Siomay Bandung

Siomay Bandung or Baso tahu, is one of my favorite dish. It is a dish made from (usually) fish meat, steamed with tofu, and served with steamed or boiled potato, hard boiled egg, and rolled steamed/boiled cabbage. The sauce is peanut based sauce with a tint of tamarind and green lime (jeruk purut).


Last week, I was craving for something Indonesian. I had only one portion of fried baso tahu during our last holiday. It is not easy to get it here, not like the Belgian fries that I can get just around the corner. My husband would also love to enjoy it on our dinner table. I was also curious on how my children would react to this taste.

To make this dish, it is not that difficult. But, just like any other Indonesian/Asian food, this food needs a lot of preparation and work. This time, I chose to use frozen fish fillet for practicality. The equipment that we need to make this dish, are food processor and a steamer. I am using a simple steamer, which is actually an attachment of my IKEA basic pot.

Please do not give any score on how I fold and shape my siomay, because I am not yet an expert in shaping food. Luckily, my husband and children did not care for the presentation. They just kept eating. *big smile*

See below on how to produce your own Siomay Bandung.

Ingredients of Siomay Bandung and Baso Tahu Bandung
300 gram white fish fillet
200 gram chicken fillet
5 cloves garlic
3 tsp salt (or according to your liking)
1/2 tsp sugar
pepper to taste
150-200 gram chayote or kohlrabi (I used this time around half of the kohlrabi)
100 gram tapioca/sagu flour
2 eggs (some recipe uses only the white, but I find that using whole eggs is also OK)
A little cold water, if needed
Tofu
Wonton skin (ready to use - from frozen section. Use the one for soup or steam)


Method (siomay bandung and baso tahu)
1. Grind the fish fillet, chicken fillet, garlic, and chayote or kohlrabi using food processor.
2. Add the tapioca or sagu flour and the eggs. Mix well. Add a bit of water if needed to make the mixing process easier. I do not add water since I used defrost fish fillet which still contain some water.
3. Add the salt, pepper and sugar. Mix until all is well-mixed.
4. Cut the tofu into either a few triangle pieces or cubes.
5. Make a cut on the surface of the tofu (do not cut through the tofu, but only to make a pocket like cut), to enable you to insert a spoon of the fish/chicken mixture, Let the upper side of the tofu covered by the paste/mixture. Put aside.
6. To make the siomay, take 1 piece of the wonton skin, put 1 spoon of the paste in the middle and fold the corners of the wonton skin into the middle/the fish paste. Put aside.
7. Boil water in a steamer.
8. When it starts to boil, put the baso tahu and siomay in the steamer and steam for around 15 minutes or until the paste is well cooked. Put aside and steam the rest of the baso tahu and siomay.


Preparing the extras
1. Peel some potato, and boil it until it is soft enough but not entirely broken when we test it with fork. Put aside.
2. Boil some eggs. Peel and put aside.
3. Boil a few pieces of cabbage, until it is soft enough to roll. Take it out from the pot, drain, and when it is cool enough to work with, roll the cabbage. Put aside.


Ingredients of the sauce (Note: this is NOT the original recipe but a practical recipe for me)
5-6 tbsp of peanut butter (use the creamy one, without the peanut pieces. This one is less sugar and creamier).
2 cloves garlic (pressed)
1 tsp tamarind paste (without seed)
1 tbsp palm sugar
1 tbsp sweet soya sauce (to taste)
1/2 cup water (or adjust to achieve consistency like steak sauce, for example)


Method for the sauce
1. Put all ingredients in a pot, boil everything.
2. Adjust the taste with one of the ingredients, if necessary. (every peanut butter brand has different taste and sweetness)
3. When it is ready, take out the not-dissolved tamarind paste.


How to serve
Serve the Baso Tahu, Siomay, boiled potato, boiled egg, rolled cabbage on a plate. Pour the sauce on top of the served ingredients, sprinkle with lime juice and prepare as extra, cut chili, if you like.

