Homemade Fried Rice For An Empty Stomach

Feeling a little bit like cooking today.

We decided to try and cooked a plate of fried rice. For cooking, we tried to use the regular fried rice trick from the street vendor with the eggs being mixed inside the rice.

We also scavenge our refrigerator, and (literally) throw everything that is left there into our fried rice concoction.

The end result: overall okay fried rice. Not too proud with the end result, but enough to fill our empty stomach :D.

Enjoy!

End Result. Not too proud with it, but it gets us through the day :D

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Cooking at Home: Homemade Cheese Sandwich

Another inspiration based on my favorite show in Asian Food Channel. Now I am cooking a nice easy lunch/ breakfast menu that you can bring to the office. This recipe is based on a display made by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his famous River Cottage show.

You can see the full recipe here. But for now, I am feeling shiny with my own result :).

Enjoy!

Scrambled Egg & Fried Home Potatoes

Homemade Cheese Sandwich

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Cooking at Home: Homemade English Breakfast

Watching a show in Asian Food Channel and it makes us hungry. It inspired us to make an English Breakfast menu at home. Armed with only prepackaged sausage, scrambled egg, fried mushroom and canned baked bean, we tried to make the imitation of it.

Looking at the picture, what do you think? Quoting what Captain Malcolm Reynolds used to say: I think it is shiny!

Enjoy!

Full Breakfast Menu

Complete Menu with Condiments

Pickled Onion

Red Bean in Tomato Soup

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A Noob Guide for Spanish Omelette

Spanish Omelette is a dish made originated from (guess) Spanish which consisted of Potato and Egg. Today out of nowhere we are inspired to make one with an Indonesian twist.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 potato, diced 1x1 cm

1/2 cup of full cream milk

1 green chili, finely chopped

salt

pepper

Olive oil and if you prefer, butter

How to make:

Heat your skillet. Add olive oil.

After the skillet is hot enough, fry your potato until golden brown

While waiting for the potato to cook, whisked your eggs and milk. Add the green chili, salt and pepper.

After your potato is cooked, rest it until all the oil reduced.

Add the potato to the egg mixture.

Heat your skillet into medium and add the mixture. Evenly spread the potato so it layered nicely.

After a while flip the omelette (I have done it in one single try, acrobatically. Really proud of myself :P).

Serve while hot, preferably with a nice cup of coffee and hot chili

Enjoy!

Homemade Spanish Omelette

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Homemade Chicken Wing! Let's Try!

Got the recipe from our aunt who cooked a hell of a feast two weeks ago. One of her signature dish is her Chicken Wings which really makes us craving it for more. So when we got the chance to meet her, we didn't waste a chance to interview her a'la Desi Anwar (a veteran reporter here in Indonesia).

So this weekend Alia decided to try and cook it herself. Armed with fresh chicken wings and complementary ingredients such as flour, salt, water, etc. she decided to cook it.

The result?

Well, we would not say that it is a hit (a little bit too salty for us), but we believe maybe next time it will produce a better result. Or maybe on the third try, who knows, I mean, after all third time is a charm right? :)

Enjoy!

1st Battering

The Batter is dipped into 2nd battering

2nd Battering

Frying Time!

The finished product
(Note that the left chicken are marinated with Go Chu Jang)

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Homemade Sirloin Steak

We are so amazed with our visit to Pasadena Steak House yesterday, that we decided to try and make our own steak. The taste is still need improvements (a lot), but we guess it is going to the right direction :).

Enjoy!

Homemade Sirloin Steak

Ingredients:
200 gr Sirloin steak (you can ordered it through your favorite butcher, or in supermarket)
Carrot, slices in finger size
Broccoli
Ready to cook french fries
Champignon mushroom
Red wine (optional)
Worcestershire sauce
Yogurt/ cream
Salt
Pepper
Eggs (optional)

How to make:
Put salt and pepper into the meat
Grilled the meat on high heat for around 3 minutes on each side. Let it cool for about 3-5 minutes.
Cooked the mushroom inside the pan where you cooked the meat, add cream, worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Add red wine to your liking.
In other pan sautee the carrot, broccoli and fried the french fries.
Fried an egg if you need additional protein
Serve it while hot.

Enjoy!

The Steak #1

The Steak #2

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Homemade Italian Pizza

Sometimes it is unbelievably easy to cook foods that usually looked hard to make. It is even especially easier if you can have it pre-made :).

For example, our pizza dough is easily purchased from Setiabudi Market. Tomato sauce? Just use the prepacked tomato sauce for spaghetti :).

