Steamed Kampung Chicken

My mum has always tried to buy Kampung Chicken when she can for the family instead of the ordinary chicken from the market. She claims that Kampung Chicken are healthier chicken with less fat as they are not cooped up inside their pens, feed to the maximum just for the slaughter. Checked Wiki and this is what they had to say about the Kampung Chicken...

"A special type of chicken in Malaysian cooking is called the "kampung chicken" (literally village chicken). These are free-range chickens which are allowed to roam instead of being caged. These chickens are generally considered to have higher nutritional value. They are scrawnier than their farmed counterparts, meaning they have less body fat."

Mum's recipe for steaming Kampung Chicken is extremely simple which can be done with minimal fuss. I did exactly that minus the Kampung Chicken. Why? Just simply a matter of Demand more than Supply. They don't have that many Kampung Chickens for sale and if you go to Supermarkets to shop like yours truly here, sometimes you simply cannot find them there. So, I had to substitute with the normal chicken. The dish turned out ok but mum would have said "Go to the wet market lah to get the Kampung Chicken, you lazy girl".

Ingredients

1 Kampung Chicken
2 stalks of spring onion (shredded)
2 stalks of coriander (chinese parsley) for garnishing
3 shallots (chopped)
1 piece of ginger (about 1 1/2 inches, shredded)
1 tsp of Shao Hsing Hua Tiao Chiew (chinese cooking wine, optional)
1/4 of water
Sugar to taste

Seasonings

2 1/2 tbsp of salt
3 tbsp of sesame oil


Method

1. Rinse the kampung chicken and pat dry with paper towels.
2. Heat up wok/pan and put in the 2 tbsp of sesame oil and the 2 tbsp of salt. Fry until fragrant and turn off the fire.
3. Use this to smear all over the chicken and leave it to marinade in to fridge for at least 2 hours.
4. After 2 hours, remove the chicken from the fridge and put it into a steamer and steam for at least 25 minutes (or until cooked).
5. Once the chicken is cooked, remove from the hot steamer and set aside. When the chicken is cool enough to be touched, chop the chicken into chunks. (note..I didn't do that as I am not a great chicken chopper .. bound to get uneven pieces..so my chicken was intact)
   
6. Heat up wok and put in the chopped shallots, shredded ginger and shredded spring onions.
7. Fry until they become fragrant. Add the cooking wine but this is optional.
8. Add in the water and bring to a boil.
   
9. Add a bit of sugar for taste. There is no need to add anymore salt as the chicken should have enough salt on it.
10. Pour this hot sauce onto the chicken and serve.

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Fried Lady's Fingers (Okra) in Dried Shrimps and Belachan

I have heard from some of my friends and the office tea lady that lady's fingers (okras) are very good especially for the knee joints. This could be due to the sap (gluey) like thing that emits from the vegetable when you cut it. But it is this very gluey thing that gave me a hard time cooking this dish last night.

I like lady's fingers when cooked with Assam Fish or Fish Head Curry but yesterday night was a work night and I really didn't have the time or the energy to attempt to cook such fanciful meals. So, I decided to make a very simple dish of fried lady's fingers with dried shrimps and belachan.

As I was cutting the lady's fingers, I notice the gluey stuff. Tried to wash it off but it still kept dripping out of the cut parts of the lady's fingers. Decided to soak them in some water and I think maybe I should not have done that as they were getting even worse. Anyway, I rinsed and drained out the water but when I started cooking it in the wok, it didn't that long to find my lady's fingers swimming in a pool of glue...alamak.. quickly scooped it out. Luckily it tasted ok but I know there must be a way to get rid of all that gluey stuff.

If SueSue of CookingMomster-My Kitchen or Babe of Babe in the City-KL is reading this post....HELP!!!!!

If you want an equivalent recipe for lady's fingers, I would suggest you visit CookingMomster's post and maybe Babe also has a post (tried to find it but I couldn't just yet). I will only post my recipe when I find out how to get rid of all that glue from my dish... :(

Can see the glue or not??

