Spaghetti Bolognese

Ok, another pasta recipe which is also easy to be cooked. And I cook it my own way, ok!

Ingredients:

500g beef mince
1 big onion
1 box (about 400 gram) tomato puree
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons oregano
two cloves of garlic
1 packet of long spaghetti pasta

Method:

1. Put the pasta in a boiling water, add some cooking oil (to prevent the pasta sticking to each other) and some salt. Cook until the pasta undercooked. Toss the pasta well.

2. Heat the olive oil in the cooking pan.

3. Add garlic and onion. Stir fry for a while.

4. Add minced meat, cook until well browned.

5. Add tomate puree (add water if the sauce is too thick)

6. Add salt, oregano, black pepper. Leave it to simmer.

7. Add parmesan cheese and mix the sauce well.

8. Serve the spaghetti with the sauce poured on top.

Ayam Masak Szechuan (Szechuan Style Chicken)

Got this recipe from my friend, Liza. The photo of the recipe in her blog, showed a very dark gravy but mine is lighter. Again, I blame the soy sause I bought here. For those who like sesame oil taste, this is the recipe.


Ingredient:

1. Chicken (can also use beef or squid)
2. Garlic - 2 or 3 cloves, minced
3. 1 onion - cut into 4
4. 1 tsp cornstarch (mix with water)
5. Dried chilies
6. Onion leaves
7. Sesame oil
8. Oyster sauce
9. Dark soy souce
10. Cashew nuts ( I didn't put as I didn't have it)

Methods:

1. Heat the coking oil + sesame oil
2. Fry the dried chilies until crispy - put aside
3. Fry the onion and garlic
4. Add in chickens
5. Add in oyster sauce and dark soy sauce
6. When chickens are cooked well, add in fried dried chilies and cashew nuts.
7. Add the cornstarch batter and mix well.

An der Lache Salad

Never heard of it? I bet sure you haven't, it's the salad that I made sesuka hati and I named it myself...hehehe. An der Lache is where I live, if one wonder what is it.

I'm trying to eat as healthily as possible, that is why I'm making a lot of salad things now. The above salad is the combination of green salad, red capsicum, apples and raisins. Then I mixed with mayonese and ground black pepper. Delicious!

Spaghetti Carbonara

One kind of pasta I love to eat. In Malaysia, I never cooked this thing myself. My favourite place to eat this; KLCC Signature, the food court.

Actually it's very easy to cook this pasta. Only thing is in Malaysia, it would be quite costly if I cook myself because the cheese and whipped cream are considerably quite expensive. Besides you don't eat this pasta so much, you tend to be muak after a plate. So I didn't bother to cook myself.

Here in Germany, cheese, cream, pasta can be considered cheap. A small box of cream costs only EU0.45. And a pack of grated Parmesan cheese is EU1.09. And why dine out when it is expensive and most of the time not halal. So I cook.

Here is the recipe:

- 2 yolk eggs
- 1/4 cup butter
- 1 cup. cream
- Half packet of spaghetti (can use other types of pasta)
- some sliced salami, cut in strips
-1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
-Salt & pepper to taste
- Add grounded thymian if you like.

Eggs, butter and cream must be at room temperature. Beat together eggs and cream until blended. Cook spaghetti 10 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water. Drain well. . Toss pasta with butter and pepperoni. Pour egg mixture over and toss. Add cheese and thymian, toss to mix. Serve immediately.

Eat with steamed broccoli if you like....

Moist Chocolate Cake

I'm not really good at baking. Most of the time, my baking end result is always a dissappointment. Anyway I would'nt give up as one quate states '"In order to succeed, you must first be willing to fail."

In the series of baking chocolate cake, I actually tried this one recipe I'm very familiar with and done it several time in Malaysia. It's very simple and when I baked it before, it always turned good. But don't know for what reason, when I madfe it here, it was a total disaster. When I baked it in the electrical oven, the batter just boiling and flowing out of the baking pan...CATASTROPHE!

I gave up a little while then decided to look for another chocolate cake recipe from Internet. I had promised my girls that I would bake a cake so I just couldn't give up, ok. I found one chocolate cake recipe from Mat Gebu so I gave it a try. And walla!...it came ok. Thanks Mat Gebu for sharing the recipe.

