicken pieces into satay sticks.
3. It is best to use the charcoal BBQ,but you can still use the oven (like me). Grill the chicken at 200 C. Brush them once in a while alternately with chicken oil and sweet soy sauce.
4. Serve them with peanut sauce and cucumber or rice cakes (ketupat lontong).

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

Nathan had 3 birthday celebration and it was just because we couldn’t book the function place soon enough. He had his first birthday on the 29th of August (his actual birthday) with me, his dad and little brother. His second birthday was on 31st of August at his kindergarten. It was only singing, blowing candles and eating cakes with his friends and teachers. Now the third celebration on the 18th of September was a big one.

Party Guest: 30 – 35 people

Party Menu:

• Nasi Tumpeng (Yellow Rice), 4 kg of rice
• Ayam Bakar Bumbu Rujak (Grilled Chicken), 5 whole chickens
• Sambal Terasi (Sambal with Shrimp Paste), 500 gr chilies
• Rendang (Beef Rendang), 5.5 kg beef
• Sambal Goreng Hati (Chicken Liver Sambal), 2 kg potatoes, 2.5 kg liver
• Tahu Tempeh Bacem (Fried Tofu and Tempeh marinated in palm sugar and herbs), 2 boxes of tofu, 2 packs of tempeh
• Perkedel (Fried Mashed Potatoes), 4 kg potatoes
• Mie Goreng Ulang Tahun (Fried Egg Noodles), 700 gr egg noodles
• Gado-gado, 1 lettuce, 1/2kg potatoes,1 box tofu, 1 cabbage, 4 cucumbers, 1 dozen eggs
• Peanut Sauce for Gado-gado, 1 kg peanut
• Strawberried Treasure Cupcake with Cream Cheese Frosting

The cooking plan was thought through weeks ahead. Monday and Tuesday were for herbs and nuts pureeing and sambal terasi. Wednesday and Thursday were for cooking chicken, beef rendang, tahu tempeh bacem, and perkedel. They were all packed in an airtight container inside the fridge. I should actually took a picture of how my fridge look like. I didn’t have the time to take a photograph. My head and hands had been pre-occupied almost all the time. Friday was dedicated for the cake. The decorating part had to be done after the birthday boy fell asleep. Friday afternoon was for cooking sambal goreng hati.

Everything was as I planned and imagined by Friday afternoon. When my husband went home from work, I asked him to drive me to the groceries store. I wanted some chocolate coins to decorate the Pirate Ship birthday cake. I also had to buy some chillies for the peanut sauce. This chili thing for the peanut was something that I didn’t expect to happen, but I believed that it wouldn’t cost me my time. Well, my husband had another plan. He was hoping to get a parking on Friday night in the city so he could stop by the Apple store to get an Ipad. What a timing huh. We circled the city for few minutes. It felt like hours to me. Time was ringing TICK TOCK!!!  TICK TOCK!!!  inside my head. Well long story short, we couldn’t get the chocolate coins and by the time he got the parking, the Apple Store closed (LOL).

The birthday boy was asleep by 9 o’clock, but the baby kept waking up and asked for frequent breast feed. Well I think it was around 1.30 AM I was done with the cake decorating. A little story behind the cake. I was planning on making the Dinosaurs cake for a long time, but I couldn’t seen to get matching merchandise like goody bags, plates, toys and decorations. When I was hunting for them, I found lots of Pirate things instead, so we decided the theme is ” Ahoy there… YARGGGG Pirate”. Look at these goodies bags, aren’t they cute?

I searched through probably about hundred of pirate cakes on the internet to brainstorm my idea. They are almost have the same shape and I was kinda combining lots of different ideas that suits me and the decorations available. I designed (well it wasn’t really designing, but arranging stripes of red and white at Photoshop) flags and printed them few days before so that I wouldn’t rush at the last minute. The recipe used was Rich Chocolate Cake , because I think it was the easiest, simple and tasty cake. I made 5 layers of 30 by 30 cm. Having all the plan on how big the ship was going to be and drawn the template on the paper made the shaping of the cake so much faster. And Taaaa Daaaa….. here comes the cake.

