BBD-57: Savoury Bread

I have been missing out so many blogging world's online event for years, blaming my own mood if not this business of raising two homeschoolers and a toddler. The time to write is so limited and always be interrupted with the kids' and (sometimes) the father's needs. I guess it's just one risk of being a multitasking person, I believe.

Today, I ask them to let me have an hour free to prepare this blog post and here I am. Zorra, I keep my promise. Here is my entry for your BBD#57: Blogwarming Party.

Savoury Bread 

with Beef Mince and Mushroom Filling

Actually, I made assorted bread from one dough recipe. I am that kind of person, who'd like to grab any opportunity to taste different things at one time. I think I am eligible for a wine tasting. *kidding

From this rich bread dough recipe, I made three kinds of bread: Mexican Coffee Buns, Savoury Bread with beef mince and mushroom filling, and Mexican Coffee Buns with Nutella filling. They all turned out really good and delicious. That's what my family said.

I followed the recipe for the bread dough here. It turned out really good, kind of spongy for a homemade bread. 

And this is my recipe for the Beef Mince and Mushroom filling.

300g beef mince

1 medium onion, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 large carrot, peeled and diced

1 cup shiitake mushroom, soaked in warm water, chopped, reserve the soaking water

2 medium tomatoes, blanched and diced

2 Tbs tomato paste

3 Tbs smokey BBQ sauce

1 tsp chopped rosemary

1 tsp chopped thyme

2 cups fresh homemade beef stock

salt and pepper to taste

oil to cook

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Cook chopped onion until translucent. Add in beef and brown. Throw in chopped garlic while beef is cooking. Throw in chopped mushrooms and its soaking water. Add in diced tomatoes, tomato paste and BBQ sauce, stir well. Pour in beef stock, cook until bubbly and the beef mince is tender. Throw in chopped herbs and season to taste. When the sauce is thickened, remove the filling from the stove to cool and ready to be used for bread filling. 

Have a great party, everyone!

Ayam Taliwang, A Memory from Bali

Kafe Batan Waru is one of Bali Good Food's restaurants, which is located on Jalan Dewi Sita, Ubud, Bali that I often dine in when I am back to Indonesia. I love the atmosphere, I love the staffs, and I love the food. I go there so often that right now I can have a vision sitting at one of those chairs, overlooking the street, and watching the passers by while munching away lemper ayam or lumpiah as a starter. 

Dining in Kafe Batan Waru when I just landed for several hours on this lovely island is like a child learning more Indonesian flavours that I have been missing during my living abroad. Although I often cook Indonesian food at my Kiwi kitchen, it just is not the same. In New Zealand, many of the ingredients on a recipe I have to omit because of its rarity or if I'm lucky enough I might bump into some ice-burnt items from the frozen bins in an Asian groceries shop. But it is not often the case. The thing like kencur (kaempferia galanga), I have given up looking now. The shop keepers always raise their eyebrows when I ask about a specific herb like that, indicating it is a foreigner.

I often have a thought to smuggle kencur from Bali, but as a good citizen of New Zealand, I don't ever try as I know it is impossible to happen. Well, it might happen, but I might end up paying fine for it, since New Zealand custom is very strict on biosecurity check. Even when I declare, perhaps the herbs will end up in an airport bin or destroyed by the biosecurity officers. I may be right or I may be wrong.

To tell you the truth, that is the herb I miss so much, as there is a number of dish uses this herb for a complete Indonesian recipe and flavour. Pecel (Javanese steamed green leaves with peanut sauce) does not taste like it when it misses kencur in its peanut sauce, to name a few.

Fortunately, when I craved for Ayam Taliwang, kencur is not required, so I am just quite happy to cook it. I first eat Ayam Taliwang at this very restaurant, Kafe Batan Waru, Bali, although Ayam Taliwang itself is told to be Mataram's delicacy. They served it with a small bowl of rice placed nicely in a traditional bamboo-woven bowl, a plate of sauteed water spinach, and a bowl heap of sweet chili sambal. 

The sambal was so deliciously red, I could just lick the bowl empty. Surely, they are generous with sambal. If you do love it, just never miss Chili Crab Tuesday they often hold as a weekly deal. You'll be devoured by lovely sweet chili sauce! 

I brought that memory back to my Kiwi kitchen, just like when I experienced that green mango salad with crispy fish and cooked it at home to become Crispy Fish and Granny Smiths Salad with Thai Dressing. With Ayam Taliwang, I have made a research and I decided to do it my way.

Here is what I do.

Ayam Taliwang

I am using chicken legs for this dish. You can use fresh chilies if you'd like, but I use dried chilies because the chilies in my garden are still green. The hotness of the chili paste can be made to your liking. I tend to use less chilies because I cannot eat too much chilies any more, and neither can the rest of my family member. I love using kaffir lime leaf for more flavour and scent, but you can omit it if you don't feel like it.

