Sticky and Sweet

I couldn't agree more with Devi Asmarani (one of my favorite writers) who wrote in one of her articles in Weekender (one of my favorite magazines) that ‘Food, like music, has a way of staying firmly in our memory, linking tastebuds and emotions’.

When I was still in elemetary school, there was a sticky and sweet snack I loved as a child. It is made of sweet potato mixed with sago flour (or tapioca) boiled in water and palm sugar and then served with coconut milk called ‘biji salak’ which literally means ‘the seed of snakeskin fruit’.

I have no idea why this snack is named ‘biji salak’ because it has nothing to do with the seed of snakeskin fruit whatsoever. Probably because the size and shape of the sweet potato ball looks like the seed of snakeskin fruit.

The sweet memory of my childhood favorite snack still sticks in my mind up to now. I remember when my Mom was making ’biji salak’, I used to help shaped the sweet potato into a small ball. It was really fun, because I got my palms all sticky after that. And imagining what it would be like after it is done really make it even more fun and exciting.

This sticky and sweet memory of my chidlhood snack has driven me to browse to internet looking for recipe of ’biji salak’. After going through some recipes, I found the following recipe by Yasa Boga which I think closest to what my Mom used to make.

Ingredients

750 g sweet potatoes, steamed, peeled, and divided into 4 parts
125 g tapioca/sago flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 liter water
200 g brown sugar/palm sugar
3 pandan leaves tied into a knot
1 tablespoon tapioca/sago flour diluted with a little water

For the coconut milk sauce

350 ml thick coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pandan leaf

Method:

Take 3/4 part of sweet potatoes, mix with tapioca flour and salt, knead until even and form into small balls.
Boil water, and palm sugar and pandan leaves
Put in the small balls and cook until they float.
Add the remaining 1/4 part mashed sweet potatoes and tapioca flour and stir
Remove from heat and put into a bowl

To make the coconut milk sauce:

Put the raw coconut milk in a saucepan
Add the pandan leaf
Cook on low heat and stir lightly until boiled

Then pour in the coconut milk into the ‘Sticky and Sweet Snakefruit Seed’.

Go Tell It On The Mountain

Last December, the company conducted the year-end meeting at Mount Bromo.  As ‘queen of convenience’ who grew up and spend most of my life in a big city, the idea of going to the mountain was not appealing to me. If it were up to me, I would love to skip the trip but unfortunately as an employee, I had no choice but joined the trip.

Mount Bromo is the most popular of all East Java’s travel destinations. this active 2,392-metre- (7,85 foot-) high volcano lies 112 kilometres (70 miles), about three hours, southeast of Surabaya. Enclosed by perpendicular walls 350 metres (1,150 feet) high, Bromo’s awesome 2,200-metre- (7,220-foot-) high ’sand sea’ caldera has three mountains within it, craters within one huge crater, the Bromo Semeru Massif. There are also three small crater lakes inside the larger crater

On the appointed date, we left Jakarta for mount Bromo as a group of 140 people. We stayed at one of Bromo resort hotels which is located around 1700 meters above sea level. The temperature was quite cold. The next day, we had to wake up at 3 am to get ready to climb the mountain to be able to watch the sun which rises at around 5 am. I can't deny that the view of the sunrise was so beautiful......

During I was in Bromo, one thing that captured my attention was one of the famous dishes of East Java named Rawon (Dark Beef Soup). Rawon is a special dark beef soup cooked with keluak (fruits of kepayang). The special dark color of rawon comes from keluak as the main spice. Keluak is a dark brown nut from Indonesia about the size and shape of a flattened golf ball. Before cooking, the content of the nuts is white in color. Good nuts after cooking, should be richly dark and oily, with the contents variously described as “opium” or “soft tar”. The nuts come from the Pangium edule or “Kepayang” tree, which grows wild in Indonesia and parts of Malaysia.

