No Pics

Damn. My camera has gone on holidays for the next two weeks so I can't snap anything that I will be cooking - so I refuse to cook since I can't take the pictures to post onto my blog. Endless circle, isn't it? And since my work has put restrictions on saving files onto a memory stick, I can't update the blog with the BDO Chef night pics either. *Sighs*

Looks like I'll be on holiday from this blog for the next two weeks until I can start taking pics again! Not fair!

Green Lil Balls of Sweet Surrender

Never made ondeh-ondeh before but having some coconut filling leftover from my previous encounter with pulut inti, I decided to use the rest up in these small little green balls. Ran out of freshly white coconut so I didn't roll my ondeh-ondeh in it. I remembered when I was little, the green kuih with the coconut filling didn't have coconut on the outside either but I am not sure if it is still called ondeh ondeh.

Ondeh-Ondeh

Ingredients:
60gm glutinous rice flour
10 teaspoons of pandan juice (blend pandan leaves with a little bit of water and squeeeze out the water)
1 cup of coconut filling (see pulut inti)
2 tbsp finely chopped gula melaka

Method:

1. Mix about half the pandan juice with the glutinous rice flour.
2. Add one teaspoon at a time into the glutinous rice flour mixture and knead until flour becomes a soft, easily-managed dough. You may require more or less pandan juice, as long as your dough is easy enough to wrap a filling and rolled into a ball, it will be ok.
3. Take some dough, and using the fingertips, flatten the dough. Take a teaspoon of the coconut filling and a bit of gula melaka and place it in the middle of the dough. Wrap the dough around the filling and roll into a ball.
4. Instead of putting in the coconut filling, you can also put in gula melaka only - then it will be a true ondeh-ondeh, with sweet gooey syrup squirting out when you bite into the ball.
5. Boil water in a saucepan. Once water is boiling, cook the ondeh-ondeh in the water and let it boil until the balls floats to the surface of the water.
6. Dish out the ondeh-ondeh balls and roll it in a mixture of grated fresh coconut mixed with a bit of salt.

Note:

• Adding a pinch of salt to the fresh coconut will preserve the coconut a bit longer, and the coconut will not sour as quickly.

The Day After and Banana Leaves

As I am not accustomed to the effects of drinking, I usually try not to put myself through the torture for the next morning of the BDO Iron Chef night - can't say that for someone I know who felt sick from overeating and perhaps, overdrinking. *LOL*

Since the Croc Dundee team had decorated their stand with banana leaves, at the end of the night, I managed to convinced that giving me the banana leaves was a better idea than putting it in the bin. Call me 'kiam siap' as you may but it costs about AUD$2 for me to get 3 small pieces of banana leaves at the markets which also depends on the availability. But in payment, I was asked if I know how to make a sticky rice with coconut topping dessert. So this is the result. I hope this met the Joan's expectations.

Pulut Inti

Ingredients:
Banana Leaves
Glutinous rice
300gm glutinous rice
1 blade of pandan leave (aka screwpine leave)
pinch of salt
½ cup of coconut milk
3 tablespoons of water
Coconut topping
120gm gula melaka
50gm sugar
1 tbsp water
1 ½ cups freshly grated coconut

Method:

1. Wash the glutinous rice until water runs clear. Soak overnight. If you are time restricted, you don’t necessarily have to let the rice soak overnight as I have done.
2. Dissolve the salt in water.
3. Place banana leaves at the bottom of a steamer and place glutinous rice, water, knotted pandan leave and two teaspoons of coconut milk on top of banana leave and allow it to steam.
4. Moisturise the rice with the addition of coconut milk every so often until the coconut mulk is used up.
5. Allow rice to be steamed until soft.
6. Leave glutinous rice aside.
   
7. Bring to boil the gula melaka, sugar and water until the sugar partially dissolves.
8. Add grated coconut to the sugar and fry until the coconut has absorbed the dissolved sugar and becomes partially translucent.
9. Leave to cool.
10. Pour hot water over banana leaves to soften the leaves and to prevent it from splitting so easily.
11. Place two tablespoons of rice in the middle of a roughly 20cm x 10cm rectangular banana leaf, waxy & matt side up.
12. Using banana leaf, try to compact the rice together and then top it with the coconut mixture.
13. Wrap the longer dimensions of the leaf over the glutinous rice and tuck sides towards the bottom as pictured in the photograph.
    