1.5kg chicken legs

half lime, juiced

salt

Sweet Chili Paste: 3 shallots, 3 garlic, 1 dried chilies, toasted shrimp paste, a pinch of salt, 1 Tbs of shaved palm sugar, oil to marinate (blend all of these ingredients in a blender or mortal and pestle until smooth)

Make Chili Paste:

8 large shallots, peeled

6 large cloves garlic, peeled

8 dried red chilies

1 Tbs shrimp paste, toasted

1 tsp shaved dark palm sugar

1 tsp white sugar

1 kaffir lime leaf, finely chopped

juice of one lime

oil to cook

Clean and trim chicken legs. Pat dry. Marinate the chicken in sweet chili paste in a ovenproof dish. Cover with aluminum foil and leave to rest for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 160C. Slow roast the chicken for 30 minutes. The chicken should be just half-cooked. We will finish them on a grill later on, getting that lovely char on them. Remove from the oven. 

Heat the grill. Grill the chicken, basting it often with both the rest of the marinate mixture and the chili paste until they are all used and the chicken are thoroughly cooked. Serve warm with the vegetables of your choice and warm fluffy jasmine rice. We enjoy them with turmeric rice, microgreens, sliced of tomatoes and cucumber.

Chili Paste: Roughly chopped shallots, garlic and red chilies. Grind in the mortar and pestle until smooth. Grind in toasted shrimp paste, sugar, and chopped kaffir lime leaf. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Sauteed the paste until your kitchen smells heavenly exotic. Add in lime juice and remove from the heat to cool. Use this chili paste to baste the chicken while grilling.

NCC Indonesian Jajanan Traditional Week: Ketan Serundeng

Natural Cooking Club mailing group once again is holding a one-off event. This time, we all are celebrating Indonesian Jajanan Traditional Food, persuading our memories to rake up childhood delicacies which often are memorable to be presented today in the modern day. 

It's not that 'jajanan pasar', as we call it, has vanished completely from the culture and modern culinary, but it seems people less and less regard it as something to be appreciated these days. Kids eat more burgers than wajik (sweet sticky rice cakes). I think many confessions have to be declared here, that Indonesian mothers today are interested in making black forest cake or tiramisu rather than are mucking their hands up in a bowl of klepon.

It's a shame, really. I believe the love of culture of one's origin can only be developed when someone makes it by doing it. Introducing kids to traditional food can give them insights of cultural experiences from other countries. I tend to cook any food from other countries, as well as from my home country, to let my kids grow with various flavours, to let them understand what other kids eat at some parts of the world.

I'm quite blessed to have children as are good eaters. They love Indonesian food I often make for a break from other cakes and cookies. It's good that they appreciate Indonesia through its cuisine. It's important for them to know where their half root is coming from.

This Ketan Serundeng that I made the other day is no stranger to my children, for I have made it many times for their after-school snacks.

My mother used to make this for us when we were kids and I just loved it. My grandmother used to feed me with this too when I was still living with her at my early years. I loved it when she wrapped it in a banana leaf and put it on my little palm. The scent of banana leaf against the warm sticky rice and sprinkled with fragrant serundeng was enough to satisfy my senses. I was so happy.

To make sticky rice as traditional as it is, I found it a bit of a hassle in my Kiwi kitchen at the moment. For we are in a dry summer season, I need to save water from washing too many dishes. Therefore, I made the sticky rice in a rice cooker, with adjustment and patience.

Here is what I do.

2 cups glutinous rice, rinsed well

2 pandan leaves, knotted

1 tsp salt

1 cup coconut cream, at least 50% cream

1/2-1 cup extra coconut cream or water

Put the rinsed rice in the rice cooker. Add in salt and pandan leaves. Pour in 1 cup coconut cream and 1/2 cup of water, stir well. Put the rice cooker on. When it's bubbling, stir the rice. Keep checking. When the water is totally absorbed, and the rice grain is still a little dry, pour in a little tablespoon of water/coconut cream at a time, and stir well until the rice is thoroughly cooked but the grain is still visible. I don't recommend you to pour all the extra coconut cream or water, because your sticky rice will become a porridge.

(Traditionally, you need to steam the rice for about 15-20 minutes, then transfer it to a saucepan and cook it with coconut cream, pandan leaves and salt until rice absorbed all the liquid and then steam it again until cooked through).

Serve the rice with serundeng. Here is my recipe for serundeng.

This serundeng is typically lighter from my mother's serundeng. She uses toasted coriander seeds, tamarind paste, and shredded kaffir limes leaves in hers. I chose to use dried shrimps as to replace shrimp paste, as I could not find the proper shrimp paste we used to use at home at our local Asian groceries store in Pukekohe.

