Indonesian food: is it worth it?

Once in a while, I will be craving Indonesian style meals. For me, the spicyness, the deep flavor is highly satisfying. It's real comfort food. But here in Toronto, we're lacking one most important "device" for making Indonesian dishes. That's the "Bibik". There're so many spices, herbs, ingredients that you have to slice, chopped, grind, that the preparation itself will take up a good hour or so. Now who has the time? Indonesian mothers have the answer: Bibik! But since we don't have "her" here, often time I have to give up my craving for an easier, faster dish. Today I found a recipe that is considered the simplest in the labirynth culinary of Indonesian dish. Daging tumis gurih bumbu pecel. Thinly slice beef simmered in savory peanut sauce. The best thing is, I have all the ingredient in the pantry & no grinding spices. Yum! I made a side dish of Tumis Kangkung. Stir fry water spinach.

Cute potluck-y dish

After seeing the same show twice in Foodtv network, I said to myself: OK, enough. I'll make it! Perhaps there's a fate too that certain dish needs to be cooked by certain person at the certain time ...It's balsamic vinegar drumette by Giada de Laurentis. Easy, no fuss & healthier version of chicken wing I would say. You just dump a batch of drummette or winglets or whatever cut of chicken you have in hand, then pour in the marinate: balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, honey, garlic & rosemary. Leave it to work in the fridge for several hours, then bake it for about 30 min. Done! and as Giada said: It's so cute! Well, it's cute & tasty. The kind of dish you would want to bring to the potluck to impress the Jones. It looks fancy but couldn't be simpler to make.. In my case, I succeeded in impressing H. Wow, look fancy! He said. If only he knew...

Yin Yang

Cooking is truly an art. This time the lesson is to balance your creation; what flavor is good with the other, and what flavor doesn't go well with another. Husband H pointed that out to me. I improved my cooking skill even more because now not only that I can create more than 1 dish, but also the dish really complement each other. And it's not difficult to achieve at all. 1 ziplock bag of ground pork (around 500 gr) can easily make 2 dishes. I love cooking with ground meat because it's so versatile and almost fool-proof. Tonight I made mushroom meatball with mixed vegetable sauce and stuffed cabbage roll. The first one is strong in flavor; combination of spicy hot, sweet & savory. The later one is so subtle. The yin of them two: you can just taste the natural flavor of the mushroom, sweetness of ground pork & carrot. The two dishes really complement each other.. Just like a marriage. Yin & Yang always work better than Yang & Yang or Yin & Yin.. For me H, who is the yin & who is the yang?

Follow your instinct

I commited a mother's cardinal sins last night. Denied the mother's first instinct. The consequence? Nothing less than fatal. My baby fell off from our bed. Somehow I knew something bad could happen to her, yet I resisted to prevent it. Could I be the only mother who doesn't follow her heart? If I were, I deserve to receive the consequence, not my baby.
After last night accident, I & husband H are functioning like zombie today. Ironically, the only one who is herself is my baby. She is as joly as ever like nothing ever happened to her. Thanks God, now we can look back and try to find a scape goat for our unforgiveable, reckless act. When you have to endure hours of constant crying in countless sleepless nights then it's not hard to find the goat...

Pasta Mia

3 years ago, I thought pasta was some kind of upscale version of noodle to the Italian. Perhaps they think the same too about noodle. Living in Toronto changed the impression; I quickly learnt pasta comes in different shapes, different ingredient and of course, ranging prices. I thought making good pasta dishes required same basic skill as whiping up delicioso noodle bowl. Boy, was I wrong! I've tried recipe after recipe. From Martha Stewart to randomly google-ing, but the result still taste like instant-pasta package. Tonight I tried my luck again, based on recipe from Ina Garten. And I strike this time! The shrimp scampi style linguine was exactly like I imagined, fresh, summery & oo-la-la. For the side dish, I sauteed some zucchini with can diced tomatoes. It's strange how fast human can adapt to a new environment. 3 years ago, pasta & zucchini were alien. Now, I'm talking about them like Chinese talking about noodle & dumpling..

Hot Korean Dinner

I was drooling over pictures of patio furniture set that I saw in the weekly store flyers since one month ago. Unfortunately, husband H & I are not focused people. We went to one store, than another, followed by a series of others. We saw this and liked it. Then we saw the others and kept them on the list also. To make the long story short, we ended up not buying any patio set because of so many pros and cons. However, I'm still determined to persuade H to buy one before the short summer ends. My way: prepare more outdoor dinner so that eventually H will think we really need a decent patio furniture to eat rather than seating in a squeaky white plastic chair..

Outdoor dinner number 1: Korean style barbeque.

Appetizer is tofu & nappa cabbage in soybean sauce & pork broth. The delicate taste gave a balance to later spicy & tasty entrees.

For entree, I made rice & fish cake in spicy sauce. I used chinese style rice cake since I only had it on hand. It will be much better if you can find fresh korean rice cake. The one I used was kinda stale and not as gooey as I wanted it.

We're meat lover. So eventhough the rice cake & soup were actually enough for both of us, I still sliced some beef for bbq. I bought the sauce in the Korean supermaket and it tasted like restaurant if not better.. the only improvement I made was adding more roasted sesame seeds.

Dinner was a huge success. But not so my persuasion strategy. We ended up having indoor bbq with our electric grill because of the rain. Put my thinking cap back on: what's the next outdoor dinner??