30 Minutes Rapid Rolls

We still have a big batch of left over beef stew from yesterday’s dinner so I decided to make these buns to eat with it. This recipe is quick and easy to make. Hub and the children love it but I find it taste somewhat too yeasty.

This time I ask my daughter to help shape the buns. She’s so excited and just couldn’t wait for the buns to come out of the oven. Got her to brush the buns with butter too. Actually I’m trying to get my daughter to help out around the house as the brother is having exam this week but whenever I am not looking she will disappear upstairs to watch television…Grrrrr

I know there are parents out there who treat their children like long-term guests in their home for fear that if they ask the children to help with the house chores, they will be loved less. The children are not even expected to do simple things like clear their plates from the table or put away their clothes.  

But what happens when the children moves out of the house, can they survive on their own? For me, the lesson to be learnt here is to not let the desire to remain indispensable to the ones we love to cloud our judgment. The world needs more responsible people.

30 Minutes Rapid Rolls
(Adapted from Delishar)

Ingredients

3 ¼ bread flour / all-purpose flour

1 cup warm milk (pour milk into a microwave-safe container and microwave on medium high for 1 minute)

2 tbsp instant yeast

4 tbsp sugar / honey

1 tsp salt

1 whole egg

¼ cup butter - melted

2 tbsp butter - melted

Instructions

In a small bowl, combine the warm milk and sugar then followed by the yeast and stir to mix well. Let the mixture sit for about 5 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C.  Lightly grease the baking tray.

In the mixer bowl with dough hook attached, add the flour and salt.

On the lowest setting, mix in the egg and the melted butter.  Then pour in the bubbly yeast mixture.

Allow this to mix until dough clings to paddle and cleans the sides of the bowl. Dough will be pretty sticky.

With floured hands, tip dough out on lightly floured surface. Divide and shape into 16 pieces. 

Place on the baking tray, covered with damp tea towel and allow it to rest for 10 minutes.

Bake for 8-12 minutes on center rack until lightly golden brown.  Remove them from the oven and immediately brush with melted butter.

Let it cool just enough so it won't burn your mouth when you take a bite.

How fast was that!

Fried Fish in Green Sambal

Fried fish with sambal is a very popular Malay dish in Johore. There are many variations of sambal sauce and this one use fresh long green chili. Each time I have this dish, I remember the shop we used to patronize near my house, Lembah Impian. Unfortunately, the shop has since closed down.

This is a very simple dish that goes so well with a bowl of hot steamed rice. Hub and my son are capable of polishing off huge portion of rice whenever I cooked this dish. It’s easy to prepare too.

For the fish, I always go to the Chinese fishmonger near the Kepayan stalls (near my brother’s house) along the Lintas highway coming from the airport to Penampang. The prices are slightly higher but his fish is so much fresher than those in Penampang Market.

Fried Fish in Green Sambal

Ingredients

500gm Mackerel fish - Gutted

10 pcs fresh long green chilies – roughly chopped

1 yellow onion – peeled and cut into wedges

4 shallots – peeled

6 cloves of garlic – peeled

1 tsp shrimp paste sauce

¼ cup of Tamarind juice (½ tsp of tamarind paste dissolved in ¼ cup of water)

Salt – to taste

Sugar – to taste

Instructions

Clean the fish then score a couple of slits in the thickest part of the fish and dry the fish with kitchen towel.  Rub salt and turmeric powder over the fish including the cavity.

Heat up a deep wok and add enough oil for deep frying and when the oil is very hot, fry the fish until golden brown and crisp. Remember not to over crowd the wok. Drain them on paper towels to rid of excess oil then transfer into a serving dish. Set aside.

Using a pestle and mortar, pound the shallots and garlic. Transfer into a bowl and set aside. Then pound the chilies. Be careful when you do this as you really do not want to get any chili in your eyes. 

Heat up another wok and add about 3 tbsp of oil then sauté the yellow onion until soft. To this, add the garlic, shallots, green chili paste and shrimp paste then sauté until fragrant.

For the shrimp paste sauce, I normally use this.

Add the tamarind juice and season with salt and sugar. Let it simmer for another 2 minutes then pour the sauce over the fried fish.

Voila!

Baked Pandan Cake (Kuih Bingka Pandan)

This is a traditional Malay desert with a custard-like texture and flavoured with fresh pandan flavour and coconut milk. Pandan always goes well with coconut milk. It’s such a beautiful combination. It’s really easy and quick to make.  

