Garlic Fried Rice

I've tasted it this delicious and yet simple fried rice at a japanese restaurant near my house
Ingredients:
2 plates of cooked white rice
3 pieces of broccoli
1 Big onion – diced thinly
½ can of corned beef
4 cloves of garlic – cut into small pieces.
1 tbsp salty Soya sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

To make:

1. Fry the garlic and onion until the smell comes out. Put the broccoli in and mix it until the broccoli softens.
2. Put the corned beef and stir it with the onion for about 2 minutes.
3. Give a pinch of salt and pepper. Stir it again.
4. Put the rice and stir it until all the ingredients mix evenly.
5. Put the soya sauce and mix all again.
6. Give more salt and pepper to taste and mix it again until everything is evenly mixed and cooked.

There you have it.

Chicken vegetable soup

My toddler loves to eat with soup. Once in 2 days, I have to make a new soup for him.
When I cook for him, I have to make sure the food contains all the vitamins he needs to grow to be a healthy child. He loves broccoli and potato but he does not really like carrots but when the carrot is cooked inside a soup, he will just eat it because normally since the carrot in the soup is soft, I will mash the carrot and mix it with the rest of soup ingredients and feed him. He won’t be able to see the carrot anymore.

Ingredients:
900 ml water
4 pieces chicken wings
1 potatoes (big potato) – if the potato is small then you can use 2-3 potatoes.
1 big fat carrot.
7 pieces of broccoli cuts
1 tomato – cut into 4 pieces
1 big onion (bawang Bombay)
2 stalks spring onion
2 stalks small celery
Some shallots – cut thinly and fried to garnish the soup.
Salt and white pepper to taste – not too salty please. Too much salt is not good at all.

To make:

1. Bring to boil the water in the pot. While waiting for the water to boil, wash the chicken wings thoroughly, put aside. Peel the potato skin then dice the potato (to dice the potato the quickest way: cut the potato into half vertically, then cut each half into another half vertically then cut into smaller squares horizontally). Peel the carrot skin then dice the carrot the same way as you dice the potato.
2. When the water is boiled, put the chicken wings into the pot and boil until the chicken wings are cooked.
3. While waiting, cut the broccoli into 7 pieces or just enough to put into the soup. Peel the onion skin and dice the same way as you dice the potato. Wash the spring onion and dice about 2 cm-long. Wash the celery and cut small about 1 cm-long.
4. When the chicken is cooked, put the carrots and boil until it softens a little bit, then put the potatoes and onion into the soup and boil until the potatoes soften.
   Then put the broccoli cuts, spring onion, and celery and boil everything until everything is soft and cooked.
5. Once everything is cooked, before you switch off your stove, put the tomatoes in and give a pinch of salt and pepper to taste the soup. Stir for a while. Garnish with fried shallots.
6. That’s all. It’s a very simple, tasty and healthy soup for everyone in the family.

Pineapple kopyor ice

This is my 2nd post for kopyor ice and it is not much different compared to the previous one. The only difference is the fruit mix ingredient.

Just to recall:
I don't actually know how to say "Kopyor" in English. My mum told me, kopyor is made from young coconut meat from a special kind of coconut. This special coconut will not mature and the meat inside will not harden as in old (mature) coconut.

According to http://www.agnet.org/library/rh/2003002c/ :

THE SPECIFIC nature of `kopyor' on coconut plant is its abnormal fruit endosperm
controlled by recessive gene (Kk or kk). Based on phenotypic characteristics,
kopyor could not be differentiated from a normal coconut.

Kopyor is very delicious especially if you mix it with syrop and other fruits such as jack fruit, pineapple or avocado or the normal young coconut meat to make some dessert or some eksotic drinks. I have never found kopyor in other countries outside Indonesia.
Mixed kopyor ice is a special drink to quench your thirst during the hot summer day.
Even in Indonesia, not many places sell this classic eksotic drink because kopyor is not easy to get.
Since kopyor is not easy to find, many people try to create the kopyor immitation using jelly that has been mixed with coconut milk and coconut juice.

