Much A Do About Tofu

The title of my today’s topic is not my own invention. I ‘borrow’ it from the title of an article which I read sometimes ago somewhere in a magazine or newspaper but unfortunately I forgot where exactly I read it.  I use this title because firstly, it reminds me of the title of one of Shakespeare’s plays ‘Much A Do About Nothing’. Secondly, I agree with this title, yes there is much a do about tofu: many dishes are made of tofu.

One of famous Indonesian dishes made of tofu is ‘Tahu Gejrot’. It is known as one of the native dishes from Cirebon (pronounced "Cheerebon". The city is in the North Coast of Java Island, close to the border of West Java and Central Java. Because of this, Cirebonese have their own dialects, bearing elements of Sundanese and Javanese.

A few months ago, I and my colleagues got the opportunity to visit  Cirebon for a business trip.  One of the good things about business trip to other cities and other countries is the opportunity to taste the famous local foods. Cirebon is well known for its local foods, such as nasi lengko (rice mixed with bean sprouts, fried tofu and fermented soybean cake or tempeh), nasi jamblang (rice of various side dishes), empal gentong (a kind of curry), tahu gejrot (fried tofu with sweet sour topping), tahu tek-tek (fried tofu topped with peanut sauce and mixed with vegetables) and many more. So we made plan that we had to find the time in between our busy works to taste different Cirebon dishes.

When we arrived in Cirebon on the first day, it was just the right time for lunch. We chose to try empal gentong for our lunch. Everything  went well. For dinner, we went to an eating place famous for its sea food. Not as good as we expected but everything went well.

The next day, early in the morning we left the hotel and went to the best place of nasi jamblang for our breakfast and we ate to our hearts’ content. With full stomach and happy heart we worked hard that day

We had to finish all the work before the end of the day so it meant we had no time to go out for lunch. And now, what? we still wanted to try the famous tahu gejrot (literally means smashed tofu). So we asked the favor of the local people who helped us with the work to buy and bring it to our place.

Finally, we had our ‘Smashed Tofu’ which we ate while we were finishing our work. Everything went well until one or so hour later. I started to feel something wrong with my stomach so I went back and forth to the toilet. Around 30 minutes later, one of my colleagues also experienced the same thing then followed by another and another. Ooooops, it seemed that we all got food poisoning from the tahu gejrot (note: it could be that they bought it from the street hawker- the tofu could get contaminated by germs from the dirt.

Back in Jakarta, I decided to cook Tahu Gejrot. I Google the recipe and found from the one posted by Indonesian Exotic Recipes. I tried it out and the following is my adaptation of the recipe. And I name my version of Tahu Gejrot as Spicy Smashed Tofu

Ingredients
10 pieces of small Tofu (use the firm tofu type or in Indonesia, I use Tahu Pong)
Vegetable oil to fry the tofu
10 shallots, thinly sliced and fried until golden brown

Ingredients for the sauce
5 small green chilies, chopped (the number of chili depends on how hot you want it to be
3 shallots, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
25 gram palm sugar, shaved
Pinch of salt
100 ml water

To prepare the TofuHeat the oil in a saucepan on medium heat
Deep fry the tofu in the oil until golden on both sides and set aside

To prepare the sauceFinely pound the chilies, shallots, garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle.
Put the mix into a small bowl
Add the tamarind paste, palm sugar and water.
Stir until mixed well.
Put the sauce mix in a clean saucepan.
Bring to the boil and turn down heat

Final touchAdd the fried tofu in the sauce-mix
Smash the tofu lightly using the spatula to let the sauce penetrate the fried tofu. Serve the smashed tofu on a serving plate and garnish with fried shallots.

My family love my home-made Spicy Smashed Tofu and this one is cooked with love and certainly free from germs.

My Dark and Sweet Journey with Risotto

After success with Pasta, I want to develop further my cooking skill by trying to cook Risotto. Why risotto? Coz it’s a rice dish and as Indonesian, I simply love rice. Indonesia have so many different  rice dishes: nasi goreng, nasi uduk, nasi ulam, nasi liwet, nasi kuning, nasi kebuli and many others (note: nasi = rice).

Again, recipes from Periplus Mini Cookbooks become my guide. This time I found the recipe of Mushroom Risotto in Classic and Essential Vegetables. Carefully, I studied the recipe and it looked easy.

The ingredients were: 750 ml vegetable stock, 250 ml white wine, 60 gram butter, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 leek, 250 gram button mushroom, 250 gram Arborio rice, 50 gram grated parmesan cheese and 2 tablespoons chopped thyme.

When I checked my stock, I had everything I need except the Arborio rice. Mine was the Indonesian Setra Ramos rice. Rice is rice, I thought. How could it be so different from one to the other. I decided to just go ahead with my plan to cook Mushroom Risotto with whatever ingredients I had. Since this was the first time for me to cook Risotto, I followed the cooking instruction from the recipe to the letter
Place the stock and wine in a pan. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently.Heat the butter and oil in a large heavy-based pan. Add the leek and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add the mushroom and cook for 5 minutes, or until tender. Add the rice and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add 125 ml of stock and stir until absorbed, then add more stock. Repeat until all the stock has been added and the rice is soft and creamy. Stir in the Parmesan and thyme and cook for 1 minute or until the cheese is melted.

OK, the dish I just cooked was supposed to be the mushroom risotto. But, wait a minute. How come it did not look like the mushroom risotto which showed in the picture of the recipe? It looked so ugly and messy. Well, probably I did not stir it right and as long as the taste is good, I am happy” I said to myself. So I tasted it and…………..yuck!

My mushroom risotto was a disaster. It tasted so bad that even a stray cat did not want to eat it so it ended up in the bin.

Now I learned my lesson. Risotto is a rice dish and like any other rice dish, the most important thing in cooking rice dish is to use the right type of rice. The recipe mentioned Arborio rice and I used Setra Ramos Indonesian rice (not even the high quality type of Indonesian rice).

Not long after my risotto experience, I watched Bobby Chinn on TV. He was in Bali and he mentioned that he would cook Balinese Risotto. What? Balinese Risotto? Never heard of it. It must be something new and exotic or probably a type of fusion cooking or something. I watched carefully when Bobby Chinn explained the details of the cooking.

I could not believe what I saw. What Bobby Chinn cooked was not something new or exotic at all. It was just the simple Indonesian ‘Bubur Ketan Item’ (in Bali it is called Bubur Injin) which I have known since my childhood. People say that its hard to find foreign visitors to Bali who does not fall in love with the wonderful nutty flavor and melt-in-your-mouth smooth texture of Balinese Bubur Injin or also known as Black Rice Pudding which served with coconut cream on top.

This is what I like about celebrity Chef like Bobby Chinn – he gave fancy name to the dish, bubur injin became Balinese Risotto. Bobby inspired me to go back to Risotto.

This time I cooked Bobby Chinn’s Balinese Risotto but I did not follow exactly the details of his recipe (he used the classic recipe of Balinese Bubur Injin). I modified the recipe a bit and I name it Dark and Sweet Risotto.

The ingredients:
100 gram uncooked black glutinous rice
100 gram uncooked white glutinous rice
1 liter water
1 pandan leaf, tied into a knot.
2 table spoons of white sugar or shaved palm sugar
1 pouch (220 gram) Full Cream Sweetened Condensed Milk (SCM).

The original recipe does not use sweetened condensed milk but coconut cream.In my recipe I use full cream SCM coz the taste is much better than coconut cream. I learned this secret from street hawker who sells ‘bubur kacang ijo’ (mung-bean porridge) and ‘bubur ketan item’ (black rice pudding). He substitutes coconut cream with Full Cream SCM. The SCM should be the full cream otherwise the taste will not be creamy enough.

