Cooking and Baking Laboratory: 2009

April 22, 2009

Klappertaart, A Dessert from Manado

I’ve just made my very first klappertaart, kind of dessert from Manado, Indonesia. I thought it was difficult, at last I found that it is an easy one to try for beginner.

Actually, someone in my sport club gave me a klappertaart when I and my husband helped him figure out his laptop’s problem. I have the recipe at home but never been inspired to make it myself. A month later, I attended a cooking class, the subject was Italian Food. It was nice and very useful. I found out that the subject for tomorrow class (I didn’t register) was Klappertaart! I didn’t join it. I decided to make it myself at first. I told my tutor, “If I’m not success making my own klappertaart, I will make up my mind, I’ll join your next class.” :))

Ingredients:

Margarine, as necessary
Young coconut, rubbed down and get 500 g, marinated in coconut water
100 ml evaporated milk
100 ml water
110 g white sugar
10 cm cinnamon
30 g roasted walnut, minced
50 g wheat flour (all purposes/medium proteins), dissolve in 100 ml water
80 g egg yolks (organic eggs/ low cholesterol eggs)
60 g egg white (organic eggs/ low cholesterol eggs)

Topping:

60 g egg white
1 teaspoon lemon juice (I used jeruk nipis)
1 tablespoon white sugar
Raisins, as necessary
Ground cinnamon, as necessary

Instructions:

Preheat the oven in 180°C.
Cover aluminium cups (or you can use pyrex) with thin layer of margarine.

Beat egg yolks and egg white. Set aside.

Mix evaporated milk, water, sugar, and cinnamon stick. Boil them in medium heat.
In Low heat, pour dissolved flour and beaten eggs. Gently stir it until it get thick.
Take out the cinnamon stick. Pour rubbed young coconut, minced walnut. Stir it.
Pour into aluminium cups. Remain ⅓ left on top for topping.
Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until it ‘freeze’. Get them out. Set aside.

Beat egg white in high speed. Add lemon juices. Beat them until stiff and shiny.
Place it to the top of each cup, gently spread it out.
Put raisins on the top.
Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes or until it turn into gold color.
Take them out.

After they reach room temperature, sow ground cinnamon on them.
Serve it immediately or keep them in chiller to prolong the durability. You can keep them 4 days until a week in chiller.

(for 8 peoples)

April 8, 2009

Fun Gifts for Food Lovers

Hi Guys, we have a guest writer here, Jon D, and expert at cookware.com
He gives us clues to decide what gift we are able to choose for our friends or relatives.
I hope you'll enjoy it.

Some people are easier to shop for than others. Luckily if the person you are shopping for happens to have a passion for food and drink, then you have a wide variety of fun options to choose from. Items like kitchen appliances, dinnerware, and cookware are somewhat impersonal gifts. Kitchen gadgets on the other hand are an ever popular gift choice for foodies because they are fun, useful, and relatively affordable. The key is to find a gift that is fun and practical, but also appeals to the person’s particular kitchen passions.

Anyone who is a fan of cooking with fresh ingredients would love to have their own indoor herb or veggie garden. The Aero Garden hydroponic growing system allows people to grow their own fresh herbs without all the hassle and dirty work of working with garden soil. You can even buy special seed pods to grow your own Italian herbs, lettuce, and salsa veggies. People that enjoy gardening can grow herbs year round in the comfort of their own home, which makes this a great gift for foodies who also have a green thumb.

Unique bottle, can, and wine openers also make excellent gifts as people are always looking for easier ways to open their favorite beverages. Modern openers and cork screws have options like pressurized handles that help take the pain out of uncorking a bottle or removing a bottle cap. These types of openers are especially helpful for elderly persons who may have trouble opening bottles by themselves.

Small kitchen gadgets like fruit slicers, cheese cutters, and pizza cutters can also make for a unique gift idea. Most kitchens are already stocked with traditional staples like pots, pans, and knives, but there is always room for more helpful gadgets. Lots of brands have unique takes on items like pizza cutters and cheese cutters and these tools can be a great way to add a little character to san otherwise traditional kitchen.

March 31, 2009

Urap Bali (Boiled Vegetables with Balinese Spices)

I’ve got this recipe from Seri Masak Femina PRIMARASA (for beginner), Merebus dan Resep-Resep Terlezat.

I really enjoy this food. It is so simple, fresh, easy and fast to serve. So, fast food not always junk food, I guess. The recipe below is my modification, a little bit. If you want the original, just grab the book in bookstore :D

Vegetables:

150 grams spinach
75 grams long pea (kind of legume), diced
50 grams cabbage, sliced
75 grams bean sprout
(You can also use finely sliced carrot)
750 ml water
A pinch of salt

Instructions:

Boil the water. Pour some water into bean sprout. Soak for 1 or 2 minutes. Remove the bean sprouts and drain it.
Keep the heat in medium. Add long pea to the boiled water, add a pinch of salt, stir. Wait until gentle enough or about 5 minutes.
Add spinach, for about 3 minutes then add cabbage. Then take them out of the water and drain.
You can also boil the vegetables separately, one by one with different boiled water. You will take some extra time if you do this.
I mix them because at the end they will be mixed too, it is only for practical purposes.
Set them aside.

Spices:

100 ml thick coconut milk
2 chilies, sliced
5 shallots, peeled, sliced
1 inch Kencur (greater galingale, Kaempferia galanga), chopped
Jeruk purut leaves, chopped
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon of salt
1½ teaspoons of sugar
3 tablespoons of hot cooking oil

Instructions:

Mix all spices, add hot cooking oil, stir well. Add coconut oil at last, stir.
Mix spices above with boiled vegetables.
Serve it immediately.

(for 2-4 peoples)

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