Malay, Sauces and Sambals

Sambal Ijo (Green Sambal)

7shasha7

I’ve been having crazy hectic weeks at work and am missing eating good food! So after work just now I decided to make this Indonesian sambal – chilli jam or chutney of sorts. It’s so versatile! Over hot rice, fried chicken (which is popular), grilled prawns… it’s really good on everything, though I’ve never really tried it with vegetables. Caution though that this is not meant as a chilli finishing oil in soupy dishes.

The ingredients are simple. I used about 15 cloves of fresh garlic, 3 Bombay onions, about 16 fresh green chillies and about 15 green bird’s eye chillies,
Wash and chop onions roughly and proceed to fry them till soft in about 6 tablespoons or so of vegetable oil. I used sunflower oil.
When the onion and garlic are soft, add the green chillies.
Fry for about 10 more minutes till everything is quite soft.
Then place all in a blender, including the oil. Blend but not too finely.
Fry the blended paste in a bit more oil. Add toasted ground belacan or fermented shrimp paste. If you don’t have this then you can simply omit this step.
Fry till the oil rises from the mixture. Season with salt, sugar and a tablespoon of distilled white vinegar. And that’s it!
Store in a jar with the oil and you can keep this in the fridge for a week. I had mine with hot plain jasmine rice and a leftover fried Jollibee chicken for my dinner.

food, Meat, Western

Cowboy Steaks using GR’s Texan Rub

7shasha7

One day while watching YouTube, I saw an episode of Gordon Ramsay in Texas I think. He was making a breakfast steak.

And then one day as I was browsing through the website of a meat supplier, I saw that this particular one was selling the same type of beef cut. So I bought one and made Gordon’s recipe.

And yesterday as we had a movie lunch day with my sister’s family, I decided to make a full blown Texan inspired meal.

I must say the outcome was amazing!

The menu yesterday was:

Cowboy steak, coleslaw, baked potatoes, air fried corn, Texan rice, chimichurri sauce, baked chicken wings

Let’s start with his rub recipe. I took a picture of the recipe from someone who posted

it on his website.

But let’s see what I had to substitute and remove. There was no way I could get ancho chilli here nor Aleppo so I used Kashmiri powder and removed the ancho powder. The result was still amazing.

I had the best coffee blend and so the smell from this rub was super amazing.
So The Man saw me massaging the steaks lovingly and couldn’t resist snapping a picture and teasing me about it.
Resting these ginormous steak cuts
They were perfectly cooked.
The entire lunch spread.

Ah, ‘‘twas a good meal. Thanks Mr Ramsay for this recipe idea. It really is an amazing rub.

Desserts, Japanese/Korean
7shasha7
Pretty isn’t it?

So my friends are K-Drama fans and apparently there’s this Korean strawberry milk that’s very popular because of a Korean drama series. I didn’t watch that series but was intrigued by the milk! 🤣

So this is how it’s made. Firstly, make the strawberry purée of sorts. But up 8-10 strawberries and add that to a pot with 1 cup of sugar and let it reduce.

Then in a glass pour some of this strawberry mixture, then full cream fresh milk (the best you can find), add ice and then top it up with fresh strawberry slices.

Making the ‘ jam’.
I topped mine with a sprig of fresh mint too.

Something different to enjoy on a hot hot hot day!

Desserts

Gordon Ramsay’s Baked Ricotta and Caramelised Peaches

7shasha7

Doesn’t the above picture look amazing? I tried to replicate Gordon Ramsay’s recipe, which turned out to be amazing! And so simple to boot, I’m going to recommend this to everyone now.

Buy ricotta cheese and peaches. That’s it!

Step 1. Make the cheese filling. I halved the recipe because I only have a tub of ricotta cheese which is 250g. His recipe calls for 500g but this will serve 4 people.

In my mixing bowl I mixed 250g of ricotta cheese, one egg, the juice of half a lemon and zest, vanilla essence and 35g of powdered sugar.
I could fill three small ramekins with that recipe.
The next thing to do is to simmer the ripe peaches with some sugar until it’s thickened. Squeeze some lemon juice over.
And then it’s time to plate! Delicious!
Indian, Meat

Lamb Rogan Josh

7shasha7

I had just bought beautiful lamb curry cubes from this online butcher here and decided to make this Michelin star chef’s rogan josh. Boy, was I glad I followed his recipe instead of buying those ready made rogan josh in a jar!

It’s so easy to make but watching on YouTube and pausing, reading his recipe in description took a lot of time so let me break this down.

First step is to marinade the lambs cubes with yogurt and saffron and ginger garlic paste. I used 500g of lamb curry cuts and 2small tubs of yogurt, followed by a pinch of saffron.

Cover and marinade
for a few hours in the fridge or overnight.

Then prepare the spice mix. One is to fry and the other is to add to the lamb mixture when it’s half cooked.

Chilli powder, coriander powder, garam masala and turmeric powder. I used more chilli powder because mine is a milder version.
Then it’s time to fry. In hot oil, add cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves and star anise. I followed the chef’s advice to pound them first to release the oils. Then add sliced onions. I used about two small Bombay onions here.
Once the onions are browned and nicely fried (not too dark and crunchy) add the lamb cubes with all the yogurt marinade. Simmer and let it cook.
When it’s half cooked, add the powdered spices and let cook again till lamb is tender.
It’s down when meat is tender and the oils surface.
I served it that day with some homemade flatbreads.

The original YouTube recipe is here.

What I like about this recipe is that it’s mild but fragrant. You might like his recipe too!