BDO Iron Chef Night

Well, I have been busy - with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I thought I would have more time to update my blog every single day but reality is a bit different!

The fans of "Iron Chef", a japanese reality cook-off show shown on SBS every week, will know the gist of the competition. But for those who don't, "Iron Chef" is a battle between top-classed chefs. Each chef creats a three-course meal utilising an ingredient revealed at the start of the competition and may the best chef wins.

We hold an annual BDO (where I work) Iron Chef night but we modified the rules a little. Instead of 2 competitors, we had six teams of 3 or 4 people, each team was given a meat that they had to work with (chicken, deer, prawns, beef, pork and fish), there is a movie-themed presentation (Grease, Harry Potter, Shrek, Braveheart, Crocodile Dundee, and Star Wars) and each group draw out a secret ingredient from a bag (pineapple, ?, button mushrooms, okra aka lady fingers, tomatoes and dates)

I didn't end up winning *frowns* and heart-broken, I forgot to take pictures of my team's food. Our team's theme was "Grease" (as in Grease Lightning) and the pre-determined meat given to our team was chicken. On the night of the competition, the secret ingredient picked out of a bag of brown-paper-wrapped-parcels by one member of our group was pineapple. Given our meats and movie theme, we decided to make three dishes:

1. Chicken sweet corn soup - to fit the idea that 'grease monkeys' aka mechanics always order chicken sweet corn soup when they go to a chinese restaurant.
2. Malaysian chicken curry - because it is grease-y and this is where we hid the pineapple.
   
3. Chicken yiros - because it is from Grease (Greece).

Can't believe we lost considering that 3-quarters of my big pot of soup was completely devoured, and compliments shot out from most people. But Congrats to the "Star Wars" team who managed to make six dishes with the predetermined meat of fish, and secret ingredient of dates.

Secondly, also congrats to the "Shrek" team who had prawns to work with and secret ingredient of button mushrooms.

Thirdly, congrats to the best winning dress-up team of "Harry Potter" who used deer and secret ingredient of something-I-can't-recall. Loved the cauldron with the dry ice effect.

Another coconut milk dessert

Another soupy, coconut milk dessert. I know, I know, it's bad for the cholesterol levels and fat content but it is a dessert that I have been wanting to do but I couldn't get my hands on some alkaline water.

Instead of alkaline water, my mum bought me some alkaline rocks and then I didn't know how much of the rocks to how much part of water so I basically powdered up the rock a little bit and used about 3 pinheads size crumbs to 1/4 tsp of water. My first batch, with the alkaline water tasted soap-suddy - i guess it was too much alkaline water. That went into the bin, I don't think that even my dog will eat it. So I just omitted it in the second batch, and it tasted fine. All that hassle and wait, and the alkaline water was just not worth it!

Chendol is something that I always look forward to when I go back to Malaysia, especially the stall in Kuala Pilah. Most of them are sold by indians, on roadsides. But come to think of it, we put our health in danger when eating from those roadside chendol stalls because most often, the bowl which we eat off is rinsed off in a bucket of water that the stall-holder has rinsed off his previous customers' bowls in. Yuck!

Chendol

Ingredients:
(A)
100gm cornflour
20gm hoen kwuen flour (mung bean flour)
20gm wheat starch (tang mein fun)
11 blades of pandan leaves
4 1/2 cups of water
(B)
350gm palm sugar (gula melaka)
150gm sugar
1 cup water
1 blade pandan leave, knotted.
(C)
400ml coconut milk
3 cups water
1 tsp salt

Method:

1. Blend water and pandan leaves together. Extract the pandan water.
2. Mix all the flour with the pandan water.
3. Strain into a non-stick saucepan.
4. Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. The mixture will coagulate and thicken into a pastey mixture and start bubbling. Turn off the stove but keep on stirring for a minute or two.
   
