Gulai Daging Masak Kicap

I did said in my earlier posts that some recipes do brings back old childood memories, so does with this recipe. This recipe came from my maternal grandmother, Hjh Damit. Most of my growing up years were with her, she was like a second mother to me, she is the one that taught me the values of life, which is respect, love and hope. She always said respcrt other poeple eventhough those that you did not like, love without qualms to those that loves you and there is always hope in every turnings in our life as long as we seek allah's help in all our prayers.

This recipe is what my grandmom love to cook amongst her other many recipes, I reckon might be because all her grandchildren loves the taste, as it tastes savoury and sweet from the soy sauce but not too stickly sweet. To garnish she likes to fry wedges of potato and scatter them on top of the dishes (which I love to quitely eat them without her knowingly or does she knew it all along because everytime I went back to the dining table the poatoes magically add back, always brings a smile and tear to me as she passed away in her sleep just after my O levels exam in 1996).

 She is a great cook, I also loves all her kue melayu like puteri mandi, cendol, seri muka, kelupis many more and in particular her kue sapit (love letters). I remembered as a little girl of 6 years old helping her sorting love letters (kue sapit) into large square tins for her customers and she always gave me the nearly burnt love letters which I always thought it taste like chocolate due to the dark brown colour of the love letters. Nowadays when I felt the urge to eat kue sapit I just bought the ready-made one at the supermarket but it always turn out to be dissappointing.

Ingredients (my own version with several tweaks from the original version)

Roughly less than 500gm Beef of any cuts (slice thinely so that it lessen the cooking time)

Base Paste (4 shallots, 2 fresh chillies, 2 cloves of garlic, half of  a medium sized large onion, 5-7 cm of old ginger, blended it with 2 teaspoon of vegetable oil to form a paste. The thing with the oil is that it would goes smooth on the blender as I don't like to add water as it takes longer to cooked the base paste on the pan)

5cm cinnamon stick

1 star anise

2 chopped tomatoes ( to add in the sour taste or for my grandmom version you could dilute 1 teapoon of tamrind paste with water)

Soy sauce to taste

Sweet soy sauce

(thereby there is no need for salt and sugar due to the amount of salt and sugar content in both of the soy sauces)

3 pieces of Assam Keping (please refer to my Gulai Ayam Masak Kunyit on the glossary of Assam Keping)

Garnishes:

2 tomotoes cute into wedges

Fried potatoe wedges

Directions:

Heat a non-stick pan on a medium heat, add a little oil (mind that the base paste is already added with oil), add in the cinnamon stick and star anise.

Add in the base paste and the chopped tomatoes, stirred always to avoiding the paste being burnt as the garlic burnts faster that other ingredients.

When the oil and the paste had been separated and fragrant, add in the sliced beef stirred untill fully incorporated.

Add in a half a cup of water and let it simmered and stew for roughly 30mins.

Add in the soy sauces to taste and the assam keping cooked it for a further 15mins.

Tuned off the heat and add in the tomatoes wedges, stirred untill incorporated.

Transferred the beef into a serving dish and garnishes it with the fry potatoes wedges. Served with piping hot jasmine rice. Happy trying out the recipe.

Tea Time Scones

Scones are hubby's favourite tea time cakes especially currants scones. He actually started to like eating them since living here. So I had found the recipes on the internet (I can't ackonlowledge the website since there are various recipes that I had browse through but if you are to google scone recipes most of the recipes have similar ingredients and methods)

I was too engrossed doing my other crafts that I nearly forgotten my scones in the oven; luckily I had saved them before they were being burnt, or else it would be wasted.

Congratulatory Card

My youngest sister is going to start her fresher week at University Brunei Darussalam this Saturday. How she had grown up already, I remembered the day she was borne and the days where me and my other sister were taking turn babysitting her. Being a 16th year old that time it was no fun babysitting a baby when you have lots to do in particular socially. But me and my sister do love her to bits and the whole family were very thrilled that she had gotten accepted to do her degree locally in my country.