It turned out that my children love them, especially the siomay. The texture is interesting enough for them to enjoy and the fish taste of the siomay combined with the taste of peanut sauce with a hint of lime juice is at least acceptable for their preference.

For my husband and me? Hm, it is heavenly. It is one of the food that we love to eat.
If you have never tried it, you may want to challenge yourself to try this to see if you are up for a new food adventure.

Sayur Asam/Sour Vegetable Soup

Sayur asam or also known as Jangan Asem is a simple dish that I always enjoy at home and when we eat outside. It seems simple but I have had some difficulty to duplicate the exact taste, especially here, far away from our beloved tropical country. My mother usually serves that accompanied by local fried chicken or similar to that. It is heavenly and one of my comfort food to go for.

Last year, I cooked this a lot using instant spices in packaging. Of course it contains monosodium-glutamat, or something like that. I know I should limit the intake of that particular stuff, but, it was SO EASY using those instant things. Especially if you are a working mother, with two active toddlers who 2 minutes are best friends the next 5 minutes are the worst enemy of each other but still love each other (it is confusing, really ^_^), no family where you can go for help with anything less than 15 minutes driving distance (in our case, it is at least 16 hours door-to-door, flying not driving), and a lot of different deadlines.

Growing up in a tropical country, I have been spoiled by the relatively easy access to affordable food, variety of food, friendly service, a lot of smile and love and plenty of sunshine. We were surrounded by delicious and affordable food in uncountable varieties. The food comes in both simple and intense flavors. I still think that it is the effect of getting a lot of sunshine.

I love to introduce my children to those varieties of flavors, to remind them to their parents's root and how big is the world. And since it is not easy to get original taste and food here, I cook a lot. At least according to my previous standard, I cook more than before.

Sayur asam is actually one of relatively easy to cook dish. A few weeks ago, we visited our friends in Dusseldorf. She showed me how she cooked her delicious sayur asam from scratch. It was delicious!! She inspired me to cook this not using my instant spices. I was quite afraid that the taste will not be up to my expectation. I did that last week, and it was good. Since I do not have all ingredient in hand, I replaced some with local ingredients.

The children, and also my husband enjoyed the dish. I hope you too.
Just take out your food processor or simple blender, and you are ready to prepare the "bumbu" (Indonesian word for seasoning) for this dish.



Ingredients
1 big red onion (cut)
4-5 cloves garlic (cut)
1 red paprika (cut) - (if you eat spicy food, replace this with 3 or 4 chilli, removes the seed)
3 ltr water
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp tamarind (without seed)
1 tsp baked/fried shrimp paste (terasi)
1 tsp galangal powder


Cut Vegetable:
Cabbage (cut)
Long beans (cut)
Chayote (peeled and cut) - we call this Labu Siam, and here I use Kohlrabi as substitute
Sweet corn (cut)
Courgette (cut)


Method:
1. Cut the onion, garlic and paprika using food processor.
2. Boil the onion, garlic and paprika mixture in 3 lt water
3. Add tamarind paste, shrimp paste, and galangal powder.
4. Once it is boiled, remove it from the stove and strain the soup to separate the onion and paprika. Do not remove the tamarind yet.
5. Add the vegetable and boil the soup again.
6. Add the salt and sugar to taste.


It is best to serve it with warm steamed rice and fried dish you like. We love to eat this accompanied by Yellow fried chicken (or baked in the oven), or fried fish.

I will definitely make this dish again from scratch. However, when I do not have extra time, I will still use my treasure instant spices. One of the products I love, is the instant spice from the local home industry from my parents hometown. I will discuss that in my next posting.

For now, please kindly enjoy the picture of my sayur asam.

Ham and Cheese Muffin

I did plan to make Indonesian Layer Cake (Lapis Legit) for the first time, but it was always busy in the weekend. The last two weeks, I have prepared some ingredients but always had to cancel it and used some of the ingredients to cook other things. Life far from my hometown, without my parents around and my other extended family around can be very hectic. Especially, we do not have nice small eatery or food vendors here.

