Home made Quiche with Italian Sausage

This is a very simple dish. Easy to make, and does not require a lot of preparation.
However, there is a min point of this dish, it is not quite filling for a dinner, if you are used to eating rice for dinner.

But, I like this dish, especially if I do not have idea what to make.
And you can vary the filling.

Here is the variant with spinach and Italian sausage.

Ingredients:
1 box of frozen puff pastry
3 eggs
100-150 gram grated cheese
150-200 gram spinach
150 ml (fresh) cream
150-200 ml milk (or adjust as needed)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp nutmeg
3-4 Italian sausages, in slices
1 piece of butter
1 onion, cut

The steps

1. Let the frozen puff pastry at room temperature and set aside
2. Heat the butter and the onion until the onion is golden brown
3. Add the spinach, stir fry for a while
4. Add the sausages and spices. Stir that for 1-2 minutes.
5. Add the milk and (fresh) cream. Note: you may want to dilute the cream with the milk first before pouring it into the pan.
6. When the spinach is well soaked and reduced in volume and the mixture is almost boiled, taste and add the salt/pepper as needed.
7. Remove the pan, and wait until it is a bit cool, then add the beaten eggs and half of the cheese.
8. Prepare and arrange the puff pastry on the pie mold.
9. Bake the puff pastry in the oven, around 180Celcius and for 5-10 minutes.
10. Take the pastry out and fill in the mold with the spinach mixture.
11. Cover with the rest of the grated cheese.
12. Put it back in the oven and bake it for around 30 minutes or until the mixture is cooked and the cheese is melted and golden brown.
13. Enjoy it.

And here is my little hero ready to eat it.

Nasi Pecel Sambal Tumpang

As a person who grew up in East Java, I love to eat vegetables with peanut-based sauce. There are different dishes using this peanut-based sauce. However, our son cannot (yet) eat peanut safely. We are still as carefull as possible avoiding certain food. The last he ate green Kiwi, we ended up camping in the hospital's emergency room (it was happy ending but tiring day, though, especially after a busy working day). However, gold Kiwi, is amazingly ok for him. Peanut is still a NO but pistache is ok.

Anyway, away from home town, I missed some of my home town local dishes. However, many of the dishes uses ingredients that are difficult to find here. And some dishes contains things that our son cannot eat (yet, note, we are still hopefull that he will be clear of all allergy one day), for example peanut. Nasi pecel is basically steamed rice served with boiled vegetables, fried tempe or fried tofu, some other extra things and served with peanut-based sauce. However, there is also nasi pecel served with sambal tumpang. This sauce (i.e. sambal) is not made from peanut but from tempe, which is basically fermented soy bean.

So, when a friend of us visited us, play with our son, I made this for our meal. Our son enjoyed the meal, he also did not refuse to eat the vegetables. But, anyway, eating vegetables and fruits has never been a big problem to him. He refuses now and then certain vegetables or fruits but when we stay persistent to try them again another day, usually he would give a try and although not always love the vegie/fruit he will not fight too hard to refuse.

The taste of the sauce is a nice compliment to the boiled vegetables since it also contains coconut milk. If you do not like coconut milk or avoid the fat content of it, you may want to try to replace it with soy milk instead. I have not tried it, but I did use soy milk or cow milk sometimes as a replacement of the coconut milk.

Here is my version of the sauce. Note that this is simplified version since the ingredients are not as easy to find as much stock in my kitchen as when I was back in East Java. You can find the more complete version in the internet.

