Sate goreng

Sate goreng is a recipe from my late mother-in-law. It is cooked on the festive seasons for instance Eidul Fitri and Eidul Adha. In the festive seasons, this dish is not a miss to my family. My husband likes it very much. It is really easy (am serious about it) to cook. Basic ingredient besides meat is a packet of sate powder. Here's the ingredients and procedures of cooking the dish.

Ingredients:
1. 1 kg meat
2. 200-300 ml santan milk (of Ayam Brand- the one in green box. Meaning you're using 1 1/2 of santan from the box. I used it because it is already trimmed. Thus, the lower cholesterol it is)
3. a pinch of salt
4. a cup of sugar (you may lessen it if you want)
5. 2 boxes of water (because you use the santan's box to measure the quantity of the water, ya dear!)

Procedures:
1. Add meat in a pot
2. Once water from the meat is already dried (perhaps after 10 minutes or so), pour in the santan
3. Cook for 30-40 minutes until the meat is soft

Serving:
You may serve the sate goreng with ketupat (rice put in coconut leaves) or nasi impit (rice which is pressed-more of less like porridge but a little bit condensed. My mother-in-law used to put 'batu giling' after nasi impit was put in a container). You can eat it with rice just like you eat for lunch or dinner.

Mee Calong

Mi calong is always a choice whenever I want to eat soup with noodles. It is called mi calong because of the fish ball that you make to eat with the noodles. I don't know the origin of the recipe but it's famous in the East Coast of Malaysia. In fact, if you were to go to Kuantan, the area in Beserah is the place/location where you can get the 'original' mi calong- so called. I learned this recipe from my late mother. She was from Terengganu. And in the state, it's a quite popular dish for breakfast or afternoon tea (Malaysians like to eat. I guess mi calong is perfect for any time). The ingredients for mi calong are:

Ingredients A

1. 1 packet of Long Fong mi (or called as mi batang/ mi lidi)

Ingredients B

Ingredients to make fish balls

1. 1/2 kg of tamban fish (family of sardin). You can have a kilo if you want [no harm ;-) ]

Ingredients C

These ingredients are used to make the gravy: 

1. 3 cups of water (depending on how much you want the soup)

2. 2 onions

3. 1 garlic 

4. 1 tsp of pepper 

5. a little bit of oil to saute ingredients 2 to 4

6. Chinese mustard as much as you like (you can also have other vege. you like- perhaps cabbage)

Procedure to prepare the gravy:

1. Heat the oil

2. Saute onions, garlic and pepper

3. Few second then, pour the water (once you can smell the aroma of garlic, onion and pepper being sauted)

5. Add the Chinse mustard

6. Cook for about 10 minutes then switch off the stove

Procedure for serving:

1. Put the mee calong in a plate

2. Add in the gravy

Grilled Chicken with Lemon

This is the second time I cook the chicken. The recipe was adapted from Hanielieza's cooking book entitles Senangnya Memasak: Masakan Barat which I bought it at Popular Book Store. As long as you have a whole chicken, you can serve the chicken at any time for any occasion- perhaps when your friends throw you a visit. There's no special occassion that makes me cook the chicken. Yet, I feel like eating Kenny Rogers but haven't  the time to go to Kuantan (this is the capital city of Pahang where you can get Mc Donald, Pizza and etc). In Pekan, there's only KFC for the kids. Here's how you prepare th Grilled Chicken with Lemon.

