Simple Chic

When I saw these throw pillows, I finally have a bit of idea what kind of look I want for the music room.

The 'Simple Chic' look.

I am thinking perhaps I can pair it with rugs like this:

And have some colorful paintings / pictures on the wall.

The only thing I cant figure out yet is the curtains. Few options I am considering:

1. Use similar/repeat pattern of one of the throw pillow. But it means Ive gotta choose a dominant color/ pattern

2. Custom made the curtains to combine the colors. Quite like this one though may not be ideal since i dont want  the window to be focal point

3. Go with the wall color. Most sensible one, but it will make the room looks bland. Too safe, not enough cheekiness.

The biggest challenge is to find it locally, without costing me arms and legs.

AND Not to mention, how do I keep it from hubs, cause he would say HECK NO for sure... Haha

Good luck to me.

  

Ketam Kari

This recipe was given to me by Auntie Ayie when I was in Penang for Eid Adha, and I am yet to try it tried it last night. Auntie is a great cook, so I am sure was glad it will turn out super. In fact, Rizal rated it 4/5. Not too bad huh?


Ingredients
____________________________________________________________

Ingredient A
Bawang besar sebiji, hiris
Santan RM1
Garam to taste
Tomato 1 biji
Cili Hijau 1

Ingredient B

3 ekor Ketam
Rempah 2 packets
Serbuk Jintan Manis 2 sudu
Halia 3 cm (blend / pound)
Sebatang Kayu Manis
Daun Kari
::mix all above ingredient, with a bit of water

Cooking Method
____________________________________________________________

1. Panaskan minyak

2. tumis bawang until wangi

3. Masukkan all item ingredient B, masak till naik minyak

4. Put in santan & garam to taste

5. lastly, put in Cili hijau and tomato. Leave it to settle for awhile. For me, I feel that curry tasted better if its cooked longer, let the taste of Ketam/ayam/ikan to blend in. I also added a bit of vinegar (since I didnt put in any nenas as the original recipe).

Note: This same recipe can be used for Chicken, meat or udang Curry

____________________________________________________________

Last night, since both me and Rizal already had dinner, I just made capathi to accompany the curry (instant one la... buy frozen at the supermarket)

Tofu Soup

The first time I had this was at Madam Lim's in Jusco Maluri. Since then I have made it a home couple of times, and to date still am not tired of it.

The dish is quite easy to make, and is a healthy one too. Especially sedap to eat during rainy nights, like last night :)

Okay, what you need:
- Soft Tofu
- Broccoli
- Baby corns
- mushrooms
- corn flour
- white eggs
- garlic (pounded)
- Ginger (pounded)
- Chicken breast (sliced) / Prawns

Step 1
- prepare ingredients. Cut Broccoli and baby corn in small pieces


- same goes with mushroom. Cut and wash. If using Oyster Mushroom, make sure you squeeze dry it


- Make the cornflour water mix



-Cut the Tofu in slices (tip: Cut into two first, then cut in slices)
-Fry the tofu till it is goldenish like below


-Separate the egg whites from the yolk. Only use the egg whites


The method:
- Sautee the garlic and Ginger
- Once garlic is golden, put in the chicken meat or prawns. Add water
- Bring to boil
- Once boil, put in solid ingredients first like baby corn and the shiitake mushroom
- Leave it for a minute or two, then add in the tofu, broccoli and cornflour
- Stir and add in the egg whites (continue stirring while adding)
- Close the lid for min or two, and turn off the fire

If ur using a claypot like me, note that the soup will continue to boil in the claypot, so dont leave the fire too long after all ingredients are put in.

The end result... tada...
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Sambal Ikan Bilis

Resipi from Dina... belum try lagik.. so no pix... will upload once tried


SAMBAL KERING TEMPE DENGAN IKAN BILIS
Ingredients :

2 pieces tempe ~ sliced thinly
1/2 cup dried anchovies
1/2 cup chillie paste + blended onion
2 cloves of garlic ~ knocked
2 tablespoons dark sweet soya sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons tamarind juice
salt to taste
1 Bombay onion ~ diced

Method :

1. Fry the tempe and dried anchovies (separately) till golden brown and set aside.
2. Add in the chillie paste and blended onion. Let it simmer till fragrant.
3. Add in the garlic, tamarind juice, soya sauce, sugar and salt.
4. When it's slightly dried, put in the fried tempe, anchovies, diced onion. I added red chillies as well.
5. Stir to mix.

Let's go sweeeeettt..

Unlike me, Rizal does not like to drink the good ol plain water... his drinks has to be flavored and chilled..! For that reason, we always to stock up on cordials at home. I have noticed lately that those cordials we purchased especially the F&N brand, is not like what it used to be. It is no longer concentrated enough but very very diluted - AND it is not that cheap!
Since we've had enough of those not-so-good commercial cordials, we thought we'd make our own. With coaching from mama, I managed to make my very own syrup cordial, which surprisingly, was quite easy to do.