If I could do something different, I would:

• Make 3 batches of Swiss Meringue Buttercream instead of 2. As seen on the picture, the cake was lacking on the water and wave.
• Not using the Astor (roll chocolate wafers), as the were too big and look a bit dodgy. I would chose something slimmer like chocolate wafer sticks.
• The chocolate wafers were started to brake because I stand them vertically. I should stack them up instead.

This was another Tumpeng platter I created (I am now starting to take orders, you could see the details on the “I SELL” page). I tried to improve my carving skills every time I had a chance to make one of these. The new addition of my creation is the cucumber, look at how the spread open. I am so pleased

These cupcakes were chocolate cupcakes with strawberry buried inside them, topped with cream cheese frosting, sprinkled with some brown sugar and had a cool pirate flag on each. I didn’t have a chance to take the picture of the inside, because they were all gone very quickly. I tasted one though, and they are so good with a very fresh taste from the strawberry and creamy taste from the cream cheese. Super duper yummy !!!

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

I usually cook my broccolini using an oyster sauce, or just as simple as using only garlic. You could add prawns with the garlic combination.

Ingredients

• 2 bunch of broccolini
• 1 chilli, sliced
• 2 garlic clove, minced
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce (more or less)
• water
• oil for stir frying

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and stir until the fragrance is out.
2. Add in broccolini and stir about 1-2 minutes..
3. Add in oyster sauce and do a quick stir (you could add more to add the saltiness)
4. Add water 1 tbsp at the time to prevent burning. Stir for 1-2 minutes and serve.

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

It is really hard for me to explain how to cook a very nice homely mie goreng in this blog. As long as you do your stir very quickly, then you got a nice mie goreng. I guess you have to use your senses. Good luck

Ingredients

• 300 gr egg noodles (treat according to the packet instructions)
• 100 gr chicken breast, slice thinly
• about 1 cup meatballs, slice thinly
• 1 tbsp mince garlic
• 1 medium shallot, slice
• 1 large carrots, julienne cut
• 1 small green capsicum, slice
• 1 stalk spring onion, slice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp sweet soy sauce or just enough to achieve the light brownish colour
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• salt and white pepper, to taste
• oil for stir frying
• deep fried shallot to serve

Instructions

1. Heat oil in the wok. Add in garlic and shallot, and stir until the fragrance is out.
2. Add in chicken slices and stir until the chicken is almost cooked through.
3. Add in meatball slices and do a quick stir.
4. Make a well in the middle and break in eggs in the middle. Add in about 1 tsp salt (you could add some more later on if it is not salty enough). Do a stir  every few seconds.
5. When the egg mixture is still wet, add the carrots and stir.
6. Add the cooked egg noodles and green capsicum and stir.
7. Add in sweet soy sauce and fish sauce and stir.
8. Add white pepper and stir.
9. Now it is time to taste your noodle. Add salt accordingly.
10. Add in spring onion and switch off your stove. Stir.
11. Serve with deep fried shallot.

Culinary tradition: Chinese, Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

This time he brought back beef round steak. Hmm interesting, that was the first time I cook with this part of the beef. Well, they looked tender as they sliced fairly thin and there was a mallet mark on the surface of the meat. This is my new invention dish. I think the dish is complemented well with the roasted capsicum as by roasting them retains its sweetness. As you can see in the picture, there was quite a lot of juices. I didn’t add any water or beef stock. It was purely came out of the beef.

Ingredients

• about 750 gr beef round steak or tenderloin, cut into long strips
• 3 tsp cornstarch to marinate
• 3 tsp mushroom soy sauce to marinate
• 2 tsp rice vinegar (or Shaoxing rice wine) to marinate
• 1 tbsp garlic mince
• 1/2 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 chili, slice diagonally
• 1 stalk spring onion, slice
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 6 tbsp sweet soy sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 large capsicum, roasted on the stove, peel the skin and sliced
• oil for stir frying

Instructions

1. Marinate the beef slices with cornstarch, mushroom soy sauce, and rice vinegar for at least 30 minutes.
2. Heat the oil on the wok. Stir the beef until they are about medium rare. Take them out of the wok and set aside.
3. Heat additional oil on the wok. Stir in garlic and ginger until fragrant.
4. Add chili and do a quick stir.
5. Add the reserved beef, sauces and white pepper. Stir for 1-2 minutes.
6. Add sliced capsicum and stir for another minute.
7. Add spring onion and serve with rice.

