Happy Birthday Mimi

                                   Chocolate Hazel Nut Cake with minimum frosting

Candies and cookies for you

Tom Yam recipe

There are many versions of Tom Yam.  To my opinion this recipe from my Mum's recipe book is the most authentic because this  is also  how  Mama Rahmah of Yala, Thailand makes her Tom Yam.

Tom Yam

A quarter of a chicken, cut in small pieces
3 cloves of garlic
4 lemongrass (bruised)
4-5 cups of water
1 big onion
3-4 kaffir lime leaves
2 small tomatoes (quartered)
1 small carrrot (cut)
3 thai chili (bruised)
Juice of 1 lime
salt
coriander leaves

Put chicken, crushed garlic and braised lemongrass into a pot. Fill with water. Put on the stove.  The secret of making Tom Yam is not to stir the soup before it boils. Just leave the pot to bring to its boil.

When it boils,  put in the sliced onion, kaffir leaves, tomatoes, carrot, and crushed chilies.  Wait for it to boil again.  Now you can stir. When chicken is cooked, season with salt.  When soup is ready, switch off the fire, add the lime juice and throw in the coriander leaves.

You can add in mushrooms, cauliflower and celery if you like.  You can use seafood or meat  instead of chicken.  Or all together.

Tom Yam

Tom Yam is the best soup in the world. Seriously.

Totally healthy and delicious. Who created the recipe was a genius.  Tangy, tasty, hot and fragrant. It has no oil in it, no cream in it like in the western soups.  It is a concoction of herbs and ingredients that are full of healthy properties like lemongrass, which is anti-bacterial, anti-virus, anti-fever.  There is tomato, full of potassium and vitamins, carrots that are filled with beta carotene, onions and garlic, loaded with minerals, and seasoned with lime juice, chilies and coriander leaves,  without any artificial or processed seasonings.

It is a pick-me-up dish that would without fail perk you up because you will  get alot of  zing in your meal and is good to eat when you are down with something or not feeling well.

It is extremely easy to make with many choices of ingredients to throw into the pot. Eat on it's own, with rice or with rice noodles.

Natural goodness in a bowl

My herbs around the house

pretty mints

 3 friends, pandan, kesum and limau purut

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Mother's day present from Mimi

Waiting for them to sprout, chives, lemongrass and coriander leaves

Apple crumble recipe

Apple crumble

(half the measurement if you want a smaller crumble)

8 green apples, peel and slice
3 tbsp of sugar
2 cups of flour
1 cup oats
4 tbsp of brown sugar
3/4 cup chopped almond
175 gm butter

Mix the sliced apples with sugar and put in a tin.

Mix all the dry ingredients together and rub in butter until resemble crumbs.

Add the crumble mixture on the apples in the tin and lightly level it.

Bake in 180 deg oven for 40-45 mins, first 20 min using bottom grill and the rest 25 min top and bottom grill  until crumble decrease in height and brown.

Serve with milk.

Apple crumble by Picipu

The cooking hobby has caught on the girls.  Picipu tells me she finds cooking rather fun and therapeutic.  Today she made apple crumble, one of the family favourites.  

Recipe for pumpkin soup

Pumpkin soup

1 small pumpkin, cut into quarters, sprinkle salt and bake in 200 deg oven
1 yellow big onion, bake with pumpkin
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup of cream ( I use low fat milk)
1 pinch  of ground or grated nutmeg
1 pinch of fennel seeds
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of pepper

Bake pumpkin and onion until soft. Scrape the flesh from skin and blend with 2 cups of stock until smooth.
Pour puree into a pot and cook, add remaining stock and milk .  Add in fennel and nutmeg.  Add in salt and pepper.

Pumpkin soup

I know how to make mushroom soup and leek and potato soup.  That day watching Donna Hay's 'Fast, Fresh and Simple' cooking show, I copied down the recipe for her Pumpkin Soup  and tried it out. It was indeed  fast, fresh and simple and delicious too. I added a few pinches of spices since I am still under the spell of the 'Spice Goddess', Bal Arnesan.

This is how it looked.  Mimi and Picipu has no palette for sweet soup but Hajar and I love it.  Especially when I bite into the fennel seeds. It is sweet, rich, silky and pumpkiny, with a tinge of spice.

Spicy pizza vs tomato paste pizza

The spicy pizza did not turn out so well.  I think it is better to stick to what you know .

