Well, I guess this is just another food blog like any other. And truthfully, I am not even a cook! But as a Malaysian living abroad, I had no other choice but to start learning and making all Malaysian cuisines by myself.

So all these recipes are tried and tested by me. Sources of these recipes come mainly from a combination of the vast internet recipes that I found. Since different people use different ingredients and have different methods for cooking, I did some research and tried to find the best combination possible, to my opinion anyway.

Some recipes are also from friends and cookbooks. And the best specialties come of course…from my mom. Now this wasn’t an easy task. She never has a proper recipe or measurement and that always makes it hard for a novice like me to understand. But surprisingly, they always turn out fine.

And it’s only natural that I taste German cuisine as well, every chance I get. And I blog about them too, and of any other morsels from all the other countries I have had the chance to visit. So you might say that this blog was born from my personal culinary experience.

So have fun now…and remember, eating is an occasion to be savoured, not to be rushed.

Note: All recipes in this blog are catered for 3 to 4 portions and 24 to 26 cm mold unless mentioned otherwise.

Happy cooking!

Rothenburg Snowballs

The Schneebällchen or snowball is Rothenburg’s best-known culinary speciality. It is made of dough, twisted into shape, then dipped in any one of several different coverings. I found these at the Christmas market in Dresden, a snowball causing about €3. We tasted two of these snowballs, chocolate covered and peanut butter covered. Basically, these snowballs tasted like chocolate covered biscuits, and nothing else. Not really that special in the taste department, but boy…were they huge!

Brezel

Brezel or Pretzel is a pastry of German origin, first documented in the 1100s. It has three looped knot shape. Another variation is the laugenbrezel, which is straight instead. The bretzel dough is made from wheat flour, water, sugar and yeast, and traditionally sprinkled with coarse salt.

Now one can find the brezels topped with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, cheese, glazed with chocolate, or just plain.
And the laugenbrezel usually have cheese or cheese and pineapple toppings.

Apart from plain, the brezel can be eaten with butter, called butterbrezel or with butter and cheese (this was good!!!). The brezel is best eaten fresh and warm, it is soft anf fluffy then. This man in Erfurt has the best brezels I ever tasted, and huge too. There is always a long line of people queuing up at his stall.Jom!

Baumkuchen

I was pleasantly surprised when we stumbled upon a certain bakery accidentally when we were in Magdeburg a few weeks back. Daniel felt the urge to stop and watch the straßenbahn passing by, so I obliged to his demands in order not to get a screaming, unsatisfied 3 years old in my hands. It was almost dark, and there was nothing out of the ordinary about the bakery. Until I noticed this…Do you have any idea how excited I was? This, my friends…is the baumkuchen, which translates into tree cake. Once cut, the interior of the cake is decorated with light golden rings, resembling that of a tree bark, hence, the name. The Baumkuchen is said to be the most difficult cake to make due to its layering on a spit technique, hence only a baker who is capable of making them is a Master Baker.It has been said that the Baumkuchen may have originated from the small town of Salzwedel, which was as claimed by this bakery. Although a bit too expensive, I opted for a purchase here rather than the boring, mass production supermarket option.

Seriously though, this cakes looks like a Sarawak Layered Cake, but tastes less spicier. But I was happy that I got to taste it anyway…

I found an online recipe that makes the use of springform instead of a spit…so this might be feasible in a normal oven. Give it a try, will you?

Zwiebelkuchen (Onion pie)

The Zwiebelmarkt or Onion market is here from the 10th to 12th October 2008, this year its 355th time. The market stalls have been selling these special onion decorations called the knoblauchzöpfe since early September, a long string of onions plaited together with white, yellow and lilac flowers.

For three days in October, there is a big festival here, with contests, concerts, 500 stalls selling local stuff, and selection of the Onion Queen. Bakeries have started to sell the zwiebelkuchen or onion pie for weeks. Most of the pies are laced with bacon, but I found one without. Anyway, here’s a recipe…

You’ll need:

125 ml lukewarm milk
6 +2 tablespoons vegetable oil
250g flour
Salt to taste
1⁄4 teaspoon yeast
1 1⁄2 kg onions
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
Some caraway seeds (cumin)
150g bacon (you can use minced meat instead)

How to make it:

Place flour in mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Pour in the milk, 6 tablespoons of oil and salt into the well.

Gently mix yeast with liquid and wait for the bubbles to form. Mix everything well and knead into a smooth dough. Cover the dough and let it rise for 20 minutes in a warm place.

Meanwhile, peel and dice onions.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a pot and cook onions until soft, stirring frequently.