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Radish Cake/Lobak Ko

Sometime last month, I managed to make a yummy Yam Cake (Woo Tau Koh) following the recipe from Lily's blog. I followed it to the letter and it came out wonderful. Anyways, yesterday, I was clearing the vegetable compartment of the fridge and I realize that I still have a radish in there (I think I must have gotten it to make soup or something but didn't get around to it). I remember that Lily also has a recipe for Radish Cake and with full confidence, I downloaded and printed the recipe and got down to work.


I had some for supper last night and some for this morning's breakfast. Again, I would like to say thanks to Lily for sharing such a yummy recipe :)

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Meat Parcels aka Meat Pouches

I think it was 2 Saturdays ago when my mum made these yummy meat parcels (tan kok in cantonese) also known as meat pouches for dinner. I got the recipe from mum and made them myself a few days later. Actually, I realize that you can change the fillings to anything that you prefer and as I didn't have some of the ingredients at home, I had to replace some of them.

Ingredients

180g of Minced Meat (chicken or pork would be best)
150g of Mince Prawn
2 dried chinese mushrooms (soaked to soften, stems discarded and diced) - I replaced this with black fungus which I cut into strips
1 - 2 lengths of Spring onion or chinese parsley (chopped)
2 pieces of shallots (chopped finely)
2 pieces of garlic (chopped finely)
3 eggs (beaten)
Oil for frying

Seasonings

1 tsp of sesame oil
1 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of sugar
1 1/2 tsp of corn starch
A dash of pepper



Method

1. Combine minced meat, minced prawns and diced mushrooms (in my case, it was the black fungus) in a bowl.
2. Add in all the seasonings and mix well.
3. Add in the chopped spring onions (or parsley) into the mixture and set aside.
4. Heat up some oil in a pan or wok and when the oil is hot, put in the chopped shallots and garlic.
5. When the shallots and garlic turns fragrant, add in the meat mixture and fry until the meat is slightly cooked. Scoop it up and put it into the beaten egg mixture.
6. Clean the wok/pan of all leftover meat and add in more oil for shallow frying
7. When the oil is hot, take a big tablespoon or small ladle and scoop a tablespoon of the egg mixture with the meat into the hot oil.
8. This is like making mini omelets. Fry until golden brown on the outside.
9. Drain and serve.

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Agar-Agar (Jelly)

Agar-agar (Jelly) making is actually child's play and and the hardest bit is selecting the mold haha.. This time, I decided to put it into fish molds that I got from the marketplace. A couple of weeks ago, I made some with longans (from a can). But there is no way I could stuff the longans inside these fish molds. So, I decided to make some sago agar-agar instead. The adults felt that they were a little too pretty to eat... but the kids...they don't really care... jelly is meant to eaten..no two ways about it :)




Ingredients

2 packets of konnyaku jelly (or 20gm of any jelly powder)
1200ml of water
320g of fine sugar
3 pandan leaves
100gm of sago pearls (soaked for 2 hours and washed and drained)
250ml of thick santan (coconut milk)
Permitted coloring as desired

Method :

1. Cooked the soaked sago under low heat until they turn transparent. Rinse it thoroughly under the tap (cold water) so that they do not stick together.
2. Divide the sago into 6 portions and add coloring to each portion. A portion or two can also be left uncolored as this also forms a "color" by itself
3. Mix the jelly powder with the sugar well before adding it to the boiling water. Dissolve the jelly powder and sugar in slow heat. Add in the pandan leaves.
4. Once the jelly powder and sugar has totally dissolved, add in the coconut milk. Bring to a boil and then turn down the flame. This is to ensure the jelly does not coagulate whilst preparing the jelly to be poured into the molds.
5. Select whatever shaped type of jelly molds you like.
   