Ingredients

6 tempe (fermented soy bean cake, *I used around 200 gr of tempeh for the sauce and I fried the other 200 gr as sliced fried tempe)

4 pieces of tempe semangit (which is basically very old tempe, almost going "bad", *I did not use this, since it is difficult to imitate here)

4 pieces white tofu (*I used 1 pieces of big firm white tofu, cut into cubes)

500 cc coconut milk (*I used only 200-250 cc coconut milk)

boiled vegetables (*I used kangkung/morning glory, taoge, long beans)

5 lime leaves (*I only used 2-3 leaves)

2 Indonesian bay/salam leaves

Spices, ground

5 cloves garlic (*I used 1 big red onion)

5 cloves shallot (*I did not have this on stock, so I skipped)

1 lemongrass, use the white part (not grounded but only crush it)

2 cm galangal/lengkuas (*I used 1 tsp galangal powder)

2 cm kempferia galangan/kencur (*I used 1 tsp powder)

250 gram bird eye chilli and red chilli (*I did not use it but add it separately)

1 tbsp dried shrimp/ebi

salt to taste

white pepper to taste

palm sugar/gula merah (*I used arond 2 tbsp)

How to make

1. Prepared the boiled vegetables and put aside

2. Cut the 200 gr tempe and fried it (you can put it first on the mixture of crushed coriander seeds, salt and pepper before frying), and put aside

3. Cut the tofu and fried it and put aside

4. Put the rest of the tempe (for the sauce), garlic and shallot in the food processor and crush it

5. Heat a pan and put in the crushed tempe, garlic and shallot mixture

6. Add the rest of the grounded spices

7. Add the coconut milk, adjust the consistency using a bit of water when necessary (the end result should be thick enough)

8. Cook until it boils

9. Serve steamed rice, with boiled vegetabes, fried tempe and tofu, and put the sauce on top of the dish.

Enjoy!

 

Nasi Bakmoy

I saw a posting about the place I used to visit during my college year to buy favorite foods (e.g. nasi bakmoy, rujak, petis kangkung, nasi lengko) in Bandung, a city in West Java, Indonesia. Suddenly I got an idea to use the shrimp paste (petis) I brought from home to make "Nasi Bakmoy". I would like to see how my son like it.

Here is the detail.

Ingredients:

Main

Chicken fillet, cut into small cubes *I used around 250 gr chicken fillet

Tofu *I used around 1 - 1 1/2 block of tofu, but not the soft type

1/4-1/2 tsp white pepper

1/2-1 tbsp salt

1 tbsp oyster sauce

3-4 tbsp sweet soya sauce (Indonesian kecap manis) or to taste

1 tbsp soya sauce *if you like, if not, just use the salt mentioned above

garlic, chopped

2 ltr water/chicken stock *I used 2 ltr water and ready to use jelly form chicken stock

1-2 sticks celery, cut into small pieces

Boiled chicken eggs

Fried shrimp (ball)

150 gr peeled and cleaned shrimp *I used around 7-8 medium large shrimp

3 tbsp tapioca or corn starch flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

1 egg

Shrimp paste chilli

Mixed of good shrimp paste (i.e. Indonesian petis), sweet soya sauce, and fresh or dried chilli to taste. If you do not like something hod, leave out the chilli *mixed it to a good paste like, not to thick not to watery

How to make:

1. Cut the tofu to make small cubes and fry the tofu, put aside

2. Stir-fry the garlic, chicken, oyster sauce, sweet soya sauce, salt (and soya sauce), white pepper for a few minutes until the chicken is a little bit brown (half cooked)

3. Add the water and/or chicken stock and the celery

4. Add the fried tofu

5. Boil it and put aside

6. Chopped the shrimp or use blender

7. Add the other ingredients of the fried shrimp (ball) until well mixed

8. Heat the oil to fry

9. Put 1 tsp of the fried shrimp (ball) dough into the hot oil, and fry it until golden brown. Don't forget to turn the shrimp half way

10. Put aside the fried shrimp (ball)

11. Place steamed rice and 1/4-1/2 tbsp of the mixed shrimp paste chili onto the plate

12. Add the soup and ingredients

13. Add some fried shrimp (ball) *I never made a ball but something more flat and cut it smaller with scissors to accomodate my son mouth size

14. Add 1/4 or half boiled egg

15. Mix everything before eating

Enjoy the Nasi Bakmoy.

It turned out that my son, Patrick, found it delicious.