Cookie Monster :)

I thought I won't be able to bake again until couple of months later, fortunately Raphael is getting more settled now that I could try new recipe. I've always been a fan of oatmeal cookies, however my mom's recipe is a crispy oatmeal cookies, while I like the thick, chewy and a big rounded kind of cookies. Thus I searched the internet for the perfect recipe and I found this recipe in Smitten Kitchen's blog, which described the cookie exactly as I wanted. I doubled the recipe because the dough can be stored in a fridge, so I could just bake them in oven for other days :)

So here's the recipe, after slightly modified by me:

Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:
230 gr butter, softened with an electric mixer
250 gr dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
190 gr all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
240 gr oats
240 gr raisin

Method:

1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla sugar until smooth
2. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and stir into the butter / sugar mixture.
3. Stir in the oats and raisin with a spatula
4. Chill in the dough into the fridge
5. When cool, scoop the dough onto a baking tray which already covered by baking paper, and put them about 5cm apart.
6. Preheat the oven to 175 celsius, around 10 minutes before you want to bake the cookies. Then bake the cookies for 12 minutes.

When you chill the dough into the fridge, an hour should be enough to make the cookies thicker. However if you don't want to wait the dough can be baked right away, however the cookies result would be less thick. Since I made the dough at night, I chilled it overnight and apparently the day after the dough is too hard to scoop, so I had to leave it for a while in room temperature before scooping them to the baking tray. I used a soup spoon to scoop the dough as I wanted to make a big rounded cookies, which are about 10 cm of diameter.

So here are my cookies! The taste is perfect, thick and chewy, best served with hot tea during rainy days, yummm!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Finger Food!

Who doesn't love finger food? I remembered one finger food I love to eat back home was bruschetta from Pizza Hut. In my early trimester pregnancy, I was craving for it however I cannot eat the one that sold in Pizza Hut because it contains pineapple and I don't eat pineapple during pregnancy. That's why I decided to make my own bruschetta.

After searching for the recipe on internet, I couldn't find the perfect recipe, so I modified by my own according to my taste :) Here is the recipe:

Bruschetta
Made about 15 slices of french bread

Ingredients:
French bread, cut into slices, about 1 cm thickness
1 large Sausage, cut into small pieces (or you could use smoke beef / ham)
white onion, cut into small pieces
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/3 part of tomato, remove the pulp (the wet part), cut into small cubes
3 tablespoon of mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of tomato sauce
2 teaspoon of condensed milk
cheddar cheese for topping

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 150 degree Celcius.
2. Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan, add white onion and stir until fragrant
3. Add the sausage to the sauce pan, stir until cooked
4. In a separate bowl, mix the mayonnaise, lemon juice, tomato sauce and condensed milk together. Taste and add the ingredients to get the taste as you like (more sweet or more sour)
5. Add the tomato cubes, sausage and white onion to the mixture and mix them well with a spoon.
6. Put a spoonful of the mixture on top of the bread and spread the cheddar on top of it.
7. Bake for about 15 minutes with 150 degree Celcius, if the edge of the bread is not crispy enough, bake again for another 5 - 10 minutes.

I noticed that the middle part of the bread was not crispy, so perhaps if you like the whole bread to be crispy, you should bake the bread first before putting the topping. The taste is very similar to the one sold in Pizza Hut, except for the missing pineapple, so I'm pretty satisfied with them :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Summer Sweet Treats

My most favorite fruit is strawberry and luckily summer is the strawberry season! We bought lots of strawberry and often make strawberry juice for late night snacks during this summer. Last week I'm thinking to make cake with strawberry just to vary the usage of strawberry and I came up with an idea to make butter cake with strawberry and cream as the topping. So I mixed up some recipes to make the cake.

Butter Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
120 gr butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
150 gr granulated sugar
2 eggs
200 gr flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150 ml milk

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180 degree Celcius
2. Sift the flour and baking powder all together
3. Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract until soften and white with a mixer
4. Add eggs to the mixture and beat them well
5. Add flour and milk alternately
6. Pour into the muffin mould (3/4 part only to avoid over expansion)
7. Bake for about 30 minutes

Topping Recipe

Ingredients:

1. Heavy cream

2. Powdered sugar

3. Cut strawberries

Method

1. Beat the heavy cream and powdered sugar until reach stiff peak
2. With a spoon, put the cream on top of the cake
3. Put the strawberry on top of the cream

Here's the result:

What I love about this cake recipe is it only need 2 eggs, whereas in most cake recipe you need at least 5 eggs. I didn't mention the exact measurement for the topping cream because I only made for 12 cake, so it depends on how much cake do you make.

