Jom Mamam

Taffy Apples

So I finally made some taffy apples without some serious kitchen mishap! Making the caramel coating is a bit scary because I don’t have a candy thermometer and had to gauge the sugar mixture by smell and colour before it gets too hot and burns itself off like a silly ninny. My arm is aching now from stirring like mad.

The caramel itself is great and sets fairly well but it’s really sticky (it sticks to the wax paper as well as to the GREASED metal pan and I had to spend quite some time scraping them off and eating them disposing them) unless I pop them in the fridge. Maybe it’s the humid weather on this side of the world? I don’t know yet.

Anyhoo - I love autumnal (is that a word?) sweets! In fact I think I’m a bit of an autumn otaku, which is seriously so damn weird because I don’t even live in a 4 seasons country T_T



Here’s one more picture of them apples. They’re so SHINY.

(Source: makan2)

More Breakfast Food

Oatmeal with honey, bananas, toasted coconut (yum) and almond flakes!



Basic nasi lemak - rice steamed with coconut milk, sambal ikan bilis (spicy anchovy chili paste and caramelised onion), boiled egg and cucumber slices.

(Source: makan2)

Dimpled Dumplings

They kinda look a bit like fortune cookies like this, don’t they?

Anyways, after watching this video on youtube that said that Chinese dumplings, or Jiaozi, are really, really easy to make, I felt compelled to make some. The wrapper only needs 2 ingredient - wheat flour and water. Oh and a whole lot of kneading. There’s also half a tube of minced chicken and a hodgepodge of vegetable (carrot, celery, spring onion, mushroom - ok, not a vege but close enough) in the fridge that can be used for the filling. (if I haven’t reiterate before, I hate wasting food!)

Anyways, don’t they look like tortellinis? I can’t do the traditional pleated dumplings, or rather I don’t have the patience for it. These are much easier to make and they look pretty damn cute.



Like buttons!

Anyways they’re really easy to prepare. Once you’re done wrapping them you just need to boil them.



Oh yeah. Enjoy piping hot with garlic and soy sauce dipping (add chili oil or chopped chili if you want) or pop them in chicken soup and SAVOUR.

(Source: makan2)

Breakfast

Fried rice,

One of the rare times I wake up early enough to cook breakfast for everyone. Fried rice, mushroom + onion + anchovy omelette and dragon fruit.

(Source: makan2)

Chocolate Eclairs

Sometimes my baking is compelled by the desire to use up the available things we have at home before it goes bad or gets thrown out because no one eats it  (I hate wasting food). In this case, it’s a batch of whipped cream, and a packet of chocolate curls with crisp chocolate rice bits that nobody seems to want to eat.

I decided to make some chocolate eclairs

Here they are before the baking process. I finally get to bust out my new piping bag to pipe these out.



These little choux pastry shells, cooling out on the rack looks a lot like mini baguettes! There’s a cute one on far right that looks like a mouse.



Fill them with cream and top them with melted chocolate …



…and we’re done! Pop ‘em into eating hole and savour :)

(Source: makan2)

Raya Cakes and Cookies

I’ve been away for the holiday season so much apologies for the lack of update! It’s the Hari Raya holidays which marks the end of Ramadan, the fasting month. I spent the holidays with my family in Miri, my mother’s birthplace and hometown - which also happened to be one of my favourite place on earth.

With holidays and family and festivities, good food is never far behind. Feast your eyes on the lovely cookies and cakes my aunt served us and these aren’t even all of her stuff she had stocked up. I was snapping away photos and soon gave up and stuffed my face instead. Behold:

Biskut Sarang Semut (Ant’s Nest cookies), named so probably because of the shape that resembles ant’s nest? Made by grating cookie dough and piling em into cups to be baked.



I think this is Melting Moments. It’s impossibly crisp and buttery.



For some reason all photos I took of these are blurry. Crumbs on my lens, I think.
These are Nestum cookies.



Biskut Batang Buruk (it translates funny: Rotted Trunk cookies? LOL) The name is weird all right hahah. I think it’s because it looks like a piece of old rotten, fungus covered wood?? Doesn’t sound appetizing I know but this one is pretty delicious and unique to the region. It’s basically crisp cookie logs, stuffed and covered with green pea powder and sugar. (tastier than it sounded, honest).

Biskut Dahlia. This is pretty traditional, everyone will always have this in their homes during the holiday season. In the olden days people use a metal cookie pump to pipe out these flowers.



Impossibly crumbly Makmur Susu cookies. They’re made from milk powder and looks a bit like the Indian sweets kulfi.



My fave. Tiny crispy mini popiah/ spring rolls, filled with spicy shrimp/ meat floss.



Heart shaped lovelies.



Another Melting Moments variety but with dotted with raisins.



Some seriously cute carrot-shaped cookies! I didn’t eat any of these though - when it comes to festive cookies I always go for the classics. Frosting-topped cookies like these are a fairly new addition to the festive spread but sometimes they tend to look better than their taste.



Cakes! Pretty layered cakes but my fave is the chunk of black cake far left corner. It’s like soft, sweet, custardy slices of pure chocolate. Heavenly.



