Aglio, olio e peperoncino a la Taiko Tari

After a long hard day at work (starting from 8:30 am), last night I came home late at 10:30 pm.

Famished and tired, I had about 30 minutes with the remnant of my energy to eat something and sleep and do everything all over again from 3 am.
I opened my fridge: nothing in there. I opened my kitchen cabinet - a lot of uncooked materials. There was virtually nothing but chips and lentils and canned goods that, frankly when you're as tired as I was last night, looked very unappetizing.

Then my eyes stumbled across some dried red chili pepper that my Japanese mum sent over earlier in the week, along with some dried bay leaves that our Niigata neighbor naturally dried from the big bushy bay tree in their backyard.
Then I thought... hey, I should make that pasta dish that is very simple, yet tastes very good. I went online trying to find a recipe for this pasta dish, but I couldn't remember what that dish was called.

I searched and searched. I bloody hell could NOT find it.

My tummy rumbled loudly. Yeah, I didn't eat all day because of Ramadan, except for the 2 pieces of chocolate at iftar, and now it's asking for some help.

So, I gave up Google and Cooks.com and started pulling out some pots and pans. You know what, let's just be creative here.

This is what I came up with:

Red pepper, garlic, olive oil and pasta recipe a la Taiko Tari

Ingredients:

spaghetti, however much you want to eat in one sitting
garlic, 2 big cloves, crushed or chopped
dried red pepper, 2 - slice thinly
dried bay leaves, 3 leaves
sea salt, to taste (about 1 tsp)
soy sauce, 1 tbsp
freshly grated parmesan cheese
SPAM oven roasted turkey, half a can
extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp

How to cook:

1. Slice SPAM oven roasted turkey, flash fry it with butter in a wok
2. At the same time, cook the pasta according to the instruction in your package, al dente. Drain and put aside
3. Heat the olive oil in the wok where the turkey was fried in #1, put in the garlic and cook until the garlic turned golden brown
4. Put in the sliced dried red pepper, cook until you smell pepper and your eyes watery
5. Put in the bay leaves, cook until you can smell the bay leaves fragrant
6. Toss in the cooked pasta in #2 and mix well, along with the sea salt and soy sauce, and sauté lightly
7. Put in a plate, sprinkle the grated parmesan cheese on top
8. Serve together with the turkey burger
9. Eat it
10. Make appreciation sound... yummm!

This dish is so simple and tasted so good. Now reflecting to my choice of ingredients, if you have access to non SPAM turkey burger, I would strongly suggest you use that instead, but otherwise this do just fine. Or if you want to make chicken burgers, or any fish or grill (go with white meat or seafood, not red meat); they would make a fine companion to the pasta.

And thanks to Rie, I now know that this pasta dish has a name... it is Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino!!! Google away, or you can make do with my revolutionary recipe. I use bay leaves and soy sauce - and no other people have done so in the past.

Sinful not to share! (Recipe of the week: Daging Bola)

(**ACHTUNG! For those who are fasting, beware there is a food picture below. Avert your eyes nearing the cooking instruction.)


Last weekend I had a bit of a cooking spree to celebrate the arrival of Ramadan and the changing of the seasons. And basically I just wanted to cook, and lots of food for that matter, too, so I invited loads of people over.

For the iftar meal on Sunday, I knew that at least 3 young children were coming, so I had troubles deciding what to make.
My thought then went back to 2 foods that I remember loving the most growing up.

One is corn soup with quail eggs (lots of veggies: carrots, mushroom, corn, onion sprigs). This is the 'soul' food that mum always made whenever one of us was sick, to make us feel all better with the colorful presentation and nutritious contents.
This soup I always make whenever I feel homesick or when I'm really sick altogether. Always works!

The other one that I thought of was Javanese meatballs, or as we literally call it: Daging Bola. Different mothers have different versions, but I think my mum's version is by far the best.