Last weekend, was the time for Indonesian mass. In our town, we only have once a month, mass in Indonesian. The mass is usually ended with get together, coffee and tea and snack. If I have some time to squeeze in, I tried to bring something to eat. Last week, I made ham and cheese muffin, an easy to make recipe, especially for the children. Why?

There are usually a few nice aunties who almost always bring very nice food for everybody (Thanks Aunties!). They are good cook and amazing ladies, with very kind hearts. Their food is also always amazing. I wanted to share also with the children. Because, although the food is always amazing, children have different taste. :-) I know this because my children, sometimes complain when I cook things we, adult, love so much but not so much to the little children liking (i.e. too spicy, too strong flavour, etc.).

So, I tried to make simple muffin with ham and cheese filling. It is easy to make and children love both ham and cheese filling.

Ingredients
300 grams all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
300 ml milk
ham (cut into small cubes)
grated cheese

Method
1. Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, except the ham and cheese. I use my hand mixer because it is easier and require less effort to mix. Mix until all is well mixed.
2. Prepare cupcake or muffin pan. Use either cupcake liner or grease the pan.
3. Fill each with dough until 1/4 of the space, fill in the ham and cheese, cover it again with the dough until it is around 2/3 of the space. I made around 18-19 muffins with this batch of dough.

4. Sprinkle the top of the muffin with grated cheese again.
5. Preheat the oven (I use convection oven) 180Celcius.
6. Bake the muffin for around 20 minutes (the exact time depends on your oven). Change to top grill for the last 3-4 minutes if necessary to get melting cheese effect.
7. Let it cool for a few minutes before serving.

My children love this muffin, especially for the salty taste of the ham and cheese. This can also be part of the children's school lunch box. Easy to bring and not messy.

Enjoy it!

Brioche Bread

My family loves this sweet bread. We usually buy it from a local supermarket near our house. The children love this bread. It is soft and sweet. Different than the normal bread used for sandwich lunch that the children usually bring to school.

A week ago, at request of husband, I tried a recipe I found in the internet. The recipe stated that the dough would be very soft and sticky because of the amount of the butter. However, this lead me to a very big mistake. I have already suspected something was not quite correct with the steps, since based on my previous experience with bread, I need to knead the bread until the gluten develops well.

My brioche bread tasted a bit floury, despites the 24 hours proofing time. It was very disappointing. The comment of my oldest child made me almost cry. "Mummy, this tastes bah". Oh dear.

That is why, 2 days after that, I found myself baked this bread again. This time, I adjust the steps and the amount of some ingredients according to my previous experiences with some bread recipes. 
The result is a very soft brioche bread, the softness feels like cotton in the mouth. BUT it is still not as sweet as our usual store-bought brioche. 

After I search the content of the ingredients of our store-bought brioche, I realized that their brioche contents at least twice as mush sugar as  mine. 

So, despite my second effort producing the cotton soft brioche, my oldest child still says, "Mummy this one is also not delicious".

Anyway, my youngest loves it, and my husband finished a big chunk of bread, eaten with a Cookie Notti spread, cappucino flavour. The bread also reminds me to my grandfather's fave, Roti Bluder. The texture is similar and also the taste. 

If your children love sweet, you may want to double the sugar in the recipe below. The time needed to make this is quite long, but it fits well with my schedule, since I bake only at night. Please feel free to comment, especially about the sugar content. I am curious on how much sugar is sweet enough, especially for the children sweet tooth.

