Asam Pedas Ikan Merah

In my place, fresh seafoods are scarce and expensive. There are frozen seafood sold at Asia Shop at reasonable price but I try to reduce eating the frozen seafood because I read somewhere the amount of chemical used for frozen items could be hazardous to one's health. Unless I'm so craving to eat seafood, would I buy these frozen stuff.

Few days ago I went to Morocco's groceries shop and saw some fresh seafood to be sold. I saw these red fish and thought how nice to cook asam pedas using this fish. I'm very sure whether this fish is exactly the red fish I know in Malaysia but I just thought 'why not give it a try?'

The cost for these two red fishes is EU5.00 which was ok! I wanted to buy more but since I wasn't sure how did it taste, I just made do with two first.

So, here is my asam pedas ikan merah with tomatoes and lady fingers. Yummy!!!! The fish tasted so delicious and I'm hoping I can find this fish again at the Morocco's groceries shop.

My recipe for asam pedas:

Ingredients:

1 big onion*
3 cloves garlic*
1 inch ginger*
Some belacan (shrimp paste)*
2-3 tablespoons blended dried chilies ( I used sambal oelek)
2 red fish - clean and cut into two (depends on the size of the fish, if one small fish is used, then you don’t have to cut it)
1 small bowl tamarind juice
1 stack daun kesum (Vietnamese coriander)
5-6 lady fingers ( add more if you like)
2 tomatoes (cut into four)
Salt
Cooking oil
* To be blended with some water

Methods:

1. Heat up cooking oil. Add the blended onion, garlic and ginger.
2. Add chilies/sambal oelek. Cook until the chilies turn a little dark.
3. Add tamarind juice and some water.
4. Add daun kesum.
5. When the gravy has boiled, add lady fingers and fish. Leave it and stir occasionally.
6. Add salt to your taste
7. Add tomatoes and cook a little while

Ready to serve with white rice.

Brownies Cupcake

Oh, again the first-time attempt! Making brownies cum cupcake....whatever. I got this recipe from Wilton website. After browsing through all the cupcake recipes, I decided to try this one cause it is simpler and I have all the ingredients needed.

The problem is, after baking, the tops were cracked. Why? Any comment?

Anyway the recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 squares unsweetened chocolate chopped
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs lightly beaten
2 teaspoons clear vanilla extract
2 cups pecans chopped (optional)
Makes: Each cupcake serves 1. Makes about 20 standard cupcakes or 4 Mini Tasty-Fill cakes.

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Line standard muffin pan with baking cups.
In medium bowl, combine flour and salt.
In small heavy saucepan or microwave-safe bowl, melt butter and chocolate; stir until blended.
In large bowl, combine chocolate mixture with sugar; mix well.
Whisk in eggs and vanilla.
Add flour mixture to chocolate mixture; mix until blended.
If desired, stir in nuts.
Distribute brownie mixture evenly into baking cups.
Bake 18-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool cupcakes in pan on cooling rack for 5-8 minutes.
Remove cupcakes from pan; cool completely.
Any of our cupcake recipes may be prepared in our Mini Tasty-Fill pans. Spray pans with vegetable pan spray, then fill each with about 1/2 cup batter. Place pans on cookie sheet and bake 14-16 minutes. Cool in pan on cooling grid for about 8 minutes; remove from pan and cool completely before filling and icing.

Burger Malaysia

My friend, Liza is expecting and one of the food she craved for is this Malaysia's delicacies: Burger Malaysia. Instead of beef or chicken fillings, it has the anchovies chilies and sclice of cucumber. So I made for her.


Here is the recipe:


Sumber: E-Book "100 Resepi Kuih-kuih Malaysia"


For anchovies chili filling:

2 tbs cooking oil
Blend together1 big onion
2 cloves garlic -
Some belacan (shrimp paste)
10 dried chilies (boiled and blended) – I substituted with 2 tbs sambal oelek
½ cup dried anchovies – deep fried
2 tbs brown sugar
½ cup tamarind juice
1 tsp salt

For dough:

250g wheat flour
120ml water
2 tbs margarine – I used butter
2 ½ tbs fine sugar
½ tsp salt
2 tsp dried yeast

Cucumber – slice into thin pieces
Cooking oil for deep frying

Method:

For anchovies chili:

1. Heat cooking oil, fry in the blended onion, garlic and shrimp paste
2. Add blended chili and cook well.
3. Add brown sugar and tamarind juice and salt. Adjust the amount to your taste.
4. Add anchovies. Mix well with the chili.
5. Turn off the heat and set aside.