Happy baking!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

After Second Attempt

After several months started cooking, I realized that I cook Chinese food more often than cooking Indonesian food. The reason is simple, it is so much easier and less ingredients cooking Chinese food. However, recently I was craving more for Indonesian food, which then I decided to make Siomay Bandung.

My first attempt was a disaster, the result was too thick instead of chewy, it tasted more like meatballs than siomay, even though the peanut sauce was perfect. On my second attempt, I used more tapioca starch and egg white and the siomay turned to be more chewy than the previous one. However since I used more minced chicken rather than the prawn, the taste was better the first one. I guess I should do a third attempt before getting the perfect siomay :-D

I used the recipe from Master Chef Indonesia, the recipe is as follows:

Siomay Bandung (10 pcs)

Ingredients:

Siomay

125 gr minced chicken

50 gr prawn, sliced into small pieces

2.5 tablespoon of tapioca starch

1/2 tablespoon of flour (I omitted this in my second attempt)

1/2 tablespoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

1/2 teaspoon of sugar

1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil

10 sheets of dumpling pastry

1 egg

1 carrot, grated

Peanut Sauce

2 tablespoon of peanut butter (I used the chunky one)

1 red chili

1/2 tablespoon of dried shrimp

2 shallots

2 lime leaves

1 garlic clove

brown sugar, as necessary

salt

water

Method:

Siomay

1. Mix all the ingredients except the dumpling pastry and carrot
2. Put the mixture inside the dumpling pastry with a spoon and wrap it.
3. Sprinkle the carrot on the top
4. Steam for about 15 minutes, until well cooked

Peanut Sauce

1. Stir fry garlic, shallot and red chilli
2. Crush them with a blender along with dried shrimp, peanut butter, brown sugar, salt and water
3. Stir fry the mixture and the lime leaves until smells nice
4. Add sweet soya sauce and ketchup, according to taste.

For the siomay mixture I added the tapioca starch and egg white until the mixture is not too thick to get more chewy result, so I didn't stick to the measurement in the above recipe.

Here's the result:

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Indonesian Snack: Tempe Mendoan

Sometimes I miss living in Indonesia because you'll easily find delicious hawker foods in such a cheap price. I remembered I went a couple of times to go jogging in Gelora Bung Karno, a huge sport centre in central Jakarta, and we always finished the jogging by buying the Tempe Mendoan in a hawker stall nearby. 

Since there is no one selling snacks like that in here, I tried to make them by myself for today's snack. They were tasted as I expected, even though I still couldn't manage to cut the Tempe in very thin slices like the one the hawker's sold. For you who haven't tried Tempe Mendoan, the taste is salty and savory; and you can dip them with sweet soya sauce and bird chili cut or peanut sauce. The one I made today is using chili peanut sauce as dipping. 

Here's is my version of Tempe Mendoan:

The recipe is as follow:

Tempe Mendoan (for about 10 pcs)

Ingredients:

100 gr tempe, sliced into thin wide pieces

1/2 stems of scallion, cut into small pieces

50 gr rice flour

1/2 tablespoon flour

50 ml water

oil

1 garlic cloves

1/2 pc of shallot or a little bit of red onion

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 tablespoon salt

Method:

1. Crush and mix the garlic cloves, shallot, coriander, pepper and salt in a mortar until all the ingredients are smooth.
2. Add the rice flour and regular flour to the mortar
3. Add half of the water, mix until well combined, if the batter is too thick, add more water. I prefer the batter a little bit thick to create more texture to the tempe.
4. Add scallion to the batter and mix them well.
5. Dip tempe into the batter until the batter cover all of its surface
6. Deep fried the tempe, but remove them from pan before they are turn crunchy.

For the peanut sauce, I used this recipe:

Chili Peanut Sauce

Ingredients:

1 tbsp of peanut butter (I used the crunchy type)

1 red chili

1 bird chili

1 garlic clove

1 shallot

salt

brown sugar

lime leaves

oil

water

sweet soya sauce

lemon

Method:

1. Crush and mix the red chili, garlic clove, shallot, brown sugar and salt in a mortar.
2. Add the peanut butter and mix them well
3. Stir fry them in a sauce pan with a little bit of oil
4. Add the lime leaves
5. Add water as necessary (to get the appropriate thickness)
6. Remove from sauce pan and add sweet soya sauce and lemon until you get the taste as expected. If the peanut sauce is too thick, you can always add hot water to lighten it.