I was thinking on a special card for my sister but was racking my mind on what to do. Then I remembered I did bought the hunkydory pop up card products, which I had bought the coffe shop prefold window card, so I mix and match my tea time toppers with the window card and using patterned paper for the background of the the inside of the card. Only using my roll on permanent adhesive and foam double sided squres to add the 3D effect hence had produce this card for my youngest sister card.

Dad's Birthday Card

This is the finished card that will get to be posted tomorrow heading itself Par Avion to Brunei Darussalam. Hopefully it will arrived within this week. I love you dad and no words could describe on how much I loved you.

This card was done using a pre-fold A5 white card and using the HOTP (Hot of the press) products include pattern paper and toppers.

Crochet Sweet treats

Cupcake Set Raspberry Ripple

 

On the Issue32 of Let's Get Crafting! Issue of  'Knitting and Crochet', there was a feature of sweet treats which is making a whole cupcake kit. There are 3 diiferet feature of crochet cupcake set and I had made one of the three which is the raspberry ripple. When I have the time will upload the crochet steps

Gulai Ayam Kunyit

Gulai Ayam Masak Kunyit (Chicken Stew with tumeric)

I reckon everyone had a childhood favourites and had recipes that could roused up sweet memories of those growing up years. This recipe always reminds me of my late grandmother paternal side. My grandmother Hjh Nipah was one of the kindest and sweetest grandmom that I ever had; she is always the fun grandmother never chatised and angry with us her grandchildren. She started to live with us since 1991 until she passed away in 1998 during those years she had taught me the love of cooking. The thing with grandmom's cooking was just simple 'kampong' (village) food and with her being an ethnic kedayan she loves to cook nearly everything savoury with fresh tumeric. The ingredients are simple enough and the taste would be soupy, soury, little taste of heat from the chopped chilles.

Ingredients:

Half kilo (500gm) chicken cut into your choice of cuts but I prefer it to be chop into medium sizes

2 medium size potatoes (cut into 8 wedges)

5-6 cm of fresh tumeric (if you are abroad and could not find any fresh tumeric; just head to your local asian store and bought powdered tumeric. Approximate 1 tablespoon is enough as the powdered tumeric is powerful and could leave stains)

1 stalk lemongrassn (there are dry versions but the fresh one is better)

4 shallots (sliced finely)

2 cloves of garlic (sliced finely)

3-5 birds eye chilli (just cut the top off thereby the heat only seeped through from the top of the chillies making the heat only tingling and not overpowering the taste - you can reduced or increased the number chillies depend on your heat preferences)

Salt and Sugar to taste

3-5 pieces of Asam Gelugur/Keping

(Asam gelugor, also known as asam keping (literally meaning “sour slices”), is used mainly in fish curries in most ASEAN countries. Its acidity and flavour are subtly different to the sour fruitiness of the more commonly used souring agent, tamarind (asam jawa) but they can be substitutes with tamarind paste (this text was taken from the definition in http://www.rasarasa.net.my/) )

Directions:

The shallots, garlics and tumeric pounded into the mortal and pestle to form a paste.

Heat little amount of oil onto your pan on medium heat (I prefer using a non-stick pan hence less oil and much healthier), chuck into your paste and stirred until its fragrant.

Put in the chicken pieces, potatoes, the bird-eye chilles, lemongrass and the Asam keping. Add half a cup of water.

(Optional I add 1 tomato cut into 4 wedges as hubby loves to eat tomatoes)

Cook and simmered until cooked. Add salt and sugar to taste.

Decorate your dish with scattering of diced spring onions. Serve with hot jasmine thai rice.