For dough:

1. Put Ing. 1 – 6 into large bowl. Knead the mixture until it turns out to dough (no longer sticky). Make big round dough. Leave the dough to expand twice the original size.
2. Punch the dough and then divide the big dough into several small round dough (I made 15). Again, leave the dough to expand twice.
3. Heat the cooking oil for deep frying (medium heat)
4. Fry the dough until golden brown. Toss.
5. Cut the dough in the middle to allow some space to put the filling (pocket).
6. Put one sliced cucumber and anchovies chili in the pocket.

Ready to serve.

Ayam Harum Thai ( Fragrant Chicken Thai)

I got this recipe from my friend's blog, Liza. It's another way to cook using tomyam paste because for me tomyam paste is always meant for tomyam soup. It's good to know the variety. So here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

Ingredients A - all ingredients to be sliced thinly

• 1 big onio
  
• 4 garlics


• 1 inch ginger
  

Ingredients B - to be mixed well to make a paste

• 2 tablespoon chili sauce


• 1 tablespoon tomato sauce
  
• 2 tablespoon tomyam paste


• 2 tablespoon light soy sauce


• 2 tablespoon sweet soy sauce


• Lime juice taken from 1 lime ( I substituted with lemon juice)
  

Ingredient C

• 1/2 chicken - cut into small pieces


• 2 lemongrass stalks - punch a bit


• 4 pieces of kaffir leaves ( daun limau purut)


• 1 capsicum - cut into several pieces


• celery leaves - for garnishing
  

Methods:

1. Heat up some cooking oil in the pan. Put Ing. A and cook until fragrant.


2. Add in Ing.B. Cook until fragrant.


3. Add chickens, lemongrass and kaffir leaves. Cook well.


4. Garnish with celery leaves.

Chocolate Cheese Cake (another failed recipe...)

Another my first-time attempt - cheese cake. Back in Malaysia, I used to visit famous Malaysia's cake house, The Secret Recipe for their delicious cheese cakes. Here in Germany, since I'm staying at home, I thought cheese cake project would be fun. So I browsed thru the Internet and decided to try this recipe called Chocolate Cheese Cake from Hanieliza's Cooking.

The result:

After baked. Looked nice....

But when I cut, it looked ugly!!! Doesn't look like cheese cake huh? The cheese part was so hard and compressed! And the colour is not so dark chocolate

The cheese cake should look like this! My..my..what have I done?

Anyway, though my cheese cake didn't look as what it supposed to be, it still bore the cheese cake taste. And my husband still ate it anyway...thahks hubby for the support!

Though it is a failure, I'm not going to give up. I'm determined to bake more. Besides, practice makes perfect, isn't it?

Bihun Singapura

This is one simple meal that I like because you can use whatever meats or vegetables you like as long as you put black pepper. I never knew the exact recipe of Bihun Singapura, I always make it my own version after an ex-colleague introduced to me this bihun years ago. She told me verbally how to cook it. And this is how I cook it:

Ingredients:

• Half a pack of bihun (rice noodle) - soak into hot water for 2-3 minutes then drain
• A small bowl of chicken breast cut into small pieces (or u can substitue with beef/squid/prawn)
• 2-3 garlic - mince
• 1-2 teaspoon grounded black pepper ( depends how you like it, the more the hotter)
• 1 table spoon oyster sauce
• 1 small carrots - cut into small long pieces
• Some sawi - cut into small pieces
• Fried shallots (can buy ready made from Asia Shop)
• Celery leaves - mince
• 2 table spoons cooking oil
• Salt

Methods:

1. 1. Heat oil in a cooking pan, stir in the minced garlic. Cook until fragrant.
2. Add chicken, cook well
3. Add black pepper and oyster sauce, stir.
4. Add carrots and cook until soft.
5. Put in bihun and sawi, mix well everything in the pan
6. Add salt (depends on your taste buds)
7. Serve with fried shallots and celery leaves garnished on top

I also always serve this bihun with a small bowl of kicap cili api soy sauce with Thai chilies) or the ready made chili in garlic oil bought from Asia Shop....makes the bihun tastes superb!

