One pot cooking: Soto Bandung

It's unusual to have soto in a one pot cooking style, but that day my daughter was fussy i could not concentrate on what i was cooking. So i made soto bandung in one pot style because it consumed just a little time. Here is the recipe.

For 6 portions
1 litre water
300 gr beef, cut into 2x2cm dices
150 gr horseradish, sliced
5 lemonleaves
2 bayleaves
1 lemongrass
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 shallot, sliced
1 teaspoonful turmeric powder
3 cm fresh ginger

To add when the above ingredients are cooked:
Salt and pepper to taste
1 green onion, cut into 2cm long

First of all, clean horseradish in a bowl of hot boiling water. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, stir until you see foams. The foam is actually horseradish sap. In a normal cooking mode, i used to boil the horseradish separately until it gets tender and all foams are out.

Boil a liter of water, then put all the ingredients inside. Cook for about 40 minute. You can check the meat, usually it would have been tender within the time. To have a clear soup, i usually take meat broth's foams out of the pot. Last, season with salt and pepper and green onion.

Smakelijk!

Lemon Marinated Lamb Steak

300 gr lamb loin
2 tbsp olive oil
4 fresh lemonleaves, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp garlic powder (or 3 cloves ground garlic)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest
Black pepper and Sea salt to taste

Mix together all spices. Coat lamb loin with the marinating spices, cover with plastic wrap, and keep them refrigerated for about 1 hour before grilling.
Grill on a non stick pan or grilling oven to your favorite degree: rare, medium, or well done. Serve with your choice of sauce and salad. I made it with mushroom sauce because my husband asked for it, but personally i recommend tomato-olive salsa.

Smakelijk!

Yellow Soup Pangasius

Back then i accidentally saw a picture of friend eating gulai kepala ikan (red snapper head soup). I was not a fan of that food because eating fish head wasn't my thing, but i remember the taste of the soup.

This soup is derived from gulai ikan but in a much lighter version. I wanted to make a dish with strong turmeric aroma but fresh. If you'd like to know how it turned out, please follow the recipe ;)

Yields: 4 portion (meal with steamed rice)

250 gr pangasius fillet (or tuna, or catfish)
150 gr chinese cabbage
2 bird eye chili (or more, if you like it hot)
1 lemongrass
2 bayleaves
5 lemonleaves
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 shallot, thin sliced (or 7 clove of small red onion)
3 tsp turmeric powder (or 5 cm fresh turmeric, peeled and ground)
1 tsp ginger powder (or 2 cm fresh ginger, peeled and crushed)
300 ml water
2 tbsp lemon juice (or 2 tbsp vinegar)
1/2 fresh tomato, diced
Salt, sugar, pepper to taste

Fry fish fillet with 3 tbsp oil until halfcooked, put aside.
On the same pan, using the remaining oil and fish stock: stir fry chili, lemongrass, bayleaves, lemonleaves, garlic, shallot, turmeric powder, and ginger powder. Stir until you smell strong aroma of turmeric cames out. Pour water and bring to boil. Add cut chinese cabbage.  Toss in fried fillet, stir until fully coated. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar. Turn stove off, add lemon juice and fresh tomato and stir evenly. Serve with hot rice.

Smakelijk!

Modified Tuna Pasta Salad with Volkmar Dressing

Actually no such thing as Volksmar Dressing. It was a name i gave to this salad dressing to remind me where i first tasted this kind of dressing. It was in Erfurt, when we were invited by Volksmar family for a dinner. Mr. And Mrs. Volksmar invited us out of the blue when they saw us standing in front of Erfurt Hauptbahnhof. He recognised us as Indonesian from the girl's headscarf style. Funny, no? :) They had two sons who were a part of AFS family and at that time were living as exchange student in Yogyakarta.

They were vegans, so the main menu we had that time were cheese and salad. Mrs. Volksmar had her own garden, so the salad she served was freshly picked from her backyard. We had arugula, mint, ijsberg sla, and other vegetables i forgot the name with an oily dressing. I asked her what the dressing was, and she said it was only olive oil with salt and pepper, mixed with sesame seeds.

Three attempts to remake the dressing, and i always failed.

When i was in Kitakyushu i tried many bottled salad dressings and i realised that italian style dressing was very similar to what Mrs. Volksmar had made. So this Volkmar Dressing was actually a modification from an italian style dressing to remake the dressing she made. Fortunately, i made it really close, and i'm happy to share it with you.

