Green Green Snacks of Home

I am feeling Green today…….


Remember the old popular song sung by Tom Jones named Green Green Grass of Home? Just like Tom Jones, today I am dreaming of the “Green Green Snacks of Home”


In my country, we have a habit of snacking….and we simply love snacking…. There is no specific timing for snacking, basically we snack all the time. Therefore we have so many traditional snacks which we call Jajanan Pasar

 

And some of the traditional snacks are ‘green snacks’ …..

Why green snacks?


call them ‘green’ snacks because they are literally green (in color)….NOT because they are made of environmental friendly ingredients.


But, wait a minute….in a way these ‘green snacks’ contain ‘green’ ingredients, literally as well as ‘environmentally’ and the ‘green ingredients’ are pandan leaves to get the ‘sweet fragrant aroma’ and/or suji leaves to get the ‘green’ color.


Nowadays, people are hardly making traditional snacks or cake using real pandan and/or suji’s leaves. Many, especially those who make traditional snacks for commercial, choose to use synthetic pandan paste or food coloring instead. It is more practical, of course.


During my childhood, I remember my Mom made the effort when she needed pandan aroma and/or suji ‘green’ color to make the green traditional snacks. She actually had this mortar and pestle made of heavy iron to pound the pandan and/or suji leaves to get the aroma and color she wanted.

Let’s Explore a Bit on Pandan and Suji Leaves


Pandan leaves are the leaves of the plant Pandanus amaryllifolius and are sometimes called fragrant screwpine. Fragrant pandanus leaves grow easily in tropical climates and are used widely in both savory and sweet dishes. These blade-like leaves grow up to about 50 cm in length but are often sold trimmed. They have a strong but very pleasant, almost woody perfume. To the Asian Chef, the pandan leaf perhaps what vanilla essence is to his/her Western counterpart. Cooks often add pandan leaves to the pot when cooking rice for their subtle, sweet fragrant – rice cooked this way tastes like it has been newly harvested.

Suji leaves are the leaves of  Dracaena angustifolia Pleomele angustifolia, an annual plant which the leaves can be used for natural food coloring. Suji leaves give natural green color to foods but they don’t have sweet fragrant aroma like Pandan. The green color of suji is darker that of Pandan leaves

Pandan leaves are sometimes tied in a knot and simmered in a sweet dish to gently release its heavenly flavor. Their flavor can also be extracted by cooking whole sections of leaf in a savory dish and removing it after cooking.


Let’s Go Back to the Green Green Snacks of Home


During my childhood, my Mom often cooked me Indonesian traditional snacks and my favorites are the green ones. Now, there are so many great snacks around but I really miss the Green Green Snacks of Home so much today. These ‘green snacks’ are very tasty desserts and drinks – perfect for an unforgettable ‘snacking moment’.

In this post, I explain a bit and show the pictures of my five favorites green snacks and the top two include the recipes.


Klepon (sticky rice green dumpling)


Klepon (pronounced Klê-pon) is a traditional Indonesian rice cake, from Javanese cuisine. It is a boiled rice cake, stuffed with liquid gula jawa (palm sugar), and rolled in grated coconut. Klepon is green because it is flavored with a paste made from the pandan and/or suji leaves which are used widely in South East Asian cooking.

Surprise, surprise I found one recipe of Klepon at the least expected website for this traditional Indonesian snack - it’s at www.nigella.com/recipes/ and klepon is called glutinous rice balls and this is the recipe:


Ingredients

• 150 ml pandanus juice
• 2 tbsp water
• 200 g palm sugar finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 75 g grated coconut

Method:

• Combine the glutinous rice flour , pandanus juice and water into a medium sized bowl kneading well to form a smooth pliable dough.Cover the dough with a damp towel to prevent it from drying out.
• Bring a pan of water to boil , then lower the heat so that the water simmers gently.
• Pinch out a dough about 2 cm across flatten it into a disc and drop it into the simmering water. When the disc is cooked and rises to the surface, lift it out with a slotted spoon , shake off the water and knead the cooked dough evenly back into the main dough. If dough seem too sticky , knead in another 1 to 2 tbsp glutinous flour.
• Mix the salt and grated coconut together and place on a plate.
• Pinch off small balls of dough the size of small limes ( 20 g each ) and roll them into your palms to form smooth balls. carefully make a small well in hte center of each ball and fill with 1 tbsp of the palm sugar .
• Pinch the dough together to seal the palm sugar inside tightly, then roll the ball gently to smoothen and , as you make each one , drop it into the simmering water.
• When the dough balls floats to the top , carefully remove them with a slotted spoon and allow the water to drain off.
• Then roll the balls in the grated coconut to coat evenly. Transfer to a serving plate.