Method:
Place the rice in a plastic bowl, rinse several times until water runs clear.
Put the rice, pandan leaf and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat and cook for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally until the rice is soft and cooked with porridge-like consistency.
Add the sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved. No need to add too much sugar coz later we will top it with SCM which will give more sweet taste. Discard the pandan leaf.
To serve, spoon the porridge into individual serving bowl and top with full cream sweetened condensed milk

Like any other Risotto dish,the quality of the rice will determine the look and taste of the Risotto. For Dark and Sweet Risotto, I recommend to use the organic glutinous rice coz it gives really smooth texture in the mouth

Notes:
You may substitute pandan leaf with 1 drop of vanilla extract.
You may also cook the rice in a rice cooker
This is also a good food for breaking the fastduring Ramadhan

Talking Tex-Mex

Driven by my cooking passion and my habit of trying out new recipes, one day I bought one more cooking book from the Periplus Mini Cookbooks. I was intrigue by its title ‘Tex-Mex’.

The book says that the phrase ‘Tex-Mex’ is not a trendy term coined by some food writer or a funny name of a Mexican restaurant – it is a geographical fact. Tex-Mex is the border between Mexico and Texas which separates two different countries but where food is concerned, the line blurs. Tex-Mex relies heavily on traditional Mexican, therefore often Spanish ingredients and recipes but there is also a strong American influence.

What I love about the recipes in Tex-Mex cooking book is because most of the recipes use chili and I am a chili lover. Over the pages I read some familiar dishes such as tacos, nachos and chili con carne which I have tried in Amigos, one famous Mexican restaurant in Jakarta. There are other recipes which are less familiar: Texan Beef Chili, Potato Skin with Chili Con Queso and Chicken Tamales and many more.

I decided to try out one of the less familiar recipes. I was attracted to the recipe of Texan Beef Chili. It has short ingredient list and relatively simple cooking method. The seasoning ingredients are onions, garlic, cumin and chili. Simple enough but wait a minute……..cumin? my family do not like the strong smell of cumin (in Bahasa we call jinten).

So now what? Should I skip this one and try out other recipe? Or should I just skip the cumin? Or should I cover the strong smell of cumin with other ingredient? But what ingredient?

When the cooking gets tough, the tough gets imaginative

Here comes my version of TEXAN BEEF CHILI

Ingredients
500 gram beef silver meat (instead of chuck steak)
5 tablespoons of all purpose seasoned flour to coat (the original recipe use plain flour)
100 gram button mushroom or 1 red bell pepper (capsicum), cut into small pieces
5 table spoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed & chopped
1 teaspoon Five Spice powder (as substitute of ground cumin)
3 teaspoons of chili powder
2 teaspoons of beef stock powder diluted in 100 ml water (as an alternative to liquid beef stock)

In the original recipe, the ingredients do not include button mushroom and/or red pepper. I add button mushroom  to the recipe to give more volume while the red pepper can give more color to the dish.

Method
Cut the meat into small cubes
Toss in the seasoned flour until coated, then shake off the excess.
Heat the oil in a large heavy-based pan
Cook the meat in batches over medium heat until brown and remove from the pan.
Put the chopped onion in the pan and cook until soft and golden
Add the garlic and chili powder, cook and stirring continuously for around 1 minutes
Put in the button mushroom and/or red pepper, stir occasionally until mix well with the seasonings
Return the meat to the pan
Add the Five Spice powder
Add the beef stock and stirring frequently to scrape up the spices from the bottom of the pan
Reduce the heat to very low and continue to cook until the meat is tender and the sauce is thick
Serve with white rice

My improvised Texan Beef Chili worked!

The substitution from plain flour to all purpose seasoned flour makes the beef more tasty and Five Spice powder seems to be a perfect ingredient to substitute the cumin.

My family love it.  Tanti, one of my colleagues in the office has been begging me to share the recipe (I told her that it’s a secret recipe).

Well, here is the recipe my friend. Now you may try it, it’s no longer secret recipe.

Notes and Tips
For the seasoned flour I use one of the so many brands of all purpose seasoned flour available in the market. But we can also use plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper.
When I ran out of button mushroom, I used red bell pepper cut into small cubes and it worked well too.