Note: If I am back home all the key ingredients would be just free, I would just go to my herb back garden and pull out the lemongrass, bird-eyes chillies and fresh tumeric. Hubby's aunty got the Asam tree so when it bear its fruit, cut up the fruit and dried it under the hot sun and I would have containers upon containers of asam keping to used for many months to come. Remembering these make my homesick more :)

Giddy with excitement

I can't wait for my tomorrow afternoon award ceremony when my University and the Shirley Parsons Associates granted a recognition award for 'The Best Overall Student Performance Award' , that all my crafting projects were now on delayed for now since I am giddy with excitement and overwhelmed mixed with humble feelings that throughout my years of academic jouney was being recognised and appreciated. Nervous that my picture would be published on the upcoming Safety Practioner Jounal hope they had taken the picture on my best sides.Will upload the pictures onto these post tomorrow.

Easel Card

I was making an easel or pedestal card for my friend's birthday to attached with the box I had made for her (have not yet taken the picture of the box - will remind to oneself to do so soonest). It was quite an easy card to do, just add in a little creativity. You can look at the how to do pedestal cards on youtube. I had used two A5 blank white cards, mirror papers, PP, toppers are all from Hunkydory, I had also gotten free very good quality papers from the freebies of the Hunkydory magazine. Hunkydory is a UK based products (do browse the Hunkydory website) unfortunately they do not delivered outside the UK.

This is how the easel card would look like when left standing on the stopper (topper) you would had to double layering the double sided foam square such that it would be sturdy standing up

The toppers are wonderfully crisp and sharp.

This is how my card look like when laying flat, with the lilac ribbon tieing up the card.

When the ribbon was opened there is the inside of my card with my chosen topper.

I got two more cards to be done for my dad's coming birthday and a congratulatory card for my youngest sister after she gotten accepted to University. Stay tuned on my next cards. Happy crafting everyone.

A place for my contact lenses

Recently I bought a vinyl material that seems like faux leather in pink in my favourite market. I was contemplating on making a small pouch that would be waterproof to put my contact lenses when travelling.

This is how my mini bag looks like

This is the inside of the bag with my favourite thing to do an internal zip.

The pattern was obtained from Amy Butler tm (Stash & Dash Bags) -which I had bought the designs from my local departmental store, John Lewis. 

Hubby birthday lunch

Hubby's birthday was a few weeks ago, to mark the special day I had made hubby's favourite food for lunch which is Rendang Beef and Nasi Minyak (it is fragrant rice cooked with tumeric and ghee with spices).  The thing with being Asian is that I don't really measured what I chuck into the pan to cook; thereby this is roughly the measurement of my recipes ( with asian recipes is depend on how the strength of the taste you would like it ot be, like for exampple if you wanted it to have more heat add more chillis or peppercorns etc). Theae recipes are what I had tweaked from my family recipes and suited it to the taste of my family so it might be diffrent from the other rendang or nasi minyak that you might had found in the various recipe sites.

Nasi Minyak (Fragrant Rice)

Ingredients:

2 cups of washed and drained Thai Fragrant Rice (its an Asian short grain rice - easily found in any local Asian/Oriental Supermarket)

1 Medium sized White Onion (diced)

2 cloved of garlic (diced)

5 tablespoon of Ghee

5cm Cinnamon Stick

2 Star Anise

5 Cardamons

5-7 peppercorns (Dont grind them - just add it as it is)

2 teaspoon of tumeric powder

Salt and Sugar to taste

Directions:

Add ghee to your heated pan. Once your ghee has liquidfied add in the dice onion, garlic, cinnamon, aniseed and cardamon. Sauted until its fragrant (do be carful with the garlic so that it wont be burned - as burnt garlic will give a bitter aftertaste). Once fragrant add in the rice and slowly stirred it untill fully incorporated. Once incorporated, turned off the heat and transfer the rice into a rice cooker. Add an equal amount of water into the rice cooker (if you are cooking 2 cups of rice I always do add and equal amount of 2 cups of water or like my grandmother taught me measure your water with your finger), add in the tumeric powder, the pepper seeds and salt&sugar to taste. Stir and let your automatic rice cooker magically do the work. 

