Delayed Mother's Day Post ...

Mother's Day. A few days late, I know. Ah well, a celebration is a celebration. Spread the love for mum's all round! Cheer cheer! And plus, I made a tasty cheesecake for my mum and I just had to show off HAHA :P. Here's a few pics:

Doesn't it look so tasty? YES. EAT ME!

A slice. With passionfruit sauce dripping off. Yum...

WHAT? Leftovers?!? Back in the fridge you go! Yes! Next to all the creepy preserved things, pita bread and millions of bottles of chilli sauce.

For anyone out there who wants to have a go at making baked cheesecake, here's the really good recipe I used. It's quite fool-proof. Turned out normal even in my shitty oven. LuLz!

Fool's Baked Cheesecake!

For fools if you're foolish enough to make it you're sure to GET FAT!

INGREDIENTS:

200g of your favourite biscuits (MUST BE TASTY!!)
100g butter, melted

500g cream cheese (no low-fat crap please)
120g white sugar
50g butter, room temperature
50g flour
4 eggs (1 whole, 3 separated. Shut up and do it.)
150g yogurt

Pinch of salt

MY SPECIAL METHOD!

Firstly, the most important step in making a cheesecake, let out all your rage at everything that annoys you and at how much your life sucks and crush those GODDAMN biscuits until they turn to powder!! ARGHH!! (Or use a food processor for a more even result.) How fine the biscuits get is up to you. Melt the butter (first 100g) and pour it in, stir till you get happy and dump the whole thing into a springform pan (9-inch, not that anyone actually cares) and press it out till it's as flat as my stomach (HAHA) and plomp it in the fridge for some party times.

Next, using an electric mixer (paddle attachment, not whisk. Most cheesecake recipes try not to incorporate air into the mix, but this one incorporates a shit-load so dance for me madame!) cream together the cream cheese, butter (50g now) and just 50g of the sugar. Let it get light and fluffy, scrape down the sides with a spatula, mix it some more, dance to Madonna, then chuck in the flour, ONE egg and THREE egg YOLKS. Mix, mix, then chuck in the yogurt (I didn't have yogurt so I used white chocolate. HAHA talk about weird substitutes.)

In a NEW (preferably metal and shiny bowl) chuck in the egg whites. Whip to soft peaks, chuck in 70g sugar and the pinch of salt and whip it till you get stiff, oops I mean till it gets stiff.

Now fold the egg whites into the original cheese mixture until well combined. Take out the pan from the fridge, spray the sides, pour in the shit, bake for 60 minutes at 160 degrees celsius in a water bath (I could use a bath) and voila! Bob's your uncle, Jeanette is your dead sister, we all get cheesecake and EVERYONE is happy!

Cheer!

Got my mum a choccy goodie bag too.

I know! I'm so nice!

Eid and Rendang

I know, I'm meant to be in HSC hiatus mode, but too many ideas popping in my head to report for future generations (i.e. blog about). So I thought I'd blog about Eid. I know, a bit late, but wtf who cares! Eid (or eid-ul-fitr if you wanna get fancy) is like Christmas for Muslims. Well not really, but it's our biggest religious celebration that marks the end of Ramadan and means we can eat all we want again!

Remember my Ramadan weightloss plan? Well let's just say starvation type diets (a.k.a fasting) just don't work for me, and I'm now fatter then when I started. Woohoo. Yay. Cheer.

I went to the mosque (Lakemba Mosque) in the morning wearing nice formal clothes, all handily scabbed off my brother. Sometimes it pays off being the fifth child (out of 6, mind you). It wasn't the most exciting Eid, I was too tired because everyone stayed up helping with the food.

I cooked chicken rendang!

First time ever too! Rendang is a very Malay dish; its like a coconut-ish curry. It's so rich and thick its like a liquid stroke; one taste and your arteries are GONE. But, oh, what a death. Let's see if I can remember the recipe off the top of my head...

Chicken Rendang!

INGREDIENTS:

Vegetable oil
Some chicken (one, two?)

Onions, garlic, ginger (the TRINITY of Asian cooking)
Lemon grass
Galangal
Tamarind paste
Chilli paste
Tumeric powder
Cumin, fennel and coriander seed powder

Dessicated cocunut
Coconut milk
Kafir-lime leaves

Salt, chicken stock, MSG, all that extra jazz.

MY SPECIAL METHOD:

Firstly, cut up the chicken into curry-style pieces (if you want you can coat the pieces in tumeric powder and salt and let them marinate for a while. I don't. LOL). Next we need to make the rendang paste, which contains the tasty flavours. In a blender (food processor, liquidator, whatever) put a few...

Ok. At this moment I am trying to type up this recipe but people are SERIOUSLY annoying me on MSN. Jeez! I like you people but I don't want to talk to you ALL THE FREAKIN TIME! And no that does not make me emo. It makes me a self-centred bastard. *Shrug*.

...peeled onions, some garlic and some ginger (I tend to use the canned versions; 'tis heaps more convenient). Chuck in a sliced stalk of lemongrass (peel off the outer layer first princess), some galangal (weirdest thing ever), a spoon of tamarind paste, chilli paste (according to how spicy you want it to be), a heaped teaspoon of the tumeric powder as well as a level teaspoon of the ground spices.

Turn the blender on and voila! Tasty paste. Add only a little bit of water if necessary to keep the blades moving. This is still a raw paste, no tasting allowed silly fools.