And this is the picture of Klepon which I saw from Nigela Lawson’s website:

Green Serabi

Serabi, surabi or called srabi is an Indonesian pancake drizzled by sweet syrupy sauce. It is made from rice flour and coconut milk or just plain shredded coconut as an emulsifier.



Each province in Indonesia has various serabi recipes corresponding to local tastes. Like in Bandung they sell serabi with chocolate or cheese or sweetened condensed milk and raisin as toppings.

But for me, the classic green serabi with sweet sauce is the best.


When browsing the internet, I found one recipe of green serabi with sweet sauce from www.belzyskitchen.blogspot.com. Here is the recipe with a bit modification:


Ingredients:

• 200 gram all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 300 cc coconut milk
• 50 cc natural green coloring made from suji leaves
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• Olive oil for brushing the pan

Sauce:

• 400 cc coconut milk
• 5 tablespoons of palm sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 pandan leaf, knotted

Methods:

• Combine flour and baking powder then sift on a big bowl.
• Whisk egg and salt until foamy.
• Whisk in coconut milk and the green coloring until well combined.

For the serabi:

• Gradually pour egg and coconut mixture into flour bowl, fold it until the batter is soft and lumps free.
• Let it rest for 2 hours.
• Brush serabi pan or a very small round pan with olive oil.
• Heat it over low heat .
• Once the pancake surface is pored then put the lid on.
• Cook it until the pancake is set.

For the sauce:

• In a saucepan, mix all ingredients and boil it until the palm sugar is melted.
• Keep stirring to avoid coconut crumbled.
• Serve the serabi with the sauce and this is the look of green serabi of the above recipe:

Green Cendol

Cendol is a traditional dessert drink originating from South East Asia which is popular in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand. There is popular belief that the name “cendol” is related to and originated from the word in Javanese, Sundanese and Indonesian language which means “bump” or “bulge” which refers to bumpy sensations of the green worm-like jelly passed through the mouth during drinking es cendol. This green cendol dessert drink is liked by many people including President Barak Obama as you can see from this picture:

Dadar Gulung (Indonesian Pancake with Coconut Filling)

Green Pandan Cake

Pandan cake is a light, fluffy cake of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines flavored with the juice of suji leaves. The cakes are light green in tone due to the chlorophyll in the leaf juice.



Wow………………how can you resist such sweet green temptations?


Just looking at the pictures of these green snacks, I get home sick and miss my childhood ‘green snacks’ so much that I am singing along with Tom Jones……..”Yes, they’ll all come to meet me, arms reaching, smiling sweetly …….It’s good to taste the green, green snacks of home…………….”


References:

• Wikipedia
• Nigela Lawson website
• belzyskitchen’s blog

Pictures are from:

• green.kompasiana.com
• kesehatan.kompasiana.com
• usahamakanan.com
• resephidanganhijau-mikhlaskautsar.blogspot.com
• resepmakananhalal.blogpot.com
• ketela.wordpress.com
• kaskus.us
• flickr.com

Let's Roll Some 'Lemper'

Lemper is an Indonesian dish made of sticky rice and chicken. The chicken is rolled inside the rice, in a fashion similar to egg roll. This is in turn rolled and wrapped inside a banana leaf or a plastic sheet to make a packet ready for serving.


Lemper also can be called ”Indonesian sushi roll”. A savory and delicious snack and sometimes good for breakfast too.


Some people cook Lemper by steaming or grilling after the Lemper are wrapped with banana leaves so that the fragrance of the leaves could be absorbed into the sticky rice. Lemper is one of the most popular ‘Jajanan Pasar’ in Indonesia (notes: ‘Jajanan’ means snacks and ‘Pasar’ means traditional market so it’s basically an Indonesian traditional snack).




Steamed Lemper (**)

Grilled Lemper (**)

Why Lemper?


I had been thinking of making Lemper for sometimes and have collected some recipes from different sources. I still regret it that I never learned how to make Lemper from my Mom as she made the best Lemper ever.