Spicy pizza and trifle

Today my daughter and my son-in-law is paying me a visit.

As I was checking the pantry for what is in the house to make for tea,  I found a can of peaches and jello and some fresh milk in the fridge.  All these can make a trifle and  I whipped  them all up into a  cakeless trifle since there is no cake.

At the moment I am waiting for the rest of the ingredients to make a spicy pizza.  The recipe called for garam masala and Mimi called from the supermarket to say there isn't any on the shelf.  Not defeated, I turned to the net to make my own garam masala from scratch.  I hope this turns out because I don't really know how the real garam masala taste like to compare with the one I just made.

Mimi's doctor told her that the Indian race keep  illnesses at bay because they consume  alot of spice in their dishes.

Turmeric, ginger and garlic are good anti-inflammatory food.  Our grandmothers and their mothers use a lot of these spice as medication after delivery and during confinement and they believe when added with other spices, would shrink the womb and to release gas or wind accumulated in the body.  During those times  research on the spices was not heard of, but they were widely used by women.  The 'jamu' and 'makjun', a traditional  Malay and Indonesian medicine are made out of spices.

So lets add some spice to our cooking and stay young and kicking .

Hajar's first cake with icing for me

honey and pistachio cake no sugar

Halal and Toyyibah

This morning in Tanyalah Ustaz, spoke of the defination of Halal.

We should not take lightly of  what we eat and should take an extra mile in finding and eating food which  without a single doubt is free from any non-halal substance.

Even when most of the ingredients are halal, it is the little stuff that can makes it questionable.  The levening  agents, improvers, preservatives and stabilizers are the ones we do not know of their origins.

The ustaz says that the halal JAKIM logo is a safe bet to go by as their endorsement follows the Syariah's requirements.

For one thing, there might be a price to pay for the smoothness and the full-flavouredness and the meltingness and the fluffiness and the deliciousness.of many foods in the market.

A bit less in taste but 100% halal and toyyibah is okay.

Kek Lapis Sarawak

Hazmi  told me that the ladies there bake their native  colourful and festive cakes with much pride.  The names of the cakes in this picture are Masam Manis, Marble Cheese, Hati Pari, Sisek Ikan and there is also the usual fruit cake. There are many more in all sorts of patterns and flavours with equally interesting names at  the Kek Lapis outlets and cottage industries, mostly situated in Kampung Gersik, by the river.  There is even a Kek Lapis Datuk K and  Kek Lapis Neelofa.

In Kuching, the great fun was in the eating

When KT told me she was going to Kuching for holidays, I could not but want to join her as Kuching was once a second home to me when Picipu was working there. 3 years had passed since.

Hazmi, my old contact took us,  8 altogether. around the town and the tourist attractions.  We had fun in the well-planned and well distributed, widely low-rised  with still a lot of land and greenery, friendly people populated  and  all encompassing Kuching. (there's river, beach, forest, orang utan, kek lapis etc etc)

But of course, as I am, an ardent foodie, it was the home cooking at the homestay by KT and Kak Ewi that was the greatest fun of all.  As KT called it, main pondok-pondok. With just whatever we had brought, and what we found at the new Satok market,  we had a great meal made out of simple but delicious dishes, incorporating the ingredients we do not find here in Semenanjong like the midin, terung asam and kelubi and the short puffy chillies.

I brought along Kak Ros's sambal tumis kosong which has become an important commodity to bring with you on your travels because it is the taste of home for the Malay tastebuds. We used the sambal  to make this asam pedas ikan siakap laut with terung asam and kelubi. Can order the sambal.

Vadey recipe

Vadey

2 big onions (chopped finely)
Approx 6 cups of dal or lentils (soak in water for at least 2 hours)
2 green chilies (sliced)
1 inch of ginger (sliced finely)
curry leaves (sliced)
salt


Directions

Drain the soaked dal till dry. Grind but not so fine. Take out from grinder. Add in other ingredients. Shape into flat compressed firm patties.  Fry in oil or use non-stick pan with little oil and low fry till brown.

Vadey

Another recipe from my mum's recipe book. Given by her friend Mrs Thomas. I remember Mrs Thomas was the fair type of Indian lady who wears a front buttoned  short blouse and long skirt. She never dons a sari. She must be of mix heritage or something.  We knew her when my father worked at the Rubber Estate in Kluang and she was one of the wives of the staffs. She must have served my mum this authentic tasting Vadey and my mum must have asked for the recipe.