Ingredients:
1. 1 whole chicken
2. 3 tbs of rosemary (you can get this in Giant)
3. a pinch of salt
4. 3-4 spoon of lemon juice
5. 1 piece of lemon (cut into 4)

Marinate chicken with all the ingredients (number 2 to 4) for about an hour or so. Then, stuff the chicken with lemon. When this is done, the chicken is ready to be grilled. I used Tupper Chef to grill the chicken. It's a big pot- a multipurpose pot where you can also bake cakes in it. A product from Tupperware. You just need to grill the chicken for an hour. For serving, it may be eaten on its own or you  may eat it with bread or rice. Whatever your choices are, this dish is sure to make you full.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Couldn't remember when I cooked this dish. But what I remembered was we ate this for breakfast as well as lunch. Coincidentally, all the ingredients are in the fridge. And thus, I didn't need to go to the store to get the minced meat or capiscum. All you need to have are 1/2 packet of spaghetti, 1 cup of minced meat (I choose Burger Ramly- easy to get at any store), 1 cup of tomato sauce, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup of red and green capiscum (yellow capiscum is also ok. It adds to the colour of the dish), 1 cup of button mushroom (I used Ayam brand- halal, InsyaAllah), 1/2 cup of onion and some garlic, 1 tbs of oil for cooking

To cook spaghetti is easy. Add some water in the pot and add in the spaghetti. Cook to 10-15 minutes (until it is soft). Or you may cook according to the instructions of the food packet. Now, what you need to do to prepare for the gravy is to firstly heat the oil. Saute garlic and onion. Add in minced meat. Cook for about 7 to 10 minutes. Add in tomato sauce and water. Then add in all the vegetables. The mushroom should come last because it is fragile.

This dish is fairly easy to cook at anytime. You don't have to wait for buying spaghetti sauce in the supermarket (and this sometimes is only an excuse for not cooking) because basically what you need to make the gravy is to only add tomato sauce and couple cups of water. My eldest like it a lot.. and of course it taste much tastier when you serve it hot. In serving spaghetti, put on the noodles first, then pout gravy on top of it. I like the gravy to be a little bit thick.

Macaroni Soup

This is the macaroni I cooked in my sister in-laws house. Since there are some carrot, Chinese mustard, half packet of macaroni, some chicken in the fridge, I then decided to cook this dish. The kids love soup and there I was cooking the dish for my family as well as hers. The ingredients you need are:
1. 1/2 packet of macaroni of any type
2. Some Chinese mustard. As you like
3. 1 carrot
4. 1 cup of chicken meat
5. water to boil the macaroni
6. Oil for cooking
7. 2 onions and some garlic (minced)
8. 2-3 cups of water

Procedures:

1. Boil the macaroni in a pot until it is soften 
2. To prepare the soup, what you basically need to do is
a) Heat the oil
b) Saute the garlic and onion
c) add in the chicken
d) add in water
e) let it boil for 10 minutes
f) add in carrot and chinese mustard
g) let it cook for another 5 minutes before turning off the stove

Macaroni soup is kind of heavy for a dish. So you can serve it for lunch or dinner. The choices of vegetables are not limited to just carrot and Chinese mustard. You can also have mushroom, bean (green soy), toufu (bean curd) and others if you like.

Pizza

Pizza is one of the foods that my eldest like. He often requested it whenever he feels like it. So, if there is minced meat or burger meat in the fridge, I would not dissapoint his request. Above is the pizza before putting it in the oven. In making pizza bread, I share with you some of the simple ingredients that you basically need to have.

These are some of the ingredients to cook pizza. Basically what you need are

1) 1/2 kg of minced meat

2) 1 cup of tomato sauce

3) a packet of spaghetti

3) 1 cup of tomato (cut into small pieces)

4) 1 cup of carrot  (cut into small pieces)

5) 1 cup of capsicum/bell pepper

6) 1/2 cup of onion

7) 5 slices of cheese (I used craft cheese)

8) 1 cup of button mushroom

And these are some of the ingredients you need for the pizza dough

1) 2 cups of flour

2) 2-3 tbsp of yeast (I use Mauripan- in yellow box. It contain several packets)

3) a little bit of water

To make the dough add flour. Then add in the yeast. Mix them well. Pour water little by little. Stop kneading when flour doesnt stick anymore to your fingers. Right after this, have a cover pot to spread the dough. First, you need to spread the tomato sauce. On top of it spread vegetable..let it rest for 30 minutes or so. Preheat the oven before baking it for 60 minutes at 180C.

This is what you get....fresh from the oven