Baigan and bhindi masala

I forgot to take a photo cos the dish tasted so good, hence the bad photo.
Will change the photo when I make the dish again and I remember to take photo!

This recipe is using my two favourite vegetables: eggplant (brinjal/baigan) and okra (bhindi). Original recipe from Yummy Tummy Aarthi.com, I alter it quite a bit and I also omit water, but since I used her spice suggestions, I still put her link here. I've experimented with several baigan masala recipe before, but it never really got close to the baigan masala that I love from Bayleaf/Mint in Townsville. This one though is good enough for me to be proud as the chef!

Ingredients

1 large brinjal/baigan/eggplant, chop small

A handful of bhindi/okra, sliced

4 tbsp ghee

1 tsp black mustard seeds

1 bayleaf

5-6 curry leaves

1 onion chopped

Green chili chopped

Oreo-based espresso ganache tart

The Oreo-espresso-chocolate tart with vanilla ice cream and boiled quince

I love coffee-infused chocolate dessert, and when it's accompanied with an Oreo cookies base, it's double true love coming true! This recipe is not mine, but I changed it slightly by changing the base to Oreos instead of Nabisco, omitting the sugar, and freezing the base instead of baking it. I took the original recipe from the amazing site of the View from the Great Island, who in turn adapted it from Epicurious. I just put it here for my collection. 

The crust:

250 grams of Oreo cookies, crushed

5 tablespoons (75 grams) of unsalted butter, melted

For the filling

Stir-fried okra Chinese style

This was my lunch today

I love simple dishes. They are easy to make, yet always manage to warm my heart and hearth. Nigella Lawson's mushroom, garlic, thyme and lemon pasta is one of them. Or just a simple spaghetti with lightly-coated pomodoro sauce (I haven't nailed the perfect sauce yet, but I will, one day). Or, when I want a touch of Orient, the stir-fried okra Chinese style.

Okra is a vegetable that you either hate or love. I'm in the love team, and I love the Indian-style okra (bhindi masala, they call it). Recently, I tried the Chinese style okra as well, and I love it too. The recipe below is not mine; it's from The Big Fat Noodle. I love it so much tho that I decide to copy it here, so it's easier if I want to check the ingredients before cooking it. Instead of eating it with onion rice, this afternoon I opted for brown rice and quinoa. Love it!

Our own Margherita pizza!

Our Margherita pizza, proudly home-made!

After visiting Rome June last year and tasting a pizza ai funghi at Aquila Nera nearby the Termini Station, I realised what I’ve been missing here. A really good, authentic pizza. I’ve dreamt of that pizza for months now. A few nights ago, we wanted to have a Margherita pizza, hence I browsed for a good recipe for that. I found this. What attracted me to the recipe wasn’t really about the topping, but it’s about the dough. Hence, Round Two for the pizza recipe on this blog (ignore the old post, that dough doesn’t work for me anymore).

BBC Food’s pizza dough

300 gr strong bread flour (we use Caputo Red "00" pizza flour)

1 tsp (teaspoon) instant yeast

1 tsp (teaspoon) salt

1 tbsp (tablespoon) olive oil

200 ml warm water (note 31.03.16: these days I just use 170 ml)

Vegetarian dumpling recipe

My favourite Sunday afternoon snack: dumplings. Photo by me, I made the dumplings, my partner made the sauce

I love dumplings. I love it so much that I learned how to make it myself so that I didn’t have to depend on my lovely Chinese friends who can be too busy to satiate my dumpling cravings. But my dumpling journey has been a bumpy one, until recently when I improved my dumpling making skills. I have concluded that I love pan-frying my dumplings with just a little bit of water; it results in crispy bottom and translucent upper part that are just divine. I first got the inspiration from watching one of Poh's shows on ABC, and after trying this method, I'm totally in love with the results (and Poh is such a lovely chef as well, it doesn't hurt...).

Ingredients:

Vegetarian paella

Our favourite vegetarian paella, proudly home-made

Our favourite vegetarian paella is Remy’s in Malvern, Melbourne. We’ve tried to imitate it countless times and never made it close enough. Until tonight, that is, when we followed Omar Allibhoy’s tips which we modified for a vegetarian twist.

Ingredients (for 2-3 people)

Olive oil

½ onion

½ red onion

1 leek (the white part)

Chopped red and green capsicums (or red chilies if you don’t have capsicums)

Carrots, sliced

Mushrooms, sliced

4 garlic, crushed

Green peas or broad beans or lima beans or edamame (or all of these)

Okras, cut into 2 cm ish
Sundried tomatoes
Capers

1 tsp smoked paprika powder

Rosemary and thyme

1 crushed or grated tomato, optional

3 cups of vegetable stocks (I put two blocks of stocks)

500 mg saffron, toasted

Chopped parsley

1 cup of callaspara, bomba or valenciana rice

Lemon wedges to serve

See this video for the original recipe from Omar Allibhoy. Our modified version is below. 

Baking a crispy pizza using a pizza stone

Note 25 Jan 2016: We don't use this recipe anymore because we found another dough recipe which gives us fail-proof results every time. Click here for that new recipe.

Our homemade vegetarian pizza with three types of cheese

 
Happy New Year! 

Been a busy start, this 2014, but not without some extra time to cook and explore new recipes. Pizza is one of them. My partner and I had tried to make homemade pizza a few years back, but we weren't happy with the dough. Never got cooked well, even with the use of pizza stone which should result in crispier base.