All you need is basically:

1. Sugar = 1kg
2. Water = 6cups (1.5ltr)
3. Coloring = 2 table spoon (depends on ur liking more means darker colour)
4. Rose flavoring = 2 teaspoon
5. Pandan leave = 1 piece and fold

The ingredients

Methods:
1. Put in pandan, water & sugar. Bring to boil in medium heat. Stir to avoid sugar burning
2. Once the sugar dissolved, and the mix thickens, add coloring and flavor
3. Bring it to boil for a minute or so

Thats it. Easy peasy!

Fish Curry

Okay, this is not really a completed recipe since I am yet to find the perfect combination / measurements for it. Right now, I still need Rizal to help me with the tasting to tell me what to adjust. So.. Kalau x sedap.. consider yourself warned okie.

As usual lets start with ingredients. Pretty basic stuff:
1. Oil
2. Salt
3. Red Onions (pound coarse)
4. Garlic (pound coarse)
5. Curry leaves
6. Tomatoes (cut into four)
7. Asam Jawa (mix with water)
8. Curry powder (I use Baba's or Aligappa. Mix with water)
9. Fish (suitable fish: tenggiri, small kembong, bawal hitam (cut))


And here are the Optional things you can add on:
1. Lady's fingers
2. Coconut milk
3. Green Chillies

As you know there are different variation and type of curry, and the recipe I am sharing here was given to me by Rizal's mum.

This time I used ikan temenung. One of Rizal's favorite. According to him the fish meat is sweet thats why he likes it. Since I dont eat fish curry I just take his word for it


We have a Karipalley plant, so I just took the curry leaves from our plant ;). A hint on choosing the leaves, pick the old ones, it gives better flavor


Okie dokie, lets get rolling.

1. Heat the oil. Sautee onions, garlic and curry leaves


2. Once browned, then add curry powder mix

3. Let it dried up, until the oil surfaced. Org panggil naik minyak.


4. Add Lady's Fingers if you like. Also if want to put in santan, this is when you add it. I didnt put any santan. Just lady's fingers


5. Add the asam jawa mix, then tomatoes. Bring to boil


6. Finally, add the fish. Allow the fish to gently simmer, not actually boil, or the outside will break into pieces before the inside is done.


7. Once mixed well, that's it. Turn off the heat and serve!

Daging Salai and belimbing Masak Lemak

As org nogori... of course I should know how to make Masak lemak cili padi. Masak Lemak is actually one of the easier dish to cook (provided you already have the pounded cilipadi). Masak Lemak is also one of the most versatile dish, you can cook it with chicken, meat, seafood or with vegetables, in short, everything goes.. ;)

Anyway, one of my most favorite variation of masak kuning is Daging Salai with Belimbing buluh. And today I am going to blog out a brief guide on how to make it.

Let's start with the shopping list.

1. Meat. I usually ask for the BatangPinang (Striploin). Its about RM23 per kg and for this purpose let's cook for 500g. BTW, traditionally, in kampung ways sometimes they use buffalo (kerbau) meat rather than cow's meat. Apparently the kerbau meat is sweeter in taste. I dont really know the difference and to me cow's meat is good enough..

2. Belimbing Buluh. I dont know if there is an english name to it, anyway, for those who dont know what it is, this is how it looks like. This particular ingredient is not easy to buy as it is seldomly sold in the market. I usually get it from the tree itself . Choose the ripe and big ones. To cook for 500g of meat maybe you'd need around 2 handful.

3. Santan (coconut milk). Amount: 1 biji

4. Cili padi. The amount? depending on your taste bud. I would say for the half kg meat you'd want to pound about a handful cilipadi. This one, I dont know how to explain how much cos I just estimated it, and add and reduce as necessary.

5. Serai (lemon grass). About 4 stalks , pounded

6. Kunyit (tumeric). You can use dry tumeric though fresh tumeric is recommended (if using fresh tumeric pls pound it as well).

Wokeh, now all the required items are sorted out. Let's start the cooking.

Preparing the meat (daging salai)
-Wash it first of course.
-You need to smoke the meat, and to do this, you need to cut the meat in fillet like about 4cm in thickness. Then mix it well with a bit of tumeric and salt (like you would when frying fish).
-Next, you grill / smoke it. I usually just use the stove top kind (see photo) since I dont have a bbq pit or a place to start an open fire. It would have tasted and smelled better though if we use good old smoke fire.



- anyway, cook the meat evenly, becareful and keep the fire low in the beginning to ensure that the meat is properly cooked.
-Okay. Once that's done. What we need to do now is sliced the meat thinly (see below).

Preparing the belimbing
- Cut the belimbing in two or fours, like the photo below. The objective is basically so that you dont take the seed.
- Why...? i dont know. My uwan just asked me to cut it that way.