5. Transfer all the mixture into chendol mould, or a colander with small holes or a steamer with small holes. Place the mould/colander/steamer over a big bowl of iced water.
6. Push the chendol mixture through the holes and it should go through the holes and drop into the iced water.
7. Bring all of ingredients (B) to a boil and allow sugars to melt. Leave to cool.
8. Bring all of ingredients (C0 to a boil. Leave to cool.
9. Scoop some chendol, coconut milk into a bowl. Top with gula melaka syrup.
10. Serve dessert hot or cold. Leave coconut milk in the fridge if you want it cold. Top with shaved ice and evaporated milk if desired.

Note: The 1/4 tsp alkaline water is supposed to make the chendol firmer and springy in texture.

Jelly Lollies

My sister saw this tempting dessert in one of my cookbooks and asked me to make it about 3 months ago. Being short of agar-agar at the time, I told her "next time". It looked like childsplay so I thought I would give it a go but either looks are deceiving or my substitution backfired.

Ingredients:
600ml water
50gm sugar
1 1/2 tbsps agar-agar powder
a few drops of red and blue colouring

250gm sugar
2-3 drops of water

Method:

1. Boil the water, 50gm sugar, agar-agar powder until the agar-agar powder is dissolved.
2. Add blue colouring to the agar-agar mixture and pour into a ball-shaped agar-agar mould.
3. Add red colouring to the remaining agar-agar mixture and pour into another ball-shaped agar-agar mould.
4. Unmould jelly balls and skewer three or four together.
5. In a saucepan, melt the sugar.
6. Using a metal spoon, take a spoonful of caramelized sugar and let it drizzle onto the skewered jelly balls while spinning the skewers between your fingers so that the sugar is spun around the jelly balls.
   

Note: I substituted sugar for maltose from original recipe taken from Y3K Fancy Cakes & Jellies. The original recipe calls for 200gm sugar, 50g maltose (mak ngar thong), pinch of salt, 6 tbsps water. Boil the ingredients together and glaze the jelly with the syrup.

I didn't have any maltose, hence my substitution. Bad bad move. Because 3 hours later, the caramel absorbed moisture from the jelly and started to melt. So I had to eat it all instead of giving some to my sister.

Doing the Cha Cha

Not quite. What I did was the Bubur Cha Cha aka "Bobo Chacha" to "Momo Chacha".

I went to the market on Friday evening and was told that the taro season is over and so I had to make-do with yam. Wasn't too happy with the taste and texture of yam but it'll have to do.

This dessert is not too good for the waistline and cholesterol levels due to the coconut milk but it sure is satisfying on the tastebuds. Here's the recipe. Enjoy.

Bubur Cha Cha

Ingredients:
800gm sweet potatoes - peeled, cubed and steamed
600gm taro/yam - peeled, cubed and steamed
400ml coconut milk diluted with 2 cups of water
250gm sugar or to taste
3 pcs pandan leaves, knotted

Starch:
50gm tapioca starch
20ml boiling water (approx)
a drop of red colouring
a drop of green colouring
a drop of yellow colouring

Method:

1. Steam the sweet potatoes and taro separately until soft.
2. Bring the coconut milk, sugar and pandan leaves to boil.
3. Add in the sweet potatoes and taro into the coconut milk, bring to boil.
4. Tapioca Starch Cubes : Put tapioca starch into a bowl, add in the boiling water little by little, mixing after each addition until it forms into a dough. You may or may not use all the boiling water specified in the recipe. Divide into three equal portions and add colouring to each. Roll each tapioca starch dough into a long strip, about 1cm in diameter. Cut the strips into about 1cm long. In a saucepan of boiling water, drop the topioca starch cubes and allow it to boil until the coloured starch appears translucent. Dish out of boiling water.
   
5. Add cooked tapioca starch cubes to the bubur cha cha.
6. Serve either hot or cold.

Note: You can add jackfruit strips to the bubur cha cha as well. Instead of using the coloured starch, you can also substitute it with tapioca balls and big sago balls.