6. Take a cupful or two of the jelly mixture and add it to one portion of the color sago. Stir well so that the sago pearls are freely floating in the jelly mixture. (Leave the rest of the jelly mixture in the simmering pot to prevent it from setting before you are reading to pour it into the molds)
   
7. You can fill the entire jelly mold with one color or you can fill it with different color layers.
8. To do different layers, you will need only put in a tablespoonful of the mixture into the mold and wait for it to set (coagulate). When the jelly is set, scratch the surface with a fork. This is to ensure that when you pour in the next layer, the two layers will bind together. Or else, the layers will slide off each other when the jelly sets.
9. Repeat step 6 for different colored portions of the jelly mixture.
   
10. Place in the fridge and serve cold.

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Claypot Chicken Rice

It was a public holiday yesterday, being Prophet Muhammad's Birthday. Stayed at home catching up on some DVDs. After having a simple lunch, actually brunch, I was still feeling very lazy and blamed it entirely on the chilly weather. Was wondering what to cook that would be yummy but simple. Remembered what my mum used to cook for us on Saturdays when we were kids. Saturdays are her Petaling Street marketing day. She simply loves Petaling Street's wet market. She normally lugs me and my brothers with her and we are made to carry all her stuff (tells us that it builds character wor). By the time we get home, it would be after lunch. We would have eaten from the hawkers' stalls at the market before we came home.

After cleaning up the fish, chicken, vegetables, she would be quite tired. Hence, it would be this one big pot of Chicken Rice for dinner on Saturday. Actually, I quite like it. In fact, I like the rice better than the chicken in it. So, I will normally tell her to put less chicken and more rice in the pot. What is even yummier is the slightly burnt crust at the bottom of the claypot...yum yum.

She used to cook this rice in a large claypot over a charcoal fire. She still has that charcoal burner at home but we have since a long time back convinced her to switch to the modern rice cooker. Perhaps the finished product may not turn out as aromatic as that cooked using charcoal, but it is definitely cleaner and faster... hungry people are not happy people haha.

So, that was what I had yesterday, Claypot Chicken Rice cooked in a Rice Cooker.

Ingredients
3 cups of rice
1/2 a chicken
6 pieces of chinese mushrooms (soaked in hot water for about an hour and sliced)
1 piece of ginger (2inches - sliced into strips)
stalks of chinese parsley
1 tbsp of oil

Seasonings
1 tbsp of sesame seed oil
1 1/2 tbsp of thick soya sauce
1 tbsp of ligh soya sauce
1 tbsp of oyster sauce
sugar and salt to taste
pepper


Method

1. Wash and drain the rice. Set aside.
   
2. Cleaned the chicken and drain of all water
3. Added the seasonings onto the chicken and marinaded the chicken for 1/2 hour. Slightly more would make the chicken tastier
4. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in the wok and when oil is hot, put in the ginger strips. Fry until the ginger turns fragrant. Add in the mushrooms.
5. Put in the chicken with all its seasonings.
6. When the chicken appears cooked on the outside, put in the drained rice.
7. Mix the rice completely with the seasonings from the chicken. Once this is completed, turn of the fire and scoop the rice and chicken into the rice pot.
8. Add in 3 3/4 cups of water into the pot
9. When the rice cooker changes from "cook" to "warm", leave it for about 5 mins. Then open the cooker and use a pair of chopsticks to fluff the rice and chicken. Close cooker for another 5 minutes before serving.
10. Serve with some chinese parsley

Pandan Marble Cake

This is actually a simple Marble Cake recipe but I decided to change it a little to see what the effect would be. Preparation plus baking time should not take more than 1 and 1/2 hrs and that was because I have one of those unsophisticated ovens where baking time normally takes a little longer.