All we have to do is just spread the tomato on top of the pizza dough. Add oregano, sliced sausage and shredded cheese. Put in the oven for 5-10 minutes, and viola! You have a very delicious pizza :).

Yummy! Enjoy!

Homemade Pizza

Looks delicious right? :)

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Wanna Try Our Homemade Salad?

As we are on a strictly diet program, we tried to make a homemade salad.
Although the look is not quite good, we can assure you the taste is quite great hehehe...

The Homemade Salad

Enjoy!

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Baking at Home: Espresso Brownies (Starbucks Copycat)

I always think that the best brownies I ever taste is from Starbucks, its espresso brownies, because it contain two things that I love the most, coffee and chocolate. Beside that, I always want to make brownies, then why not bake an espresso brownies.

I've got the recipe from here, but of course with a little modification. And I bought all the ingredients mostly from Setiabudi Supermarket because they provide ingredients for baking more complete than any other supermarket.

Ingredients
250 gr  Sobocca chocolate chips (It should be semisweet but I couldn't find any other except the expensive one from Hershey)
65 gr Marley dark chocolate compound – chopped
125 gr orchid butter
250 gr all purpose flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp Bali coffee
250 gr sugar (or adjust to your taste)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
confectioner’s sugar(optional)- for dusting

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 11 x 7-inch (or 10″ square) non-stick baking pan and set aside.
Melt the chocolates and butter over a double boiler & stir until smooth to make a ganache . Then remove from heat and keep aside.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and espresso. In another mixing bowl, beat sugar, egg and vanilla on medium high until light colored, about 2 minutes.
Beat in the chocolate until well combined. Add the flour mixture slowly into the egg mixture until well blended. If you like your brownies a bit fudgy, leave it like this; but if you need a more cake-like texture, beat the mixture for another 1 min, to aerate it even further.
Pour the mixture into the prepared baking pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted 2 inched from the side comes out clean.
Cool completely, then cut into 8-10 rectangles. To make clean cuts of the brownie, allow it to cool entirely (about 45-60 mins) once out of the oven. Then use a plastic knife to cut into even slices.
Variations: You can use  any flavored coffee instead of plain espresso if you like.
Dust the Espresso Brownies with a sprinkling of powdered (confectioner’s) sugar, and eat your way to heaven!

Well, I think it was over-baked or maybe the eggs should be six, because the texture too dry, but I think it's an Ok for first try :)

So, enjoy!

The Espresso Brownies

The Mixture and A Cup of Espresso 

All the Ingredients

The Brownies' Mixture Ready to Bake

Ta da! 

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Baking at Home: Fruit Pie (Crumble)

Inspired by Michael Smith, in one of his "Chef at Home" episode, we decided to try and cook his super simple fruit pie (his version is apple pie) with a little adjustment.
First we used additional margarine, not wholly butter, as we still got quite a lot of it left when Alia was cooking her famous Kaastengel. The second one is that we used not just apple, but various fruits mixture.

Enjoy!

Our Homemade Fruit Pie (Inspired by Michael Smith's Chef at Home)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 stick of butter
1/2 stick of margarine (give or take)
1 1/2 cup of baking flour
1 egg
Fruits of your choice (Apple, Kiwi, Strawberry, etc.)

How to make:
Combine sugar, butter, and margarine, and whisk them together using electric mixer.
After combined, gradually add the flour and egg.
Kneed all of the mixture into a solid dough, wrap them using plastic and refrigerate (from 15 minutes to whole day).
Kneed the dough up to the appropriate size, place them upon the baking tray.
Place the fruits over the dough, and bake them on the oven at 175 degrees Fahrenheit until the dough turned golden brown and the fruits soften.
Serves them using Ice Cream or Whipped Cream.
Enjoy!

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #1

The Dough

Fruit inserted into the dough

Mid-Baked Pie

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #2

Fruit Pie (Crumble) #3

Half of it :)

It will much better if combine with ice cream 

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Baking at Home: Kaastengel

We are rarely doing baking in our house, mostly because of the lack of time to do that and also because the equipment in our house is not quite good. But, as we see the abundant cheese brought back from our parents last trip to Holland, we decided to make the most of it. Alia comes up with the idea of creating Kaastengel, a Holland cheese cookies which are very famous for this time of Iedul Fitri in our country.

Here's the ingredients and the process on how to make it.

Enjoy!