Rendang Daging (Beef Rendang)

Ingredients:

Roughly I had around 300-400gms of beef - Sliced it in cubes

Vegetable oil

Kaffir leaves (lime leaves)

5cm of Cinnamon

2 Star anise

5 Cardamons

(5 cm of fresh tumeric, 10 shallots, 5 cloves of garlic, 3 chillies (if you wanted a milder version you can add just one chilli), 1 lemongrass, 2 teaspoons of curry powder : all of these placed in a food processor until it form a paste)

1 tin (around 250 ml of Coconut milk)

2 tablespopon of kerisik (toasted dessicated coconut - nowadays you can find kerisik in the local oriental supermarket)

2-3 teaspoons of grated gula melaka (if you can't found a gula melaka you can substitute it with muscavado sugar)

Salt to taste

Direction:

Heat your pan (medium heat) and add in the vegetable oil, saute your paste, cinnamon, star anise & cadamons, stirred it always so that the paste would not be burnt or else it wouold be very bitter. When you found that the vegetable oil had split from your paste you would know that you are ready to put in your diced beef, stirred the beef until fully incorporated. Add in the kaffir leaves and your coconut milk. Cooked it slowly until it is reduced ( it is quite a long process  - it takes around 45 mintures to an hour on medium heat and stirred occasionally - that is why i prefer to used a non stick pot) As rendang is done in stages, you initially boiling or simmering it until the sauce thicken, then continue to cook it until the sauce dried up and it seems to be stir frying the beef. Add in the gula melaka and salt to taste.

Sambal Kacang (Savoury Peanuts & Anchovies)

Back home in Brunei we love to eat peanuts and anchovies cooked with savoury sticky sauce - its a combination of chillies, sugar and honey, trust me it is very tasty and you couldn't put the bowl down till it finishes.

Sambal Kacang (Savoury Paanuts & Anchovies)

Ingredients:

Red peanuts ( I prefer this type as it have a sweeter and nutty taste that I love)

Dried Anchovies (there are many kinds of anchovies sold at any oriental shop; I preferred the medium size ones)

Vegetable oil

 

Shallots (thinly sliced)

Garlic (thinly sliced)

Dried chilli paste

White Sugar

Salt to taste (Add salt sparingly as the anchovies are already salty)

 

Direction:

1. Fry your red peanuts and anchovies separately using the Vegetable oil. Set aside to cool.
2. On a new pan add few tablespoon of the used oil to fry the shallot and garlic until they are golden brown (make use you don't burn the garlic or else it will left a bitter aftertaste)
3. Add in your chilli paste (you can make your own chilli paste by boiling dried chillies with water and salt; then drain in the excess water left to cool; then blender the boiled chillies into a paste) until combines
4. Add in your sugar, stirred until the sugar melted. Once melted turn of your heat and pur your peanuts and anchovies. Stir untill well combined. Enjoy xx

 

2 tier cake

During the weekend hubby booked a hotel in London Hilton for my birthday weekend gateaway. And hubby also treating me to a shopping spree (but within the consented budget limit he he). Thanks love for the wonderful present.

During our two hours train journey to London I bought my crochet needle and several yarns to start a new project in my new book  called Gourmet Crochet. I fancy of doing a new crochet project of my new found love crocheted foodies. Above is what I did during the weekend (within my 4 hours journey to and fro to London) and even hubby seems to be impressed with it.

