my go-to recipe(s).

I'm pretty sure those who cook have a go-to recipe, right? Someone's coming for dinner? Or lunch? Or any other time of the day? Have no fear because "go-to" is there to save the day! While some people are comfortable cooking dishes like nasi lemak, ayam goreng and gulai in big batches for big crowds, I haven't had the same luck getting those things right, especially the ayam goreng (even just for my husband). Yes, you heard me right, alright; even after all these years of cooking, no matter what I do, I can't seem to make ayam goreng with utmost perfection.

So, having said that, what is my GO-TO? 

Butter chicken, that's what! 

I actually adapted the recipe from a butter prawn recipe, but since I found it, I think I've made butter chicken more times than I've made butter prawn!

Hehe. 

Well, anyway. Yesterday I planned on cooking chicken for buka puasa. Having a go-to recipe is wonderful but it was only 11 days into Ramadan and we already had butter chicken sometime in the first week, so I definitely couldn't (well, I could, but wouldn't) repeat the same recipe. 

Had to troll the internet for some other chicken recipes when I saw a really simple recipe for garlic-herb roast.

It was perfect (for me!) because it requires so few ingredients (all of which I have), it is super simple to prepare and I didn't need to use the stove (bad luck with ayam goreng, remember?), plus I didn't want to use the stove anyway since I had some laundry hanging to dry outside. And, most importantly, it's different from the roast that we normally have (you know, soy sauce, honey etc., which we just had the day before!).

Wrote the recipe down (walaupun simple, tapi first time buat) and visualised (and hoped) that it would turn out alright. 

Ting ting. Husband messages me at around 5 p.m.,

"Buka apa hari ni ye?"

"Chicken", was my simple reply. Didn't want to get his hopes up too high. Hehe. 

So, how did it turn out?

Wonderful (if I may say so myself)!

Initially planned to save some for sahur as well but none made it past 8 p.m., dalam kata lain... habis semuanya! 

And because it was a good recipe, I'm thinking that this could be my other "go-to" too!

xxx

Now, on to the recipe(s):

Butter chicken:

Ingredients:

1. chicken - I normally use about 3 chicken keels, cut into smaller pieces

2. 3 tablespoons butter - I also save some oil from frying the chicken to mix with the butter

3. 6 birds eyes chillies (cili api) - I use cili kering, in larger quantity to keep the heat down (you may adjust to your liking)

4. 3 sprigs curry leaves - Tip: if you have fresh ones, leave them to dehydrate in the fridge and take them off the stem and store in a bottle. Keep refrigerated. These days, I have a constant supply.

5. 3 cloves garlic - I normally use about 5-6 because I love the taste

6. 1/2 teaspoon salt

7. 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

8. 6 tablespoon grated coconut (dry fry until fragrant) - I use a packet of santan serbuk mixed with 200 ml of water. Alternatively, you can use susu sejat if you don't like the taste of coconut.

Method:

1. Shallow fry chicken and set aside.

2. Melt butter, add chillies, curry leaves, garlic, salt. Fry for about 2 mins or until fragrant. If using santan or susu sejat, put in at this point.

3. Add prawns, sugar, soy sauce. If using grated coconut, add in at this point. Cook over high heat.

And wallah! Siap! Best served with steamed rice and salads of your choice. 

Garlic-herb Roast

Ingredients:

1. 2 tablespoons olive oil

2. 6 garlic cloves

3. 1/4 cup vinegar or lemon juice - I tried with vinegar yesterday

4. 3 tablespoon fresh thyme - I used dried thyme

5. Coarse salt - I used normal salt 

6. black pepper - about 2 tablespoon also

7. chicken cutlets - I had about 5-6 yesteday, but I think this recipe was meant for 10 cutlets

Method:

1. With pestle and mortar (kalau malas silalah pakai blender), crush the garlic and pepper together. 

2. Put in olive oil, vinegar and thyme.

3. Marinate the chicken for 10-30 mins.

4. Preheat oven at 250 degrees celcius - Tip: when the oven is slightly heated, take your roasting pan and place it in the oven to be preheated too. I do quite alot of roasting and I find that doing this really helps to get a perfect roast. 

5. Take out the preheated roast pan and place chicken on it. Also put in all the access marinade together with the chicken.

6. Reduce oven temperature to 220 degrees and put chicken in - it'll be ready in about 40-60 minutes or so.

And wallah! Siap! In my opinion, this goes really well with breads. We had it with pita yesterday, with salads. Tip: the drippings from the roast can be used as salad dressing and gravy for the chicken. Sedap gila! Alternatively, while waiting for the chicken to cook, you can prepare some salsa. We had left-over salsa with our meal last night :)

xxx

Happy trying, everyone!