Good luck trying!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Celebration Dinner Date

Unpredictable things can always happen in life and what you have at the moment can be taken away in an instance. This past few days, we've been waiting for the news about my husband's job certainty since the company has major changes in the organization structure. Luckily, we received good news today, so to celebrate it, I was making pork satay for dinner and bake a chocolate cake for dessert :)

My husband always says that I have the beginner's luck in cooking, because almost every food I made for the first trial are always a huge success, even better than the second and the next trial. Apparently his word is sort of true :-D The pork satay tasted super! It's tasty, tender and juicy. I got the recipe from this blog but I've made some modification to the measurement since I only made for 2 people. Here's the recipe:

Pork Satay (approximately 10 skewers)

Ingredients:
3 slices of pork steak meat, that contains fat (about 300 gr)
1 piece of candle nut (kemiri)
1/2 tablespoon of corriander, heated in a pan
1 cm of galangal, grated
4 shallot
2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoon of lemon juice
1 teaspoon of tamarind water
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of sugar
4 teaspoons of sweet soya sauce
white pepper, as needed.

Method:

1. Clean the pork meat in running water, cut into cubes
2. Mash all the other spices, except lemon juice, tamarind water and sweet soya sauce in a mortar.
3. Put the spices in a bowl, add the lemon juice, tamarind water and sweet soya sauce and mix them well.
4. Add the meat into the bowl, mix them well and leave it for at least 1 hour. Cover the bowl with its lid.
5. After one hour, put the meat into the skewers and grill them in the pan until cooked.

What I love about this recipe is it combines the sour and sweet taste perfectly and it also smells delicious :) Here's the result of my pork satay:

And this is our dessert for the day, chocolate cake with melted chocolate and raspberries on top :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

DIY: Jar Label Project

Finally I had the time to accomplish my jar label project this morning. I have promised that I will post the final result of my spices jar after they were labeled, so here are they:

I'm having so much fun taking photos of these sweet jars :-) I especially love the pastel colors that match with the white jar lids. Too bad I only have 3 empty jars at the moment. Looking forward to make more spices jars with these label design. This is a very cheap and easy DIY kitchen project that costs nearly 0 kroner for me.

Materials:
1. Used jars
2. Paper
3. Scissor
4. Double Tape

How to make:
1. Design the label using Adobe Photoshop, or you can download the jar label design online.
2. Name the label with the spices name
3. Print it in a thick paper
4. Cut the labels according to the shapes
5. Wash the used jar and remove the old labels attached to the jar
6. When the jars are dried, stick the labels to the jar lid and jar glass using double tape.

Good luck trying! Don't forget to send me pictures of your spice jar label when you're done!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Jar Labels

Do you remember about the post I wrote about organizing kitchen? Yeps, apparently it hasn't finished until now, with so much things to do I almost forgot to finalize organizing my kitchen. So today I'm starting to design the label for jar spices. I'm using empty used jars to keep all the spices, instead of using plastic storage because it will look tidier.

However I haven't printed the labels yet, I'm just started designing the label with Photoshop. I made it simple with pastel colors. Here are my result so far:

Since I only have 4 empty jars at the moment, I only made 4 designs. I'm planning to make another design for covering the jars, instead of just the jar lids since I will place the jars in a rack, so it would be easier if I could see it from above and also from the sides.

Tell me what you think about those designs :) Will update this post after I've printed them and stick them to the jars.

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

From Breakfast to Dessert

Since on weekdays my husband always has breakfast at the office, every time I bought a stack of bread, I could never finish it before the expiry date. Hence I looked for another way to turn the bread from a breakfast dishes into dessert, so my husband can enjoy it after dinner. That way I didn't waste any bread.

As usual I took the recipe from Joy of Baking and modified a little bit. The complete recipe is as follows:

Bread Pudding (for 2 people)

Ingredients:
4 slices of bread, cut into small cubes
4 tablespoon of sultana / raisins.
1 egg
50 grams granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of butter, melted and cooled
240 ml milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes
2. Place the bread cubes and sultana into an 13 cm x 13 cm size aluminum foil tray. I used 2 aluminum foil tray for this recipe.
3. In an electric mixer, beat the egg and sugar on high speed until thick and lemon colored .
4. Add the cinnamon and vanilla extract
5. Add the melted butter and milk to the mixer
6. Pour the custard mixture into the aluminum foil tray over the bread cubes until completely covered.
7. Press down the bread cubes so they are covered with custard.
8. Put the aluminum foil tray into a larger baking dish and fill the baking dish with water so it can work as a water bath, to prevent the bread pudding from burning or drying out.
9. Bake them for about an hour in the oven.
10. Let it cool down before serving.