Ingredients

125g butter, softened
150g of caster sugar
3 large egges
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp of milk powder, stirred in 100ml of warm water
225g self-raising flour, sifted


Method

1. Line a 20cm round cake tin or 17cmx17cm square cake tin with baking paper
2. Preheat oven at 180°C.
3. Cream softened butter with sugar until it turns creamy and pale.
4. Add in the vanilla essence and mix well.
5. Beat in one egg at a time. Make sure each egg is well blended into the mixture before the next one is added.
6. Fold in sifted flour and milk alternately. This is to ensure that the mixture is thoroughly blended in.
7. Divide the cake mixture into 3 portions and they need not be equal portions. I left most for the plain portion.
8. Add melted cocoa (mix 1 1/2 tbsp of cocoa powder with 1 1/2tbsp of hot water) into one of the portions.
9. For the last portion, I added a little pandan essence and green coloring.
10. Pour in half of the plain mixture into the lined cake tin.
11. Drop in the cocoa and pandan portion alternatively
12. Pour in the rest of the plain mixture and tap the cake tin to ensure that the cake mix settles.
13. Use a knife and run it through the batter a few times.
14. Bake for 45mins - 50mins. Test with a toothpick or skewer to ensure cake is done.
15. Remove from the oven and leave cake in the cake tin for 5 mins
16. After that, remove cake from the cake tin onto a wire rack to cool completely.

My cake turned out the way it did coz my green portion was very little. So, instead of embedding the green portion between 2 plain layer, I just plonked the entire green portion in the centre of the cake. Actually, making marble cakes are fun as each outcome is different, depending on the artistic creativity of the baker :)

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Steamed Prawns in Ginger

I know that when one is in a rush, the easiest and fastest food to dish up for a meal is anything steamed. Luckily I bought some large white prawns last week and kept it in the freezer because the price difference for these prawns was up almost RM2 per 100gm.

This is a highly simple dish and quite yummy, especially if you like prawns. The prawns has to be really fresh as for all steamed dishes. However, I was quite surprised that freezing the prawns didn't not alter the freshness of the prawns (luckily).

Whilst the prawns(6 large ones) were defrosting naturally, i got the following stuff for the sauce;

2 inches of young ginger *
4 cloves of garlic *
1 tbsp of light soya souce
1 tsp of Shao Hsing Hua Tiao Chiew (chinese cooking wine, optional)
1/2 tsp of sesame seed oil
salt and sugar taste
chinese parsley for garnishing

* chopped/blended

Pour all the sauce onto the defrosted prawns and put in a steamer for about 15 to 20mins, depending to intensity of the steamer. I noticed that electric steamers generate more heat then gas. Once done, remove from the steamer and garnish with some chinese parsley

The entire cooking time can be as short at 25mins, if your prawns are not frozen stiff. A quick and yummy dish for lunch or dinner.

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A Quick Curry Chicken Recipe

Do you know the best type of food to eat when it is raining? Curry. Absolutely yummy. I love curry chicken with rice and bread. As it has been raining quite a fair bit the whole of last week, I decided to try my hand in cooking curry chicken. Called mum yesterday morning and she was rattling her recipe as usual with a lot of dashes and pinches of stuff...sigh.. and me, the "starter" cook was totally lost after the 3rd ingredient.

So, what to do? Went over to the supermarket, picked up some serai (lemongrass), some pandan leaves for the rice, 2 bags of coconut milk, some curry leaves, a chicken, some potatoes and going over to the spices section, found this beauty.


Rushed home and first things first, washed 3 cups of long grain rice and soaked them in water whilst I started preparing the curry chicken. Watched an auntie on AFC channel say that if you soak the long grain rice in water before actually cooking it, it will turn out much better. I reckon better meant you could actually see each grain of rice once cooked.


For the curry, the packet of spices Instant Chicken Curry Sauce listed in its ingredients Palm Oil, chilli, lemongrass, onion, spices, ginger, sugar and salt. But I wanted my curry to be a little bit more pungent, so, I added some chopped garlic, shallots and ginger, 2 more stalks of lemongrass and 2 sprigs of curry leaves, and I was ready to cook the curry.

But before that, I drained the rice, put it in the rice cooker, added 220ml of coconut milk, another 2 1/2 cups of water, a pinch of salt and the pandan leaves. This will take care of its self and when the rice is cooked, just fluff it up and let it stay warm in the rice cooker.

Before I started with the curry chicken proper, I heated up 2 tablespoons of oil and fried the potato chunks first. This is to cook the potatoes a bit hence keeping the potatoes intact later when it is cooking in the curry. When we don't do this, the potatoes can turn mushy (so advised my mum).