After studying the recipes, I decided to try the one which I thought closest to my Mom’s Lemper. And this is the recipe I chose to follow:


Ingredients:

• 250 gram sticky rice, rinsed and drained
• 400 ml water
• 50 gram cream coconut powder
• salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 225 gram minced chicken
• 2 pandan leaves
• 3 Kafir lime leaves
• 1 teaspoon squized lime juice

Ingredients for the spice paste:

• 1 oinion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons coriander seeds
• 2 teaspoon shaved palm sugar or brown sugar
• salt

* in the original recipe it uses 1 teaspoon of cumin in the ingredients for spice paste, but I skip the cumin coz my family don’t like it




The first time I tried making Lemper was on last February 3rd, during the holiday for Lunar New Year.


I managed to cook the sticky rice:

and the chicken filling ….. (note: I did not really mince the chicken , basically only it into small pieces)  

When came the time to roll the Lemper……….that was a bit of disaster.


I have never learned before how to roll the sticky rice. I tried to figure it out myself but could not roll the sticky rice because my fingers got all sticky….even with the help of oil and the Lemper was breaking up.


After struggled trying to roll the sticky rice and the chicken filling, I knew that it must be something wrong with the technique. The taste was OK but the look was far from the Lemper I’ve known. Oh gosh, what should I do?


I remember I have ever seen another technique of making lemper in a cooking magazine. Instead of rolling the sticky rice, they used baking pan to form the lemper as shown in the following picture (**):

So I decided to make the most out of the mess I’ve made by putting the sticky rice and the chicken filling in a baking pan as follows:

• First I brush the baking pan with oil
• Put one layer (around 2 – 3 cm thick) of the sticky rice in the pan
• Add a layer of the chicken meat on top of the sticky rice layer
• Cover the chicken meat layer with another layer of sticky rice.

Since part of my sticky rice has been mixed with the chicken filling, I could not avoid having a little bit of the chicken pieces on the top of the sticky rice…which should not be!.
 
 

 
Definitely, the look of my Lemper was not good at all, but fortunately the taste was OK and that’s all the matter for first time trial. 


When cut, my first time Lemper looked like this: 

 

I promised myself that next time I will try making better Lemper not just in terms of the taste but also the appearance.

The second time I made Lemper Ayam was last week end. This time it was much better than the first, both in terms of the taste and the look.

I did not know the step by step of rolling the Lemper, so I just rely on my memory of how my Mom’s made Lemper many years ago. When trying the second time, I found out that to roll the sticky rice, I need the help of banana leaf or plastic wrap or plastic gloves to prevent the sticky rice get stuck on all over my fingers


And this was how I made Lemper the second time:

• Place the sticky rice in a pan and add the water
• Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes
• Add half of the cream coconut and a pinch of salt and continue to cook over a low heat until the rice is tender
• Spread the hot rice in a plate and allow to cool

• Using a pestle and a mortar, pound all the spice ingredients into a smooth paste. Add in the pieces of pandan leaves 

   

• Gently fry the spice paste in the oil until fragrant    

   

   

• Add the minced chicken and Kafir line leaves, then stir in the remaining half of the coconut cream powder and a dash of water
•  Continue to stir fry until the chicken is cooked through and the mixture is dry
•  Season with salt and the squized lime juice
•  Remove from heat, discard the pandan and kafir line leaves and let the chicken mixture to cool 
• Brush a sheet of plastic wrap or aluminum foil with oil
• Spoon heap of sticky rice onto the plastic wrap or aluminum foild and shape into rectangles

• Spread some chicken filling along the center of each rice rectangle from end to end

•  Fold both sides of the rectangle rice towards each other lengthwise
•  Roll with our fingers (covered by plastic wrap or gloves) and shape it like this:    

   

•    continue to fold one by one until you get a batch of Lemper   

This is how the Lemper rolls should look when they are wrapped in banana leaves:

The banana leaves make a nice aroma. After that, you may steam or grill the Lemper. Many people said when Lemper rolls are wrapped with banana leaves and then steamed, it makes the Lemper can be kept longer (not easily get spoiled). Eating Lemper is very easy but making it is a different story. It takes a long time and our determination to cook it. But once you can cook good Lemper, it’s worth the effort.

My second daughter loves Lemper so much but she would only eat Lemper when it’s cooked by my Mom. She could even finish seven pieces of my Mom’s Lemper at one time. She would not eat Lemper unless it tastes exactly like the Lemper made by her grandma. That’s why when I tried cooking Lemper the first time, I tried hard to be as good as my Mom’s. Fortunately, the second trial was considered a success as she ate seven pieces of my Lemper too


References:

• Wikipedia
• MyKitchenProduce Blog
• KitchenCake Blog
• IndoChef Blog
• Google Images for some pictures (**)