Remove the pot from the stove and leave to cool. Then stir in the eggs and sour cream. Add salt to taste and caraway seeds.

Heat the oven to 200C. Knead the dough once more, then roll out thin for a round cake pan.

Place the dough in the pan making sure that the edge of the dough comes up to the sides.

Pour the onions in. Cut the bacon into small pieces (or meat) and place on top.

Place the pan into the oven and bake for an hour or until golden brown. Serve warm

The original recipe is here.

Puding roti (bread pudding)

We were craving for something to eat this afternoon. But everything we wanted to make needed the use of wheat flour, which unfortunately, we’re fresh out. So I searched for a recipe that doesn’t need wheat flour and found a recipe for the puding roti. This pudding is popular also with the British, Belgian, French and South America. So here is a Malaysian version of the bread pudding. Although the pudding turned out nice, the recipe needed more sugar in it. So I topped the pudding with cinnamon powder and vanilla sugar instead. Below is the adapted recipe, where I have already added the sugar content. But you could adjust the sugar to suit your sweet tooth. This pudding can be eaten with icecream, caramel sauce, custard sauce, or any other sweet sauces. 

You’ll need:

8 pieces of white bread (shredded)
500ml evaporated milk
2 tablespoons raisins
2 eggs
1 tablespoon corn flour
1 teaspoons vanilla essence
4 tablespoons butter (melted)
8 tablespoons sugar

How to make it:

Preheat the oven at 180C.

In a container, soak the bread with the milk. Leave for 30 minutes.

Mix the eggs, corn flour, vanilla essence, butter and sugar well. Then add the bread and milk in. Mix well with a spoon.

Grease a 20 cm mold with butter. Add the pudding mixture in.

Bake for 30 minutes of golden brown. Top with cinnamon powder and vanilla sugar (optional).

Windbeutels @ Cafe Laden

I can never resist an offer for a cup of coffee at the Cafe Laden in Weimar. This small but chic Italian themed coffee shop is just a few minutes walk from our apartment. My absolute favourite is the windbeutel…or cream puffs. There are two types of cream puffs there, vanilla and chocolate. The chocolate cream puff is filled with a vanilla cream and covered with chocolate cream and sauce, while the vanilla cream puff is filled with chocolate cream and covered with vanilla cream and chocolate shavings. They are smaller than the regular cream puff and costs €0.90 each. 

We also had a Mousse au-chocolate yesterday, which was very, very chocolatey, I must say.

And a cup of cappucino at Cafe Laden looks like this…

No doubt that I’ll be returing here again…and again.

Poffertjes

We were in Delft for five days last May. Since we cooked in the hotel room everyday, we only ate out once. So here’s what we had to have a taste of Holland’s culinary, the Poffertjes. The Poffertjes are actually mini pancakes, but much fluffier and sweeter…like a crossbreed between the normal pancake and the doughnut. Here is the history of the Poffertjes, which I took from Wikipedia.

Poffertjes were originally made to be served as a form of host in a Dutch abbey. During the French revolution the monks, faced with a shortage of wheat flour, started making the batter with buck-wheat flour instead, and the result was a thicker and even tastier host. As in many monasteries at the time, the friars traded goods with market sellers and merchants, and when they tasted this new type of host they immediately saw its commercial potential. They bought the recipe from its creators and ordered a blacksmith to make a furnace with 200 small hollows on the top plate on which they began making what they dubbed little friars. The noise of air escaping from the little friars when they were done however, soon had people calling them Poffertjes.

You’ll need:

500g self-raising flour
2 eggs
800ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
A pinch of salt
Some oil for brushing the pan

How to make them:

Sift flour in a large bowl. Combine milk, eggs and vanilla essence in a bowl and mix lightly. Add the mixture to the flour and beat well for 3 to 5 minutes until the batter is light and fluffy. Cover and stand batter for an hour.

Pour batter into a squeeze bottle (like the ones you get in the supermarket for sauce). Place the Poffertje pan (the pan is steel pan with tiny holes in it for the pancakes)  on the stove at medium heat. Brush pan with a generous amount of oil.

When the oil is hot, squeeze the batter into each hole, filling it just below the rim.

When bubbles start appearing in the batter, flip over each Poffertje gently with a butter knife. Cook this side for 2 to 3 minutes and slide the pancakes onto a plate.

Dust generously with icing sugar and serve with strawberries, cream and butter. Or serve with nuts and chocolate sauce. Yummy….

Original recipe was taken here.

Fluffiest doughnuts ever!