Coming back to the curry chicken, heated about 2 tablespoons of oil, put in firstly the chopped garlic, shallots and ginger. When it turns aromatic, empty the packet Instant Chicken Curry Sauce in. Added 220ml of thick coconut milk and stir well. Then add in the chicken pieces and potatoes. Add enough water to cover the chicken and potatoes and cover.



Once the chicken is cooked and the potatoes have soften, add salt and sugar to taste. Dish up and eat with the rice or bread. Sadly, it didn't rain last evening...so, I was really building up a sweat whilst eating this spicy concoction... haha..more enjoyable sweating this way then on a treadmill :D

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Home cooked Meals at Mum's

I love eating mum's cooking as the food is simple, nice and yummy. This week, she asked me what I would like to eat... wow, that is like being given a blank cheque. So, I rattled on about 4 to 5 types of my favorite home cooked dishes and she cooked most of all those I listed. There were 5 adults (inclusive of the maid) and 2 kids for dinner that evening and we all polished off all the food.

This is french beans fried with choy poh , dried tofo and chilli. Dice all ingredients before hand. Heat up work, fry some chopped shallots until aromatic. Dunk in all the diced ingredients. Add a little salt and sugar to taste. Serve.

Meat parcels/pockets (tan kok). A little bit more interesting to do. Will post some photos and ingredients later as I tried this for yesterday's dinner.

Steamed eggs for the kiddos. Easy peasy. The recipe can also be gotten from Lily's Wai Sek Hong's blog

Stewed pork.. this is really my all time favorite. All it takes is some pork belly, soya sauce both light and thick, salt and sugar. And there you have it :)

Simple fried fish. The hardest part to frying fish is one, making sure the oil doesn't get you and two, the skin of the fish stays on the fish, and not on the pan/wok.

Yummy!

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Chocolate Cheese Cupcakes

Ha Ha.. have been totally thinking about chocolates since surfing some of the food blogs last evening that I cannot tahan anymore. Just have to find something chocolaty to satisfy the craving. No more chocolates in the fridge, finished all the chocolate ice-cream two nights ago.. aha.. I bought a fresh tub of cheese last Sunday...why don't I make myself some chocolate cheese cupcakes.

I actually recycled the recipe from the previous post, Chocolate Cheese Cake CCC but instead of making one big cake, I decided to make more work for myself and make cup cakes instead, plus also to see what I can turn up with this cream cheese frostings I got from the net.

This is the recipe for the frosting:-

• 125g cream cheese
• 30g butter
• 150g icing sugar

Well, the cupcakes were not difficult but I do need a lot of help with the decoration part :(. Must really sign up for classes or plead to other bloggers for tips, suggestions, anything. When I got the cream cheese frosting done, that is where I hit a brick wall....now what?? It is too soft to be shaped into anything and anyways, I wanted to so desperately eat those cupcakes already haha..



Anyway, I just did some swirls, sprinkled some cocoa powder over them and....chomp, chomp, chomp....ah....giving into one's cravings is sooooo wonderful ....just a little bit sinful though on the waistline :)



Brought some to the office for my little test bunny who is also babe's boiboi. Hope's he will like them.

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Marmite Prawns

I love to read food blogs and have subscribed to more than 20 of such blogs and without fail I will go through most of them, if not all every day. And I will be so inspired by these food bloggers who are also great cookes (& bakers) and their abilities to whip up the yummilicious stuff. A few days ago, I was at Cooking Momster's blog and saw her Marmite Prawn post. Wow.. this is top restaurant quality type cooking wor. So, that evening, went to get me some prawns to try out her recipe.

I almost followed her ingredients and method to the T, except that I wanted more gravy as I love Marmite. When I was a kid, I used to spread it on bread and eat it just like that. But I eat Milo spread on bread too.. in fact, I eat anything spread on bread.. haha.. I love bread.