Vadey is  made of all natural ingredients and a healthy snack to munch on.  Fry slowly till brown  in little oil in a non-stick pan to lessen fat content compared to when deep fried.  Will post recipe later

I remember the aunties

During my mum's days it was a norm to visit your friends often.  The friends would do a sort of rotation to visit each other in their homes, usually during tea.  People rarely bought food from outside and would cook something or serve biscuits. Good biscuits.   Some of my mother's friends are reknown cooks and their tea parties would be the time they show off their cooking finese.

Before, there was no internet and the explosion of information.  The ladies had to go and learn at classes like the Women Institution or WI as it was known.  Or learn from cook books. Or handed down by their families. Now we just search and the recipe appears in droves.

These days you cannot just drop in people's house without informing of your intended visit earlier.  It would be inconsiderate. Those days guest are treated with more revered appreciation, that you get dressed and serve them the best dishes you have when they come, even without prior notice.

Nowadays we don't change for our guest and we treat them in a very 'lepak' manner, picking up the mess as we welcome them into our houses and chitchat as we fry the keropok in the kitchen and stir the drinks in the   mugs.  Those days mugs are not allowed for guests.

Those days women lived up to their appearances.  Dress well, eat well and host well. The olden aunties' ways were always impeccable and proper. When we children are out of 'their' line, be rest assured that we  will know it, by their pinches. That's how we were taught. Mind our ways or get pinched!

I hope it is not too late to teach those ways to the girls. I reallly hope it is not too late but I don't know about the pinching part.

My own chefs

If you read my blog and the accolades and compliments I give the western chefs, you might think that I do not think much of our own local chefs.  On the contrary,  because there are real life great unsung chefs in my family and life that the well known local chefs on TV  seemed to go unnoticed. Sorry..huhu.

My own chefs are, of course, my late great grandmother, my late grandmother,  my ex-mother in law, my aunt, Cikpah and my cooking cousins in Singapore,  My aunts Aunty Nor and  Chor, Kak Ros, Chef with great potential  in the closet, Mariam, her mum, the unbeatable Kak Limah, the girls 'Granny Nora', and my very own, Hajar. And a few more.

I enjoy their food so much that I do not look into the local well known chef's profiles. Hehe. I will.

Recipe for hajar's custard pie

Hajar's custard pie

For crust

280 gm flour

1/8 tsp salt
230 gm cold butter
1 egg
2 tsp vinegar
2 tbsp cold water

Mix all the ingredient into a dough and roll out into a pie dish.  Bake 30 mins until golden.  Poke with fork to avoid the balloons in the dough.

For custard

1/2 tin evaporated milk
1 tin of water (use the evaporated milk tin)
1 level  (not heap) cup of custard powder
1 cup of sugar or more if you like it sweeter
2 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolk.

Directions:

When crust is cooked and cooled, pour in the custard.

Top with anything you like. If you use walnut like Hajar, toast it in the oven for a couple of minutes and sprinkle on the custard.

Simple custard pie, with whatever you have

Picipu bought Hajar a recipe book at the International Book Fair 2013 in KL.  It was 500 recipes for tarts and pies.

Yesterday Hajar wanted to try her hand at it.  She did not have the ingredients, and I was out the whole day, so she just put in whatever she could find in the kitchen and came out with something not from the 500 recipes but her very own, custard pie with walnuts sprinkled on top.  Not only it is delicious, it is not expensive to make if you top it with other than walnut, like fruits or dried fruits or jelly or nuts.

1 Malaysia

Being born in Kuala Lumpur, my life was already in a '1 Malaysia' setting without the propaganda. There was no call or promotion to unite with the other races because we were already united, and that was how things were.  We all lived together as neighbours and generally, people were just nice to each other.

There was Boo Leong and Boo Hin, there was Balan, the small Indian boy, there was Kimee, who had a Burmese mum and a Pekingese dog, there was handsome Zeezal, who had an English mum.  There was Art, a Malay boy whom I do not know his real name.  There was Sofia whom I met again when we are adults.

I remember going to their birthdays.  And they came to ours.  Things were not so private and individualistic as they are now.  We all played in the evenings.  There were no video games or even computers and our doors only close at night. If we close our doors during the day, it would mean we are not at home.

We moved alot and met alot of people along the way. All races and all kinds.

I see in my Mum's recipe book, recipe's from these childhood friend's mothers.  A proof  and evidence to our 1 Malaysia approach and lifestyle.