Fried Pastel

Among the favorite snacks i used to hunt when stopping at cake kiosk on traditional market are kue dadar (rolled pandan pancake with coconut and sugar filling), kue lapis (traditional layer cake made from rice flour), risoles (rolled pastry with ragout filling), pastel (wrapped fritters with fillings), kroket (local version of croquette), various puddings, and sometimes kue talam (nyonya rice cake). Those yummy things are perfect for weekend breakfast appetizer. Sometimes, there are days when i craved for fried pastels with sambal kacang (peanut chili sauce) in unlimited batch. That time i would beg mom to practice her recipe for me to nibbling.

This long weekend, after pausing for weeks, we would like to returned to kitchen and tried some pending recipes. I was searching mom’s sacred book recipe for pastel ingredients but could not located exactly. Lucky we have powerful google guru’s anyway. Few things i remembered from the mom’s recipe were i did not like the texture of the dough for it was crunchy after frying but just last for hours. The flour type might contribute in evoking the crunchy texture so i decided trying another flour usually used for making bread and noodles. The recipe was tweaking between my memories and the browsing recipes.

Served : 15 pcs

Dough
250 gr flour (high gluten preferable)
50 gr margarine
80 ml water
½ tsp salt

Filling
2 pcs potato
5 pcs carrot
250 gr fillet chicken breasts, diced
2 boiled eggs (cut thins)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 pack glass vermicelli, soak in water first
Nutmeg to taste
Pinch of Salt
Cooking oil

1. Diced half steamed potato and carrot separately. Heat frying pan, add oil and garlic follow by diced chicken and fry for 2-3 minutes until lightly coloured. Reduced heat, add potato and carrot. Stir in salt and nutmeg, follow by soak glass vermicelli. Sauteed until well done.

2. Mix the flour with margarine and salt first in larger bowl, then add water gradually until the mixture forming a ball. Knead for about 2-3 minutes, until the dough is smooth and no longer sticky.

2. Flour a work surface or counter. Gently pick quite amounts from the dough, and start knead with rolling pin until thins.

3. Use your small bowl or any circle objects between 4” to 5” diameter as dough cutter.

4. Place the wrapper flat in the palm of your hand, then using your other hand place 2-3 tsp of the filling mixture into the centre of the wrapper together with sliced boiled eggs. Bring the sides together to form a half moon shape and pinch the seam firmly to seal it in a pleat. The pleat style needs a lot of practice but you can use regular molding for easier pleat.

5. Deep fried, and served.

This time high gluten flour works better, no splitting dough and gives extra chewy texture to the wrappers without losing its crunchiness. Another thing, the surface looks more smooth without any crack or bubbling. I prefer this new recipes, and might try another practice later on.

For Sambal Kacang sauce :

Fried peanut
Sugar
Salt
Lemon
Ground chili

Blend the peanut until well managed, add sugar, salt, lemon and ground chili together. Served.

Feta Cheese & Spinach Salad

Still in the process of cleaning up the fridge, Kiko also cleaned up her book rack when she came across the recipe book, with this salad recipe inside. We were happy because it will used up some rarely used ingredients (Feta Cheese, mustard cinnamon, and many more), and I'm happy because it use cheese :D.

Preparing the dressing is simple and quick. I prefer to prepare it in advance, and put it in watertight container, and stash it in the fridge for later use. And when you crave for the salad, put the spinach, cucumber, onion and tomato in salad bowl or plate, shake the pre-mixed dressing, and sprinkle on top of the vegetables. Crumble enough amount of Feta Cheese, and it is set for a picture, or to satisfy your craving.

Since I'm running out of powder mustard, we use mustard jam, which is why the taste is so strong. Adding some pepper didn't help, Feta cheese slightly helps. Probably you might want to reduce the mustard a little bit.

And a little bit of note for the recipe. The amount of vegetables used is too much.... I think you can feed a horde of goat with it. Other than that, this salad is very refreshing.....