Preparing the Cilipadi
- Pound the cili padi. See picture

alrighty, now that we have done all the prelimenary work, lets start cooking

1. Put in the sliced meat, pounded cili, pounded lemongrass, salt and tumeric. Cook in slow fire
2. Mix it well, and usually at this will produce slight water. This is when you taste it and see if its pedas enough or not.
3. When the water dried, put in the santan cair
4. Once it has boiled over twice, then put in the belimbing and the santan pekat
5. When it boils again, voila... it is cooked!

Experiment 1 - Roti Jala

Roti Jala has always been one of my favorite food, but so hard to find here in KL. So today, after looking at the recipe to make roti jala, I decided to make it myself.

The recipe looks easy enough, all I need is:
3 cups of flour
1 egg
2.5 cups of fresh milk
2.5 big spoon of oil
1 teaspoon of garam
a bit of tumeric powder

Just mix all those together, until it became the roti jala batter. Looks easy huh. Anyway, after making it, I think the menjala part is the most challenging part. Quite susah , in my case the batter kept getting stuck on the roti jala thingy, apparently we are supposed to poke the holes. So next time i'll try that.

All in all, I think the roti jala still taste quite nice, so I think I just need to brush up my menjala skill. Anyway.... here is the end result
To accompany it, I made kari daging - since ada daging je. I think chicken curry would have been nicer tapi takpela.. anything goes...

Steam Fish Thai style

Today I am so proud of myself, I managed to cook the steamfish the Thai style.
I have been wanting to eat the steamfish for a few days, and this morning I got up early to go to the market.
It was the first time I was that early at the market, and I was quite surprised to find that there were lots more fish and fresher food .. tee hee hee.

Anyhoot, I managed to buy a siakap fish. It was slightly above 0.5 kg, costs me RM11. I then hunted for the other ingredieant such as ginger, lemongrass etc etc..

There is this other crucial ingredient that I have been looking for high and low, and could not find it, which was the Asam pickle. I was just thinking of substistuting it with something else since I could not find it. But today, I just thought as a final check, I just looked at Mercato Pavillion in case they have it, and Lucky Me, I found it there.

So, since I would like to ensure my future venture of cooking this Steamfish be as successful, i am going to write the recipe down (unfortunately, no photos.. semua dah abis)

The Market List
1 Ikan Siakap
4 pieces of Pickle asam
1 red chilli
10 Cili Padi
1 tomato
1 Limau nipis
1 bawang besar
4 garlic
1 inch Ginger (halia muda)
2 stalks of lemongrass
coriander leaves
salt, fish sauce, whitepepper & cuka to taste
5 pinkspoon corn flour


1. Preparing the fish
Clean the fish with salt and lemon
Once clean put in the wok

2. Preparing the ingredients
->Slice thinly the following:
- garlic
- cili
- lemongrass
- ginger
- red chilli
-> ketuk cilipadi
-> slice tomato to 6 slices

The way to cook:
1. Put the fish and all ingredients (ingredients no 2. above + the asam) into the wok








2. Add water, with some of the water mixed with corn flour.
The water level should cover the fish







3. Bring it to boil, with the lid on

4. Once boiling, add salt, fish sauce, cuka and perahan limau to taste

5. After about 5 mins, turn the fish over

6. When it is almost cooked, at white pepper

7. To serve, put the Coriander leaves on top

INTRODUCING... RENDANG TOK... edisi Uwan

INTRODUCING... RENDANG TOK... edisi Uwan

Ingredient

1. Daging 1 kilo [Potong sebesar 4cm x 4cm]

2. Santan 2 biji

3. Garam Secukup rasa (preferably garam kasar)

4. Gula 1 sudu kecil

5. Kunyit 2 sudu kecil

6. Daun kunyit 3 helai [Buang batangnya, dan ikat daun]

7. Bawang merah kecil 15 biji [hiris]

8. Halia sebesar ibu jari [hiris]

9. Lengkuas sebesar 2x ibu jari [hiris]

10. Bawang putih 5 biji [hiris]

11. Serai 4 batang [hiris halus]

12. Cili padi 15 biji [potong kecil2]

13. Cili Kering 15 tangkai [potong2 dan rendam]

Cara memasak

1. Blend Halia (item 8), lengkuas (item 9), bawang putih (item 10), serai (item 11), cili padi (item 12) dan cili kering (item 13) dengan sedikit air

2. Masukkan Daging dan bahan yg diblend ke dalam kuali dengan api sederhana

3. Masukkan garam

4. Biarkan hingga almost kering

5. Bila almost kering, masukkan santan. Kuatkan api

6. Bila menggelegak, masukkan bawang merah yang dihiris (item 7) dan daun kunyit yang telah diikat (item 6)

7. Masukkan gula

8. Kacau hingga kering