Twisted Sausage Bread

This is my first attempt making bread on my own. Since most of the bakeries don't sell halal meat bread, I decided to try making them myself. I found one recipe from here. But I made several adjustments to the recipe. For example, I used whole meal bread flour that already had yeast added. So I didn't put yeast anymore. Then the original recipe used breadmaker to make the dough but I don't have one, so I just used my two hands.

Before bake

After bake

The recipe is all follows:

Ingredients:

190 ml water
400 gm bread flour
5 table spoons sugar
1 tea spoon salt
2 table spoon milk powder
1 egg
2 tea spoons yeast
60 gm butter
sausage
mayonese/chili sauce

Methods:

1. Mix the flour, sugar, salt, milk powder, yeast water and egg in a large bowl. Mix well and knead until it forms a dough (smooth not sticky).

2. Divide the dough into several small round dough. Leave for 20 minutes.

3. Roll one dough big enough to put a sausage.

4. Put the sausage on the dough and roll the sausage.

5. Cut the dough into several parts but with joints at the bottom.

6. Twist the dough to the right and left one after another.

7. Repeat the method for the rest of the dough and sausage.

8. Leave the doughs for another 40 minutes.

9. Bake at 180C for 12 minutes.

10. Garnish with mayonese and chili sauce. Ready to serve.

Boiled Fruit Cake

I found this recipe from Joy of Baking and after reading through the recipe and I thought 'Hey, this one sounds easy to make!'

So I gave it a try and well...it's not so bad. It is so rich of fruits and I love it!

Ingredients:

1 cup (210 grams) light brown sugar
1 cup (240 ml) hot water
1/4 cup (56 grams) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon ( I think I would reduce this amount next time as I found it too strong)
1/2 teaspoon ground clove (I didn't put)
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (I didn't put)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (125 grams) seedless raisins
1/2 cup (65 grams) dried cranberries
1/2 cup (75 grams) dried cherries
1 1/2 cups (210 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (175 grams) candied and chopped mixed peel


Methods:

1. Butter, or spray with a nonstick vegetable, a 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pan.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C). (Note: if using a dark colored pan reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees F (160 degrees C).)
3. In a large saucepan, over medium heat, bring to a boil the sugar, water, butter, spices, raisins, cranberries, and cherries. Boil for five minutes, remove from heat, and let cool till lukewarm.
4. Stir into this mixture the flour, baking soda, vanilla extract and candied fruit.
5. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 - 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
6.Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.
7. Cover and store, if possible, for a few days before serving.

I tried to cut the cake after 2 hours of cooling but the cutting was not nice so I kept it for another day. So next day when I tried to cut it, it turned ok. So if you want to cut it nicely, leave the cake for several days as suggested.

Mee Ladna

Another noodles recipe which is easy to prepare, it is called Mee Ladna. Since I lacked certain ingredients, so I made it my own version ( the Germany's version of course...hehehe). I couldn't find the fresh yellow mee like the one in Malaysia. But a friend has taught me how to turn spaghetti noodle to yellow mee. All I need to do, when I boil the spaghetti (with some oil and salt), add some turmeric powder in. Then once the spaghetti is cooked well, quickly drain the spaghetti under cold water. And I get the yellow mee!

Ingredients:

1. Half a pack of spaghetti

2. 1 cup of beefs - slices into small pieces ( can also use or add chicken/prawns/squid)

3. Half onion - mince

4. 2-3 garlic - mince

5. 1 small carrots - cut into long cubes

6. 1 cup of cauliflowers

7. 1 egg

8. 1-2 spoon of oyster sauce

9. 2 spoon of black thick soy sauce

10. 1 tsp ground black pepper

11. Celery/onion leaves for garnishing

12. Fried shallots for garnishing

Methods:

1. Heat some cooking oil in the pan

2. Stir the minced onion and garlic until fragrant

3. Add beefs. Cook well.

4. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce and black pepper.

5. Add carrots and cauliflower. Cook well.

6. Add the noodles (spaghetti). Mix well.

7. Add the egg, mix well.

8. Add salt if you like (but most of the time this is not necessary as the oyster and soy sauce already provide the salty taste)

9. Garnish the noodles with the celery leaves and fried shallots.

Guten Appetit!