Homemade Peanut Sauce

This homemade peanut sauce is versatile. I always make it big batch and keep in the fridge. There are a lot of recipes using this sauce either as a basic spices or condiment. Let say, Indonesian vegetable salad (gado-gado), Indonesian cooked vegetable salad (pecel), ketoprak, chicken satay (sate ayam), siomay, batagor, green mussel peanut sauce stir fry and etc. So here it the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup roasted peanuts or pan fried peanuts

3/4 cup shredded coconut sugar

10 kaffir lime leaves

8 red Thai chili peppers (you can steam or boil it first so that it would be easy to blend)

2 tbs of tamarind dissolve in 1/2 cup of water

1 tsp shrimp paste

6 cloves of garlic

2 tsp salt

Direction:

Combine all of the ingredients and blend it either with food processor or stick blender.

Store it in a fridge.

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Green Mussel Peanut Sauce Stir Fry

I shopped for green mussel but I don't know what to do with it. My mom used to make clams soup for us and it was super easy. She just used shallots, garlic and chili peppers. The result was very good thou because of clams broth itself is so succulent. Here I am having a green mussel and collard green which are sitting in the fridge and don't know what to do with it. I'd like to make something different with combining those two ingredients. Last time I ate green mussel and I got a very bad headache afterward. That was in Indonesia 2 years ago. Either green mussel was contaminated or I just ate it too much. At that moment I was craved for seafood so badly and here I am at my friend's house and she served me a big platter of green mussel stir fry. I just devouring that green mussel like a truly rabid and later got a very bad headache. Oh well, that's the lesson, just take it easy girl! After ate green mussels from this recipe, I didn't have any headache and I used peanut sauce as a basic taste, pretty different from the other seafood recipe. Let's check my recipe:

Ingredients:

12 green mussels, brushed and cleaned

7 collard green leaves, discard the tough stem and boil it until it blanched and chop thinly

1/2 medium cooking onion, sliced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

5 red Thai chili peppers, cut into angle

1/2 medium tomato, cut into wedges

2 tbs of sweet soy sauce (kecap manis)

2 tsp homemade peanut sauce

2 tsp of sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbs lemon juice obtained from lemon squeezed

2 cups of water

1 tbs olive oil for sauteing

A handful of coriander leaves, chopped thinly

Direction:

Saute the cooking onion, minced garlic, red Thai chili peppers and tomato until fragrant.

Add water, green mussel, sweet soy sauce, homemade peanut sauce, lemon juice, sugar and salt. Let it boiled.

Add collard green and stir it evenly. Cook for another 2 minutes and turn off the stove.

Sprinkle with chopped coriander leaves.

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Easy Chocolate Cake

Chocolate cake is one of my favorite cake beside cheese cake, sponge cake and brownies. The only pie that I can eat is pecan pie. I don't mind with pumpkin pie but not overdose. I got this easy chocolate cake from CBC TV show calls Best Recipe Ever. I love that show since the host, Kary Osmond always come up with an easy recipe yet creative. Her recipe is from Canadian Living's renowned recipe library. Every time I try that recipe, it always work and have a good result. For this chocolate cake recipe, she calls for cider vinegar and I don't have any in my pantry. Instead I substituted with white vinegar and mango juice. The result, still good...just beyond anything! Here, check the recipe:

Ingredients:

3 cups whole wheat flour (the original recipe calls for regular all purpose flour)

3 cups brown sugar

2/3 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups cold coffee or water

1 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla extract

3 tbs cider vinegar (I substituted with 1 1/2 tbs of white vinegar and 1 1/2 tbs of mango juice)

Direction:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease the 13' x 9' baking pan.

In a large bowl whisk together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

Whisk coffee, oil, vanilla extract, white vinegar and mango juice in a different bowl.

Mix together with the dry ingredients.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

6 oz cream cheese (room temperature)

1/3 cup confectioners sugar (icing sugar; gula halus)

1 cup whipping cream

3 bars of semi sweet chocolate (Baker's chocolate), melted

Direction:

Using the electric mixer, mix the cream cheese, icing sugar, whipping cream and chocolate for 2 minutes until smooth (with the lowest speed).

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Black Bottom Cupcake

I'm very pleased to share this recipe because I love this black bottom cupcake. I got this recipe from www.joyofbaking.com. I hope you'll love it too. It's very easy, moist, delicious and definitely will make your day!

Ingredients:

8 oz cream cheese (227 gr) room temperature

1/3 cup white sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

For the chocolate cupcake:

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour ( I used the whole wheat one)

1 cup white sugar

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup water

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 tsp vinegar

1/3 cup corn/ canola oil/ vegetable oil

Direction:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 12 muffin cups with paper liners

Cream cheese filling:
In your electric mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar, egg, vanilla extract until creamy and smooth. Set aside.

Chocolate cupcake:
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl mix the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla extract.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients until nice and smooth.