Ingredients
500 grams white bread flour (high gluten flour)
7 grams instant yeast (my local brand yeast, suggests 7 grams for every 500 gr flour)
1 tsp salt
6 eggs (or 5 if you use bigger size eggs)
70 grams sugar
125 ml milk
250 grams butter (soft, room temperature)
1 egg, beaten for egg wash

Method
1. Place the flour in the bowl, sugar at one side of bowl, salt at one side of bowl and the instant yeast in the middle. Mix the dry ingredients well, you can immediately use the knead (hook) extension of your mixer.
2. After the dry ingredients well mixed, add the eggs and mix it well.
3. Add the milk and mix again the dough until the milk is good incorporated.
4. Cut the butter in cubes, and add them one by one into the bowl. Knead the dough until the gluten develops well. This is when the dough does not stick anymore to the side of the bowl. It is, however, a bit greasy compared to the dough of normal sandwich loaf, due to the high content of butter and eggs.You should be able to stretch the dough easily, although it will not form a relatively thinner membrane like the dough of sweet bread with water roux method. But it should be similar to that.
5. Remove the dough to a plastic bowl and cover it with cling film (plastic wrap). Store it in the refrigerator overnight, or around 24 hours to let it proof. By then, the volume of the dough should be at least twice.
6. After the dough rise double in size, punch down the dough and divide into several pieces, around 50-60 grams each. Place each portion parallel to each other in the loaf pan (remember to brush the pan with margarine/butter before filling the pan with the dough. I use two loaf pans, but you may also use 3 loaf pans.
7. Let the dough to raise again for around 2-3 hours, outside the refrigerator, at room temperature. Brush the top of the bread with the beaten egg.
8. Heat the oven, 180Celcius. I use lower heat. Bake the bread for around 30 minute or until the skewer inserted into the bread comes clean. I change to both lower and upper heat in the last 7 minutes to get a nice golden brown colour.  Let the bread cool on the rack before serving it.

Since I usually bake more than what we can finish in one sitting, I freeze half of the bread. We have tried the frozen bread. We took out the frozen bread and leave it at room temperature for a couple of hours. The bread is still soft and the texture is still good. It is delicious and the texture is still heavenly. I really wish that my children prefer less sweet food, one day.

Gudeg Nangka Using Electric Pressure Cooker

This is one of my Indonesian favorite dish. The origin is from Jogjakarta (Java). It is made from young jack fruit (Nangka) cooked with several spices, coconut water, and coconut milk. Gudeg is usually eaten together with steam rice, and other dishes such as opor ayam (chicken opor), sambal goreng krecek (which is stewed crisp beef skin), and tahu/tempe bacem. Whenever we are eating this Javanese cuisine, I will never forget to serve it with sambal/chilli and krupuk (a type of Indonesian cracker).

My children, at the time I am writing this post, love this Indonesian dish, except for the krecek (stewed crisp beef skin). May be the texture is quite strange for them, especially because they are used to western food.

I usually make a batch of Gudeg and the friends, enough for at least 3 times 3 person-serving. I intentionally do that because making a complete Nasi Gudeg is a labor by itself, at least for me. So, if I have to do a laborious work, it is better if I can keep at least one 3-person serving in the freezer for one of the day when I do not have time to cook dinner.

A few years ago, when I started to learn to make this dish, I made it using pots. However, since my husband bought me an electric pressure cooker, I could make the Gudeg Nangka faster - with some modification of the recipe, saving a few hours.

Ingredients:
1 kg jack fruit (not the ripe one), cut into smaller pieces - (I usually use 3 cans of young jack fruit. The drained weight is around 900 grams)
10 eggs (boiled and peeled the shell) - put aside
500 cc coconut water (The original recipe is calling for 1 liter. However, since I am cooking using pressure cooker, I will only need half of it)
8-10 salam leaves (similar to bay leaves, but please use Indonesian salam leaves, the flavor is different)
5-8 slices galangal (or it is around 0.5 cm) - I usually used around 3tsp galangal powder
200 gr palm sugar - shredded (I love to use Wayang brand here, because it is clean and easy to portion)
500 cc thick coconut milk (or coconut milk from 1 coconut) - (I usually use 3/4 of a 500ml can Kara + 1/4 can water and use the rest of the coconut milk for making sambal goreng krecek)