Here is my bread pudding version:

You could also use apple slices instead of raisins for variations. I love it better when the bread pudding is served cold, so I usually put them into the refrigerator before serving. Then, your bread is now turn into a delicious dessert :)

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

A Little Reminder of Bali

Couple of days ago, I'm helping a friend to plan a holiday to Bali. I listed down the must visit places, beaches and of course the recommended culinary spots. Since I have passion for traveling and I also have arranged itineraries in Bali for my previous trips, when she asked me about which places I recommend, I excitedly offered her a help to plan the trip.

Yet, when I was planning her trip, I am a little bit jealous of her as I also want to go to Bali! Writing down those stunning private beaches, interesting places and delicious foods to eat, makes me drooling to go there, as well. Sigh. Another thing reminded me of Bali is the milk pie, one of Bali's famous souvenir. There are many suppliers of milk pie in Bali, recently. However the pioneer and for me is the best, is the one with brand "Enaaak." Since the pie is very famous, you should order it beforehand, or you won't get any, the address and phone is as follows:

Jl. Nangka, Gang. Nuri No. 14
Denpasar, Bali
081-337-557-888 / 0361-784-2073

Well, since I obviously can not go to Bali to buy one of those pie, I decided to make one with the recipe given by a friend. Here is the complete recipe, in case you want to try to make one:

Milk Pie (30 pies)

Note: For the pie, please refer to my fruit tartlet recipe post: The SweeTarts.

Filling Ingredients:
200 ml condensed milk
200 ml water
2 eggs
2 tablespoon of corn starch
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Method:

1. Mix the condensed milk, vanilla extract and corn starch with a spatula
2. Add the eggs one at a time and stir well
3. Add water to the mixture until the mixture is smooth.
4. Remove the nearly baked tartlet from the oven (just until a slight brown color appeared) and fill the tartlet with the filling.
5. Bake again in the oven (180 degree Celsius) for about 20 minutes or until the filling is risen a little bit.
6. Remove the pie from the tins and your milk pie is ready to eat.

When you make the filling, you will notice that the mixture is too watery. It is completely fine, because the water prevents the filling from hardening, as we want to have a soft and smooth custard. When I baked my first batch, I didn't add the water as I thought the mixture is already sloppy, however after I have them bake, the custard is not as soft as expected. Then I fixed the filling for the next batch and the custard is softer.

As a review of the recipe, the taste is good, the pie is crunchy enough (due to twice baking of the tartlet), nonetheless, it still didn't taste the same as the one from Bali. Hmm..I wonder why? The color also not as yellowish as the milk pie sold in Bali. Anyone has a better recipe for this pie?

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Utilize the Leftover

When you cook rice only for two people, sometimes there is some left and you are too full to finish them up. I used to make them into fried rice for breakfast, but it might be boring eating fried rice too often. Then I found this recipe from Martha Stewart's website, which utilize the leftover rice to make a delicious hot rice breakfast drink.

The first time I read about it, I thought it sound disgusting, how come you're making a drink from leftover rice. And that's also what my husband and others think when I told them about this recipe :-D However, we'll never know until we give it a go, right? So this morning, I tested the recipe and it actually tasted pretty good and the good thing is you would get a full stomach only by drinking one glass of it. Ask my husband if you don't believe me :-D 

Here is the result of the hot rice breakfast drink:

Wondering about the recipe? Let me share it here.

Hot Rice Breakfast Drink (2 cups)

Ingredients:

Leftover rice (portion of 1 person)

Milk

Honey / Sugar

Cinnamon

Method:

1. Put the leftover rice into a saucepan
2. Add milk until the rice is soaked.
3. Add honey / sugar, according to your taste. I used 4 tablespoon of sugar.
4. Add cinnamon
5. Stir the mixture until boiling. Keep stirring regularly before the mixture is boiled to avoid the milk from caramelized.
6. Just when it started to boil. Turn off the heat and pour the mixture into a blender.
7. Blend the mixture until smooth.
8. Pour into a cup and you could sprinkle the top with more cinnamon.

