Fish In Green Curry Sauce

As I said before in my posting about green curry that I'd post a recipe using this paste. I love fish and seafood and I always have them in the freezer, so adding fish in the curry sauce would be great to accompany my hot steamy rice. It's very simple yet delicious dish, perfect to make when you have unexpected guests.

Ingredients:
350 gr fish fillet
2-3 eatsps green curry paste
100 gr green beans
salt & peper for seasoning
1 teasp stock powder (optional)
250 ml coconut milk


Directions:
1. Heat the oil in the pan. Stir fry the green curry paste in hot oil until fragrant.

2. Add with cut green beans, stir fry until the beans half-soft, add liquid / water if it's too dry.

3. Pour the coconut milk in the pan, season and add stock powder, leave to boil.

4. Add the fish in the pan, cover the sauce to coat. Lower the heat and simmer until the fish done. Remove and ready to serve.

Click Jugalbandi Photography Event: Rice Pilaff

A pilaff dish is satisfying by itself, but makes an ideal accompaniment to roast chicken. Served with a side salad, it is a quick and economical luncheon dish.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
225 gr brown or white rice
500 ml stock
50 gr currants
half of a red / green peppers, seeded and diced
a pinch of mixed herbs or oregano
25 gr chopped walnust (I'm allergic to nuts, I didn't use this)

Directions:
1. Gently fry the onion, peppers, herbs in the oil until transparent.

2. Then add the rice, stirring it carefully to coat the grains.

3. Pour on the hot stock, allow to come to the boil and then cover and put over a very low heat. Check and add more liquid if necessary.

4. When the rice is done, add the currants and walnuts. Just before serving, season with freshly groud pepper and grated parmesan cheese if liked.

As my entry to participate Jugalbandi Click Photography event which the theme is RED, I put my ready-to-eat rice pilaff in the red pepper to fit to the theme.

More informations about the event, please click their link here.

Hot & Spicy Shrimp

I dare you to eat this shrimp dish... it's super spicy! Definitely not for beginner... I warn you not to try this if you have weak stomach, otherwise you'll be on fire and having trouble non-stop going to the toilet... :D.

Ingredients:
1 kg shrimp/prawn, tail-on, deveined
3 sjallots, thin slices
3-4 tblsps sambal
1 stalk lemon grass
2 cm fresh ginger, thin slices
salt, sugar for seasoning

Directions:
1. Heat the oil in the wok, stir fry the sjallots until transparent.

2. Add the sambal ulek, ginger and lemon grass, stir fry until fragrant.

3. Add the shrimp, stir fry until the shrimp colored. Season with salt & sugar. If you like it more spicy, add with slices fresh red chillies.

4. Shrimp dish ready to serve.

Self-made Sambal

All kinds of Sambals are easy to find in every store. Sambal ulek means that the ingredients need to be crushed in a mortar. If you make it for large amount, it's difficult to do it in a mortar. The best is using electric blender instead of mortar to grind all ingredients. In order to keep sambal for longer period, stir fry the paste first before keeping in a glass jar. Make sure you have a clean glass jar by washing it in warm water with soap, then rinse it in hot water. Put the glass jar in pre-heated oven 120°C for about 20 minutes until it's really dry. Don't clean it with kitchen towel anymore because you will bring the germs in the jar. This way you'll keep sambal for longer period.

Sambal Ulek

Ingredients:
4 sjallots
6 cloves garlics
100 gr red chillies
1/2 teasp terasi /shrimp paste (optional)
1 1/2 tbsps brown sugar / gula jawa
1 big red tomato
5 lime leaves
salt

Directions:
1. Blend sjallots, garlics, chillies, terasi, salt, sugar and tomato in a blender until the mixture turns as a paste. Add oil or water if necessary.

2. Heat 3 tbsps oil in the pan, add the chilli paste and lime leaves. Stir fry and mix well.

3. Reduce the heat, let it simmer and stirring occasionally. When the paste becoming a bit thicker, remove from the heat. Let it cool down.

4. After cooling down, put the sambal in the clean jar and can be kept in the fridge for approx. one month.

Green Curry Paste

Since raising two kids and keeping daily activities outside the house get the higher priorities, I try to spend less time in the kitchen without loosing qualities and quantities of the dishes. And how to do this? By using curry paste as base of ingredients, where the paste can be prepared in advance and kept for quite long time in the fridge. Then when time for dinner, I combine the curry with chicken, fish, beef or vegetables. It's always delicious and my family loves it. This way I save a lot of time in the kitchen by blending all stuffs and certainly less mess too.

Green curry is a variety of curry in Thai cuisine. The name "green" curry derives from the color of the dish. Other Thai curry dishes are identified solely by their colors, such as yellow and red. Green curry can be made with meat, duck, chicken, fish or vegetables and is usually eaten as an accompaniment to rice or round rice noodles.

This is the basic green curry paste I made... enough for making 3 to 4 times dishes. Stay tuned I'll be posting the recipes using this curry paste soon.

Green curry paste:
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons shrimp paste (optional- I skip this)
1 teaspoon ground peper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
4 lemon grass
2 teaspoon galanga
1 lime leaf
1 tablespoon coriander roots (optional)
10 garlics
5 sjalots
16 or less green chillies

- Blend all ingredients in the blender to make paste. Add a bit water as needed.
- Put the paste in the jar and keep it cool in the fridge.

Indonesian Traditional Sweet Layered Rice Pudding

Ingredients:
950 ml coconut milk
2-3 pandan leafs or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
300 gr sugar
250 gr rice flour
100 gr tapioca flour
1/2 tsp salt
Purple (or other color) food coloring

Directions:
1. Boil the coconut milk and pandan leafs (or vanilla extract) over medium heat, then remove and cool.
2. Mix the rice flour, tapioca flour, salt and sugar in a bowl. Gradually stir in the coconut milk, blend well.
3. Divide the coconut mixture into two parts. Color one with food coloring and one part stays white.
4. Prepare a square baking pan or square plastick mold. If you use baking pan, coat the pan lightly with cooking oil.
5. Pour about 100 cc of colored mixture in the mold and steam for about 10 minutes, until the surface hardened. Cover the lid of the steamer with a napkin to protect the cake from steam droplets.
6. Then pour over 100 cc of uncolored mixture and steam for another 10 minutes. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.
7. Steam again for about 20 minutes, remove and let cool.

Banana Marble Cake

Finally I got the opportunity again to use my baking equipments. And this is for the first time in beginning of new year 2009.

I'm actually still lazy to bake something, but because I have overripe bananas and that is too bad to be thrown away and I know that from overripe bananas I can make something delicious. So I force myself to bake again...:o)

Most of the banana cake which I know is banana bread. I've been googling to find other recipes besides banana bread but it's quite rare to find that fits to my requirements. Because I want to make a moist and with light texture of the cake, then I try to combine using butter cake recipe and add with mashed bananas, and it works greatly. The cake turns so soft, moist and looks so beautiful with the marble look.

Here I'm sharing it with you...


Ingredients:
250 gr soft butter
200 gr sugar
4 eggs
250 self-raising flour; sifted
3-4 tablespoons milk
3 overripe banana, mashed
1 tablespoon cacao powder

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 190°C.

2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs, mix well. Then add the mashed bananas.

4. Add the flour, mix well. Pour into a 20x20 cm pan. Leave some to be added with cacao powder to make the marble textures.

5. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven.