From Aemy's Lab: Curry Noodle

Nobody can resist the temptation of curry noodle! It's one of the famous dish here in my country. My undying love for anything remotely resembling curry noodle, be it dry or wet, santan-full or santan-less, spicy or sour or sweet, from north to south and everywhere else, led me to the urge of making one at home. It's my first attempt. ^^

What you need:

#1

- a pack of yellow noodle (blanched)

- a cup of bean sprouts

- crisp-fried onions

#2 (sliced)

- 2 fried tofu

- 2 stalks of parsley and scallion

- 2 red chilies

- 3 limes 

#3 (for the gravy)

-1/2 kg of chicken (cut into chunks)

- 200 g of shrimps

- a pack of chicken balls

- a pack of fish cake (sliced)

- 2 tablespoons of chili paste

- 3 tablespoons of curry powder (mixed with a little tamarind juice)

- 5 cups of coconut milk

- cooking oil

- salt

#4 (blended)

- 2 stalks of lemongrass

- 1 inch of ginger

- 1/2 inch of lengkuas

- 5 onions

- 2 garlic

How you do it:

1. Stir-fry the #4 ingredients until fragrant. Add curry paste and the spices and cook until the oil separates.

2. Add the chicken, fish cake, chicken balls and coconut milk into the pan. Let it boil.

3. Serve with noodles and #2 ingredients.

4. Bon appetit! 

Sweet Green Rolls

Taken from MalaysianFood

Just because we can't eat and drink this month, doesn't mean we can't talk or write about food, right? ;) 

It's the 4th Ramadan and it's been good. I haven't set a foot at any bazaars yet to buy food for iftar. Well, I just don't feel like going because I prefer self-cooked meals. As you know, I always find joy in cooking even in fasting month. Though it's quite a challenge because I can't taste the food to know whether it needs more salt or sugar, it's still fun. Sometimes you don't need the specific recipe to cook what you want, you just have to follow your instinct. 

So yesterday, I made a traditional Malaysian dish: Pandan Crepe with Coconut Filling. You know, the sweet coconut stuffed green roll. Yes it's green but I don't use any artificial coloring, the color is 100% made from pandan juice. Here we call it as kuih ketayap or kuih lenggang. At some places it's called Sweet Nyonya Pancake Roll, kuih dadar, etc. It's my mom's specialty and one of my favorites. So I've learned the recipe from her and tried to make it by myself. So here's the recipe:

The filling

3 cups grated coconut

150 g palm sugar (gula Melaka), chopped

1 tablespoon white sugar (optional)

2 pandan leaves, knotted

A pinch of salt

Water

How to make the filling:

1. Mix palm sugar, knotted pandan leaves and water in a pot. Boil until the sugar melts.

2. Take out pandan leaves and set aside

3. In a clean wok, caramelize white sugar by heating.

4. Add palm sugar mixture into the caramelized sugar.

5. Add the grated coconut and salt, mix thoroughly.

6. Keep stirring so the coconut doesn't burn and cook until almost dry.

7. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.

The batter

2 cups flour, sieved

1 egg, beaten

6 pandan leaves (or more), blended with water

A pinch of salt

1 tablespoon corn oil

How to make the batter:

1. Put the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, make a well at the center.

2. Pour in the beaten egg, pandan juice and corn oil, whisk slowly. Make sure the batter's not lumpy and add in a little more water if it's too thick.

3. Set aside for at least half an hour.

How to prepare Pandan Crepe with Coconut Filling:

1. Heat up a non-stick pan over a low flame and lightly grease with a little oil/butter. Pour one scoop of batter into pan, tilt pan to form a thin crepe.

2. Fry on one side only. Once it's cooked, crepe is ready and remove it immediately.

3. Put a spoonful of the coconut filling on the crepe and roll it up like the spring roll.

4. Done and ready to serve.

They're burnt a little, just the way I like. 

Happy cooking! ^^

When Life Gives you Bitter Melon

If I were to write the nasty food column, bitter melon or bitter gourd would be at the top of my list of underappreciated vegetables. True to its name, the squash is unabashedly bitter, with an acerbic taste that leaves your tongue and the roof of your mouth dry. I couldn't understand people who love it, especially those who eat it raw. My mom loves to serve it as kerabu but I still don't like it because it gives me stomach acid.

Most of you out there would have bitter gourd in your hate list. I was one among you until my aunt came the other day bringing fried bitter gourd. I didn't know it was bitter gourd at the first place, it looked like tempura or something but I didn't care enough to ask because it smelled so nice. So I ate it joyfully, it was crispy, savory..just the way I liked it. Then they told me it's actually bitter gourd. And I was like, OMG how can bitter gourd taste so good?? It's not bitter at all! I was so shocked with that new discovery that I had a feeling that my entire life has been a lie. Lol. Too much. :p 

So I asked for the recipe and tried to make it on my own. So this is how to turn hate into love:

Ingredients
Bitter gourd
Kentucky flour
Egg
Garlic
Black pepper
White pepper
Salt


Method
1. Slice the bitter gourd, remove the seeds and cottony part. Wash the slices and keep them aside.
2. Put minced garlic, peppers and salt into the whisked egg.
3. Toss in slices of bitter gourd into the egg mixture and mix them well.
4. Evacuate the slices from the egg mixture and dip them into Kentucky flour, make sure they're fully coated, then immediately fry in the hot oil. Deep fry until they're golden brown.