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You !!!

Ingredients

• 1.8 kg or 10 pcs yellow tail fish, clean, gutted, and chopped into 3
• 1 lime, strain the juice
• 2 tsp of salt to marinate
• 1 1/2 tbsp of garlic puree
• 1 1/2 cup of red long chilli puree
• 1 tsp of salt or to adjust accordingly
• 1 tbsp of vinegar or to adjust accordingly
• 2 tbsp of sugar or to adjust accordingly (see note)
• 1 tbsp tomato sauce
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

Butcher: How many kg for the spareribs?

Me: ehhhmmmmm…. give me 3 kg please

Butcher took 4 big pieces of ribs and weight, and they were about 2.3 kg. Suddenly I thought to myself, OMG it was a bit too much if she added more ribs. I shouted my change of mine.

Me: so sorry.. I changed my mind.. that would be enough thank you (fiuhhhh… what a relieve)

On Sunday morning, I thought this BBQ type of thing would be just perfect for our weekend brunch. So there I was, standing in the kitchen at 9 o’clock, peeling my herbs and pureeing them. By 10.30, my toddler had his ribs with steam rice, and he absolutely loves it. I don’t think the chilli affect him because you can’t really taste the spiciness because of the other herbs. We all had a lovely and full-filling brunch. I suddenly regret myself forbidding the butcher to give me 3 kg instead of 2.3 kg. My husband kept coming back to the kitchen to get some of those sticky juicy spare ribs. When I asked him whether I actually need to cook them twice as much quantity, he agreed. Ehmmm… so I actually should ask for 5 kg of spare ribs to satisfy all the meat eaters at home.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from The Around the World Cookbook

• 1 kg American pork spare ribs
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 cloves shallot
• 2.5 cm fresh ginger
• 1/3 soy sauce (half sweet soy sauce and half the salty one)
• 2 red chillies
• 1/3 cup of tamarind juice (soaked about a thumb size of tamarind in hot water)
• 2 tbsp palm sugar
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation time (duration): 30

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

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The fried pork cutlets are really nice, tender and full of flavour. For some reasons, which I don’t know exactly why, they don’t taste greasy at all as the deep fried stuffs should be. As for the sauce, you could check out the Kylie Kwong style (click on the lick provided under the Ingredients) or you could follow mine. My sweet and sour sauce is simple and it is kind of an Chinese-Indonesian everyday sweet and sour sauce. You could add pineapple, peas, capsicum in the sauce. It just happened that I didn’t have any of them available in the fridge.

Ingredients for the pork

Recipe adapted from Kylie Kwong : Sweet and Sour Pork, for details click here

• 600 gr pork neck fillets
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cornflour (cornstarch)
• 1 tablespoon cold water
• 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 3 teaspoons light soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• oil for deep frying
• 1/4 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup cornflour (extra)

Cooking time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: Chinese

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Sydney’s weather has been unfriendly for weeks now. The rain has been pouring non stop throughout the week and that made me feel like I want to stay indoors. Lucky my husband offered to drive me to the Paddish Market in the afternoon, so I could do some quick shopping. I went to a butcher and bought a whole chicken. I also asked them to chop them into small little pieces, and one of Laksa making task is done. I went to the groceries store next to the butcher instead of crossing the street to get to Paddish Market, because the rain was pouring so bad. It turned out that the grocery store did not have any fresh lemon grass left, however the do have some finely chopped frozen one. I thought that would do for me.