Anyway, the physical look was not that pretty cause I was so excited, I took the cake out from the pan before it had the chance to properly cool down. Resulted in breaking cake. It didn't really matter as long as I can pour the chocolate ganache on top of it and then the girls poured the chocolate rice for the decoration. An interesting activity for the girls to do.....

For those who one to try, this is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS :

-1 cup of cake flour/self-purpose flour*

-1 teaspoon baking powder*(*mix together and sift 3 times)

-1 cup of castor sugar

-2 eggs (gred A)

-125 g butter

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-1/2 cup of cocoa powder*

-1/2 teaspoon coffee powder (nescafe)*

-1/4 castor sugar*

-1/2 cup hot water*

-1/4 cup milk* (*mix together to make a chocolate paste)

FOR GANACHE :

-100 g cooking chocolate

-50 ml UHT Whipping Cream (or with 100 ml milk)

-1 teaspoon butter

METHOD:

1. Preheat the oven at 175C.

2. Butter the baking pan and place the bottom with parchment paper.

3. In electrical mixer, beat the butter and castor sugar until creamy and smooth

4. Add the vanilla extract and eggs one by one. Beat the mixture until creamy and smooth.

5. Reduce the mixer speed, add the flour and chocolate paste (in small amount) one after another until finish. Mix well the batter.

5. Pour the batter into the baking pan. Bake in the oven for about 45-50 minutes.

6. Once the cake is properly bake, cool it down first before you decorate with chocolate ganache (optional)

FOR GANACHE:- Mix the chocolate and UHT Whipping Cream in a heat-resistance bowl. Melt the combination in double-boiler method (put the heat-resistance bowl inside a cooking pot with water over a medium heat). When it is completely melt, turn off the heat and add the butter. Mix well. Leave it to cool a while then pour it on the cake.

You can add chocolate rice or chopped almond nuts on top of the ganache . It is all up to your creativity. Happy baking!

Sambal Tumis Udang Petai (Prawn Chilies with Petai)

I guess for Malays this is just a typical cuisine. But since I have told my Korean friend about my cooking blog, this is an opportunity to expose her to Malay cuisines.

Well, wonder how I get petai here in Germany? Thanks to Asia Shop, I get to buy all the exotic foods (exotic for me because they are imported). From petai, daun kesum, lemongrass, kafir leaves are all available in this shop. Cause other Asian like Thais, Vietnamese also use these ingredients in their cooking, these items are always available.

Typical sambal tumis uses blended dried chilies but my Malaysian dried chilies stock has long gone. There is Thai dried chilies sold in the Asia Shop but it is of cili api. More than 3 chilies, it is already so spicy so it is not possible to make sambal tumis as we want the sambal tumis to have this red-colour look but but not that spicy.

A friend had introduced this sambal olek (also available in Asia Shop) to substitute blended dried chilies. A very user-friendly ingredient, I would say....hehehe, save me from dealing with boiling and blending the dried chilies.

Then the shrimp powder (belacan) of course plays important role for the authentic sambal tumis. The one I used is from Malaysia. You can still buy it (paste in the bottle) from Asia Shop but it is of Thailand make. Not really our Malaysian taste...

Ok, let's the ingredient based on my own recipe:

Ingredients:

1. 500 gram of shrimp (the bigger the better)

2. 2 spoons of sambal oelek or dried chilies paste (if you like it spicier, add more)

3. Petai (as much as you want)

3. 2 onion - 1 cut into small cubes (shallots are better, but here in Germany shallots are expensive, so I used onion) and 1 cut in round slices.

4. 3 garlic cloves (cut into small pieces)

5. Shrimp powder ( 1 spoon)

6. Tamarind juice

7. Sugar and salt to taste

8. Some cooking oil

Method:

1. Heat up cooking oil

2. Fry the onion (small cubes) and garlic until yellow

3. Add the chilies. Leave it to cook properly. Stir once a while.

4. Add shrimp powder, sugar, salt and tamarind juice.

5. Add shrimp and petai. Leave it to cook.

6. Add round sliced onion. Leave it for a while.

Ready to serve!