Here is the recipe:
To make this drink, you need 5 whole young coconuts. The best type of young coconut to use is pandan coconut because pandan coconut has a very sweet fragrance and tastes so fresh.
Ingredients:
500 ml coconut juice
200 gr young coconut flesh
50 ml rose syrop/grenadine
1 can of cubed pineapple in a can (if you have fresh pineapple - by all means - just use the frest one)
200 ml rock sugar syrop (you can just boil some rock sugar with 200ml water to make your own syrop)
1 can nata de coco (in some countries nata de coco is sold as canned fruit. According to Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) Nata de coco is a chewy, translucent, jelly-like food product produced by the bacterial fermentation of coconut water.)
Some ice cubes

For kopyor imitation:
1 packet Agar-agar (jelly) powder (the Indonesian brand Swallow Globe yellow packet is the best to make this kopyor imitation)
200 ml thick coconut milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 big block of ice (you can make the ice by yourself by freezing some water inside a medium size Glad zipped lock plastic bag)
900 ml coconut juice

For coconut milk sauce:
500 ml coconut milk from 1 whole coconut
1 tsp salt
2 pandan leaves
1/2 tsp vanilla powder

To make the kopyor imitation:

1. Mix the coconut juice, coconut milk, salt, and the agar-agar (jelly) and bring to boil.
2. In the mean time, you have to put your big block of ice into a big bowl. If you made the ice by yourself, don't forget to take it out from the plastic bag.
3. Once the mixture is boiled, switch off the stove. Keep stirring agar-agar mixture to release the heat until it is cooling down. Using a table spoon, scoop the mixture one by one and pour it on the ice block and let it freeze.

To make the coconut milk sauce:

1. Mix all ingredients and bring to boil.
2. Let it cool.

To serve:

1. Prepare some glasses to serve the kopyor ice.
2. Put some young coconut flesh, 3 cubes of pineapple, nata de coco, some kopyor imitation, ice cubes.
3. Pour some coconut juice, rock sugar syrop, coconut milk sauce, and give a drop of rose syrop (grenadine).
   

And now the mixed kopyor ice is ready to be served.

Sweet potato chocolate cake with sultanas

I'm sure the first thing comes to your mind when you read this post title is "this cake must be very sweet". In fact, this cake is very delicious and not very sweet at all because at that time when I made this cake, I was short of sugar and so was the whole country.

I was in the middle of preparing all the ingredients to bake this cake and when it came to preparing sugar, I run out of sugar! I quickly run to the nearest supermarket to buy more sugar and I was thunder struck to see the supermarket did not have and did not sell sugar at all. I run to different supermarkets hoping to find some sugar to bake my cake but I was told that the whole country is in the shortage of sugar. Oh no!! I went back home empty handed. No sugar to bake my cake and I already halfway preparing the ingredients including steaming the sweet potato. Luckily, I found my last packet of icing sugar. I had no choice then to use this type of sugar.

Then after I finished baking this cake, I was ready to decorate the cake with some chocolate topping. Again I run out of my usual chocolate for baking but I still had a different type of chocolate bar. This chocolate bar is a pure dark chocolate and it is bitter.

So, the only sweet things in my cake are the sweet potato, icing sugar, and the sultana raisins and when they were combined together those sweet ingredients didn't give a strong sweet taste and my cake is just very delicious.
It is so delicious until I decided not to share it with anyone... :-D
This is a blessing in disguise for running out of sugar and my usual chocolate for baking.

Below is the recipe for that delicious cake:
Ingredients:

100 gr sweet potato - peel the skin off, steamed and mashed
150 gr flour
150 gr sugar (icing sugar/castor sugar)
5 egg yolk
4 egg whites
150 gr butter
150 ml coconut milk
100 gr sultana raisins
150 gr grated chocolate
1 tsp vanilla essence

To make:

1. Preheat the oven to 160^oC (315^oF). Grease a deep 20 cm round cake tin and line with baking paper.
   
2. Mix sugar and butter with electronic mixer in a big bowl until the mixture raises.
3. While mixing, put egg yolks one at a time, followed by the egg whites one at a time, followed by the mashed sweet potato, flour, vanilla essence, and pour the coconut milk slowly one drop at a time.
   
4. Keep on mixing until the mixture is perfectly mixed.
5. Put the sultana raisins into the mixture, mix with wooden spoon slowly.
6. Spread the grated chocolate on the mixture and mix with wooden spoon a little while just to give pattern to the mixture created by the grated chocolate.
7. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake about 2 hours OR until a fork comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake.
8. Leave in the tin to cool completely, then turn over the cake out of the tin and put it on the plate.

As for the chocolate topping, you can get it from my previous post Chocolate Toppings for your cakes.