We arrived home at half past six and I went straight to the kitchen to prepare everything. I was hoping that we could have dinner by half past seven. I would say that making laksa is not a hassle or hard work at all. It was pretty simple and quick. Just be aware of the chillies if you are not a big fan of some hot and spicy stuff. I used about 10 dried chillies and to my surprised, it was pretty hot for my toddler liking. My 2 years and 9 months son like a little bit of chilli in his food but this is just a bit way of his range.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken about 1.5 kg, cut into little pieces (ask your butcher to do it)
• 6 cloves garlic
• 4 cloves shallot
• about 2 fingers ginger
• 8 dried chillies or less, soaked in hot water
• about 10 gr belacan/shrimp paste (I used 2 dried blocks of belacan)
• 4 pieces of galangal, about the size of 20 cents coin
• 1 stalk of lemon grass, bruised
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 tsp of turmeric powder
• 400 ml of coconut milk
• about 800 ml of water (water is needed to thin the laksa. They should be light, so add water as needed)
• salt, sugar and lime juice to taste
• a packet of fried tofu puffs
• oil for stir frying
• vermicelli noodles, soaked in the cold water
• egg noodles (optional)
• bean sprouts to serve
• spring onions to serve
• fried shallots to serve

Cooking time (duration): 45

Culinary tradition: Malaysian, Singaporean

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Back to the chicken wing journey from Woolworths to my kitchen. Woolworths sold this bulk pack of chicken wings which sounds economical and ended up me on buying them. I had no idea at that time what I am going to do with them. I thought just buy them first and figure it out later what I can do with them. Anyway, I ended up making this dish because it was almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon and I had to pick up my toddler at kindy. I need something quick and easy for my lunch and there was it Fried Chicken with Sweet Soy Sauce.

If you would like to share this dish with the little one, don’t slice the chillies up. Leave them as whole, so the adult could still enjoy the spiciness of the chillies on their own plate.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg of chicken wings
• juice from 1 lime to marinade
• salt to marinade
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 clove of shallot, sliced
• half punnet of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
• small chillies, according to your preferences
• 3/4 cup of sweet soy sauce
• salt to taste
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

Cooking time (duration): 20

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken (about 1.6-1.8 kg), cut into small bites about 20 pcs
• 2 tbsp lime juice to marinate
• 1 1/2 tsp salt to marinate
• 250 gr green long chilli, puree
• 1 /2 tbsp garlic puree
• 3/4 tsp salt or to taste
• 1 tbsp vinegar or to taste
• 1/2 tbsp tomato sauce
• 1 1/2 tbsp sugar or to taste
• oil for deep frying and stir frying

Ingredients

• 1 kg of calamari/cuttle fish, clean the translucent bone, ink and skin, cut
• 3 tomatoes, cut in cubes
• 1 capsicum, cut in long strips
• 2 green long chillies, slice
• 2 cloves, sliced thinly
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 cup tomato sauce, more or less
• 1 tbsp chilli sauce, more or less
• salt and sugar to adjust
• oil for stir frying

I have been wondering for a long time on how the restaurants do their deep fried fish. I have been experimenting for a long time to get to this point. When my dad came last February, he offered me to cook several dishes for our family dinner on Chinese New Year’s eve and one of them is this dish. I watched him while he pour and rub the cornflour on the fish. He simply poured the cornflour on his hand and rubbed in on the fish, but you could still see the fish skin underneath. After the fish is deep fried, it was crunchy but not the sort of crunchy that I would think the fish should be.

I thought to myself maybe I should go extreme with the cornflour. I usually put the cornflour on a plate and then dip the fish on that. This time I pour lots and lots of cornflour on my hand and rub it all over the fish until the fish turned white. Then VOILA a very nice crunchy fish.

For adding Nutrisari in the sauce, I was told by my sister in law who were told by her aunt. Using Nutrisari, give a punch taste to the sauce and make the colour of the sauce brighter.

Ingredients

• whole medium size snapper, clean and gutted
• juice from a whole lime
• salt to marinade the fish
• corn flour to coat the fish
• 2 cloves of garlic, slice
• 1 small onion, slice
• 1 or 2 long green chilli, slices it
• 1 small tomato, cut into wedges
• half of a capsicum, cut into squares
• half cup of pineapple pieces
• half cup of peas
• 1 sachet of Nutrisari, diluted with 300 ml of water (see note)
• 3 tbsp of tomato sauce
• salt, sugar(I didn’t add the sugar), vinegar to taste
• diluted corn flour to thicken the sauce
• oil for stir frying