Fish Satay

We went to Prague in Czech Republic last weekend. It seems Czechs eat lots of meat because their dishes mostly are meat dishes. I love meat but I really missed fish. So yesterday I cooked this Fish Satay for our dinner, served with boiled rice and spinach clear soup as the accompaniment (my previous post).

















FISH SATAY (Sate Lilit)

Ingredients:
300g white fish, chopped
300g prawn
500g grated coconut
5 lime leaves, shredded
1 tbsp grated palm sugar
black pepper & salt

For the paste:
1 big red chilli (or more if you want)
1 tbsp grated palm sugar
2 cloves of garlic
12cm turmeric
2.5cm lesser galangal
2 lemon grass (the white part)
9cm galangal
10 candle nuts

Mix all the ingredients and spice paste into a food processor. Process it until all mix really well and form a big clump.
Take a handful of the fish mixture and stick it on a skewer. Flat it a little bit.
Finish all the fish mixture.
Grill them on a griddle / bbq / in the oven until all brown and cooked.

Serve with lemon wedges.


This satay is really good, especially if you want to give lots of flavour to rather bland fish like cod.

My lunch today, Clear Spinach Soup

This dish is one of my favourite. Bring back the memory of after school lunch. I love to eat it with garlic chilli paste. Great for hot days, served with rice or just the way it is.

I don't cook this dish that often because I don't come across fingerroot spice that often but few days ago I saw spinach theme recipes on one of my Multiply contacts, then of course I remember this one.

Here is the recipe:
CLEAR SPINACH SOUP

Ingredients:
1 bag of spinach
2 corn on a cob, cut into 6
1 liter water/stock
5 shallots, slice
3 cm fingerroot, smash
1 lemon grass, smash
1 tbsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt

Method:
Boil water/stock, add all the ingredients except spinach and leave it until the sweet corns are cooked.
Stir in the spinach and take of from the heat. Pick out the fingerroot and lemon grass before serving.

Garlic Chilli Paste:
3 Red chillies
1 clove of garlic
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp cooking oil, heated

Put all the ingredients except the oil in to mortar and mash them into paste, then add the hot oil.

Gluten Free Chocolate (eggs) Cookies

I have previously made several different gluten free cookies for my husband, who's a coeliac. He enjoyed all of them but he thinks the ones from this recipe are the best.
This time I substituted chocolate eggs instead of chocolate bars, to use up all my stock. They are much harder than chocolate bars, so I had to smash them with a meat mallet. The chocolate eggs didn't melt during the baking, and gave crunchier texture to the cookies.


For this month MASTER BAKER CHALLENGE we have to use chocolate eggs or other Easter candies, therefore I created this one delicious crunchy cookies.


Chocolate chunks cookies

170g unsalted butter -- softened
227g brown sugar
55g granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
250g all purpose flour (I used ready mix gluten free flour)
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
285g bittersweet chocolate -- cut into chunks (I used smashed chocolate eggs)

Directions:
1.Preheat oven to 180C
2.Cream together butter and sugars until smooth. Add egg and vanilla and blend in.
3.Stir in flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt.
Stir in chocolate chunks.
4.Drop by tablespoons onto a greased baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes, until golden brown around the edges.
5.Let cool slightly and enjoy.

The result is a nice firm, crunchy biscuit, more like the European style than softer American style of cookies

Chicken Satay

This is a popular dish in Indonesia. Very simple and easy to make. Perfect for summer BBQ.



Ingredients
2 chicken breast
3 cloves of garlic, mashed
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
white pepper
knob of butter, melted

Method:
Cut the chicken breast into bite size and put them in a bowl.
Add the garlic, sugar, salt and pepper. Mix well.
Put the chicken pieces on skewers (if you use bamboo skewers, please don't forget to soak them in the water first to avoid burning).
Before you grill them in the oven grill or BBQ, brush them with the melted butter all over.
When they are half cooked, brush them with the soy sauce and then continue to grill them until they cooked and brown all over.
Serve them with spicy peanut sauce or sweet soy sauce or just as it is.
(Serves 2 -3)

Royal Foodie Joust

This is my entry for this month's Royal Foodie Joust and the ingredients are Seafood, Lime/Lemon and Coconut Milk.
When I saw the ingredients I was supposed to use I was very excited, because this is the first time I'm joining in and the ingredients are ones I use very often.
On this occasion I would like to share my Indonesian background with you all through this dish.
















