Tahu telur, literally tofu and egg omelette, is one of those fresh one-dish-salad-turned-into-a-meal we love. Originally from Java, it is served in households as simple and easy dish that is filling and cheap to make. It is amazing how a lot of dishes we enjoy come with peanut sauce. But I am not complaining. Peanut sauce just goes with everything, don’t you think? It is best served with fresh vegetables, by the way. As most other peanut sauce in Indonesian cuisine, the ingredients are deep-fried or roasted first before using, so it refrigerates rather well. Do adjust the amount of chilies. We take our sauces super spicy.

Here I arranged sliced cucumber and chopped lettuces on a serving plate, omelette goes on top and last that goes on the plate is beansprouts. The bean sprouts can be raw or blanched. The sauce is prepared separately, first the brown spicy base sauce and ground peanuts are added into the sauce last minute of serving. The peanuts would get soggy if mixed too early into sauce before serving.

Some tofu of firmer variety. These are to be cut into smaller cubed, about 2 cm.

I was using 5 eggs for this, lightly whisked.

Ingredients for the sauce is red chilies, bird’s eye chilies (optional), garlic, shrimp paste, palm sugar (or gula melaka) and salt. Chilies and garlic are to be roasted or deep-fried for 3 minutes in a little bit of oil in advance.

So I have a great news. We are expecting our first bundle of joy. In two months’ time. Thank you so much for all the support during these idle months. I hope to pick up more energy to cook and blog in the coming months before the joy arrives.

I love the smell of cinnamon in baked goods. Cinnamon is in abundance in our area, they are sold by the bundles in the shape of gigantic sticks, up to about 40cm in length. We grate our cinnamon sticks manually then shift the powder with metal strainer before storing. I know, I am baffled at the fact that we do things the hard way. We make ground cinnamon as we use them. We rarely keep them for more than a week. Our baked goods are so good with the fresh cinnamon. The one thing that I keep on going back on making is cinnamon buns. I am a great fan of Cinnabon, but after they closed down the only shop they had here, I was feeling kinda lost. When I started making my own, I was found.

I am also a great, great fan of Peter Reinhart’s bread making book. It is the first bread baking book I have ever bought, more than 5 years ago. I love the book. The Bread Maker’s Apprentice is a great book for, well, bread maker’s apprentice. Everything is explained in detail and absolutely no guesswork. Of all the bread recipes in the book, this particular recipe is the one I love the most.

Combine butter, sugar and salt in a mixer bowl. Cream these ingredients on medium speed with an electric mixer, using paddle attachment, about 5 minutes.

Add eggs and lemon zest and continue mixing until smooth, about 1 minute.

Indonesian fried rice is just like any other dishes in Indonesian cooking. Everybody has their own version. However, all the main ingredients are there. Shallots, chili, shrimp paste, kecap manis. Of course, rice and other condiments such as emping crackers, chicken bits, spring onions, fried eggs, sliced tomatoes and cucumber. Some fancy hotel version has satay and peanut sauce and fried chicken. It is common dish that’s easy to dress up by using fancier table ware and adding more condiments.

The main points are the type or rice used, which is medium grain and cold rice, the colder the better. Heavy bottomed wok is preferred, normal saucepan won’t give you the

For simple version, here is what I do with mine.

Spices to be ground are chilies, shallots, garlic and toasted shrimp paste.

Work on them in a mortar and pestle until reasonably fine.

Chop spring onion and chinese celery finely.

Deep-fried snacks are my favorites. I make my own fried food as often as I can as I just can’t resist them. Risoles are just soft spring rolls with gooey vegetable fillings. They are made and sold fresh. The quality of the risoles depends on the quality of the ingredients and freshness of cooking oil. The crumbs will soak some of the oil, so you would want decent and clean oil on your risoles.

The skin is crepe-like and made individually. Driving me crazy, you said? Yeah, they drive me crazy. The thin skin. For the first 20-ish, they are often as thick as jeans. The last 20ish usually they are nice, thin and rather presentable.

Fillings are made of chicken, carrots, peas, onions and beans cooked in milk and chicken stock, thickened with flour. Vegetarian version is without meat and more vegetables. The spices used are either ground coriander or ground nutmeg.

Risoles are crumbed twice, compared to the one time usually done. The risoles are coated with egg white mixture, then bread crumbs, and egg white mixture again and lastly, bread crumbs. I believe some added sprinkle of tapioca starch on the egg white for that extra crunchy bites that last a bit longer.

The prepping work is quite a lot, but I believe if you have the right equipment (or person) to help you with the cutting part, it would be quite an easy process.

I always start with cooking the filling and getting it out of the way. Heat cooking oil in a wok and stir-fry onion till fragrant and transluscent, about 2-3 minutes.

It was Sunday morning. Nobody else is in the kitchen, I have it all for myself, so I can try making things that I would not do when the kitchen is full of people. My aunties (yes, plural) always visit on Sunday morning. They like to come and check out what I am making on Sundays for this little blog. They would stay for lunch, sometimes staying all day. I have always tried to cook dishes that they love and they are good at so I can pick up some tips. So to have a quiet kitchen is quite rare, I decided to bake the chocolate wafers that so many bloggers raved about. I could almost hear them screaming at me, complaining how much sugar I used and how dark the dough is.

It turned out wonderful. For my first try. I am sharing all the things that I think I did wrong. But it turned out wonderful. Really. Alice Medrich has revised the chocolate wafer recipe on her newest book. So this is the Chocolate Wafer 3.0 recipe.

Combine milk and vanilla extract in a bowl. Set aside for later use.

I made a mistake by using a stand mixer. I don’t own a food processor. The mixer is just too hard on the batter. Now I know that I should have worked the dough by hands. I combined all the dry ingredients in a mixer bowl.