This cake is also called Kuih Kemboja because of the traditional bronze mould used for the preparation of this cake that resembles a plumeria flower.

I made this cake yesterday for Hub and my daughter. They love it very much especially the crusty burnt edges.  

Baked Pandan Cake (Kuih Bingka Pandan)

(Adapted from Azie Kitchen)

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour

1 cup sugar

1 cup of pandan water

3 cups coconut milk (2 cups boxed coconut milk & 1 cup water)

3 whole eggs

2 tbsp unsalted butter - melted

½ tsp salt

½ tsp of pandan paste

3 tbsp sesame seeds

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C.

To prepare the pandan water, wash 5 – 6 pieces of pandan leaves and cut into small pieces then blend together with 1 cup of water. Strain then set aside.

Put all the ingredients except for the sesame seeds in a blender and blend until smooth.  Mixture should turn into a thick slurry.

Grease the baking pan with a tiny bit of oil then transfer it into the oven. When the oil is in the baking pan is hot, take out the pan then pour the batter into the baking pan up to the brim and sprinkle sesame seeds on top then baked for 45 minutes (on upper and lower heat).

The cake will puff up on baking but when it cools down, it will sink a bit.

In the final 10 minutes of the baking time, switch the oven’s control panel to upper heat, this is to brown the surface of the cake so that the edges of the cake will be light golden brown and crusty.

Allow to cool completely.  Cut and serve.

2-Ingredients Flourless Nutella Brownies

I made this desert to be served during our Hari Raya Aidiladha lunch recently and have never seen a plateful of anything go down so fast. These brownies are made with just Nutella and eggs. That's it. They're incredibly easy to fix.  

This recipe is from Nigella Lawson's cookbook Simply Nigella. I was inspired by The Domestic Goddess Wannabe to make this brownie.

2-Ingredients Flourless Nutella Brownies

Ingredients

4 large eggs

A pinch of fine sea salt

270gm Nutella

½ tsp icing sugar (optional)

Instructions

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and a pinch of salt (at high speed) until they have more than doubled in volume and have turned pale, aerated and mousselike. This will take about 5-7 minutes.

In the meantime, place the Nutella in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water (a ban marie) to soften. Stir this occasionally for 3-4 minutes, until the Nutella is warm and slightly runny.

Pour the Nutella into the mixing bowl, whisking all the while until all the Nutella is combined. This will deflate the egg mixture but it is okay.

Pour the batter into a lined and lightly greased 8×8-inch square pan.

Bake this at 180°C for 17-20 minutes or until the top is dry and the middle is tender but set.

Leave the brownie to cool in the pan. As it cools, the brownie will shrink away from the sides of the pan.

When the brownie is cool, cut it into 16 squares. Dust with icing sugar if desired and serve!

Chicken in Soy Sauce

When I was young, I used to not able to stomach spicy food. Somehow, as I grew up, I learnt to stomach more and more spicy food. By the time I moved over to live independently, I even developed a fondness towards spicy food.

My least favorite thing to cook is chicken since I do not like them, but when someone requests them on their plate, I will not be reluctant to cook them. Instead, I would embrace their desires and make it for them.

This is a simple, spicy, sweet yet delicious dish.

Chicken in Soy sauce

Ingredients

500kg chicken

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

6 tbsp sweet soy sauce

2 tbsp oyster sauce

3 cloves

2 cardamoms

3 star anises

1 cinnamon stick

2 cups water

1 yellow onion / 2 shallots – peeled and sliced

3 cloves garlic – peeled and sliced

3-inch ginger – peeled and sliced

4 bird’s eyes chilies – bruised

1 red chili – diagonally sliced

2 tbsp of tamarind juice (½ tbsp tamarind paste dissolved in 2 tbsp water)

½ tsp pepper

Salt – to taste

Sugar – to taste

Instructions

Clean the chicken and cut into large bite-sized chunk then pat dry. Marinade the chicken with dark soy sauce, sweet soy sauce and oyster sauce then leave it aside for at least 15 minutes.  

Heat up a wok then add about ¼ cup of cooking oil and sauté the cloves, cardamom, star anise and cinnamon stick until fragrant.

Add the sliced yellow onion / shallots, garlic and ginger and sauté until it is translucent.  

Add the chicken together with the sauces then stir-fry for about 1 minute. Pour in 1 cup of water and stir to combine well then cover the wok. Let the gravy simmer to let the chicken cook in the gravy for about 10 minutes over medium low heat. Stir occasionally.

Add the bird’s eyes chili, red chili, tamarind juice and pepper. Stir to combine well.