Who knows, maybe my go-to will become your go-to, too? ;)

buttercream.

It's been eons since I baked anything. My mug cakes obviously don't count. At least to me they don't.

And since baking has become such a luxury (because that means I get to spend some me-time rekindling my relationship with my old time love), I've always wanted to save it for a special occasion.  

Since I woke up really early that Saturday morning when we convened at Da's house, I got right to work in the kitchen.

I got all my ingredients out of the fridge to bring them to room temperature and while waiting, I managed to get loads of ironing done.

By the time I was done, my ingredients were more or less ready. So, I got to beating my butter... all 300 grams of butter... by hand with a whisk!

And that's when I realised how crazy I was to think that I could beat the butter without a mixer.

Yes, not even a hand mixer!

After a while, realising that it was an impossible feat, I "improvised" by melting the butter (all the time with fingers crossed!) hoping that everything would turn out well eventually.

Managed to mix everything well, and then I put my cake batter in the oven to bake.

Since I was in the midst of rekindling my relationship with my long lost love, I figured that this was obviously the right time to try out a new buttercream recipe... which if you're used to baking, you'd know how crazy of an idea it is if you're without a mixer.

I knew the idea was crazy but hey, what's 2 sticks of butter compared to the 300 grams I initially attempted? I could surely beat 2 sticks without fail right? And right I was!

I googled for some tips for the perfect buttercream and got to work.

Basically, I woke up every single muscle in my hand and got them to work (hard!).

And you know what? The end result made it all worth it.

So glad that my buttercream was finally not too soft to hold itself and that by the time we got to our destination, it didn't look like this -

yes, this was one of my many attempts 2 years ago. such a sorry sight i know. yummy enough because everyone loved it (probably because it was for free) but yeah, it IS A SORRY SIGHT. and this was only transported from my house to my office which is just 5 minutes away. haha

A long way to go to become a bakerella, but once my boy's a bit bigger, I'll start baking loads again.

Oh, you lovely cake smell, how I've missed you.

Now, for the recipe I used:

2 sticks of butter (about 100 gm)

4 cups confectioners (icing) sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp milk

Instructions:

Leave butter to room temperature. Never put in microvawe to soften. And at room temperature, never leave it until it is too soft. Room temperature means that the consistency is that of ice cream. Not too hard that you can't beat it. But not too soft 'til it can't hold itself.

(This, I think is the most important part which I failed to learn in my previous attempts)

Beat the butter and vanilla until light and fluffy.

Beat in icing sugar bit by bit and beat well with each addition.

Add milk and keep beating til light and fluffy.

Then, frost your cake!

Happy trying!

home is where the heart is.

As a kid, I used to be so ashamed of my mom for certain reasons.

It's like this. When we went to eat out, she would bring food from home. Okay, so maybe it's not heavy food that she brings. Most of the time, it's tidbits like the honey roasted almond she made or sambal ikan bilis garing or rempeyek. I know, right? Like, WHATTT? Why do you bring food from home when the whole point of eating out was to eat food made outside of home???

Then, I started living on my own.I started cooking for my own household. I started traveling more.

And each time we traveled, I would bring along food FROM HOME  (my kids will so hate me for this, I already know), like Rocky, mineral water, cookies and the most recent must be the most epic - roti Gardenia, Nutella and NASI GORENG. And we weren't going for a picnic, mind you. We were about to stay at Glory Beach Resort, which promised about 6 free meals per day. But that didn't stop me from bringing food from home.

I then realised that... Home is where the heart is.

After staying there for just one night, I became all homesick. I tweeted twice about how Glory Beach isn't so glorious after all and the moment my husband suggested that we go home on Saturday night after all events were done, I packed our bags and put them at the front door.

I was so glad to wake up in my own bed this morning.

To celebrate being home, I had a ball in the kitchen throughout the day. It was great that I had so many things that I missed and wanted to eat and one of them is Cucur Manis.

There is no stopping me when I want to eat something, I tell you. But I had to make sure that my husband was a willing "rat lab" to my new-found recipes. When he (reluctantly) agreed to eat the Cucur Manis if I made them, I got myself to work.