Kaastengel (Holland cheese cookies)

Ingredients:
150gr butter
50gr margarine
1 egg yolk + 1 egg yolk for spreading
200gr baking flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
125gr aged Edam cheese (I think we put more than 125gr :D) - Shredded

How to make it:
Sieve the flour, and mix them together with baking powder and salt
Meanwhile prepare the wet batter. Whisk butter and margarine with mixer (medium speed) until it softens up (around 3 minutes, not less). Put it the egg yolk, mix them together until it expands (around 2 minutes or so).
Mix the wet and the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and salt) and the shredded Edam cheese (save some for topping when baking), and whisk together. After that use your hand to kneed the batter, wrap it with plastic and put it into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
While waiting, spread margarine thinly into the baking pan.
After refrigerated, kneed the batter into the shape that you like (we prefer the classic cylindrical shape with 3 cm long). Put them all over the pan and spread them with mixture of egg yolk and water. Put the leftover Edam cheese as topping on each of the dough.
Bake them on the oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes until golden brown (don't forget to check them every 5 minutes or so). After finished baking, make sure you wait for additional 5 minutes before moving them into a jar.
Enjoy!

The Cheese

Dough being shaped into Kaastengel

The Cheese from Holland

Yolk to be spread at the top of the dough

Ready to bake

Voila! 15 minutes later

Good foods indeed come from ingredients!

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Gifts from Holland: Chipolata Pudding & All kind of Cheese

Picture of some foods that are being brought from our parents trip to Holland. One of them is the Chipolata Pudding, a quite famous pudding from Holland, and the other one is pack of cheeses coming from the famous Henry Willig Cheese Farm.

The cute thing is there's a quote on the packaging  of the Chipolata:

omdat een dag zonder pudding een dag niet geleefd is. (elke reden is een goede reden om te genieten van pudding, toch?)

And it means: because a day without pudding is a day wasted (any reason is a good reason to enjoy pudding, right?)

Genieten!

Chipolata Pudding

The Quote on The Packaging

Various Cheeses

Henry Willig Cheese Farm

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Mix Vegetables Fritter: The Healthy Version

One day suddenly craving for a Bala-Bala/ Bakwan. But considering that we are on a dietary program, we decided to create one.

The ingredients are:

Cabbage, shredded

Carrot, shredded

Salt

Pepper

Flour

Soda water 

Eggs

Olive oil (you can use vegetable oil)

To cook this, simply mixed the cabbage, carrot, salt, pepper, flour and eggs into a bowl. Mix well. After that heat a pan and add the olive oil. Place one spoon of the mixture into the pan and fry them for several minutes until golden brown. 

Enjoy!

The Raw Ingredients

Cooking Process #1

Cooking Process #2

Finished Product

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Sheep Shaped Bread

What happened if you let a grown up toying with food?
This creation will occurs. Look how adorable they are :)

Mbeeeek!

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Simple Hotdog with Garlic Bread

What happened if you have a great garlic bread from Setiabudi Market, a good piece of beef franks, and an empty stomach? Then it's a hot dog waiting to happened :).

For the recipe is quite simple. Just grilled two pieces of beef franks until it's charred. Meanwhile, cut the garlic bread into two pieces and slice them, smother them with garlic butter/ margarine, mayo, and your choice of mustard. Place the beef franks in between the bread, and you're good to go! Enjoy!

Simple Hotdog with Garlic Bread

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Homemade Potato Salad

Several days ago, we saw an article in the news that discussed about the benefits of potato. How for 100gr of potato compared with rice, the calorie difference was at 70 to 200 per 100gr. For that, we decided to make a potato salad for ourselves.
The recipes was basically a modified Michael Smith recipe, with a little twist of leftover ingredients in our home. The result was quite OK. Maybe next time we can make it again for breakfast or lunch :). Enjoy!

Homemade Potato Salad

Ingredients:
500gr baby potato (you can use regular potato), cut in half
1 stick (?) spring onion, chopped finely
Beef bacon/ Sausage/ Meat of your choice
1/2 cup of milk
100gr of shredded sweet corn (or you can change it with nuts)
Stale bread
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Worcester Sauce

How to make:
Cook the potato in a batch of boiled water. After finished drain the water.
Cook the shredded sweet corn in olive oil, add the meat, salt, pepper, and Worcester sauce.
Meanwhile cooked the stale bread in the oven until crisp to make a crouton.
Add the potato into the cooked sweet corn, add the chopped spring onion, and milk.
After finished, just present it into your finest salad bowl. Add the crouton and other topping such as cheese or nuts for finishing touch.
You can also add spinach as other source of greens in the salad in the very end of your cooking.
Enjoy!

Homemade Potato Salad

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