Finally, add another 1 cup of water and season with salt and sugar. Bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer for another 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.

It is now ready to be served!

Tuaran's Sunday Morning Market

This morning, we went to Tuaran to visit the bustling weekly market or locally known as ‘tamu’. Tuaran is situated in the West Coast of the state of Sabah, on the island of Borneo. It is located 34 km north of the state capital, Kota Kinabalu city and is strategically situated along the main highway linking the city with the north of Sabah.

 

Every Sunday, the town centre comes alive with a variety of sights, sounds and smells. The tamu is a weekend open market where native people bring their produce and harvest, either home-grown or picked from the jungle for sale. The tamu operates as early as 6am and closed by 2pm. The best time to go is in the early morning, when everything is fresh and abundant. The natives camp on the tamu grounds and by afternoon most things would be gone.

Early birds can grab a variety of local delicacies for breakfast, including pastries and traditional cakes. The tamu is also a great place to take pictures.  Everything fresh is available from roots to eggplant to fruit, laid on the floor. Prices are much lower than the regular markets.

There is also a variety of seafood available and it's very cheap. 

This is definitely something that I've never seen before. 

The native of Tuaran are known for their hand-woven baskets, fish traps and other hand-made bamboo craft.  This is the perfect place for a good bargain. 

Fruits or vegetables that some of us may have never seen before:-

‘Mahkota Dewa’ (God’s Crown) fruit. 

Wild banana heart. 

Now this fruit is interesting. My husband despises this fruit as it reminded him of how he got really sick within an hour after consuming it. This is a Bambangan fruit. It is popular in Sabah. We, the people of Sabah, love our bambangan fruit. It is a type of wild mango with brown skin and a somewhat pungent smell. It can be eaten fresh or made into a pickle and cooked with fish for a distinctive flavour. I still remember during my college years, my friends and I used to eat our instant noodles with bambangan pickle just to add an extra sour tang to it.

This is my favourite fruit. We called it ‘belunu’ on this side of the world. It is a seasonal fruit so whenever I see this fruit I will definitely buy some.

This is new. I have been to many tamus is Sabah since we moved here but I have never seen this, live chickens for sale.   

Sayonara for now! I will surely come back to Tuaran soon. 

 

 

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Lately, we rarely do takeouts as Hub is never happy with the quality and taste. 

Today, it’s one of those days when I am lazy to cook again and it’s also our ‘western food’ day again.  But when I think of how important it is for my growing children to eat nourishing foods so I cooked spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. I made the meatballs and just used the sauce out of a jar in order to get a fast meal. It literally took me 45 minutes to make the whole thing.

My daughter is always fussy when it comes to the sauce. She likes it to be thick so it won’t run right through to the bottom when she put it on top of the noodles, she said.

 

Spaghetti and Meatballs

(Adapted from Chef Michael Smith)

Ingredients

½ cup bread crumbs

½ cup milk

2 cups ground beef

1 onion - peeled then grated on a cheese or potato grater

2 garlic cloves - finely minced

1 egg yolk

1 small bunch of parsley - chopped

½ cup grated parmesan (optional)

Salt – to taste

Pepper - to taste

Sugar – to taste

A pinch of nutmeg

Olive oil

1 small jar of Prego brand traditional spaghetti sauce (379gm)

2 canned duchef tomato puree (430gm each)

1 chicken stock cube

2 bay leaves

A sprinkle of dry oregano leaves

1 packet of spaghetti

Directions

1.    Toss the breadcrumbs into a small bowl and pour the milk over them. Stir to combine then set aside the mixture until the crumbs have absorbed all the milk.

2.    Place the ground beef into a large bowl and add the grated onion, minced garlic and egg yolk. If you like add the optional Parmesan. Add the breadcrumb mixture, nutmeg and parsley. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and mix well. Form into 16 small meatballs.

3.    Pre-heat a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. When it’s hot add a splash of olive oil, enough to cover the bottom. Add the meatballs. Patiently sear them until they are well browned on all sides. Transfer into a bowl. Set aside.

4.    Heat up a pot over low heat, add the spaghetti sauce and the tomato purees.  Stir in the bay leaves and a sprinkle of dry oregano leaves then season with chicken stock cube and sugar (to cut down the sourness of the sauce). Add the meatballs then cover the pan. Simmer until the meatballs have cooked through about 15 to 20 minutes.

5.    Cook the spaghetti in lots of boiling salted water, drain without rinsing and serve with the meatballs. 

Enjoy!