Daging halia and asparagus....beef , ginger and asparagus

mmmmm......sedaaaaaap ......



'Lama dah mama tak buat masak ni, daging dengan sparagus tu", said my eldest daughter. Thats true, I forgot how long ago did I make this dish, one of the recipes from Chef Wan's "Sedaaaaapnya....." book which I bought many many years ago and had his autograph on the third page of the book.

So, when we went groceries shopping last Friday, bought the asparagus, and after sending Batrisyia to school yesterday, made a quick stop at the wet market where I bought the senangin fish and bought the batang pinang ( also bought tulang rusuk,for curry or soup for other days )

I need to marinate the beef with the following:

oyster sauce,salt, juice of young ginger , beef cube and Tabasco sauce ( searched everywhere for it, in the fridge, in the larder but ..nil, I thot I had it ) so I marinated the beef without the Tabasco sauce and left it in the fridge.

When I went out to pick up my youngest daughter from school, I decided to stop by at Gi*nt and looked for the missing ingredient and thankfully the store had it an I just bought a small bottle because this is the only recipe that I knew which used Tabasco sauce and it would be a while before I am making make this dish again, unless somebody request for it again.

Add the Tabasco sauce into the marinated beef.keep aside.

Heat up a little oil in a shallow pan and fry some crushed garlic, sliced young ginger and asparagus.

then just add in the marinated beef and stir for a while till th ebeef is tender and you are done!

salt

"Lama dah mama tak buat

Gulai ikan versi rempah giling

I have found the rempah which suits my hubbys tastebud for fish curry, even if it is not 100%perfect but close.....not Ad*b*, nor B*b*s or Allag*pp*, but home made , not by moi ( i wish it was, but no...wishful thinking on my part ) by a lady who sells coconut milk and kerisek at the local wet market here in Alor Star, at the Souq Al-Bukhary market to be exact.(Thanks to her I can now make gulai ikan yang pecah minyak)

Whenever I feel like making fish curry, be it the whole ikan termenung or ikan senagin or maybe fish head ( ikan merah or jenahak ), I would drop by at her gerai and bought the fish curry paste.It only cost RM1 for one dish or maybe two dishes of gulai ikan depending on the quantity of fish used.

for the above recipe, I used ikan senangin, quite a big one, but I just bought the tail part which cost RM10 which I bought yesterday morning after dropping Batrisyia off at her school

Here's my version of fish curry:

Heat oil, fry sliced shallots , garlics, curry leaves and ( blank... I suddenly cant remember what this net ingredient is called), yang bijik2 tu, ?#@&?
okay, got it, halba campur:)

then, once fragrant, add in the home made (giling or blended i dont know) fish curry paste, stir until cooked.
Add in a little water , and a lttle asam jawa juice too.
leave it to boil and add in coconut milk
and the fish too
if you like, you can also add in some ladys fingers and tomatoes
salt and sugar to taste,

done.

Siakap kukus

I finally found the simplest, the easiest and the yummiest steamed fish recipe. Didnt quite knew how to make this dish before though I know that this is one of the easiest recipe to cook fish, simply throw anything in and steam ahead, but not to me, I struggle to make 'ikan kukus but when I came across this recipe on TV during Chef Kamarul's show. It's one of those shows where he would be cooking a few dishes with a celebrity or an artist and I thot I'd give a try . Guess what? I've got thumbs up from my kids, especially the youngest who could easily finish off the whole small siakap on her own, I'd stick to this recipe for now.

here's the recipe ( semua main agak2 ya....)
SIAKAP KUKUS
one siakap, cleaned and place in a deep bowl or plate and rub some salt and squeezed some lemon juice on it.put aside.
get the steamer ready.
meanwhile, heat cooking oil in a small frying pan, fry sliced lemon grass with sliced onions till fragrant,
then add in a few cloves of garlic and a little chunk of sliced ginger, red chillies, green chillies, cili api.
then, add in some oyster sauce to taste.
add in some water for the gravy.
place the fish inside the steamer tray and pour the gravy on top of it. If you like, you can also put in thinly sliced carrot
cover the steamer and steam the fish for about 10 minutes.
before serving, just sprinkle some spring onion on top for colour.
serve with hot rice

Ayam Masak Minangkabau

Ayam Masak Minangkabau, ready , to be served hot with hot white rice..

The name , masak minangkabau sounded so grand to a mere mortal who didn't know how to cook, like me, with all the cumin, fennel seeds, coriander, galangal, turmeric. Noticed the past tenses used in this sentence because it is to describe a thing of the past. However, it doesn't sound grand or alien to me anymore cos I think I have mastered the making of this wonderfully spicy cuminy coriandery ( are there such word?....whatever....)dishy..

this is the part when you put in the chicken after all the ingredients are all cooked and smell so fragrantly with the combination of the following:

Ingredients:
shallot and garlic
lengkuas and kunyit
jintan manis, jintan putih, ketumbar
cili kering, belacan.
blend everything and tumis with cooking oil until fragrant.


People say or rather I said because that was what I thought at that time( back in the student days), that making chicken curry was the easiest of all the dishes for curry, but not to moi. I could make dishes much more complicated than chicken curry, like this ayam masak minangkabau, masak lemak cili api, ayam masak portugis but I didn't know how to make that simple curry! ( with its readymade curry powder, Ad*b*, b*b*s,Al*g*p*a, etc, etc, )

After the chicken is almost cooked, add some water, just about covering the chicken, cover the pot, simmer it and leave it to become tender.

After a while, add a few blobs of tomato sauce and a couple of tablespoons of fresh milk, salt and sugar to taste.

When it boils, add some coconut milk and stir occasionally , cook on slow fire until the gravy becomes thick.

Done!

" zue guna rempah apa ni? , abah asked me in our house in Kedai Batu 8 ( meaning which brand did I use to make this dish?

"Zue tumbuk sendiri", I answered proudly, though wasn't so sure what the comment was gonna be.
"Sedap...macam yang dijual di kedai2".

That was one of the proudest moments in my life.( for someone who didn't really know how to cook, that was quite an achievement! )

I was on holiday during the Summer break and decided to cook for my family, which was a rare moment because normally My Umi or my sister would do all the cooking because this girl ( girl lagi ke, dah mak budak...masa tu girl lah....)wasn't much of a cook. I was away from home most of the time, if at the boarding school, food was served on the table, nasi kawah and the lauk2 all done and prepared by the Makcik2 ( Bless all of them for preparing such wonderful lauk2, though ada jugak masa2 yang I don't like, me being a picky eater, but most of the time, simply delicious ), and thereafter, nasi bungkus or nasi mangkuk tingkat or nasi polysterine ( this was when I was doing my A Level in Kelana Jaya in the 80s )

The highlight of the cooking era was during my student days where I was staying thousands of miles away from my home-cooked meal by my Umi and stayed in a 3 bedroom rented house somewhere in Ilford with three other Malaysian ladies. We have to eat and so we have to cook ourselves because mummy is not here to cook for us, eating out is a bit expensive for students like us and we are also not 100% sure of the halal status, furthermore, it's not easy to get Malaysian dish from where we are staying, halal chicken is readily available but the dish itself, we have to cook them ourselves. Thankfully, we have a few good cooks in the house and it is from them and also from the recipe books that I learn how to cook some of the dishes.

But this particular ayam masak minangkabau, I learned when I was in my secondary school. Let's not dwell into that era, it will require more space in this entry if I were to talk about my school days. maybe, in the next entries