Macaroni Schotel

I never really make this dish in purpose seeing the works I have to do to prepare all this at once. Usually when I make pasta with bolognese sauce I always have left over sauce. Or I just make the sauce a bit more. I use this bolognese sauce to make macaroni schotel. With new cooked macaroni and white sauce, I will have new dish for the whole family and afterall it's also less work in the kitchen.

The picture here was made before I put it in the oven. Once it was out of the oven, my children and hubby ate it straight away and nothing left to be photographed...!!!

Macaroni Schotel
225 gr macaroni

Bolognese sauce:
300 gr minced
1 onion, roughly chopped
400 gr (1 can) diced tomatoes
70 gr (1 can) tomato paste
1 cube broth
salt & pepper

Bechamel sauce:
50 gr butter
50 gr flour
1/2 ltr milk
50 gr grated cheese
salt, pepper, nutmeg

Directions:
1. Boil the macaroni with salt al dente and drain well, put aside.

2. Make the bolognese sauce:
- Bake the chopped onion until transparent, then add the meat in and occasional stirring. Cook until the meat brown and the liquid is gone.
- Add the diced tomatoes and broth in. Season with salt and pepper. Let it boiled until the tomatoes become soft.
- Add the tomato paste in the sauce, stir well. Lower the heat, cook until the sauce thickened.

3. To make the white sauce (bechamel sauce):
- Bake the butter to melt in a sauce pan.
- Add the flour in the melted butter, keep stiring until the flour absorbing all the butter.
- Pour milk gradually while you're whisking the roux. Keep whisking until the sauce is thick.
- Add the grated cheese in the sauce, season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to suit.

4. Pour the macaroni gently in the white sauce mixture.

5. Put all this into a large oven dish, pour the rest of the bolognese sauce on, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake for about 20 minutes at 180°C.

Crunchy Coffee Cookies

Cookies are very popular everywhere. All cookies can be combined with all kinds of flavours and tastes. As a coffee lover, I want to try to create cookies with sense of coffee. The result is very satisfactory, they are very crunchy, not too sweet and have strong coffee flavour in it. They are truly only for coffee lovers. When a friend of mine came to my house, I served her these cookies, and she was very pleased and liked them.... and she took some for home.. ^_^

This is also my entry for Jugalbandy Click Photo Event for the month May 2009.

Crunchy Coffee Cookies

Ingredients:
100 gr butter / margarine
50 gr icing sugar
1 yellow eggs
1 eatspoon instant coffee
25 gr almond powder
100 gr flour


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Grease cookie sheets.

2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and coffee. Beat in the egg, flour, and almond powder. Mix until well blended. Make figures as you like using cookies cutters or decorating tubes.

3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Let cool on wire racks.

Bubur Ayam // Chicken Porridge

Bubur is a favourite breakfast food, and many food vendors pass through the streets at dawn to serve it at residences, while calling "bubur". A popular version is "bubur ayam", which is porridge with chicken meat. In contrast to many other Indonesian dishes, it is not spicy.


I just found out from wikipedia that bubur is also called "congee".... well, I never knew it before..

Bubur can be made in a pot or in a rice cooker. Some rice cookers even have a "congee/bubur/porridge" setting, allowing the user to cook their breakfast congee overnight.

Besides functioning as an everyday meal, porridge is considered to be food therapy for the unwell. Ingredients can be determined by their supposed therapeutic value as well as flavor.

More information about congee/bubur/porridge please click here.

Bubur Ayam // Chicken Porridge
(source: Kumpulan Resep Sedap Khusus Pemula)

Ingredients:
200 gr rice
2 eatspoons sesame oil
1/2 chicken
1 eatspoon salt
2 litres water

Complements:
Cakwe, slicely cut
spring onions, finely chopped
celery, finely chopped
kecap asin (salty dark soy sauce)


Directions:

1. Wash rice until clean, enter in the pot. Add sesame oil, mix thoroughly.

2. Enter the chicken, salt and water. Let them boiling and stirring occasionally.

3. Remove the chicken from the pot, then fried and afterwards shredded in small pieces. Put aside.

4. Stir the porridge again and cook again until the porridge becomes thick.

5. Pour the porridge in the bowl, sprinkle with the complements and shredded chicken.

Simply Banana Cake

Banana is always been our favorite fruit and we always have it at home. What happened when I have banana's over?? No problem, sometimes I make banana fritter or banana ice cream or banana cake. These light and simple banana cake is one of our favorite recipes.


Simply Banana Cake

3 ripe bananas, mashed
100 gr butter
150 gr brown sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
225 gr flour
1 eatspoon baking powder


Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sift the flour and baking powder, put aside.

2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and flufy.

3. Add the eggs and beat well.

4. Fold in the mashed bananas in the mixture.

5. Add the flour and baking powder in the mixture, mix well.

6. Pour in loaf pan and bake for about 50 minutes.

Beef Rendang

Rendang is a dish made from beef slowly cooked in coconut milk and spices for several hours. The slow cooking process allows the meat to absorb all the spices and to become tender. Though rendang is sometimes described as being like a curry, and the name is sometimes applied to curried meat dishes in Malaysia, authentic rendang is nothing like a curry.

Beef Rendang
(source: Menu Sehari-hari Yasa Boga)

Ingredients:
500 gr beef
2 tablesps dessicated coconut
2 sticks sereh/lemongrass
5 lime leaves
1 ltr coconut milk
2 curry leaves
1-2 teasp(s) tamarind paste
salt to season

ingredients to be grinded:
3 big red chillies
4 shallots
2 teasps ground coriander
1 teasp ginger
2 teasps curcuma


Directions:
1. Heat the oil in the deep pan. Add in the pan the paste, lemongrass, lime leaves, curry leaves and tamarind. Stir fry until fragrant.

2. Add the beef and dessicated coconut in the pan, stir fry until the beef colored.

3. Add the coconut milk and salt in the mixture, stir well. Lower the heat.

4. Let the rendang slowly cooking and once in a while stirring the mixture.

5. Remove from the fire after the beef is tender and the liquid is dry.

Low Fat Tomato Quiche

For a quick warm lunch or brunch, quiche is the best solution. It's easy to make and you can put anything you like in it. Quiche is known as tart or flan. Normally I use milk or cream in the egg mixture, but this time I try to replace it with low fat yogurt. Eventhough the taste is slightly different, but surely lighter and low calorie than using milk or cream.

Ingredients:
Ready-to-use pastry
9 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Steamed/blanched broccoli
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125 gr low fat yogurt
nutmeg, salt, pepper to season
100 gr grated cheese

Directions:
1. Preheated the oven to 200°c. Prepare and bake the pastry according to pastry's directions in the packaging.

2. Mix the yogurt, eggs, salt & pepper in a container.

3. Scatter the cherry tomatoes and grated cheese on the bottom of the pastry case.

4. Pour the yogurt mixture and scatter the grated cheese on top.

5. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the filling solid. Remove from the oven and cool for about 5 minutes. Serve hot or cold with mix salads.