That was until a few days ago when we decided to open an old recipe book and tried the Super Food Ideas quick pizza dough, wholemeal version. It was okay, but the base was still sticky and wasn't really crispy. Wonder what went wrong again...

We still had half of the pizza dough this morning. So, for lunch, I decided to just use the pizza dough and try again, with more flour this time. It worked. It worked really well, actually, such that I feel the need to share it here.

Read on for the tips to bake a crispy pizza using a pizza stone. At least, I think it works for me...

QUICK PIZZA DOUGH

Modified from Super Food Ideas - April 2007, Page 69

Original Recipe by Janelle Bloom

 

Ingredients

• 2 cups plain flour (or 1 cup plain flour and 1 cup wholemeal flour; or 2 cups of wholemeal flour)
• 8g sachet instant dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
• 3/4 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Strawberry cupcakes with strawberry SMBC

Strawberry cupcakes with strawberry SMBC

I was flipping Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book when I saw the strawberry cupcake recipe. I wonder how it worked, so I searched online for reviews. I found this one from Brown Eyed Baker who was so excited about the final result (and she has lovely photographs!). I immediately was tempted to try.

Then, last week my friends and I were driving through Bedugul in central Bali when my friends spotted some fresh strawberries on sale. Since I had wanted to try Martha Stewart's recipe on strawberry cupcake, I bought some fresh strawberries. Two days later, I baked a big batch of strawberry cupcakes with strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream. It was a total hit! My Australian friend said that this cupcake was the best he'd ever tried. A friend who live in France (and is visiting Bali now) tried it and even took care to eat the remnants of the crumbles sticking on the paper cup. He is a baker himself, so I take that as a compliment! My other friends said that these cupcakes were the best they ever tried. It was more delicious than the cupcakes in local bakeries here (and we have lots of great bakeries in Bali!).

Red velvet cupcakes with strawberry SMBC!

Red velvet cupcakes with strawberry SMBC (photo by Surya)

I love red velvet cupcakes, and I love Swiss meringue buttercream (SMBC). I think SMBC is the most sensible icing you can get for tropical weather. Of course red velvet cupcakes is best paired with cream cheese frosting, but I've tried that before, and it didn't work. Either I just couldn't find the right cream cheese for that purpose here, or Bali weather is too hot for cream cheese frosting (unless I make in inside an aircon-ed room). I might be able to use cream cheese Swiss meringue buttercream, but I just didn't want to gamble with the cream cheese found here (no offense to my own island). Hence, this time I paired red velvet cupcakes with strawberry SMBC. It tastes gorgeous and looks gorgeous as well! 

The red velvet cupcakes recipe is from the cute Laura Vitale, and the SMBC is from Martha Stewart, which I have written here (note: I didn't have enough butter for 5 cups of SMBC, so I used only about 370 grams or about 3 sticks of butter instead of 450 grams of butter. It still worked fine tho!). For the strawberry SMBC, after adding the butter, just add the pureed strawberries (original recipe calls for 8 ounces of strawberries). Keep beating on LOW speed until the desired piping consistency is achieved. If it get curdled, put the mixture on top of shimmering water and mix it again on low speed. 

Below is the red velvet cupcake recipe from Laura Vitale, with the original cream cheese frosting. The recipe yielded 15 cupcakes for me.

Martha Stewart’s white cupcakes with Swiss meringue buttercream

Winter Rose cupcake (which uses Martha Stewart's recipe below)

I love baking. I do. My favourites are anything chocolate (I have a delicious never-fail chocolate mud cake from Super Food Ideas that I will share sometime). I also love making muffins, and I have my own Cordon Bleu muffin recipes. But these days, I am so into cupcakes. And below is my favourite cupcake recipe: Martha Stewart's white cupcake with Swiss meringue buttercream.

This recipe is a tad expensive, as in you will use 5 egg whites for the cupcake and 5 extra egg whites for the icing... but this is when you can also make the delicious lemon cake I posted earlier today. The egg whites make the cupcake very light (and slightly guilt-free, hehe). The egg whites also somehow hold the icing stronger, particularly for hot climate like Bali.

Very fluffy lemon cake!

My lemon cake. Don't be fooled by its simple look; it tastes divine!

A friend of mine asked me a few weeks ago whether I’ve switched my blog into a total-Japanese dorama review blog. I chuckled and said no. I love watching J-dorama (and Okada Masaki), but this blog is a tangent personal thing where I can write many things, not just my affection towards J-dorama and J-cute guys.

One of the things that I have been wanting to write is my favourite recipes. And since I suddenly crave for a delicious lemon cake, I thought I will just post my newfound, super favourite, super easy recipe for lemon cake. I found it on the net because I had almost a dozen egg yolks at my disposal after making Martha Stewart’s white cupcake with Swiss Meringue buttercream (click this for the recipe). Because I didn’t want to waste the egg yolks, I searched for a cake that will need at least 5-6 egg yolks. And here it is! I got it from this site, but this recipe is so popular, I found the same recipe in other sites too, such as Allrecipes.com.

Based on the reviews from Allrecipes, I made a slight change in the recipe. I reduced the milk to 1 cup plus TWO tablespoons, and added one tablespoon of lemon juice in the cake batter. The result was super amazing! The cake had lemon fragrance and tasted lemony, without being too tangy. The egg yolks helped the cake to have such a soft and beautiful structure that almost melted in your mouth! The recipe for the cake is totally recommended!