SEA BASS IN COCONUT SAUCE

400g Sea bass (or you can use sea bream, or trout)
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 fresh (big) red chillies - de seed one of them
1/2 tsp ground coriander
oil for deep frying
3 tbsp peanut oil
400ml coconut milk
juice of 1 lime
2 tsp grated palm sugar
5 lime leaves, shredded
salt
Coriander leaves for garnish

Method:
With a sharp knife, make small incisions about 1cm apart on both sides of the fish. Season the fish with salt inside and out.

Finely chop the onions and the garlic. Cut the deseeded chillies into thin strips.

Deep fry the fish in hot oil until brown all over. Drain it thoroughly on kitchen paper.

Heat the peanut oil in a large wok. Fry the onions, garlic, chillies and ground coriander, stirring frequently until the onions are lightly browned. Pour in the coconut milk and lime juice. Add the palm sugar and stir until all dissolve and then put in the lime leaves. Bring to boil.

Lay the fish in the sauce and simmer over a low heat for about 10 minutes.

Transfer the fish and sauce to a warm dish, sprinkle with coriander leaves and serve immediately with boiled rice.

We had a friend come for dinner last night and she doesn't eat meat, so I made this dish and she loved it.
The lime juice and lime leaves really give the sauce a fresh taste.

The Foodie Blogroll

I started this food blog to share my experiences of being a food-loving Indonesian living in Ireland, to document some of my favourite recipes, and to give . Another reason was to get inspiration and ideas from other blogs, and to get to know other people who share my passion for food.

A little while ago, I found The Foodie Blogroll sign on a site I was visiting, and instantly I knew that it was something I should get involved with. Because my blog was a little new, I had to wait a while before being elligible, but finally a few days ago I applied and very quickly got approved.

I'm looking forward to getting more involved in the food online community, and looking forward to seeing more bloggers join in.

Indonesian Curry

For so many years I have been trying to cook the perfect Indonesian curry for my own palate and so many times I've failed. I know the basic ingredients but I just couldn't make it as good as the way my parents' cook made back in Indonesia. Because of that, I usually just used Indonesian curry sauce from Singapore.


I could buy the sauce from our local Asian shop before, but then the shop stopped importing it. I was desperate so I bought a batch directly from Singapore by post one time and asked my mother in law to bring them back when she went to Singapore one other time, but eventually I used them all up.



I was sad, I always think that this sauce tastes quite original and I love it. Unfortunately it was too spicy for my husband, who doesn't like spicy food despite having me as his wife and his cook for about 6 years.
That made me think, maybe the reason I've never been able to cook the right taste curry was because I tried to make it less spicy for my husband. So a few days ago I was in this mood that I had to make it right this time. I had a chow chow or chayote squash in the fridge and some tofu (I use aubergine/egg plant sometimes for this kind of curry) and I modified the basic ingredients I know.

Chow-chow (Chayote Squash) Indonesian curry
(Sayur Lodeh Labu Siam)
serves 2-3

Ingredients:
1 chow chow, cut into strips
2 squares of firm tofu
½ cup shrimps
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped finely
3 (fat) red chillies, deseeded and sliced (I deseeded only two of them)
6 curry leaves
½ tsp galangal powder (1 inch fresh, smashed)

½ tsp shrimp paste
1 tbsp grated palm sugar
2 cups coconut milk
salt
oil

Method:
Heat some oil in a hot pan, fry the onion until soft then add the garlic, chillies, galangal, curry leaves and shrimp paste, fry until fragrant. Add the shrimps and chow chow.

Pour the coconut milk into the pan and keep stirring until it simmers, then add the palm sugar, keep stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Add the tofu.
Add some water if necessary.

Keep boiling slowly until the vegetables are soft. Season with salt.

Serve it with boiled rice.

Note:
You can add or reduce some of the ingredients until you find the right amount for you own taste. Be careful using galangal powder, if you put too much of it, it can make the dish taste bitter.

I was so pleased with myself. Finally I can make Indonesian vegetable curry that is right for my taste, because this is my comfort food when I miss my parents home cooking and I want to share this with the other participants in Monthly Mingle.






Unfortunately my husband couldn't stand the chillies, but that's okay, more for me then :-D.