Get her recipe here. The only difference is that I added a little bit more Marmite and water and then thicken it back slightly with cornflour. It was very lovely that I almost took out bread to wipe off the remaining gravy on the plate :)

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Chocolate Cheese Cake

Once a chocoholic.... always a chocoholic.

I love anything that is made of chocolate, be it cakes, muffins, cookies, ice cream. I had cheese left over from a friend's gathering and decided to do something with it before little green things started to grow on it. Was running through some cook books that I had and decided to improvise on one of the recipes I found to make a Cheese Cake, a chocolate one at that.

This is actually very easy to make and it taste pretty ok (opinion of some of the test bunnies). Again, you may adjust for the sweetness factor as I try not to make my cakes too sweet, else the test bunnies will complain.

Ingredients

Cheese Filling (A)
1 block of Philidelphia Cheese (250g)
60g of castor sugar
1 large egg

Cake (B)
130g sugar
180g butter
3 large eggs
3tbsp of cocoa
120g flour
1tsp of baking soda
pinch of salt

Method

Preheat oven at 180 degrees

Cheese Filling

1. Beat sugar with cream cheese until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in the egg and beat until it is evenly blended in the cheese & sugar.
3. Set the mixture aside whilst making the cake.

Cake

1. Sieve cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt. Put aside
2. Cream sugar and butter together until light and fluffy
3. Beat in the eggs, one at a time until well mixed.
4. Fold in the sieved ingredients into this egg mixture and mix well.
5. Pour in half the cake mixture into a greased cake pan (8ins or 9 ins)
6. Pour in all the cheese filling on top and spread out. For wave-like effects, don't spread the cheese too evenly.
7. Pour in the remaining cake mixture and let the cake even out.
8. Bake for 55mins-60mins (8ins cake pan) pr 45-50mins (9ins cake pan)
9. Test with a tooth pick or skewer to make sure cake is cooked.
10. Take cake out of the pan after 10 mins as leaving it in the hot pan will have the effect of shrinking the cake later (thanks babe for this little tip)
11. Best served chilled

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Mum's Recipe: Steam Pomfret (Ikan Bawal)

This is about the simplest dish to cook but because it has to be eaten when the fish is just taken out of the steamer, mum will only cook this dish when she is sure that the family will turn up for dinner on time. Over steaming will make the fish texture turn "rough". Fish must not only be fresh, but also taste fresh (i.e. the flesh must be smooth and soft). We normally have this dish during Chinese New Year's reunion dinners in the past but since my dad passed on, we have decided to have our reunion dinners at restaurants, just to safe mum from all that effort having to go to the market and cooking for us.

I did this one time and following closely to mum's instructions, I must say it turned out alright.

Ingredients

1 pomfret 500g - 800g (I managed to get a bawal emas from Carrefour)
2 inches of young ginger (shredded)
20 pieces of wolfberries
2 stalks of spring onions or chinese parsley

2 tbsp of light soya sauce *
1 tbsp of oyster sauce*
1 tsp of sesame oil*
1 tsp of hua diao wine*

* seasonings for the fish

Method

Clean fish of all innards and cut slits onto the body of the fish
Prepare the steamer or wok, ready for steaming
Place the fish on a plate and cover it with the wolfberries and shredded ginger
Once the water is boiling in the steamer, place the fish in the steamer and steam it for about 15 minutes (fish is cooked when the eyes popped)
Remove it from the steamer and pour in the seasonings*
Sprinkle with spring onions or chinese parsley

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Banana Walnut Muffin

I have been wanting to make this for the longest time as they are really one of my favorites. I used to buy them from Coffeebean...and they look good and tastes great. But at times, when you are craving for them, the best way to get it is to bake them yourselves and you don't have to stop at one :).