Enjoy your delicious breakfast drink :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady 

30 Minutes Recipe

Cooking can be time consuming sometimes. Without you realize, you spent hours at the kitchen just to make one dish and you absolutely ran out of time for doing other things. That is why I am a big fan of 'little cooking time' recipe. One of the recipe I found very easy and practical is this Hongkong Steamed Fish. I usually use a steamer with timer, which helps me a lot in preparing the dish. This is the look of my steamer:

The complete recipe is as follows:

Hongkong Steamed Fish (for 2 persons)

Ingredients:

2 pcs Pangasius Fish Fillet

lemon

2 garlic cloves

ginger, thin sliced, about 3 cm long (see picture)

scallion, thin sliced, about 3 cm long (see picture)

coriander leaves

1 tbsp of vegetable oil

1 tbsp of sesame oil

80 ml of soya sauce

40 ml of hot water

2 tbsp of sugar

Methods:

1. Clean the fish and squeeze the lemon over the fish. Steam the fish in a steamer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, throw away the water left in the steamer. Leave it while you're preparing other ingredients.
2. Chop the garlic, and slice the ginger and scallion.
3. In a bowl, dissolve sugar with hot water and add the soya sauce to the bowl.
4. Heat a pan and add the vegetable oil and sesame oil, stir fry the garlic until fragrant. Put the garlic and the oil into the steamer, as well as the soya sauce mixture.
5. Garnish the top of the fish with the ginger and scallion and steam again all the ingredients for 15 minutes. 
6. Before serving, garnish the top of the fish with coriander leaves (or you can put the coriander leaves in the steamer, as well).

Voila! Your dish is ready within 30 minutes :) This is the result of the steamed fish. Apologize for the bad presentation, but I can assure you, it tastes as good as the one served at chinese restaurant :-p

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Dream Kitchen

Do you have a dream kitchen? I do!

If I have my own house, I want to have a spacious kitchen near big glass window so the sun could brighten the room in the morning. The design should be minimalist with the combination of white and wooden colored table. Another important element is the kitchen cabinet should have many drawers and shelves to keep all the kitchen utensils away from the countertop as I don't like a messy countertop. It would be wonderful to also have a freestanding kitchen island where I could do some works, especially when baking and perhaps having a breakfast.

As requested by a friend, I will post the photo of my kitchen in current apartment. It's not as I imagined, however it is at least close to what my dream kitchen would be. The things I love about it is:

1. The design
The kitchen was designed with minimalist concept, with the combination of white color cabinets and wooden worktops. It is exactly as I dreamed. And since it is an open kitchen, it is quite spacious.

2. Lots of cabinets
The kitchen has lots of cabinets to put all the utensils away from the countertop.

However it only has small spaces countertops, so when I cook, all the countertops will be full with bowls and pans. Even when I want to bake, I have to move the rice cooker first so I could have more space. Well, it means I definitely need a freestanding kitchen island, right? :-p

So here is the picture of my kitchen:

What do you think?

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady

Strawberry Cream Puff

We had a potluck last weekend at our apartment and one of the guest brought fresh strawberries, which plenty of them still left at the end of the day. Then I started to think what I was gonna make with the leftover strawberries. I already made strawberry milkshake yesterday and we still had some more strawberries left.

I searched for a delicious recipe in my favorite baking website, Joy of Baking, and I found an interesting recipe of this cream puff, in which I could add the strawberries to the cream. So here is the recipe:

Strawberry Cream Puff
(Makes 9 puffs with diameter approximately 5cm)

Ingredients:
Pastry
65 gr all purpose flour
1/2 tsp granulated white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
57 gr unsalted butter
120 ml water
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Glaze
1 egg, lightly beaten

Cream Filling
240 ml heavy whipped cream (35-40% butterfat)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 tbsp granulated white sugar
3 pcs of large strawberries

Garnish
Powdered sugar

Methods:
Pastry

1. Prepare and weight all ingredients.
2. Preheat the oven to 200 Celcius for 15 minutes.
3. Place a baking sheet on a pan.
4. In a bowl, sift of whisk together the flour, sugar and salt.
5. Place butter and water in a saucepan, over medium high heat until it boils. Make sure the butter melts before the water boils to reduce the amount of evaporation.
6. Remove from the heat and add the flour mixture all at once and stir until combine.
7. Return the sauce pan to the heat and stir constantly about 1 - 2 minutes until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan and form a thick smooth ball.
8. Put the dough to electric mixer and beat to low speed about 1 minute to release the steam from the dough.
9. Once the dough is lukewarm, start adding 3/4 portion of the eggs and continue to mix until you have a smooth thick paste (dough will fall from a spoon in thick ribbon). If your dough still too thick, add the rest of the eggs.
10. Spoon the dough onto baking sheets, spacing about 5 cm apart, try making a round form with the spoon.
11.  With a pastry brush, gently brush the top of the dough with lightly beaten egg.
12. Bake for 15 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 180 Celcius for another 30 - 35 minutes or until the shells have nice amber color and almost dry inside.
13. If you open the puff and find moist dough inside, cut the puff in a half, turn the oven off and put back the puff to the oven with the door slightly ajar.

