perfect ten, with love.

[continued from here]

I looked into the larder and in the fridge and figured that I should not bother making something which I’m not good at making.

If there was spaghetti, I would have made that since Adik is a HUGE FAN!

But there was none, so I made these:

butter carrot rice.


The rice is real easy to make.

Ingredients

• 1 ½ pot (is this how we spell it?) of rice.
• Around 20g (max) of salted butter (you can measure by using the indicator on the butter packaging).
• A little bit of olive oil. Mine was slightly on the oily side that day so remember not to be overzealous with the oil.
• 1 ½ carrots (medium size), grated. This gives the rice the saffron-like colour, which I love.
• Onions (no exact measurement, but approx. ¾ of a big onion)
• Salt (I use garam kasar because my mom says that it’s slightly sweeter)

Steps:

• put olive oil in pan and leave to heat for a while.
• then, put in the butter to melt with the olive oil.
• put in carrots first and leave to sauté.

*DO NOT put in onions first because onions burn faster and that would make your dish slightly bitter.

• after the carrots have started to soften, put in the onions and leave them both to sauté. make sure the carrots and onions are well cooked (tapi bukan garing atau hangus okay?)

*Mama taught me a trick. when cooking any dish with vege like tomatoes, bendi or carrots etc., make sure the vege are cooked properly. if not the food will spoil very easily. that’s why sometimes, you find that your curry yang ada carrots or tomatoes cepat berbuih and rosak.

• add in salt as required.
• turn fire off and leave the tumisan to rest. it will normally cook in its own heat.
• prepare rice and add in water as how you like your rice to be (kering or basah or lembik or keras).

*always bear in mind that the tumisan is a little bit runny too, so the water you add to the rice depends on how runny your carrot-onion base is.

• put the rice cooker and don’t forget to press “COOK” button.
• to add flavour, add in a few chunks of chicken (which I did).

chicken wings "brulee"

The chicken wings "brulee" was a (slight) kitchen mishap. I was rushing and the chicken had not defrosted properly yet so, it was a little runny. I misgauged the amount of soy sauce and honey to be put into the chicken marinade, and that was what caused the chicken to slightly (slightly la sangat) char. Remember, when sugar burns, it will turn into some sort of brulee (nicer word for hitam). And since this combo involved soy sauce and honey, it “bruleed” more than normal.

But whatever it is, looks can be deceiving. As black as the chicken turned out to be, apart from the charred bits, it was quite succulent ;)

udang padprik.

And this, my dear readers, is my version of udang padprik. I had padprik in mind and was happily preparing until I realised we didn’t have any chilli boh. What??? So, for flavour, I had to use cili api giling and for colour, I had to use chilli sauce. Which explains why it turned out to be orange-ish instead of red. When making padprik, please remember to add lemongrass and also lime leaves (daun limau purut). These ingredients can really add character to a simple dish, I tell you.

x

Apart from the slight mishap I had with the chicken, my biggest mishap that day was when my dad asked for a simple brunch.

He wanted 2 sunny side ups and some bread.

And I burnt my finger making him his sunny side up. Fail betul!

Other than that, all of them were happy and these 2 had second helpings despite Mister who initially warned Adik,

“Adik, kalau sakit perut after this you know why!”

And Adik kept on reiterating that she didn’t know why she was SO hungry, so since she’s hungry she had to eat some more, while going nom nom nom nom on the food I brought. Hah!

Mengaku je lah sedap, right? Right? Right? ;p

Of course, I was super happy too ;)

Shy to comment? Well, never mind! Your reactions mean the world to me! Make me smile today :)