Ingredients (Serves 6)

• 2lb/1kg fresh spinach
• 1/2 cup/125ml Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 tbsp White Wine Vinegar (We replace with white cooking wine & white vinegar with the same ammount, probably explain the weird taste we got)
• 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
• Salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cucumber, sliced
• 1lb/500gr cherry tomatoes
• 8oz/250gr Feta Cheese, crumbled
• 6 spring onion, chopped

Directions:

• Trim the spinach and rinse thoroughly under cold running water. Dry well and place in a salad bowl
• Put the oil, vinegar, lemon juice, cinamon, mustard, salt and pepper in a small jar with a screw top and shake well
• Pour half the dressing over the spinach and toss well
• Add the cucumber, tomatoes, Feta and spring onions to the salad
• Pour the remaining dressing over the top, toss gently and serve

Recipe from Cheese Cook Book, published by Silverback (ISBN: 1-930603-89-4)

Evening Feta & Pepermint Dipper

Still in the attempt to clean up the fridge, we are looking some recipe that will use up our Feta when we found Dagmar's Cucumber, mint and feta dip. We made one last week, only to find that our Sour Cream has expired. And when it finally completed last night, we were not happy. The dip lack the taste of mint, and it is totally awful with Nachos... the salty Nachos just didn't match the dominant salty taste of Feta and the sour cream.

It is after we browsed through the original recipe that we recall our cucumber last week, bought before we found out about the expired sour cream. It is immediately de-seeded, cut into 5x1cm piece, dipped, and chewed. We instantly fell in love with dipped cucumber, and the dip didn't last more than 15 minutes that night.


With some raw materials left, I grab some fresh peppermint leaves, and made a new dip sauce, this time with generous amount of peppermint leaves. In addition to cucumber, I dipped a piece of French Baguette, leftover from garlic bread. Both match perfectly, and the baguette will certainly be on the dip list next time.

Again... this one does not last more than 15 minutes......

The 2 in 1 Tomato Soup

Although I insist that it would be safer for us to buy instead of cooking our own tomato soup, she insist me to promise to cook her one. So finally last week I keep my promise, and use Jamie's recipe posted by Venny in her blog. Since there are only 2 of us, not to mention other recipe tried that day, we cut the recipe into half. Here is the result:


We put the soup from the recipe to a blender, then strain to obtain smoother texture. The result looks convincing, except that we got only 1 small cup instead of 3. Then here all the laughter came.

First, the soup smell more to sambal balado (Padang's Cuisine), and taste like one. We can still trace the taste of the tomato, though, and she said that it taste good, but I still think it reminds me of sambal balado. I think somehow I cut wrong amount of red pepper and chillies from the original recipe

And when we see the residue on the strainer, we almost rolling on the floor laughing. It reminds us to chili for Ayam Pop, another Padang's cuisine.

Fortunately the soup is still edible, and does not cause any side effect so far. And hopefully she now agree that it is better to buy rather than my version of tomato soup :D

Cold Pasta Salad

Pasta and cheese.... hmm.... a combination that is hard to resist, even when it is in form of letters, numbers and photos in recipe book. Especially when it took only 30 minutes to prepare, over an evening coffee session. Any other objection?

Ingredients:

• 200gr Fusili Pasta
  
• 2 Red Tomatoes
  
• 150gr Broccoli
  
• 100gr Cheddar, grated (Optional)
  
• 250gr Smoke Chicken (I run out of stock, and replace it with chicken burger meat instead)
• 3 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 tablespoon Lemon Juice
• 2 shallots, coarsely minced
  
• 4 tablespoon Mayonnaise
  

Direction for dressing:
Mix Mayonnaise, Olive Oil and Shallots into mixing bowl, then stir. Keep it in cold in the fridge until ready to serve

Direction for pasta mix:

1. Cook the Fusili until Al Dente, and dry
2. Boil the broccoli
   
3. The tomatoes should be unseeded, and the sliced to your taste. I like to cut it into square
4. Smoke chicken (or in my case, chicken burger meat) should be cut into square
5. Then store them all in the fridge until ready to serve

Direction for serving:

1. I like to arrange the fusili as the base, broccoli circled above the fusili, and then the smoke chicken and tomatoes mixed in the middle
2. Pour the dressing, and topped with grated cheese (Note: I forgot the cheese once, and it still taste good. Thus, I put the cheese as optional)
   
3. Take your spoon and fork, taste it, and invite me for a dinner :D

Recipe translated from Menu Magazine

Baking a Garlic Bread

A very successfully garlic bread, on our 2nd attempt. The first one few weeks ago went awry when we put it too long in the oven.

This time, we wrap it in Aluminium foil, before putting it in the pre-heated oven. Set the temperature to 200 Celsius, and timer to 7 minutes. After 7 minutes, unwrap the foil at the top of the bread, then put it back in the oven for another 3 minutes.

Have a nice garlic bread :D