Yield: 2 plates of cold tuna pasta salad

A full fist of fussili or spirelli, boil until al dente and put inside a bowl
A cup of kopsla or romaine salad, sliced
A cup of ijsberg sla or lettuce, sliced
Half red paprika, thin sliced
Wash them all clean with cold water, mix with pasta and put inside refrigerator about an hour before serving

2 tbsp crispy sweet corn
4 tbsp canned tuna fish
Mix altogether with cold vegetables and pasta. Put aside.

Volksmar Dressing
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp vinegar
3 tsp fine granulated sugar
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Salt, pepper to taste
3 tbsp cold water
2 tsp white sesame seed
Mix evenly altogether.

Smakelijk!

Modified Knoblauch Sauce

Knoblauch in German means garlic, so this sauce was basically garlic sauce. This sauce was my favorite Nordsee sauce, they sold it as condiment for fried potato (they call it kartoffeln mit knoblauch). I didn't have sour cream so i modified the sauce using plain yoghurt. A little bit different in taste but surprisingly good when combined with fried potato.

100 ml plain yoghurt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 onion, finely chopped
Sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.

 If you are not in a hurry, drain yoghurt overnight using cheese cloth (or clean soft thin towel). Mix all ingredients in a cup. This sauce should have a strong garlic taste so add more garlic if necessary. Refrigerate for 1 hour before using it as dip sauce. Smakelijk!

PS. It tastes really good on tuna and corn salad. You should try that too!

Japanese Roll Cake

Happy birthday, dear husband! Yesterday was a special day and i wanted to make a special surprise for him. At first i wanted to make three layers of 1234 cake but then realised that i don't have a proper hand mixer with different speed, only a whisker. It would be difficult to set the batter without a proper mixer so i turned to roll cake, which needs only one speed to mix the dough. This Japanese roll cake was made really in a survival mode!!

Here is the recipe.
For the cake
4 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
50ml milk

For the filling
1 cup confectioner sugar
1 cup soft butter
Vanilla extract
1 tbsp corn flour

Preheat oven at 180 degree celcius. In a bowl, whisk egg with sugar until all sugar is diluted. Using an electric whisk, beat this mixture at high speed until white and fluffy, approximately 7 minute. You can consider it is done when you can leave trail on the surface of this mixture with the batter. Pour flour into bowl, fold evenly. Bake in 9 inch flat non stick brownies pan. You can use baking paper too. Bake 15 minute.

For buttercream filling, beat butter (if you use mixer, use low speed at this step. If you use whisk, beat forcefully!!) until white and smooth, then add dry ingredients a spoon at a time. Beat again at high speed until the mixture rises.

Coat one side of your pound cake with butter cream and roll. Put inside refrigerator for 30 minute. Your basic cake is ready. You can actually mix the filling with anything you want,  fruit of your choices, jam, jelly, or even put matcha powder to your buttercream batter.

Smakelijk!

PS: my brownies pan is not flat that is why the cake looks uneven. Then i got too excited when rolling the cake so i accidentally push it too hard. It went... flat and densed :( But well, i'm quite proud that i managed to beat the buttercream batter. After this one, i hope no more cake without hand mixer. -____-;

Grilled Fish Curry

A little fusion today between Indian and Sundanese food, because i wanted to have a kind of pepes (steamed fish) but did not find banana leaves and no sweet basil. This one is 'grilled' on a non stick pan, but sure you can also use grill oven. Tips: use a pyrex dish to make it easier to control whether your fish, is cooked alright or burnt.

Here is the recipe.
Marinate spice:
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
2 tsp ground brown mustard seed
Salt and Pepper to season

Main ingredients:
3 slices or 300 gr pangasius fillet (or any kind of white fish)
100 ml chicken broth
2cm crushed ginger
1 onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tomato, diced

1 stick lemongrass, sliced

1 stick large scallion/green onion, sliced

Marinate fish with spices and let it set in refrigerator for 30 minute. When the fish is ready, saute onion, garlic, and ginger with chicken broth. Pour this sauted spice on marinated fish and coat evenly. Prepare the pan (or preheat oven at 150 degree celcius), put fish in the pan and cover it with diced tomato, lemingrass, and scallion. Grill until fish is flaky. Serve with steamed basmati rice.

Smakelijk!

Lemon Yoghurt Muffin

It was May Day and husband had a free day! Yay! You know that it's nice to have a warm muffin for afternoon tea so i decided to make this one.
Here is the recipe for 2 ramekin cups.

6 tbsp all purpose flour
5 tbsp plain yoghurt
1 egg
1 tbsp vegetable oil
A pinch of salt
3 tbsp orange juice
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp lemon zest
30gr sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven at 170 degree celcius.
Whisk egg and oil together. Add yoghurt to the mixture. Mix flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda then sift into the previous liquid batter. Stir evenly. Dilute sugar in orange juice then add lemon juice and lemon zest to the mixture. Combine the juice with the batter. Prepare ramekin cups, apply butter to inside ramekin's side. Bake in two cups ramekin for 25 minute.