My first attempt of making doughnuts from Nurul’s blog, but I was never really satisfied with my doughnuts, somehow it didn’t turn out the way I want it to. Either it was too heavy, or too big, or too ugly…there’s always something wrong. Maybe I did it wrong, because Nurul’s turned out fine. Then I searched through the internet and found this site. The picture of the doughnut was really fluffy and tempting, and it also has a lot of good reviews. So I tried it. The first time I made it, the dough didn’t rise at all. It could be because of too little yeast or too cold of a room temperature. So today I made it again. But the dough was too soft and watery. I was getting frustrated. I promised myself, if this didn’t work, I am never making doughnuts again. So I reread the reviews in the site and found a reader who had a watery dough like mine, and the recipe owner advised to add more flour until the dough is no longer sticky and has a smooth surface. So that’s what I did. And here are the results…

You’ll need:

5 cups wheat flour
11 grams per 500 grams of flour so you’ll need about 3 1/2 teaspoons yeast
1/4 cup of water (lukewarm)
1 1/2 cups of fresh milk (lukewarm)
1 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup of sugar
2 eggs

What you need to do:

Mix the instant yeast with lukewarm water in a mixing bowl, leave for 5 minutes or until bubbly.

Add the milk, sugar, salt, eggs, butter and 2 cups of flour into yeast. Mix thoroughly.

Add the rest of the flour little by little until you get a dough. Knead until the dough is slick and nonstick. Add more flour if the dough too soft and watery. Knead.

Leave the dough at room temperature until the dough has raised to about two times its initial size (about 1 or 1 1/2 hours would be good).

Now, if you have a doughnut cutter, roll the dough until about 1/2 inches thick. Cut with a doughnut cutter, or divide the dough into 18 pieces and form.

If you don’t have a cutter, divide the dough into 18 pieces. Shape into balls and make a hole in the middle with your thumb. Then leave to rise for about 30 minutes or until the doughnuts has raised to double its size.

Heat the oil. Fry the doughnuts at medium heat until golden brown. Toss the oil and dip in sugar, chocolate or whatever.

Rendang ayam (chicken rendang)

The rendang is the main Eid ul-Fitr dish in Malaysia. During Eid, all houses would have their own version of the rendang…perhaps their family recipe, or maybe a spicier version…the variation is endless. It can be made from chicken, beef, mutton or even scallops. The rendang actually comes from the Minangkabau people. Like the sayur lodeh, the rendang is also eaten with the lontong, or pressed rice.

You’ll need:
1 small chicken (cut)
To blend – 2 garlic, 2 onions, 2 lemongrass, 6 dried chilies (soaked and seeded), 2cm galangal,  1 teaspoon turmeric powder
300 ml coconut milk
Water to cover
5 kaffir lime leaves
3 dried tamarind fruit or 1 teaspoon tamarind juice
3 tablespoons kerisik (grated and toasted coconut)
Salt to taste

How to make it:

Heat the oil in a wok. The saute the blended ingrdients until the oil has separated.

Add in the chicken, coconut milk and water to cover. Then add in the tamarind fruits and kaffir lime leaves. Stir frequently.

Cook until the water has dried up and only a thick gravy is left. Add in the kerisik in add cook until you get a gravy like in the picture.

Sayur lodeh & lontong

So Eid ul-Fitr is finally here. I spent the morning cooking the sayur lodeh and lontong, a typical Eid favourite in my land. Sayur lodeh is actually vegetables cooked in coconut milk, with some additions of bean curd, tofu skin, tempeh and glass noodles. It is eaten with the lontong, or pressed rice and the sambal tumis. I usually like my lontong with squid sambal tumis, but I made some prawn sambal tumis today.

You’ll need:

50g glass noodles
70g tofu skin
1 bean curd (deep fried and diced)
50g tempeh (deep fried and sliced)
To blend- A handful of dried shrimps, 1 garlic, 1/2 onion, 3 chilies, 2 cm ginger, 2 cm galangal
400ml coconut milk
About 1000 ml water
1 stalk lemongrass (bruised)
5 tablespoons turmeric powder
1 carrot (cut lengthwise)
Some cabbage (sliced)
Some long beans (cut lengthwise)
Some sweet turnip
Salt to taste

How to make it:

Heat some oil in a pot. Saute blended ingredients and lemongrass until fragrant.

Now add the coconut milk and water to cover. Add all the vegetables, glass noodles and tofu skin, tempeh and bead curd. Stir frequently.

Add salt to taste.

Serve the sayur lodeh with sambal kacang or sambal tumis and lontong (pressed rice).