Evenly divide the batter to 12 muffin cups then spoon a few of cream cheese filling into the center of each cupcake.
Bake for 25 minutes until cream cheese filling a little bit brown

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Lasagna Stuffed Spinach Salad

This recipe is my creation of lasagna noodle since the recipe of lasagna that running around is usually so fatty. Damien is my tester for every food I made and he loves this meal as well. This recipe is so simple. My first experience made lasagna was not great. I followed all of the direction in a lasagna box but the result was very disappointing. As a matter of fact, even though we bake the lasagna for 45 minutes, the lasagna noodle is still hard. Since then every time I make lasagna I always boil them first for about 10-15 minutes. It also helps us to  cut off the baking time by 30 minutes. Let's check out the recipe:

Ingredients:
4 pieces lasagna noodle
a handful of spinach, chopped thinly
3 green onions, chopped thinly
1 carrot, cubed
2 baked chicken breast, chopped coarsely
4 tbs caesar dressing salad
1 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp oregano
1/2 cup of feta cheese
1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1 tbs lemon juice derived from lemon squeezed
4 tbs pasta sauce

Direction:
Boil the lasagna noodle for 10-15 minutes so that it will be easy to fold.
Combine spinach, green onions, carrot, feta cheese, black pepper, lemon juice, garlic, salt and caesar dressing.
Cut lasagna in a half and arrange the spinach salad in the middle of it and wrap both sides.
Arrange the wrapped lasagna seam-side down in a greased pan. Cover with pasta sauce and sprinkle with cheddar cheese and oregano.
Bake for 15 minutes

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Banana Cupcake

I'm trying to gather some of my old recipes and pictures. This banana cupcake is my first baking experience. I think baking is as fun as cooking. The thing is I have to keep it away from my mind since I love sweet food  but I have to control my sugar consumption. My mom, my grandmother from my mom's side, both of my aunties (from my mom's side) and my grandfather from my dad's side had diabetes. So genetically I have diabetes carrier in my blood, that's why I have to be more careful with sugar. Since I found that the common sugar in here is corn sugar which is worse than any other sugar product, I have to really controlling my sugar intake. One time, I found one sweetener as sugar substitute calls Stevia. This kind of sweetener apparently has been widely used in Japan since 1970. I have never used this kind of sweetener for baking but I do use it for cooking. What I'm doing in baking is I usually reduce the amount of sugar by a half or a quarter. Baking once every week is fine for me since I don't like to buy bakery product in the store because they usually use chemical stuff and I found that the taste is not that great. Homemade bakery is the best. Banana cupcake is easy to make and it could be your alternative meal to start your day. I forgot where I got this recipe so I'm sorry about that. Whoever shared this recipe in the internet, thank you so much...

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (spponed and leveled)

3/4  cup of sugar

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted

1 1/2 cup mashed bananas (about 4 ripe bananas)

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Direction:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder,baking soda and salt.

Make a well in center flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, mashed bananas, eggs and vanilla. Stir in incorporate flour mix (do not over mix or the muffin will be tough). Diving evenly, spoon batter into  muffin pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes

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Steamed Tofu, Anchovy Fish and Shrimp Wrapped with Banana Leaves a.k.a Botok Tahu, Teri dan Udang

Botok (not a 'botox' treatment) is one of Javanese food made from shredded coconut flesh wrapped with banana leaves and we steam it. When I was young, my mom pretty often make this meal for us as a companion for Tamarind Soup (Sayur Asem). Actually this is one of her favorite dish. She also made Shrimp paste sambal (Sambal Terasi) as a condiment. To be honest, I don't like when my mom making this meal. I found that it's boring. As I grew up, I don't mind with this meal but not quite often. Since I moved to Winnipeg, somehow I miss this meal and want to make it so badly. My favorite one is with dried anchovy fish and white leadtree a.k.a jumbay; white popinac; (Leucaena leuchocepala (petai cina in Indonesia; lamtoro or pèthèt in Javanese). Unfortunately I haven't found white leadtree in here yet. The main ingredient for this dish is shredded coconut flesh, usually we use the young one. Why? It's because the young coconut flesh is more juicy which will enrich the taste. In here because we don't have fresh coconut so I just use the frozen one. Hence, I couldn't choose the young coconut to use so I just used whatever I got, life must go on...Unfortunately I just have a little bit of shredded coconut flesh left over from last time I made Cooked Vegetable Salad (Urap sayur) so I decided to add tofu. Here it is the recipe:

Ingredients:

200 gr shredded coconut flesh

1 block of tofu, mashed

100 gr of dried anchovy fish

10 shrimps, peel of the skin

10 bilimbi (belimbing wuluh/ belimbing keris), cut into angle

5 red Thai chili peppers, cut into angle

5 bay leaves

5 galangal

banana leaves

toothpicks

Spices to blend:

3 shallots

2 cloves of garlic

2 cm of kaemferia galangal/ great galangal (kencur)

1 red Thai chili pepper

1 tsp shrimp paste

1 1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp sugar

Direction:

Steam/ pan fry/ boil the shallots, garlic and chili pepper before you blend it. It will make it easier to blend. After you're done then blend it altogether with kaemferia galangal, shrimp paste, sugar and salt.

Combine the blended spices, shredded coconut flesh, mashed tofu, dried anchovy fish, shrimps, bilimbi and red Thai chili peppers.

Place one bay leaf and galangal on a banana leaf then put 2 tbs of  the mixed ingredients (from step 3) on top of it.Wrap and pin it with toothpick.

Steam it in a steamer for about 45 minutes.

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