I've posted this some time back in my other blog but I don't think I put down the recipe for it. Here it is :-

Ingredients

2 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons for baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
175g of butter (leave at room temperature to soften it)
2 large eggs
1 tsp of vanilla essence (or pure vanilla extract, if you have it, I don't)
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of very ripe bananas (I used about 4 to 5 pisang emas)
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts
15 to 20 pieces of whole walnuts for decoration


Method

1. Preheat oven at 180C and arrange paper cups in a muffin tray
2. Mash the bananas and set aside.
3. Sift the flour and baking soda in a bowl.
4. Combine in the butter, eggs, sugar and vanilla extract.
5. Beat the ingredients by hand or with an electric mixer until they well mixed.
6. Fold in the chopped walnuts and mashed bananas with a big spatula.
7. Spoon in the batter into the pre-arranged muffin cups. If you want the muffins to have a "puffed" up look, fill the cup to almost 3/4 full.
8. Place a whole walnut in the middle of each muffin.

Bake for 15 minutes or until muffins turn brown. Test it by pushing in a toothpick into the muffin. If the stick comes away clean, then the muffin is cooked.

Makes about 12 to 15 muffins.

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Mum's Recipe: Kueh Sago (Sago Cake)

This recipe was taught to me a long time ago by my mother. This is one of those recipes passed down without proper documentation. I think a lot of those recipes that I will share with you from mum are like that. She'll tell you, a handful of flour, a dash of sugar, a stick of gula melaka (palm sugar)... it is like, you go figure lah :).

Anyway, I did this through virtual recall of her words. The actual ingredient portions are really my own and it turned out ok. Perhaps the sugar portion can be increased as I put very little in the cake.


Ingredients
150g Pearl Sago
220ml of Santan (1 tube coconut cream from the supermarket)
1 tbsp water
3 tbsp of sugar
1/2 tsp of instant coffee powder
pinch of salt
80g of grated coconut


Method

1. Soak the Pearl Sago for about 1/2 hour and rinse a few times to get rid of the excess starch
   
2. Heat up a pan and pour the Santan (coconut cream) with 1 tbsp water to dilute it a bit. Bring it to a slow boil.
3. Stir in the soaked sago.
4. As the sago is turning transparent, put in the coffee powder and continue stirring. This is to give the coffee flavor and the coloring. If you don't like coffee, you can put in other coloring. For flavoring, you can try pandan essence.
5. Once the sago has totally turned transparent, add the sugar.
6. When the sugar has totally blended with the sago, turn off the fire and pour the cake into a greased pan to cool.
7. Cut the sago cake into pieces and toss it the grated coconut (which has been added a pinch of salt).
8. Serve slightly chilled.
   

Recipe for Chocolate Chip & Walnut Cookies

This was the first ever recipe I posted on Shifting Sand. I decided to reproduce it here, where it should have been :).


Ingredients
125 grams of butter
150 grams of brown sugar (may have to reduce this a bit as babe commented that the cookies were a mite too sweet.... which I agree)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (which I didn't add coz I didn't have any)
150 grams plain flour*
1/2 teaspoon baking powder*
1/2 teaspoon baking soda*
15 grams of cocoa powder*
200 grams chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

* these are sifted together

Method
1. Cream butter with sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add egg and vanilla essence and mix well
3. Add the sifted dry ingredients in the mixture, followed with the chocolate chips and chopped walnuts
4. Mix all these until dough forms. Drop by teaspoon onto greased backing pan (this is to get the Famous Amos sized cookies. For me, I used the spoon we eat our dinner with... dinner spoon??)
5. Bake at 180 degress C for 15 minutes (but don't take my word for it coz it depends on the size of your cookie and the type of oven you have. I have the el cheepo type where you have to keep peeping into it to see if the cookies are done..else, you'll end up with CHARRED chocolate chip cookies)

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Recipe Logger

This would be officially my second blog. I have decided after some thoughts that I will keep my first blog "Shifting Sand" as my primary blog. As I will be attempting to be a better cook (and baker), I have decided not to bore my friends with recipes and the mundane rantings about failed attempts by collecting them all here. As a start, I will need to add the recipes to the Chocolate Cheese Cake and the Loh Mai Kai which I did recently. So, if anyone is interested to share their views or comments on how I can improve myself, I more than welcome them. That is the only way I can improve.

So, please watch this spot.