Spices, Ground
12 cloves shallot
12 cloves garlic
1 tsp coriander seed
3-4 tsp salt or to taste
8-10 candle nuts (I usually use the candle nuts paste in jar - about 4-5 tsp)

Method
1. Drained the canned young jack fruit and cut into small pieces.
2. Ground the garlic and cut the shallot.
3. Put all ingredients into the pressure cooker, make sure that it is still below the maximum level allowed.
4. Set the pressure cooker to "High Pressure" and the timer for 30 minutes.
5. In the mean time, boil the eggs. Let it cool and peel the shell. Set them aside.
6. After 30 minutes timer is off, turn off the pressure cooker and open it after you release the pressure according to the Pressure Cooker Manual/instruction book.
7. Move the Gudeg Nangka to a pot and add the boiled eggs.
8. Boil the Gudeg Nangka and the eggs again before serving.

The Gudeg Nangka is now ready to be served with warm steam rice accompanied by Sambel Goreng Krecek and Opor Ayam Tahu.

I seldom cook this, although my husband loves this food. To cook the complete dish I will need a lot of preparation and cooking time. Quite tiring if you are cooking after the children are in bed. That is why I only make this 2 or maximum 3 times a year.

My children find the gudeg nangka is delicious. However, they still find the Sambal Goreng Krecek has funny texture. May be, just may be, I have to cook the complete dish more than twice a year.

If you are having a vacation in Indonesia, do not forget to find the best warung gudeng there.Enjoy!

NB: in the photo above, I have just add the boiled eggs. That is why it is still white. It is best eaten after the eggs is covered by the gudeg nangka for a few hours to make sure the spices also infused the eggs.

Chinese Pork Jerky

I love and missed eating Bak Kwa (Chinese Pork Jerky). When I was a child, my uncle introduced me to this food. He brought it back from Singapore, Usually, tourist will buy this from a famous shop, called Bee Cheng Hiang. This pork jerky is expensive. Over the years, it is getting more and more expensive. I think this is not only the effect of inflation but also the popularity.

Although most tourist bought their Bak Kwa from Bee Cheng Hiang, I noticed, when I lived in Singapore, that the  many local friends prefer other shop, called Lim Chee Guan. The queue during the Chinese New Year period is always impossible. People can queue for hours, even before the shop is open. I have tried both shop, and I like both. They have different signature taste, but not everybody can distinguish the difference.

Although Chinese New Year has passed weeks ago, I suddenly had a craving for this, especially after browsing the blog of Sonia, Nasi Lemak Lover. To make it worse, our friend tried to make this a few days ago. So, I decided to make this pork jerky. My motivation was quite big, because Sonia made it seems quite `easy´. I used her recipe to make this.

It turned out quite good and similar to what I usually bought back home and not too sweet. Just as I would love to have.

My family love this also, except my oldest son. We ate it with warm rice and also as snack. I will try to persuade my oldest son to give it a try again. We will see if he will love this later.

The recipe and method are from Sonia, Nasi Lemak Lover

Ingredients (with some modification)
500 gr minced pork (the original recipe is 450 gr), with at least 10% fat
100 gr sugar

1 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tbsp Chinese rice wine
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp dark caramel sauce or sweet soy sauce
1/4 tsp Chinese powder 5 spices
a pinch of pepper
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp honey (the choice of honey will affect the taste)


How to:
1. Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix everything until the mixture mixed well and forms a glue like consistency
2. Keep the mixture in the refrigerator for a few hours (I kept it for 1 night, since I have to spread my time. I only cook or bake when the kids are in bed)
3. Take out the mixture from the refrigerator, Line a baking tray with baking paper. I did that to make the cleaning easier and avoid some burned meat
4. Spread the mixture to form a thin, probably around 3 mm thick layer on the baking paper evenly

5. Bake the meat in the middle of the oven at 160 Celcius, 15 minutes.
6. Take out the meat and let it slightly cool. Cut the meat into squares/rectangles/desired shapes
7. Grill one side using top heat at 240Celcius for around 8-10 minutes or until it is golden brown with a slight burnt appearance.
8. Take it out from the oven and grill the other side of the meat for around 5-7 minutes until this side is also golden brown with a slight burnt.