My mom came from one of the cities in East Java so since I was a kid I have been exposed to this authentic dark beef soup. My mom cooked very delicious Rawon and she always served it warm to eat with steam rice, boiled salted egg, beansprout sambal and shrimp-crackers. It’s so yummy ……..

When I arrived back home, I tried to find my mom’s old recipe of Rawon and here is her version of Dark Beef Soup:

Ingredients:

500 g beef
1 liter water
6 shallots
Pinch of salt
1 roasted tamarind
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 keluaks (fruits of kepayang)
1 piece (around1 cm) of turmeric
1 piece (around1 cm) of galangal
1 stalk of lemongrass

Directions:
Clean the beef and boil it in the water in a saucepan until almost tender
Remove the beef from the saucepan and cut into small cubes.
Grind all spices except lemongrass and galan¬gal then sauté at medium temperature.
Put the spice into the boiling beef stock in the saucepan
Add lemongrass and galangal
Put back the beef cubes into the saucepan
Cook through until the beef is really tender

To make the Bean Sprouts Sambal

Ingredients: 3 red chillies, 5 g of roasted shrimp-paste, pinch of salt and a cup of short beansprout

Grind the red chillies, roasted shrimp-paste, and salt, then add the bean sprouts. Mix well

Complement
Rice
Sambal taoge (bean sprouts sambal)
Boiled salted eggs
Fried shrimp crackers

Serve Rawon warm with steam rice, salted egg, bean sprouts sambal, fried shrimp crackers and Go Tell It On the Mountain........

Who Moved My Cheese?

In December 2009, I had been busy with Project Moving. Just 2 days before Christmas on December 23rd, we moved from the old house in the Northeast to the new house in the Southeast of Jakarta. The reason we moved house simply because we want to avoid the flood which usually comes around end of January each year.

So far we have experienced 2 big floods (water entered the house up to 1 meter high) and 1 small flood (water entered the house up to 20 cm). After 3 flood experiences, it’s time for us to move. And so we moved to a new house which looks like Barbie house.

During the moving preparation, I organized our stuffs in different colors of plastic containers and I ended up having 65 containers which 40 of them contained books (in total we have around 800 books). Some of the books are my precious cooking books.

On the first day we were in the new house, we bought RTE (ready-to-eat) food for our lunch and dinner. We were all exhausted from the moving activities and slept well that night. The next morning, I did not feel like eating RTE food anymore so I decided to cook.

Alas, my kitchen has not been ready yet and most of cooking stuffs were still in the plastic containers. Though we put label on each of container but dealing with stacks of 65 containers were not that easy. I checked my refrigerator, found broccoli, onion, milk and some seasoning. I was thinking of making broccoli & cheese. I remember that I still have some Old Amsterdam Cheese which I bought in Amsterdam last October when I was there for a business meeting. I opened the compartment for keeping cheese & butter in the fridge but I only found the butter while the cheese was no where to find.

Hey who moved my cheese?

I checked with each member of my family in case they happened to keep the cheese somewhere else but nobody knew the cheese where-about. I kept on searching for the cheese coz how can I make broccoli and cheese without the cheese?

Here’s my recipe of Broccoli and Cheese

Main ingredient:
400 g broccoli, cut into small pieces, boil in water for 5 minutes

Cheese sauce
2 table-spoons butter
1 onion, chopped
2 table-spoons flour
250 ml milk
A pinch of ground nutmeg, salt & pepper
200 g cheddar cheese, grated and 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese

To make the cheese sauce:
Melt the butter in a sauce-pan on medium heat
Stir fry the onion in the melted butter until wilted
Put the flour into the pan, stir well
Pour in the milk slowly while keep on stirring
Put in the salt, pepper and ground nutmeg
Put in the grated cheese, mix well

Arrange the broccoli in a glass dish which has been brush with butter or margarine
Pour in the cheese sauce on the broccoli, spread parmesan cheese on top of the sauce
Bake in the oven at 180 degree Celsius until brown