Traditionally, we use freshly grated coconut flesh to make serundeng, but because New Zealand does not grow its own coconut trees, I have to use desiccated coconut. The reason to soak desiccated coconut in a heated coconut cream is to moistened the dry coconut thread in its supposedly original flavour substance. My theory.

Well, I hope you enjoy something traditional from my Kiwi kitchen this time. Have a great weekend!

My First Barbie Cake: All About Chocolate

Natural Cooking Club celebrates togetherness as of society of culinary lovers with extravaganza barbie doll competition, held in Jakarta, Indonesia yesterday. Since I have become a member for 8 years now (and will always be), I have an urge to participate on my own way from my New Zealand kitchen.

And, so I decided to make my own barbie doll cake. My first one, honestly.

I have got no clue how to bake, let alone, decorate a barbie doll. Thoughts come cross my mind, of how I am going to do it, in spite of such an inexperience baker in handling such delicate work.

Oh, well. I have a promise and I hate to break it. So I go on. Here's what I do. I am sending this to Michelle of Greedybread for Sweet New Zealand event, initiated by Alessandra Zecchini.

Dark Chocolate Leather

I tripled this recipe, making sure I got sufficient dough to cover the whole dress, and a little more for half body. I used Whittakers' 72% dark chocolate for the dark modelling paste, and Valrhona Ivoire Coverture for the white modelling paste.

Source: Wedding Cakes from Start to Finish, by Elaine MacGregor

155g liquid glucose

185g melted chocolate

Pour in the warmed liquid glucose into a bowl of melted chocolate. Stir until thickens, and it will move away from the sides of the bowl. Tip it out onto a well greased work bench. Knead thoroughly until it's smooth and leathery. Cover and keep in the fridge until ready to use.

I made chocolate roses firsthand before moving on to make gluten-free chocolate cake. I do have photos of molding the roses on my account on Twitter or Facebook if you care to look. I don't post it to Flickr, though. But it's easy enough to make roses, so I don't think you need a tutorial for that.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake

I takes two cakes to fill in this tin of barbie cake from Wilton. It is called WonderMold Pan. I bought it from The Cake Shop in Pukekohe. I just greased and floured the cake tin before baking, no baking paper involved (and it handwash easy too).

The mixture fills about ¾ of the tin. It springs fine to the top of the tin and it is perfectly level when it's baked.

185g margarine

1 ¼ cup caster sugar

4 eggs

2 cups gluten-free flour sifted with 50g Varlhona cocoa powder and 1 tsp baking soda

½ cup almond meal

150g melted dark chocolate, cooled

2 tsp vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 165C. Beat margarine and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add in eggs one at a time. Beat in melted and cooled dark chocolate. Add in vanilla essence. Beat a little bit more and turn the mixer off. Fold in the flour mixture, and then almond meal, mix gently well.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for 1 hour or until the skewer comes out clean when inserted from the centre of the cake. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes and transfer the cake, the wider side down, and let cool.

Cream Cheese Buttercream

250g cream cheese, room temperature

60g icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp vanilla essence

juice from half lemon

Beat the cream cheese until smooth. Beat in the icing sugar, vanilla and lemon juice together, until the mixture is soft and fluffy. Use this to sandwich and cover the barbie cake.

Assemble

I divide the cake into 4 layers and sandwich them with buttercream, then cover the sides of the cake with it. Leave it in the fridge until the buttercream hardened a little bit.

Then the tricky part is coming. To roll this mass of chocolate is one hell of a baker job, especially when your kitchen is heating up with sun poking mixed with the heat of the oven and stove (as I was cooking dinner as well).

It did not go quite as I expected. It could not roll out thinly as I wanted it. Whenever I try to roll it out thinly, it breaks. I decided to just leave it thicker and forget that paper thin layers I had in mind. There is always a plan B in this life, don't you think?

I worked on it in batches. Front part of the dress has to be fitted first. That one is then pressed with sunflower pattern to make a rather unplained dress. And then I work around the cake, a little at a time (while handling chicken satay on the grill!). The overlapping sheets of chocolate leather is then made to make a resemblance of the flow of the gown.

After I feel that things going on smoothly, it is time to decorate the other half of the barbie. I use a little bit of the chocolate leather on the chest and around, and use my scalpel to form a top dress.

Then the barbie top is inserted in the hole. From there, I worked on to glue the roses one at a time while eyeing on the balance. So, there it is.

My first barbie cake. I don't know what to feel. I completely am not satisfied, for I thought I could do better than that, but for a first try, I did okay. Don't you think?

The Review

We have this cake for morning tea over at my mother-in-law's place. I was quite pleased to see the cake was still moist and tasted really good. 

The buttercream went well with the cake. The chocolate leather, though, was not a pick. It tasted rather sweeter to us surprise. But the white chocolate roses taste better. I wonder if the quality of chocolate does make a difference? Who knows. I am already ordered to make this cake again for someone's birthday next, so I have more opportunity to play around with different design. Have you made yours?