The following is the recipe that mum gave me over the phone 90 minutes before my guests arrived:

Daging Bola a la Taiko Tari's Mamma

some ground beef (about 250 gr)
pearl onion/shallot (about 5 cloves, if not available, substitute with onion, obviously not 5, but about 2 tbsp for the meat, 2 tbsp for the soup afterwards)
garlic (about 3 cloves for the meat, 2 cloves for the soup afterwards)
salt (to taste)
pepper
vegetable oil (about 2 tbsp)
1 whole fresh tomato
ground corriander (1 tsp)
kecap manis (to taste, approximately 3 tbsp)
beef broth (5 cups)

How to make:

1. Season beef with ground pearl onion, garlic and salt and then ball the ground beef, size depends on however you wish, but for this one I like them to be large, I have big thumbs, so about 2/3 of the thumb is the diameter)

2. Boil the balled beef until the meat is cooked. Set aside the water used for boiling the meat for the broth

3. Ground together some pearl onion, garlic, coriander, and salt, stir fry it in the vegetable oil together with some coarsely chopped tomato

5. Put in the boiled balled beef stir fry together with the spices

6. Add the beef broth to the mix, bring everything to a boil, put in the kecap manis*. I like to add a half cube of beef consome to the mix just to ensure perfection in taste.

6. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

*Unlike other recipes, for this you REALLY need to have the kecap manis. This is one of the dish where this particular sauce cannot be substituted. If your Asian shop doesn't have this, you can try to make it yourself. Here's a recipe where you can try to make this sauce.



The food was a HOOT! The children couldn't get enough of it.

Try it. It's so easy to make and it tastes heavenly.

Oh crap, now I miss my Mamma.

Delectable Books

On this fine Monday afternoon, I began my delicious daydreaming on foods. The trigger of it all was simply because I am supposed to be cooking for the Tuesdays tomorrow. The last time I had people over for dinner was in March (EEEKKK!), so it's time to pull my sleeves and dive into the kitchen!

While thinking of the menu, my mind kept on being transported back to the top of my kitchen cabinet, where I had some 20 cookbooks. Ah, the joy those books have brought me!

Yes, it is time. It is time for me to divulge the cookbooks that I simply cannot live without.

1. Jamie Oliver's "The Naked Chef"

You need to go to page 120 where he had his amazing roast chicken recipe. I have made this chicken so much over the years. The multiple herbs that are used for this dish brought out the best flavor from the chicken. If you can, try to always use sea salt in the mix, it brings out the best taste from the chicken.

Another thing that I began doing recently every time I cook this chicken:
put aside the chicken broth and oil that comes out after you roasted it for 1 hour

For an easy-to-prepare lunch: take 2 tbsp of this broth, heat it up, and then mixed some of the left over chicken and some chopped tomatoes.
Add in pre-cooked linguini/ spaghetti/ vermicelli/ capellini, anything rod and long, mix it well. Buon appetito! You got yourself a delicious lunch!

The other recipes here in this book are all equally simple and so easy to make. For muslims like Taiko Tari here, substitute all Miss Piggy related stuff with chicken, or for broth you can always use mushroom broth. I have no idea what pork/lard are supposed to taste like; but I can assure you replacing them with chicken/mushroom base are very very tasty! Really, really!

2. "Vegetarian" by Fiona Biggs

I found this book 50% off at Barnes & Nobles in San Diego back in 2003. I remembered at the time paying only $5.00 (or something ridiculously cheap like that) and was sincerely hoping that the book could somehow make my life easier. You see, at that time I was dating a very picky vegetarian who liked to eat quality food. This book had ultimately saved my kitchen and is solely responsible in expanding my horizon to vegetarian cooking and eating.
Now, said boyfriend is history, but the cookbook remained going strong in my kitchen. Over the years, I have gone through literally half of the cookbook of some 175+ recipes. This book has opened my way to hummus, vegetarian pâté, baked pie, baked pasta, tortilla hors d'oeuvres, turnip soup, potato soup, mexican omelet, desserts.
The sad news about this book is that I don't think it is anywhere in circulation anymore. Been wanting to give this book as presents to fellow food and cooking enthusiasts, but they are nowhere to be found. Kind of making me feel special for actually owning it and using it religiously.

