Cooking and Baking Laboratory: 1/1/09

January 29, 2009

Sambal Tumpang (fermented soybeans cook with chili spices and coconut milk)

This recipe came from my mother, apparently my grandmother who really mastered it. Originally people in East Java and Central Java serve Sambal Tumpang with boiled vegetables, just like Pecel. Some peoples come from West-East Java or East-Central Java call it Letok, say with thick ‘t’ (Lethok) .

Ingredients:

300 gTempe (tempeh, fermented soybeans), a bit over-fermented tempe would be better.
1 salam leaves
2 slices galangal root, crushed
250 ml thin coconut milk
500 ml water
3-5 Hot chili (cabe rawit)
3 cloves garlic
5 shallots
Kencur [Greater galingale (Kaempferia galanga)]
3 teaspoon salt
A pinch of sugar

Instructions:

Boil the water in a pan, add tempe, salam leaves, galangal root and hot chilies.
When tempe and chilies become tender, turn off the heat. Take both out of water.
Pound tempe in stone mortar. Put it back into the pan.
Grind chilies with salt, garlic, shallots, and kencur. Take into the pan.
Turn on the heat at low. Pour thin coconut milk, stir it well.
Add sugar.
Cook until quite thick.
Serve it with boiled vegetables, warm cooked rice and Kerupuk Puli (Lempeng from Madiun, East Java)

(for 4 peoples)

January 15, 2009

Rawon

This is another Indonesian traditional food. This dish come from Surabaya, East Java, cook with special spice, which is keluwek or keluwak. Keluwek or keluwak is fruit from Kepayang tree. How to choose good Keluwak? Some people just shake the fruit and get two voices inside. But it doesn’t enough for me. I choose the heavier one, ‘antep’ in Javanese language. The larger is not always the heavier. When you do the right choice, you’ll get a perfect color of black keluwak inside the nut shell and its great smell. I can’t describe the smell but it is just like fermented fruits, you will get the smell of alcohol a little when the nut shell is cracked.

Actually, Rawon was my first experiment .Having capability to cook Rawon with good taste is a must for me, because this is one of my favorite foods. Rawon was my first experiment a couple years ago. This recipe is made after several tries.

Ingredients:
700 g beef (brisket, sandunglamur in Bahasa Indonesia), cut in cubical shape
2 L water
2 lemongrass, crushed
2 salam leaves
4 jeruk purut leaves
2 thick slices of galangal root, crushed
3 tablespoons cooking oil
7 teaspoon salt

Spices to Grind:
4 chilies, throw the seeds away
5 cloves garlic, peeled
7 shallots, peeled
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
7 keluwak/keluwek, cracked, use only the black inner
5 candlenut
2 teaspoon ground coriander
A pinch of tamarind
50 g palm sugar
2 tablespoons sugar

Complements:
150 g sprouts (the short one), soaked in hot water, then drained
2 tablespoon fried onion
Lime juice
Leek, chopped
Chili condiment
Salted eggs (duck egg), cut in two

Instructions:
Boil the water in a pan in high heat.
Set heat in low, add the beef, lemongrass, salam leaves, galangal root and Jeruk Purut leaves.
While tendering the meat in the pan, grind all spices in Spices to Grind above with stone mortar or processor.
Set the heat in medium. Sauté the ground spices with cooking oil until it is fragrant.
Then, pour the spices to the pan, stir it. Add salt.
Keep stewing until the meat is tender and the spices well absorbed.
Serve Rawon with warm rice and The Complements.

(for 4 peoples)

January 5, 2009

Fried Broccoli

Broccoli is a vegetable with a thick green stem and several dark green flower heads or florets coming from that one main stem. It looks like cauliflower but different in color.

Fried broccoli maybe not the healthiest way to cook broccoli, it just give us alternative when sometime we get bored with steamed broccoli or another choice for people who don’t like eating and smelling green vegetables.

The composition of flours and spices I wrote here is still kind of try and error experiment. The change of the ingredients below is quite possible.

Ingredients:

250 g Broccoli
4½ tablespoons wheat flour (high protein)
4 tablespoons rice flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground Coriander
2 teaspoons ground White pepper
2 large organic eggs
Cooking oil (deep frying is better)

Instructions:

Cut the florets, as big or as small as you want. But remember, the thinner you cut, the more they interact with cooking oil so that their nutrition remains less.

Wash in running water and soak it for about 5 minutes, clean it if there are some worms.

Crack the eggs in a bowl. Mix homogenously with ½ teaspoon ground coriander, ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon ground white pepper.

Set a plate for mixing spicy flour. Pour rice flour and wheat flour into it. Mix both of them. Then add 1½ teaspoons salt, 1½ teaspoons ground coriander, and 1½ teaspoons ground white pepper. Mix it homogenously.

Immerse the floret with spicy eggs. Take it out then cover it with mix spicy flour. Dip in spicy eggs once more then cover it again with the mix spicy flour.

Set the cooking oil on the medium heat. Then just fry, take out from the oil when they turn into golden color. Drain the remaining cooking oil. Serve for snack or appetizer.

For 2 peoples