~ seeking peace spice by spice by spice
Today’s light lunch of Korean gimbap. Easy to make and easy to eat!
First, prepare short grain Japanese rice. Pickled daikon strips, carrot strips and fried beef slices that had been marinated with soy sauce.
Place seaweed onto a rolling bamboo mat with rice and all the other ingredients. Then roll tight.
Once rolled, brush with a light layer of sesame oil.
With a sharp knife, cut into slices and enjoy! This was really good on a hot weekend. I’ll be making this for work lunches soon!
This is a western style chicken chop dish originated from Malaya. The story went as usual when it came to colonist foods. A British man wanted a taste of home and the cooks, many of them Hainanese, would make this version for their colonial masters.
I made my version because I had frozen deboned chicken thighs and a packet of frozen peas. After browsing other recipes and blog sites, I made my version based on the family’s preference. I mean, that’s what cooking is all about right? To be creative and inventive and cook things your family will like.
So anyway, the first part is to marinade the chicken with salt and give spice powder. Then immerse the thighs in soy sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce, pepper and sugar. By right, remove the skin. But I wanted the skin on for some reason.
The breading. Plain flour, egg and Pablo bread crumbs.
The sauce. In a pan, sauté onions. Then I used chicken stock. And added a heaped teaspoon of wholegrain mustard. Season with salt and a tinge of sugar. Added four packets of tomato ketchup (leftover ketchup packets from fast food joints) and a packet of chilli sauce. To thicken the sauce, the cornflour slurry technique. And voila! They loved the sauce.
To assemble, place crispy chicken thigh on a plate then spoon over the onion sauce. Serve with homemade potato wedges and a side of boiled green peas.
And there you have it. A relic from the colonial past and carried on today in some coffeeshops. I hear, mostly in the northern parts of Malaysia where this dish is still popular.
Ok once I learn to make something new and easy, I get completely obsessed. My latest obsession is with this spinach and cheese in phyllo pastry. It’s simple to make and everyone likes it. Well, most anyone.
I’ve made so many versions of it so I’m just going to post my latest one, and in my opinion the best version simply because using fresh spinach is so much more delicious than the frozen ones I’ve been using.
The concept is simple. A cheese and spinach filling. A custard topping. And phyllo pastry as the base and cover.
For this picture, I’ve moved on to the second layer. Many do it with only one layer but I find if you have the extra ingredients, making two layers makes it thicker and more moorish. So first spread cooked spinach.
And then add cheese. I’ve been using feta all along but for this particular day, my supermarket ran out of feta. So I used dollops of ricotta cheese and sharp cheddar. Season with lots of sea salt and black pepper.
Then the custard. For this custard, I what three whole eggs with one tub (125ml) of Greek yogurt. Season with salt and pepper. Add a splash of milk and that’s it.
Cover the dough. And because I learn from experience, I watched how some people would cut the pastry into squares first before baking. It helps! If you don’t, yes, it will look prettier but the process of cutting crispy phyllo in front of guests is a huge mess!
And then voila! It’s all ready to be served.
For the cheesy part, feel free to experiment. My aunt uses mozzarella, and I think next time I’ll do these pastries in individual portions. With mozzarella and pine nuts!
Enjoy trying! It’s an easy dish to whip up for last minute entertaining. 🙂
There’s a firm favourite fish amongst the Malays from the ladies side. Most men I know do not like this fish. It has quite a strong smell but once cooked, it’s delicious. It has a firm flesh, the skin a bit tough so you can’t eat the crispy skin. You’ve got to peel the out skin first after cooking to enjoy the firm sweet meaty flesh.
In Malay, this fish is called cencaru and even the local fishmongers know that it’s well liked by the Malays and not so by the other races. If not why would he tempt me by calling out just as I was walking or if the supermarket, ‘Ikan cencaru nak tak?’ (Do you want this cencaru fish?’ Haven’t eaten this fish in years, I caved and walked back to him, and before I knew it, I had three fish in my hand.
It’s best eaten fried or baked with sambal or soy sauce chilli padi dip. I made the first version, or rather got the Helper to do so for me.
We first made the sambal paste together and cooked the sambal through. After that, slit the top part of the fish and stuff as much sambal as you can. Before this, we seasoned the fish with salt and ground turmeric. And then bake. My kitchen smelled of fish! But afterwards, when the fish was done and the house smelled normal again, we both enjoyed eating the fish with hot plain rice. It’s a kampong favourite and us so modern in our sanitized public apartments have forgotten to appreciate the foods of the past.
Sambal paste
1. blend soft already boiled down dried chillies (about 20 pieces) with three onions and four cloves of garlic till very fine.
2. Fry over medium heat till cooked.
3. Add a bit of tamarind paste, salt and sugar to taste. The sambal should be sweet and tangy.
For those living in this region, the Ramly burger is like the epitome of street food burgers. Beef patties are grilled and encased in a thin layer of omelette. The sauce…that’s their secret. Lots and lots of brown sauce, mayonnaise, chilli sauce…. the perfect night stack in Malaysia.
The burger Ramly is banned in Singapore, but there are many stalls during bazaars selling these burgers under the Ramly banner. They used other patties but because the original patties are banned, I guess the manner how these burgers are made allowed the Singaporean vendors to use the Ramly name.
At home, I decided to make my own version. Well, for this one that The May made them. I used expensive Angus beef patties instead of the cheap unhealthy frozen kinds because I wanted the kids to eat healthily. But we followed the Ramly style, with an omelette encasing the juicy patties. And for The Son, a slice of cheese on the beef patties before it got wrapped in the golden eggy blanket.
It was a hit for dinner that night. Will definitely make it again!
The Occasional Cook 