3. "The Essential Asian Cookbook", by Whitecap Publications

This book is a lifesaver for me to be living overseas and wanting to cook the foods from home. Early in the days where my foods and ingredients vocabulary were limited to the Indonesian language, I was ever clueless each time I am looking for the stuff in Japanese. Heck, I didn't even know the words in English, and back in those days there was no good source for localizing it based on the local market availability. Enter came this book with the pictures of those odd "gallangal", or "coriander", or "cumin", or "bawang merah" (Thai pearl onion), etc - since then grocery shopping has become so much easier, I can actually strategize a substitute for the impossible ingredients. The book smartly divide the books based on the countries the recipes came from, makes thematic party planning so much easier!

4. Mi madre
Last but not least... if all roads failed, such as no books to refer to,
nothing online that is trustworthy and all attempt led to a dead-end: I will pick up the phone and call my mother. She always has the ultimate answer to all my culinary questions.

Ah.... and for tomorrow night, I've decided to finally use my paellera and make some paella, as well as some rotisserie chicken and some tomato caprese. Yeah, that'll do it.

Rengginang

This one is another recipe for you, Montchan!

This is a standard recipe for Rengginang that I found from a blog of the Indonesian women society in Helsinki.
Since it is in Bahasa Indonesia here is the translated version:

Rengginang

Inggredients:

1 kg sticky rice/ mochi kome, soaked in water for 1 hour
5 cloves of garlic, pasted
1 tsp of shrimp paste (you can get them at any Asian store, the Thai people use it a lot for their cooking)
1.5 tbsp salt
400 cc water

How to cook:

1. steam the sticky rice for 30 minutes
2. Cook the rice with 400 cc water, pasted garlic, shrimp paste and salt the traditional way (using regular pot) on small fire until water is dissolved
3. Steam the cooked rice for another hour until rice is cooked
4. Take a tbsp of cooked rice and flatten it on a surface, basically like you're making a senbei, but this is with the rice thingy
5. Let it sit in the sun for 2 days (with the long days of sun that you have in Scandinavia now, I say, you can let it sit for 1 day)
6. Deep fry in any cooking oil (well, avoid olive oil, because they don't fry well)
7. VOILA! ready to be eaten

The end product will look like the attached picture.

Rengginang picture was excerpted from the quoted link

So, this is ideally how Rengginang is made.
Now, in attempt to make use of burnt rice, here's what I would do:

1. Repeat everything from step #2 above and add any kind of seasoning that your heart desires. It can be salty, it can be sweet. If you want sweet, add honey. If you want salty, copy the seasoning used in the recipe above. If you don't have shrimp paste, you can do without it. The only thing that makes it taste Indonesian is the shrimp paste, mind you. One of the trivia trial that I loved the most is actually adding honey to the composition above. The honey or sugar will make it slightly stickier than the salty/cheesy version.

2. After you do everything from #2 to #7. Do eat it, like lots of it. Eating hearty food will make your heart a whole lot lighter.

P.s.
In exchange of step #6, my mother sometimes will put this in the microwave, so she doesn't have to deal with the oil after frying. I don't prefer doing this, though, the taste will be too 'clean' and quite different from the intended.

Recipe of the week: Beef Curry a la Taiko Tari's Mamma

Now this one is for you, Montchan!


some ground beef (about 250 gr)
pearl onion/shallot (about 5 cloves, if not available, substitute with onion, obviously not 5, but about 1 tbsp)
garlic (about 3 cloves)
candlenut (about 3 nuts)
lemongrass (2 sticks)
salt (to taste)
potatoes, cubed (about 2 medium sized potatoes)
red chillis (your preference, I always put about 5)
coconut milk (about 1 can)
vegetable oil (about 2 tbsp)


1. Season beef with ground pearl onion, garlic and salt and then ball the ground beef, size depends on however you wish, but we like to make it the size of a teaspoon

2. Boil the balled beef until the meat is cooked

3. Flash fry the potatoes, put aside

4. Ground together some pearl onion, garlic, candlenut,and salt, stir fry it in the vegetable oil together with some red chilis and lemon grass

5. Put in the boiled balled beef and the flash fried potato, stir fry together with the spices - add some of the beef broth from boiling the meat in number 1

6. Add the coconut milk, bring everything to a boil, let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Note: Everytime I asked my mamma about the measurement, she will always say, "I don't know, just taste it first, if you need more then add to it, if you put too much in, you can always soften it with more coconut milk."

This is pretty easy. Good luck and Bon Appétit!