Cream Filling

1. In a mixing bowl, place the whipped cream, vanilla extract and sugar, and stir to combine.
2. Cover the bowl with a plastic wrap and put the bowl and whisker in the refrigerator to chill them up for at least 15 minutes.
3. When chilled, whip the cream until reach stiff peaks form
4. Chop the strawberries into small cuts and combine them to the cream.

Before serving, fill the puffs with the cream and garnish the top of the puffs with powdered sugar.

Here is the result of my strawberry cream puff:

It's not 100% perfect as the puff should be more crispy and I guessed I didn't whisk the cream long enough as the cream still a little bit sloppy, as I'm afraid that the cream will be lumpy if I over beat the cream. Apparently the trick to check whether the cream has reached its stiff peak is if you lift up the beaters from the mixing bowl, the peak should stand straight up and if you tilt the bowl, the mixture should not slide around. However, it tastes good and looks really tempting on the picture after all, so next time I'll just need to make sure not repeating the mistakes :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Kitchen Essential

Today's post is especially dedicated to a friend who will get married soon this year and she requested me to write more about daily dishes recipes so she could try to cook them after married. Yeah, we're Indonesian ladies rarely cook at home, as we live with parents and have maids to do the kitchen job :-D I will combine the recipe with a product review, though. And just to be clear, this is purely a review from a customer perspective, of course I don't sell the product, but if you want to know where I bought it, you surely could ask me here :)

I noticed that few months ago, I am looking for recommendation of type of kitchen appliances as I want to buy them for my kitchen in Copenhagen. I've searched them through the internet, but couldn't find any clear and comprehensive review. Therefore I got a little bit confused when going to the store and should do the research myself through asking the sales assistant, which is a little bit time consuming and you wouldn't know if what the sales person said is true or just a marketing speech. So here I am, trying to help you, who might be in the similar situation, providing the review from a customer point of view.

The first product I am going to review here is rice cooker. This is an essential one for me, I even brought this in my baggage, instead of putting this in container, as I have to eat rice in order to have a full stomach. This one is from Yong Ma, Korea. The type of product is Magic Com and the series number is MC-1100. Here is mine:

What I love most about it is the small size, which is suitable for my husband and me. The maximum capacity is only 3 cup of rice or equal to 0,7 liters. I usually only cook 1 cup of rice for both of us so the size of the pot is perfect for us. Another point I consider excellent is the inner pot has black coating technology which make it non-sticky pot. Sometimes when we cook only small portion of rice, in most rice cooker, we often find the rice stick to the pot, which would be hard to clean. However, it never happens with this rice cooker. So I'm pretty satisfied with the cooking result.

The products is completed with accessories such as: scoop, measuring cup and steam pot. The measuring cup is also match to the measuring of water written in the inner pot. In the picture below, you would see that the inner pot has a water measurement, which helps you determine how much water should be pour into the pot based on the amount of rice.

Did you see there are stripes with number 1 until 3? That is the measurement of water, so if you put 1 cup of rice (measured using measurement cup), then you just need to feel the pot with water up to the number 1 limit. You don't have to predict anymore whether you pour the right amount of water and in consequence, you will get perfect cooked rice :) It is very easy, especially if you want to teach your husband who never cook rice with a rice cooker before. LOL.

The picture of the other accessories (scoop, measuring cup and steam pot) that I've mentioned above is as follows:

With the steam pot, you could steam cold food, such as dimsum or perhaps leftover rice from yesterday. You just need to fill the inner pot with 2 cups of water and put the food in the steam pot and push the cook button. Voila! the food will be hot and ready to eat in a few minutes. Ow and the best thing is, I bought this for only Rp169,000, it is very cheap for a product with quality, right?

Besides for making white rice, I have tried making Hainan Chicken Rice with this rice cooker. The result was perfect and it tasted good. So here is the recipe:

Hainan Chicken Rice (for 1 person):

Ingredients:
1 cup of rice
1 piece of chicken drumstick
2 slice of ginger
2 cloves of garlic, 1 clove is smashed, 1 clove is chopped into small slices
1/2 cup of onion, slice into small pieces
1/4 tsp of pepper
1/2 tbsp of sesame oil
1 tbsp of soya sauce

Method:

1. Boil 2 cups of water and heat the chicken drumsticks to make chicken stock. Add the smashed garlic and 1 slice of ginger into the sauce pan.
2. Heat a pan, add the sesame oil. When hot, add onions, garlic and ginger, stir fry until it smells good, then add the soya sauce and pepper.
3. Wash the rice and put the rice into the inner pot of the rice cooker, add the stir fry mixture, chicken and chicken stock into the inner pot, as well. Ensure the chicken stock liquid is reached the 1 cup measurement of water, as stated on the inner pot.
4. Push the cook button of the rice cooker and wait until the cook indicator turn off and change into warm.