Cookies and Cream (Part II)

Chocolate Spirals

1. Take one half of the remaining basic cookie dough (after half of it has been made into the chocolate cookie dough)
2. Take one half of the chocolate cookie dough.
3. Between two sheets of non-stick baking paper, separately roll each portion of dough into 30cmx40cm rectangles, to about 2-3 cm in thickness.
4. Place one layer on top of the other.
5. Trim the edges.
6. Roll up the dough in a swiss roll style.
7. Place in freezer, slice and bake as directed in Part I.

Checkerboard Cookies
Refrigerate the cookie dough at any stages where you believe the dough is too soft to handle or to be cut.

1. Take one half of the remaining basic cookie dough (after half of it has been made into the chocolate cookie dough)
2. Take one half of the chocolate cookie dough.
3. Between two sheets of non-stick baking paper, separately roll each portion of dough into a rectangle to 1cm in thickness.
4. Trim edges and place one layer on top of the other.
5. Refrigerate for about 10 mins or until dough is hard enough to handle.
6. Slice down the middle of the length of the rectangle.
7. Place the two rectangles one on top of the other, ensuring that the colours are alternately layered. (white-brown-white-brown).
8. Refrigerate for about 10 mins or until dough is hard enough to cut.
9. Remove dough from fridge and cut into four equal slices along the longer side of the rectangle.
10. Assemble cookie dough into the checkerboard effect.
11. Place in freezer, slice and bake as directed in Part I.

Double Choc Chip Cookies

1. Using the some basic chocolate biscuit dough, roll out some balls of diameter of 3cm.
   
2. Lightly, using the heels of your palm, press the dough onto a sheet of non-stick baking paper.
3. Add 5 chocolate chips on the top of the biscuit dough.
4. Bake as directed in Part I

Cookies and Cream (Part I)

My computer has a virus in it and keeps popping up with these system alert messages. It is damn annoying but that's what I get for not paying for a virus protection.

Change topic, back to my cookies blog. Cookies go so well with milk, especially chocolate ones. I made these last night. The uncooked dough can keep up to 1 month in the freezer and it is good when unexpected guests drop in or when you just feel like making something without having to have a lot to clean up afterwards.

Basic Cookie Dough
Ingredients:
180gm butter
1 cup soft or dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg
2 1/4 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy.
2. Add the vanilla essence and egg and beat until combined.
3. Add in the sifted flour and baking powder.
4. Mix all ingredients together until a soft dough forms.
5. Roll dough into a log shape, sized to your own preference, on a sheet of baking paper (You may have to first divide the dough into two portions)
   
6. Fold the paper around the dough neatly and place the dough into the freezer for about 20 mins or until the dough is firm.
7. Slice the logs to about 1cm thick.
8. Place on baking trays, leaving 3 cm between each slice.
9. Bake in a preheated oven for 10-15 mins on 180°C.Leave on the trays for about 3 mins before transferring it onto a wire rack to cool.

Basic Chocolate Cookie Dough

1. Divide the basic cookie dough in half.
2. Melt 50gm of chocolate and milk over a double boiler.
3. Add the melted chocolate and 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder into one half of the cookie dough mixture and knead until combined.

My Birthday Today

I didn't cook today coz I've been kinda busy with work and volunteering.

My work supplies two cakes for every person's birthday but because I had to go out on an audit today, I had to postpone my cakes until next week at the earliest since I have audit all this week, Monday is a public holiday for us and Tuesday is another day out of the office on audit. So I guess I'll be having my Black Forest and Treasure Cake from 'The Cheesecake Shop' on next Wednesday. So everyone wasn't too happy that we didn't get our cakes today - however for those who was at home sick, they must be happy that I have postponed.

I got prezzies from two of my best friends - Thanks Heather and Vy. Absolutely loved the egg timer, and the unique pineapple peeler/corer/ringer and the "Happy Therapy Ball" which apparently has the answers to all my questions. Loved the lollypops and card but not the big reminder that I am getting old. Was just checking out my prezzies again and I realised I haven't opened one...the best one... the magnet saying "This is a self-cleaning kitchen so clean up after yourself". I have given it to Kev and hopefully he gets the message since he's the one that never cleans the kitchen.