Moist mini swiss rolls!! I love these. The one of the right is filled with durian custard. It’s flat out DELICIOUS. I know durian’s an acquired taste but gawd, if you don’t like durian, you’re really missing out on this.



Chocolate Roll and Vanilla Cream. MMMMmmm.



The parental units, and aunts seem to prefer this cake every year. It looks like, according to my cousin, a whole bunch of fruits and nuts tossed into the gutter and fished out again XD. It’s basically a whole lot of preserved fruits and cashew held together by a chewy, dense pudding. It’s a bit too sweet for my taste, but a lot of older people love it and it lasts forever.



This is something new to me and according to my aunt, it’s very traditional. It’s made entirely using a kuali (wok).



This is Kek Jantung Pisang (Banana Heart Cake). Because when you cut into it, it resembles the heart of the banana plant (the thing that dangles out from the banana fruit stalk, kinda like an artichoke in structure and flavour). Making this is super laborious - it’s basically a whole lot of crepes cooked on top of one another until it resembles the banana heart. It’s amazing, and tastes pretty damn good.



Hello delicious. I’m gonna eat you up by myself.

(Source: makan2)

Ramadhan Food Bazaar

(Satok Ramadhan Bazaar)

Ramadhan Food Bazaar is something that happens only once a year. It’s basically a whole month (or close to it) of food market selling a wide variety of breaking fast staples/ favourites like the refreshing freshly-squeezed sugarcane juice below (good to replenish your body with energy-boosting simple sugars and fluid after a whole day of fasting).

The green, banana-leaf wrapped pouch in the photo below is called Kuih Tongkol, which is a delicious steamed rice pudding. ‘Tongkol’ can be literally translated as ‘block’ because when you unwrap the pouch, you get a ‘block’ of soft rice pudding, doused in creamy, slightly salty coconut milk and smoky-sweet palm sugar. It may sound mighty simple - but when you get a good version of this sweet treat, it’s superbly sublime. And best of all, it’s delicious both hot from the steamer or chilled in the fridge.

And yes, those are mighty delicious looking fried chickens you see in the tray next to the Kuih Tongkol!



There’s also the ubiquitous murtabak, Indian-style meatwich - meat and egg mixture held together with roti canai and grilled on a hot plate.



Various fried goodies like wonderfully spiced vadai (dhal fritters), prawn and onion fritters, and crispy muruku sold in huge packets!



Lots and lots of sweet and savoury treats in form of kuih (cakes/snacks of all sorts), doughnuts, pumpkin puddings, tapioca cakes, spring rolls, banana leaf-wrapped puddings, glutinous rice cakes liberally covered in grated coconut, sweet jellies…



Rojak - fruits, cucumber, jicama and tofu in delicious, dark shrimp-based sauce. Yeah bet you can’t imagine how black shrimp-based sauce go together with vegetables and be awesomely DELICIOUS at that, but trust me, it’s GOOD.



Sate/ Satay - which is essentially barbecued meat on a stick! Can’t go wrong with that! Eat with peanut gravy and rice cakes and lots of fresh cucumber.



Last but not least, an array of colourful and tantalizing mix of refreshing drinks - from creamy, coconut milk-heavy cendol, fresh coconut water, air bandung (rose syrup with milk which is pink as heck), bits and bobs of basil seed, jelly cubes, barley and slices of lemon pooling in their plastic packets.



I love these markets. It’s bustling and busy and full of life, and the sellers are almost always friendly and smiling despite the fact that most of them are fasting and have not eaten the whole day! If anything the only drawbacks of these places is that there’s always the temptation of buying way too much…

Foraging Foray

My parents’ garden in reality is not really a garden but a entangled, overgrown mess of trees, flowering plants and unexpected edible weeds. A quick foray into one particularly lush patch one late afternoon yielded these gems: 2 types of fern - a delicate red leafed variety locally known as ‘midin’ (much loved for its partnership with the ubiquitous shrimp paste (belacan) in a simple dish of stir fry), and second, the green, curly, slightly furry specimen you see right upfront, known as the paku uban (white-haired fern) - often blanched and eaten like you would a salad.

Far in the back is a misshapen, sad excuse of a jicama that I planted a few months back and forgot that it existed until I found its yellowed vines on a secluded patch in the corner of the garden. For something that neglected for all that time it’s quite surprising that it even yielded anything at all!

For dinner the both types of ferns are used to make a simple boiled green dish with a sweet local pumpkin. I used some home made chicken stock (chicken bones boiled with some cloves, star anise, cinnamon bark and daun salam), toss in a chopped onion, cubes pumpkins, leave to boil till it’s soft and toss in the ferns for a quick hot bath and then it’s ready to be eaten.



The chicken stock goes so well with the pumpkins, which in turn lent the whole dish a pleasant sweet flavour. This is a simple home cooked meal using fresh and readily available ingredients at its best - half of the ingredient came from behind our backyard, and the rest can be found at the local market. It’s nutritious, comforting and simply put, effortlessly delicious.

(Source: makan2)