Rolls Nice: Japanese Roll Cake

I was wondering if cake decorating term is only applied to cookies and layered cakes. When I saw a Greentea Japanese Roll Cake from Rachmah's blog post, I have a thought the term could be enlarged with decorating roll cakes somewhere under that particular category.

I mean, what's the difference? Although decorating roll cakes doesn't need sugarpaste, royal icing or buttercream, it surely needs imagination like a 'normal' cake decorating needs.



It involves drawing and painting with batter. It involves colours and techniques. 

And there is skills. 



Honestly, I have never met a challenge like it before and it took me by surprise that it is not as easy as it looks. I failed one of my roll cake, cracked and split when I was trying to roll it. I suspect, I was too adamant to put fresh strawberries in the centre and perhaps way too heavy for the sponge to take them all. I learned my lesson.

 

Another tricky thing is to use the right baking paper. Everytime I put coloured batter on to make decorations, the moment it came out of the freezer, the baking paper will be wrinkled. And that means, the final product will not be as smooth as I want it.

Some girls in the group said to use silpat, but my my silpat is way too big for the measurement required on the recipe. I don't know how they did it, but one time around, I decided not to grease the roll tin. The result was just the same, if not only to satisfy my observation on what to overcome with those two techniques. Nah, I'm still not able to make my roll cakes looking perfectly as smooth as I want to. 

There is one thing I have forgotten, a result of not reading the recipe properly. It's that I have to put a pattern paper under the baking paper, so that the baking paper is not on contact with the bottom of the tin. I must try that again one day.

Well, are you feeling challenged now? Here is the recipe.



Japanese Roll Cake (JRC)

Source: Junko Book (Hop on this website to see what the book look like. It includes step-by-step too. I wonder where to get it in New Zealand)
Modified by Rachmah Setyawati
---------------------------------------------

Ingredients
Batter I
4 egg yolks
40g caster sugar
40cc vegetable oil
60cc water
80g plain flour

Batter for Decorations

60g egg whites
15g caster sugar
10g cornflour

Batter II
160-175g egg whites
0,5g salt
50g caster sugar

1tsp lime juice
15g cornflour
　

1 Tbs Blueberry Paste or dark purple food coloring (I omit this somehow, using different ideas of decorations and colours)

Filling :
Fresh cream, whipped


Methods:

Batter I: Beat egg yolks and sugar until fluffy, drizzle in oil a little at a time while mixing well and then continued with water until all combined. Fold in flour and mix well. Set aside.

Batter for Decorations: Beat egg whites with half of the sugar until foamy, add in sugar a little at a time while still whisking, until all the sugar is used and it forms soft peak. Fold in cornflour, mix well until the batter appears thicken but not hard peak. Set aside.

Get 5-6 tablespoons of Batter I and spoon into the Batter for Decorations, mix well. Divide into two portions. For the first portion of batter, divide into three colours: light pink, dark pink, and light yellow, following the drawing below, provided by Rachmah Setyawati.

Decorations drawing by Rachmah Setyawati

Prepare 2 roll tins measured 20X20X5cm. Prepare your paper which is already sketched with your desired patterns and place it on the bottom of the tin. Grease this paper with a little butter and put the baking paper over. So the paper with patterns is covered by baking paper. Do not grease your baking paper.

Take a little light pink colour, spoon it on to the love pattern. Then get the dark pink one, spoon onto the rest of the love pattern which is not decorated yet. Repeat the process for the dot patterns.

After all patterns are filled and done, put the tin into the freezer until the batter is frozen and dry. Then pour in the Batter I.

You can create another pattern as much as you want. So with this recipe, it will yield two sponge roll cakes.

Preheat the oven to 165C-175C.

Batter II: Make this while freezing the patterns. Beat the egg whites with half of the sugar until foamy, add in the rest of the sugar a little at a time while whisking. Add in lime juice, keep whisking until soft peak. Fold in cornflour, whisk well until thicken. 

 

Combine Batter I and Batter II until incorporated well enough, no egg whites streaks, that is. Divide into two portions. Drop blueberry paste or food colouring as to your liking into one of the portions, mix well. 

Remove the tin out of the freezer, then pour in the blueberry coloured batter onto the love-patterned tin, and the the other portion into the second tin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until well cooked. Peel off the paper and let it cool.

Assemble

When the cake is cooled, spread the filling over the non-patterned side, roll well and wrap with baking paper. Let it be hardened in the freezer for a little while and serve.

My Review:
Although I still bump into difficulties of making it right, I definitely will try again and let my children design the patterns.

So yeah. We had had a good time with Japanese Roll Cake. Afternoon tea feels so cute with these little rolls. Do ahead with yours, and let me know what you come up with!