It's very simple dish and you could add vegetables, such as carrot, into the inner pot, if you like. Just eat the dish with the soya sauce and coriander leaves.

Hope you'll find it useful!

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

The SweeTarts

This is my all time favorite dessert and my mom often made one at home. Nothing can beat the crunchiness and the combination of sweet custard and sour fruits. Can you guess what I'm referring to?
Yeps, it is fruit tartlet! I tried making the fruit tartlet yesterday and now I'm sharing you the result and of course I include my mom's recipe here so you could try making them. Enjoy!

My Fruit Tartlet Result

Fruit Tartlet Recipe

Ingredients:

- For the tarts:
125 gr butter
50 gr sugar
240 gr flour
2 egg yolks
1/4 tbsp vanilla extract

- For the custard:
450 cc milk
50 gr flour
100 gr sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
50 cc rum
2 egg yolks

Method:

- For the tarts:

1. Mix the butter and sugar until the colors turn white with electric mixer
2. Whisk in the vanilla extract and the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition
3. Add shifted flour and stir it well.
4. Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius for 15 minutes.
5. Butter the tartlet tins
6. Place 1 tablespoon of the dough to each tins, ensure that the dough place on the tin is not too thick.
7. With a fork, poke the base of the dough (docking) to prevent dough from puffing up during baking.
8. Put the tart tins into the oven and bake for another 15 - 20 minutes.
9. Pull out the tartlet from the tins when cool.

- For the custard:

1. Mix flour with half of the milk in a bowl
2. Heat the rest of the milk, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan
3. Take 2 tbsp of the boiling milk into the flour bowl and stir them well before putting them back to the sauce pan, stir constantly until the mixture thicken.
4. Beat egg yolk in a bowl and add the egg yolk to the saucepan after the mixture is boiled. Turn off the heat and stir them well.
5. After the mixture is cooling down, add the rum.

Next, fill the tart with the custard and place the fruits on top of the custard. For glossy result, you could coat the top with a gelatin glaze. The fruits can be varied, from berries into kiwi fruit or mango. You could also use canned fruits if fresh fruit is not available. The fruit tartlet is served best when cold.

However, do not refrigerate the fruit tartlet more than 12 hours as the tartlet will turn soft instead of crunchy. What I did is keep the custard in the fridge but the tartlet is kept in a box in a room temperature. I fill the tart with custard only a minute before serving.

Hope you like it!

Indispensable Lady

My First Baking Attempt

I've never literally done baking by myself before. Usually I just helped my mother or my little sister who loves baking cakes and cookies, but never really tried to bake alone. When I moved here, I decided I want to start baking in my spare time. Besides that buying cakes is quite expensive in here, I always admire my friends who have passion for baking, where they turn the passion into business. Well, who knows if I might be able to sell my own cakes someday :)

I've searched for the perfect recipe for my first trial, until I found the delicious brownies recipe on this website. I love having a chocolatey brownies, which have moist texture and dry cracked crust on the top and this recipe provides the exact brownies. The recipe is as follows (I've added some additional instruction to make it more precise and the sequence is more suitable for me):

Brownies (25 brownies)

Ingredients:

5 ounces (150 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chopped

1/2 cup (1 stick) (113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons (15 grams) cocoa powder

1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs

3/4 cup (95 grams) all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (125 grams) semi-sweet chocolate chips(optional)

Method:

1. Prepare a square baking pan of 23cm x 23cm, place a baking paper at the bottom of the pan and butter the paper and the side of the pan.
2. Prepare and weigh the ingredients.
3. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C for 15 minutes and place the rack in the center of the oven, use timer for precise timing. Use the top and bottom heat.
4. Melt the chocolate and butter in a stainless steel bowl (or a small saucepan) and placed over a saucepan of simmering water, until smooth.
5. Remove from the heat and stir the cocoa powder and sugar with a whisker (do not use mixer because we don't want the batter too smooth).
6. Next, whisk in the vanilla extract and eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
7. Finally, stir in the flour, salt and chocolate chips (at this stage, the batter is getting thicken, so it's better to use spatula)
8. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a little batter a few moist clumps clinging to it. Do not over bake. Remove from oven and let cool.
9. Cut the brownies with a cake knife into 3x3cm square per pcs. Between each cut, clean the knife with a tissue or paper to get a better cutting result.
10. The brownies is ready to serve.