Photo Booth Day with Mummy

I had got this photo laying around in my scrap box for ages since last year when it was last taken at a photo booth. It took me a few hours finishing this LO; which most of the time consumed was choosing my PP and the embelishements from my many collections of PPs and embelishemnts (ribbons, 3D stickers and chipboards). The straw bag and wedges tells the story of the day we went through ; its a mother-daughter shopping day out. Like me, my daughter also have a passion of handbags and shoes. I really do dread the day when the her head would be as tall as mind; I will definitely be sure there will be disappearances of my beloved handbags and shoes which would be a certain likely to be found at her bedroom! But then like all mothers we should known by now that nothing is truly ours to own. On her free time she would endlessly like to browse through my jewellery boxes and I remember when she was a little tot of  3 years old she would walk around the house in my designers shoes and bags.

When the LO finished, I found that my jounalling sticker did not stand out; I should have matted it with a cardstock. But then in overall I am quite happy with my LO.

Upclose

Zip Up Bag

My hubby always said that my bag was like a tardis (the teasing I got if you have a husband who grew up watching Dr Who series and his life seems to be in heaven when BBC decided to rekindled back his favourite telly watching with the reincarnation of the Dr Who series in 2005), it seems to have an endless bottom. Everytime either or both of my two handphones rang I had to rumage through such a long time looking for it had made me doing this project.

That is how the inside of my phone bag, I just love the pink cotton polka dot pattern (which I had bought as a bundle of four fat quaters at my local haberdashery shop). The lining was done by hand-stiching by using invisible thread.

I always have an obsession with zips to add in any of my sewing projects, here I had incorporated with 2 zips, one for the main zip of the bag and the other was a zip for the front pocket. If u are not keen on placing a zip on your front pocket you could just add a bias binding to give a beautiful finish on your front pocket.

This was the final look of my mini bag that I had design by myself. There was no difficult pattern to do, just choose of the size that you want, draw the size on your paper (but when attaching your pattern paper onto oilcloth you must not use your pinhead needle but attached it with celophane as you would punture the oilcloth - and be careful also when sewing it take your time as if you did a mistake on your sewing and picking the thread you will permanently creat holes in it).

Apple and Pear

These last few weeks I was restless from all the packing thereby the limited free time that had crept in I had filled it with doing a fruity crocheting projects. Currently I am so into fruity designs even my new summer dress I bought from Hobs is a knee length grey linen pattern with a scaterring of apples, pears and banana. Do see on my Chrochet pages the picture of a crocheted apple cover.

The pattern of my crochets projects (picture shown below) was taken from a magazine called Love Crochet Special Issue (just for acknowledgement). It was an easy thing to do as it was doing in rounds and all stiches were in double crochet (of the American abbreviations would be in Single Crochet stitches).

Dilemma of Packing Pt II

It was with a heavy heart that I goes on packing all my crafts and art materials. Apparently two large boxes are not enough. I reckon I needed another 2 more in order my many stashes and materials would be done packing. Saying goodbye to my sewing machine was very hard indeed as it was being lowered to its orignal box and my sewing materials need to be wrap and boxed.

As the days grow nearer to the movers coming in, it makes me reflect of the years I had been in good old blighty since 2004. Being away for such a long time from home makes me appreciate my family and those that I had left and loved back home more. But I couldn't comprehend how would I be when I am back home in my country for good; there won't be a second home in another country no more. And plus being back to work and facing all the tribulations of the office or working culture all the good and in itself their not so good. But in all my years here I had learnt to accept that we need to count all our blessings and be truly happy about it.

Paris Disneyland Vacation.

The family went to Disneyland Paris last December which when we came it seem that it was bad planning as we had to endure one of the coldest winter that year. The temperature was freezingly -2 degrees celcius. But in the end it was a memorable trip all in all. I found this chipboards with travel themes at TK Mexx

 

Our Paris day passes, and the train tickets on another layout

Window Card Using Spellbinder Grand Calibur

Hubby's birthday is in a few days away so what is better than to try out my just 2 months old Spellbinders Grand Calibur making a scalloped window card for hubby. The cutout window could be used at matting; what I learnt from the papercrafting magazine was that every crafter need to be frugal and no scrap be left discarded. So this is how the initial card looks like. And making the tags for his pressies.