Dong Zhi (Tang Yuan, Onde Onde)

As a child I loved Dong zhi festival, as it is the time where we can make these colourful balls and also it is a reminder that new year is near, and there will be new dresses, and red pockets with monies.

A lot of fun can be had for children to make these ball with their own mixed of marble colour, design with eyes and nose.

Whether it is serve in palm sugar and ginger syrup or clear pandan flavour, it taste really nice and refreshing.

The recipe are really simple:

1 cup of glutinuous rice powder
1 teaspoon of sugar
enough water to make this into a soft dough

Divide dough into 5 lots,. colour with small amount of food colouring.
cook palm sugar and a little ginger in boiling water to make syrup or alternately boil 2 pandan leaves and sugar for pandan flavour syrup.

Boil glutinuos ball until it float, scoop and place into syrup.

Marinated Salmon

I have never spent such a little time on a dish that taste this good.

This recipe is from the book 'party time' by Jane price. My version is following:

The ingredients are:

- salmon cut into thin strips
- 4 tablespoons of mirin (sake and glucose syrup)
- 2 tablespoons of japanese soy sauce
- pickled ginger
- pickled cucumber
- roasted sesame seed

Arranged salmon strips on a serving place.
Mix mirin and soy sauce, then pour this mixture on the salmon.

Garnish with pickled ginger, cucumber and roasted sesame seed.

Cling wrap and keep in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Note: Salmon need to be freeze for 1 week before eating it raw to kill any parasite that maybe present in the salmon.

Ongol Ongol

This is an old time fav, brings back childhood memory of mum making it, though the shape is normally round, as it was scooped with spoon before rolled into coconut.
I have looked into various recipes, and choose this one to try. It has right combination of water/flour.

For those that like very chewy texture, this is the recipe.
Ingredient:
A. 130g tapioca flour
300 ml water

B 150 g palm sugar
100ml water
1pandan leave

C Dessicated coconut and a pinch of salt
  
Melt palm sugar with 100 ml of water and pandan leave on stove.
You should ended up with 200 ml of melted palm sugar- strain to get rid of any sandy bits

Mixed tapioca flour with 300 ml of water. Take 3 table spoon of this mixture and pour it into piping hot palm sugar, stir quickly ,to get a thick mixture.

pour in the rest of tapioca mixture and steam it for 40 minutes or until its transparant.

when it has cooled down, cut into slices and roll into coconut.

Kari Kambing~Goat Curry

This curry remind me of parties I attended to in various celebration. It seems to be a big favourite for young and old. best serve with rice or bread

here is the recipe:
1kg goat meat/lamb, cut into pieces
2 brown onion
7 cloves of garlic
6 kaffir lime leaves
6 large red chille
10 candle nut
2 tsp tumeric powder
2 lemon grass
6 Indonesian bay leave
3 tbsp cooking oil
1 litre hot water
1 tin of 250 ml coconut milk
salt and pepper to taste

blendered onion, garlic, candle nut and chilli until formed paste
heat oil in wok, and saute paste until fragrant.
then browned the meat in this mix
pour in hot water, simmer until meat is soft
put coconut milk, cook for 5 min and remove

ndonesian Sponge cake with Cheddar cheese

Its probably one of those thing that is an aquired taste. some swear by it,.. others kinda hmm.

The sponge cake is normally iced with combination of cream cheese, normal cream and icing sugar top with shredded cheddar cheese.

I have made it without icing as to cut down on calories intake, but according to my faithful food taster, its not the real thing. The cake definitely need to be done with complete icing and cheese...ooppsss.

I forgot which food blog I got the recipe from, but more or less its the following ingredient.

10 yolk, 3 egg white
100g sugar
cake flour 120g, corn flour 15 g, milk powder 15 g
25 ml milk
50 g butter
1 table spoon of shredded cheese- melt these 3 ingredient under low heat, then keep warm -
bake 170c for 30 min in 9 inch round tin

Genoise Sponge Cake

Hooray.. success story on first goes, which is a bit unusual. So used to fail attempt, the result of the cake comes as a surprise. Though the deco could do with improvement.

I have watch you tube on how to cover cake with icing and it look deadly easy. But guess what?

try to roll the icing on board, it stick like super glue. tried to roll it on baking paper, it sticks as well..

If you really wanted to learn how to become a patient person, try icing a piece of cake.

My god there are temptation to just be aggresive and destroy the whole thing.

anyway,.. the end result is this. a very nice cake, though had to throw away most of the icing, as they are use for deco purposes, even though they are good to eat as no chemical was used, but its so sweet...

Not according to husband, which I have to use watchful eye and stopped him from eating this sweet coating..though I believed he managed to sneak a few in between time when i blink.

Chinese Vegetable- Tong Ho

I was trying to set up Compos heaps and part of the stuff that goes in was the left over bits from Tang Ho vegetables.

Some weeks later I noticed the stems are actually looking really fresh. Upon pulling it out from the ground, there were a lot of roots growing out of it. So I decided to plant them in the pot and guess what, this beautiful flowers are the result.

They look like daisy... its so nice. the other plant with a slightly different shape leaves have white and yellow petals. Even if you dont like Tang Ho, it still made an attractive plant.

So,.. now what is the recipe to cook this delicious vegetables,.. from stirfry to soup?