Here are the picture of my brownies. It tastes as expected, very chocolatey and moist. When it is still hot, the chocolate chip inside the brownies is melted in your mouth. Very yummy!

As it is quite successful, I decided to give it as a present for a friend of mine who will receive confirmation this Sunday and I was asked to be her sponsor. So, this is my brownies gift for her:

Really hope she'll like it :)

Cheers,

Indispensable Lady

Newbie in Cooking

Sometimes I realized, the biggest progress I've made since I moved to Copenhagen is cooking skill. Since in Jakarta I rarely cooked and even worse feel so lazy to cook, it is a big transformation having to cook two times a day and amazingly I found it quite exciting. Fortunately, my recipe trial are less likely to fail, so it encourages me to keep trying other new recipes. I was planning to take photos of my cooking results and share the stories in this blog, however I noticed that food gets cold easily in here and my husband and I don't like eating cold dish. Hence, I haven't succeeded in taking photos of my everyday cooking.

However, yesterday I'm trying new recipe of bitterballen and I managed to take photo of it. So here I am, sharing you the recipe and the result. Apparently it didn't taste like the bitterballen I plan to make (back home, my mom often received very delicious bitterballen from our neighbour, it was the first bitterballen I've ever taste, so that was the kind of bitterballen I have in mind), as it was too crunchy on the outside. Nonetheless, it was quite successful and taste good.

The recipe I've found on this website: http://www.ayahbunda.co.id/Artikel/Resep/Keluarga/bitterballen.keju/001/008/349/16/3

But I rewrite it again here in English and put additional notes for the process.

Melted Cheese Bitterballen Recipe

Ingredients:

2 tbsp flour

1 tbsp butter

150 cc milk

100 gr cheese

1 teaspoon granulated white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

50 gr bread crumb

oil

Method:

1. Heat the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and mix well, you might get lumps, but it's okay.

2. Pour milk slowly while keep stirring, until the batter get thicken.

3. Add salt and sugar, stir until it mix well.

4. Beat the egg on a bowl.

5. Take a tablespoon of batter and fill it with cheese then make a small round ball with your hands. 

6. Dipped the ball into eggs then roll it in the bread crumbs, and then repeat the step once again.

7. Heat the pan and fry the bitterballen until the colors turn gold/brown.

I noticed that it was hard to create a nice round ball before we roll the ball into the breadcrumb as the mixture will stick to your fingers. Apparently to make it easier, you should chill the mixture for about 2 hours until it become solid. However, based on my experience, if you don't have that much time to wait, after you roll it with bread crumb for the first time, you can fix the ball and turn it into a nice round. After that you dip the ball again into the eggs and roll it again in bread crumb.

My tips is do not let your hands touch the ball when you dip it into the eggs as it will make the bread crumb stick to your finger instead of to the ball. So use a spoon to dip the ball then use your hands to roll the ball in the bread crumb. Ow and don't fry them to long as the melted cheese will break the ball if it gets too hot.

Enjoy,

Indispensable Lady

Menu Planning

The never ending question is "What's for Dinner?" I've never realized how confusing it is to determine menu for everyday meals, especially when you have to cook for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole week. Having someone else cooked for me back at home, I have never had to think about what I am going to eat. And yet, I am quite cranky if I have to eat the same dish over and over again.

So here I am, living on my own now and have to think what do I have to cook and groceries I have to buy at the beginning of the week for supplies. I noticed that without planning first, I often ran out of supplies hence limiting my cooking option. Moreover, it is frustrating not knowing what to cook while your stomach already growling, asking to be fed.

I used to jot down a weekly menu plan on a paper, but I realized, sometimes I forgot where to put the paper and then I didn't stick to the schedule. Yet, after a week passed by, the notes turned into rubbish. Today I'm making the note with Adobe Photoshop to make it prettier and I put it down in my desktop so I could easily read it when needed. In order to make the shopping easier, I have jotted down the supplies I will need to buy for the week. So, basically it is an integrated menu planning and shopping list. Pretty efficient, right?

Let me share with you the menu planner I created. Hopefully it will give you inspirations to create a similar one :)

Ow, and don't forget to check this blog:
http://thehomesihavemade.blogspot.com/2012/02/magnetic-menu-board-part-1.html.
She's done an amazing job by creating this magnetic menu planning. Totally inspiring!

Cheers,
Indispensable Lady