I ROCKED IT(!!!)
(It's the first time I made this from scratch, please pardon my excitement)

It's really, really easy to make.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup tepung gandum
1/4 cup self-raising floor
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup of susu pekat manis (2 spoons of susu pekat mixed with water until it becomes half cup)
1/2 tin of jagung krim (any brand will do but I used Yeo's)

How to make:
Put flour and sugar in mixing bowl.
Add all wet ingredients.
Stir with spatula.
Note: The batter is runny. Don't go and add more flour or anything alright? It's meant to be that way.
Heat pan.
Put in some oil (but not so much like you are deep frying)
Put in blobs of batter in hot oil with medium sized spoon.
If the batter leaves the pan or is golden, means it's ready to be turned.
Serve hot with hot tea.

Hot tea mesti pandai buat sendiri kan?

So, happy trying! Home really is where the heart is. I am so glad we have a home over our heads :)

And here's another something that will make you drool. Saje dengki. Heh.

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

my reason for sit ups.

If there is one thing which I absolutely love doing after being married, it would be cooking (much to my mom’s chagrin because I hardly did back in TTDI).

I don’t know if its just me or I’m anal like that, but I get very territorial in the kitchen and once someone looks over me too much or tells me how to do things twice, tops, I get agitated and give that person the “if you know it so well, then why don’t you do it yourself” look and lose my mood to prepare whatever it is that I was preparing.

Mean, I know. But a necessary evil all the same.

Well, anyway, the transition from being unmarried to married has lead to many kitchen mishaps. For one, I almost lost a finger, remember?

Plus, I am so used to cooking for a household of 5 and my brother is always hungry (or he seems to be), I have had trouble budgeting the amount of food to cook. And trust me; no one trusts anyone else apart from me where budgeting is concerned because I am The Master. I claim so myself because it’s tested and proven.

And then, when I get my budgeting right and convince myself that “3 pieces of chicken is enough to feed the both of you, dimwit, not 5 or 7!” (I mean, how long can I stand looking at my husband’s gorged eyeballs, while he gives me the “ARE YOU CRAZY?” look every time dinner is served?), I have trouble with salt.

I get my portions right, but I get my flavours wrong. I cook the right amount of chicken or fish but I make gravy enough to feed a platoon of soldiers (hyperbolically speaking, of course). But day in, day out, it’s always salt that I’m having trouble with.

But Alhamdulillah.

Many days have passed since and I have been trying my best to cook when I can. I’m traditional in the sense that I feel some kind of fulfillment at the end of the day if I am able to stuff my husband with good home-cooked food, much to his horror at times because I still do get a ‘lil overzealous with the portions. Haih.

And that means that I now eat more as well (I get hungry looking at him eat) and that has caused me perut lipat-lipat (imagine a multi-tiered cake without any cake stand in your head), which in turn has forced me to do sit ups before going to bed. Night before last, I did 25. Last night, I did 15.

Please don’t ask me why there has been a reduction in number. I’m weird like that. Hahahaha.

Well, anyway, despite getting all worked up and insecure about my expanding midriff, I do still indulge in all the worldly goodness of all things sweet. After all, a ‘lil bit won’t hurt, right, right? Wrong, I know.

Anyways, the point of this entry (when I began writing it just now) was merely to share a pancake recipe which I whipped from ThePinkStiletto’s Blog. It’s mighty easy to make and can be prepared even on weekday mornings before work (provided you wake up early enough, of course).

Well, here goes the recipe (which I improvised because I didn’t have some of the things in my house) –

Dry Ingredients
1 cup flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients
1 egg
1 tsbp oil (I feel that one is enough already)
1 cup milk (preferably HL because it already has a vanilla taste)
if not, just add a tiny bit of vanilla essence

Instructions
1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. In a different bowl, mix all the wet ingredients.
3. Then, pour the mixed wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients gradually until all clumps of flour have dissolved.
4. Take out a non-stick pan (preferably) and pour pancake mixture.
5. Watch the pancake.
6. The sure sign that you can already turn it is when you see tiny holes forming in the mixture (I know I should be more helpful by giving a pictorial tutorial, but didn’t get to snap a photo, sorry).
7. Once most of the surface is covered with holes, flip it to the other side.
8. And then, you’re ready to eat (please take it off the pan first okay. unless of course you're real hungry)

And here’s a photo to make you drool (hopefully) on this lovely, rainy Friday afternoon.

just drizzle maple syrup or honey and you're good to go!

Happy trying!

Perhaps you can make it for tea, today!

p.s.: The mugs at the back were wedding gifts. I think that person is my reader :) Many thanks to you for the gift! We love it and used it right away! :)

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

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 :)