Ps. My oven heat was not even, it made my batter bleed :(

Smakelijk!

Klepon Salju ;)

Klepon is one of many indigenous Indonesian snack. It tastes like Japanese mochi but with a more firm texture. Normally klepon has green color for it uses paste extracted from  pandan leaves or suji leaves. Since i did not find those paste, i made white klepon instead. Salju means snow, it's quite ok to represent white color, i guess.

Okay, here is what to do to make klepon.

Yield: 20 medium size klepon.

1 cup glutinous rice flour
1/2 tsp salt

For the filling
1/2 cup finely chopped palm sugar

For the coating

2 cups grated coconut, steamed and seasoned with salt.

Knead flour with water until smooth and doesn't stick to your hand. You will find it a little bit hard and cracky but it does not matter as long as you can form a ball from the batter. Make small ball shapes and fill the centre with palm sugar. Meanwhile, prepare 1/2 litre of water and let it boil. When klepon balls are finished, boil them for about 3-5 minute until they float on the surface. Take them out from water then coat with grated coconut. The easiest way to coat without breaking the klepons is by spreading coconut in a wide lunchbox then roll klepon upon it. Let it cool and serve.

Smakelijk!

Ayam Kola (Fried Chicken with Cola Sauce)

This dish was very popular. Ayam kola was a signature food of one of Gelap Nyawang street vendors. I tried to remake it with a little modification to enrich the flavor, i hope you like it.

Here it goes.
For the crispy chicken:
600 gr chicken. I used chicken breast fillets, sliced into thin parts.
5 tbsp flour
Salt, pepper, garlic powder.

Mix flour with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Coat chicken fillets with flour mix then deep-fry it. Set aside.

For Cola sauce:
2 glass cola
2 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp sriracha chili sauce. I used typical Indonesian chili sauce called ABC chili sauce, which i personally think is better than Sriracha :p
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
6 dried cloves
2 cm cinnamon
Salt, nutmeg powder, and pepper to season

Saute chopped onion, garlic, cloves, and cinnamkn until fragrant then pour cola in. Add ketchup and chili sauce. Season with salt, nutmeg powder, and pepper. Stir evenly. When it comes to boil put in the crispy chicken and stir until all chicken are coated with sauce. Serve hot with steamed rice.

Smakelijk!

Mie Aceh Tumis (Stir Fry Acehnese Spicy Noodle)

So back then i made a bowl of Pangasius balado for breakfast and surprisingly it tasted good that my husband liked to take almost all fishes to the office. I was left with sauces leftover and stumbled upon @masakTV webisode, showing recipe of Acehnese noodle.

There it was, a combination of balado spices and Indian spices made this stir fried noodle tasted like Sumatran food with a smell of Indian curry. Nevermind, it was still good.

Here goes the recipe.
For balado sauce:
1 tomato
2 sticks red chili
2 stick bird eye chili
4 cloves garlic
1/2 onion
Process all of them in a food processor to get a thin paste.

1 stick lemongrass
2 bayleaves
2 tbsp vegetable oil
200 ml Chicken broth

Salt, pepper to taste
Saute the tomato paste with lemongrass and bayleaves. Add chicken broth and stir until it thickens. Season with salt and pepper. This is the base of balado sauce. You can put hard boiled eggs, fish, chicken, or any kind of meat inside the sauce.

For mie aceh:
Prepare dry spices:
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
Mix together. This is the base of mild curry powder.
You can use garam masala instead, just like i did. But that was what happened, a smell of India. Hehe. That was because garam masala contains other spices such as cardamom and aniseed, typical to Indian food.  

Prepare noodle ingredients:

100 gr dry noodle. Boil noodle so you have damp, ready to use noodle. You can also use preboiled noodle.

100 gr pokcoy, chopped

100 gr cabbage, thin sliced

100 gr enoki mushroom

1/2 tomato, diced

Salt for seasoning

Sliced tomato and chopped cucumber for condiment. 

Prawn crackers/chips/kerupuk.

Preheat pan/skillet on top of medium heat. Stir together balado sauce and 1/2teaspoon dry spices. Add a little water, approximately 150 ml, we want to have a moist and 'watery' mixture. Toss tomato into the batter then put in pokcoy and cabbage. Cook until vegetables are tender. Put noodles and enoki mushroom into the mixture, stir evenly. You can add chili powder if you think that this is not hot enough for your taste. Sprinkle salt to season. Serve with condiment (and with prawn chips!)

Smakelijk!