The last step is to let the pork jerky to cool down and enjoy it.
I love to eat it with Indonesian yellow rice. With the result of this trial, I would like to try this method to make Indonesian beef jerky. The problem now is to find a time to do it.

My husband and I brought some to the office for snack and shared them with a couple of colleagues. The respond was quite good. Enjoy!

Purple Yam Rose Steamed Bun (Mantou)

A couple of months ago, I found the video of "how to make a rose steam bun" on the youtube. The rose steam buns are so pretty and the pink colour is intriguing. However, I could not find a good time to try and the thinking of making steam buns is so terrifying. 

I, once made BBQ pork steamed buns, and I felt the work to steam them with my small steamer was too much for me to handle. If you are a regular of my blog, you may know that I am a midnight amateur baker. I bake only after the children are in bed and the morning after, we still have to deal with morning routine, preparing the children to school and getting ready for work.

But, I have bought a bag of steamed bun flour, different brand than I used to buy. And I wanted actually to use that to make salty egg custard steamed buns. However, I did not have the chance to make it. And a couple of days ago, we visited our friends, and I was running out of idea what to bring. So, here it is, I challenged myself to try the rose steamed buns. 

Coincidentally, I still have frozen grated purple yam in my freezer. Inspired by the great posting from Sonia (Nasi lemak lover), pumpkin rose buns, which are so pretty and looks very delicious, I modified a bit her recipe to make my purple yam rose steamed buns. I brought some to our friends, and froze the rest for next occasion. We planned to make chilli crab or something like that to accompany the steamed buns.

My husband did try 1 piece, just after the first batch was finished. He approved the buns. However, the pumpkin ones seem worth to try for the next experiment.


Making the rose buns unexpectedly not too difficult, but it is quite time consuming. The positive side of this shape is, they fits better in my small IKEA steamer than the usual round buns with filling.

I could not wait to see if the children love this or not. I will update the story, when I managed to make the dish to accompany the buns.

Ingredients
180 gr grated purple yam (steam it first before use)
125 ml milk (I used full fat pasteurized milk, but you can also use the fresh milk)
5 gr yeast
400 gr Steamed buns flour
50 gr sugar (you can increase it to 75 gr if you like it sweeter)
40 gr of vegetable oil

1. Mix half of the milk and the yeast in a bowl and let it rest for 5 minutes.
2. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl, add the mixture of milk and yeast. Knead the the ingredients using the hook attachment until the dough is smooth and does not stick to the side of the mixing bowl.
3. Let the dough to rest for 15 minutes.
4. Weight the dough 15 gram each and shape each portion to a ball. Roll each ball to an extended round shape. You will need 5 x 15 gram portions to make two roses. 
5. Roll the first portion to make the centre of the rose. Put it on top of the other portion, and roll them again. Do this until you get a five layers roll. Cut it in the middle into two roses and put the rose buns on top of the baking paper, in the steamer. 

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all the dough is shaped into roses.

7. Let the dough to rise for around 20 minutes.

8. Heat the water for the steaming and when the water starts to boil, steam the the buns for 15 minutes.

9. Repeat the steaming for all buns.

I noticed that since I was in a hurry (this is my negative side as midnight amateur baker), the first batch was not proven well. The last batch was left longer on my table and therefore the dough had longer time to rise. Nevertheless, I love the results.

One thing that made me a bit disappointed is the colour. I avoided using food colouring, that is why the purple yam. The colour of the end results is not as bright as the raw purple yam that I have used for this. It seems that when it is fully cooked, the colour is fading. Anyway, you can still see a little purple colour of the buns.