It might still taste bitter a little bit, but better then it was. At least it's edible.

Well, it's a whole new definition to the saying "when life gives you lemon..."

Except when life gives you bitter gourd, make them not bitter. Lol.

From Aemy's Lab: Salted Fish Sambal

I used to hate cooking. Why? Because it was boring. (This just in: It is not.) Well, the real reason I hated it is because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, no confidence whatsoever that I'd ever be able to navigate my way around the kitchen. 

My mom is an amazing cook. So much of my childhood was spent sitting in the kitchen, watching her whip up elaborate meals for us. She goes through the motions without thinking, adds ingredients without measuring. So I decided to dive in. Well, okay, maybe mom pushed me in a little bit. I can't just sit and watch her cooking forever. I'm not living in a castle waiting for my dinner to be served. So mom taught me to cook and she convinced me that I'd fall in love with cooking if only I learned how. And so I did learn. And so I do love it. Mom's always right. :)

Sambal dish is part of main course in our place, with chili base paste stir-fry to fragrant before adding the other main ingredients. They can be vegetable or seafood. One of my favorites is salted fish. So recently, using mom's recipe, I cooked salted fish with chili or sambal tumis ikan masin. Salted fish slightly stinks, but the taste, holy moly, is yummy! So here it is:

Ingredients:
Salted terubok fish (cut into pieces)
3 onions (ground)
4 garlic cloves (ground)
5 small chilies..or more, as you like (chopped)
2 tablespoons of chili paste
1/2 cup of tamarind water
2 tomatoes (diced)
2 big green chilies (chopped)
Pinch of salt and sugar

Directions:
1. Deep-fry the salted fish until crispy.
2. Evacuate the fish and replace the oil with new one (when you fry salted fish, the oil turns dark and you wouldn't want to reuse it).
3. Heat the oil in the pan, then stir-fry ground garlic and onions.
4. Add chili paste and stir-fry until fragrant.
5. Add small chilies, tamarind water (with the pulps) and tomatoes, stir. Lower heat and let it simmer.
6. Adjust the taste with salt and sugar.
7. Toss in salted fish and stir evenly. Add green chilies for garnishing. And it's ready to serve.

Maybe you can try this for dinner tonight. ;)

Bon appétit!

From Aemy's Lab: Gulai Kawah

dream kitchen

My favorite part of my house is the kitchen. Hi-5 if we have thing in common. ;)

Yep, I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen these days; not just eating, but also cooking. I'm not a great chef, I don't know all the recipes in the world, but I really love cooking. It's such a joy. I think if you're a food lover, you should love cooking too, right? I like trying new recipe and new ingredient. The kitchen is my laboratory. And I love reading food blogs, chef bloggers' especially, browsing food photos, watching Food Network (Ina Garten, Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay are my favorites) and searching new recipes. Did you watch Julie And Julia? Isn't it a wonderful movie with wonderful casts?! It has inspired me so much to start blogging about cooking. I actually wanna wait until I own a house with cute kitchen. But I don't know when will that happen..so I guess I can just start blogging like Julie Powell anytime..except, I don't have Julia Child's book.

Few days ago I cooked gulai kawah beef. It's like curry, but I didn't use the curry paste, instead I used a special powder mix for gulai kawah that my dad bought from his Kelantanese friend. Traditionally, this dish is cooked in a large cooking crater and usually for big feast or ceremony. But we can also cook it at home for few servings by only using a regular saucepan. So this is how Chef Aemy do it, lol (I've never wrote recipe before, so I don't have the exact measurement, I mean, I just use the ingredients as much as I please..heee..).

Ingredients:

Beef. People commonly use tenderloin, but I use the bones because they really give distinctive flavor especially in broth.

Gulai kawah paste.

Herbs and spices (cinnamon, bunga cengkih, bunga lawang, buah pelaga, ketumbar).

Kerisik.

Coconut milk.

Brown sugar.

Tamarind water.

Ground garlic and onions.

Chili paste.

Ground ginger.

Ground turmeric.

Ground lengkuas.

Potatoes.

Salt and sugar.

Method:

1. Heat the saucepan, add oil and stir-fry the herbs and spices until the aroma is apparent. Add grounded ingredients and stir-fry for a couple of minutes.

2. Add gulai kawah paste, chili paste and kerisik, cook until fragrant and the oil separates.

3. Put the beef meat and bones into saucepan, add plain water, and cook them until the beef get tender.

4. When the beef is tender, add coconut milk, a little bit of brown sugar and tamarind water. Adjust the taste with salt and sugar. Add potatoes.

5. Let it simmer for a while. Serve when it's ready. You can put some garnishes like some chili or parsley.

That's it! ^^