Now that we have the paste, we need kerisik. This is an essential ingredient of rendang. Using a dry-blender, blend a cup of dessicated coconut until it disintegrates into a oily paste (LOL! Isn't that cool? Dessicated coconut, the bloody driest thing on Earth, turns into an oily paste if you blender it). Then take this paste, and using a little oil, fry it in a frying pan until it turns brown (not TOO brown; like the colour of dry leaves). Woohoo! We have kerisik!

Using a big pot, add oil, and fry the rendang paste. Fry, fry, fry until you can't be bothered, and then add the kerisik. Stir till you get cramps and then chuck in coconut milk (like a can? Or more?) and the kafir-lime leaves. Add salt, chicken stock, voodoo spices and taste. Yum? WIN! Not yum? F*** OFF! Or add more salt.

Add the chicken, and let it cook until tender. And there you have it.

Chicken rendang!

PIZZA!

It's official. I should be given the Nobel Prize for Foodies this year. Guess what I did!? I made a PIZZA that tastes like a BIG MAC. YES! I made a pizza taste like a burger. I am SO amazing. Praise me! PRAISE MEE!!

Ok, it was my turn to make iftar, and I was really not in the mood for rice and/or other Asian foods (yes, I know I are Asian PHAIL). All we had was mince meat, so I randomly started asking people what to make with mince meat. Nahyan suggested pizza. "Hmmm..." I said. I've never tried making much Western savoury food. I didn't know how to make it anyway LOL.

When a 21st century teenager needs to know something, who does he ask? GOOGLE of course! I searched, "How to make pizza dough," because that is basically all you need to know; the toppings are pretty much experimentation.

I came across eHow.com which showed how to make a pretty good dough. I didn't have many typical pizza ingredients in my fridge so I just dumped anything and VOILA! Tasty!

Big-Mac Pizza!

INGREDIENTS:

500 g plain flour
1 and 1/4 cup warm water
Packet of dry yeast (usually 15 g I think)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Chilli sauce
Dijonnaise mustard (yes, you read right. MUST HAVE!)

Some raw mince meat
Some left over kima-aloo mince meat
Mushrooms
Cucumbers
Onions
Spring onions
Red chillis

Cheese slices (NOT mozarella)

MY SPECIAL METHOD:

First, dissolve the yeast into the warm water in a large bowl and leave it until you see some bubbles. Mix the flour into this and knead it into a dough (HAHA! That makes it sound so easy. If your kneading by hand, knead until you get arthritis and your dough is all smooth and shiny. Or use a machine with a dough-hook.) Oh yeh, I forgot to tell you, add the oil and salt. I think that was meant to be done a bit earlier, but anyhoo...

Cover the dough in oil (like kinda rub oil over it? LOL) and put it in a bowl (oil the bowl too. We like our oil.) Cover the bowl with cling-wrap and leave the bowl in a warm place (like next to the stove after mummy made iftaari) until it at least doubles in size (SERIOUSLY! It gets really fat, its so cool). This takes like 45 minutes. This is what I ended up with:

As you can see, not a very smooth surface. I used my HANDS ok!! My wrists hurt after that. I wonder how all those grandmas do it without getting huge biceps. Anyway, this would be a good point to preheat your oven to the highest setting it has. REALLY! That gives a nice crisp crust. Most ovens only go up to 220 degrees celsius. It's good enough.

Roll out your dough into a pizza-base, as thick or thin as you want, remembering that the dough does rise a little bit during cooking. Then the fun stuff starts! I covered it with a layer of chilli sauce (like the hardcore Asian type) and then a layer of dijonnaise mustard. Dice up the onions, chillis, spring onionsm cucumbers and mushrooms and chuck them over it. Then cover it with the meats. You should end up with this prettiness:

YUM! I want to eat it again! Usually most normal people would then cover the pizza with mozarella cheese. Unfortunately, one, I'm not usually considered a normal person (for good reasons of course) and two, we didn't have any mozarella. I was gonna use feta, but then I remembered that feta doesn't really melt. LOL. I chucked on some cheese slices, in a nice pattern of course, and popped the bugger into the oven:

I left it in there for a while, about 20 minutes. The cheese kinda oozed everywhere and didn't stick to the pizza very well. Ah well. It tasted really nice. Did I mention it tasted like a Big Mac? I think it was the combination of cheese, onions and mustard. Oooo! It was SO good!

Mum told everyone to go pray and then eat, but I snuck in a few bites. What!? I MADE IT OKAY!! Great success! Maybe white-people food ain't so bad after all. After I was done, the evil kitchen wall monster reminded me of what to do next:

L-O-L.

Banana Bread!

When you see bananas lying in the fruitbowl for a week, and no-one wants to eat them, what do you think? I think, "Make banana bread!" Banana bread is this most awesome food. I think it's more of a cake than bread (maybe a quick-bread).

Anyway, the first time I tasted it was when my brother bought a slice from Gloria Jeans' and I scabbed some (duh). It was really nice (!!) so naturally I went home and researched how to make it. Here's a recipe I found (from the doods at SimplyRecipes) that makes a pretty nice banana bread:


RECIPE - Banana Bread:

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas; mashed
  
• 1/3 cup butter; melted
  
• 1 cup brown sugar
  
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda/powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cup of plain flour

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F for you imperial dopes) and grease a loaf pan. Mash the bananas with a potato masher (or fork; its better to use old bananas, like REALLY old, black and oozy. They're sweeter and softer.) With a wooden spoon, mix the melted butter into the bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last and mix. Pour mixture into the pan and bake for 1 hour (don't open oven halfway!! I know, it smells SO good!) Cool loaf on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve:

TASTY!