I was so fascinated when I saw a youtuber was having a plate of pandan nasi lemak aka coconut milk rice. I am a big fan of pandan. I like any food with pandan flavour, especially sweet dessets.
The green colour, soft and fluffy rice grain instantly captured my heart. I was drooling away when I saw the food clip, and I knew I needed to make a plate of pandan nasi lemak. A plate of nasi lemak is pretty simple to make, especially when using the rice cooker. All you need are rice, coconut milk, salt and water. The pandan extract is just something extra for pandan flavour and colouring.
Ingredients
2 cups white rice
400ml coconut milk
1/2 tsp pandan extract
a pinch of salt
some water
Directions
1. Rinse and drain the rice. Place the drained rice in the rice cooker.
2. Add coconut milk, salt and pandan extract.
3. Add in additional water until it reaches the 2-cup mark shown in the rice cooker. (The amount of water required varies according to the type of rice cooker you are using. Please follow the measurement guidelines of your rice cooker).
4. Switch on the rice cooker and cook the rice.
5. Fluff up the rice and serve it hot with your favourite side dishes.
Nasi lemak is best to enjoy with sambal, as side dish. Check out my luxurious version of nasi lemak, with the best in town sambal shrimps and acar aka pickled carrot, pineapple and cucumber.
Click here for the 5 Minutes Sambal Shrimps recipe.
Shopping in the Asian grocers can be like treasure hunting for me. It can be full of surprises, or it can be of disappointments. There are times I discover great ingredients unexpectedly; there are times I struggle to find the ingredients that I am looking for. This is exactly the experience I have with a bottle of Way Sambal Sauce.
Sambal aka spicy chili paste is not an easy dish to make at home (for me) as it required more than 10 types of spices or ingredients. Some of the ingredients are beyond reached such as galangal, shrimps paste, kaffir lime leaves etc. I may need to travel to the Asian grocer next towns for some of the ingredients. So it does not cross my mind at all to attempt any homemade sambal sauce.
One day while shopping in the Asian grocer, I unexpectedly discovered a hidden jam – Way Sambal Sauce. I was in joy and quickly grabbed a bottle and added it into my shopping cart without checking the price tag. Ingredients like these are scarce and I am willing to pay a premium price for it, so long it can save me a lot of works and time. (By the way, a bottle of 200g sambal sauce costs ~ 4.5 EUR).
I fell in love with the sambal sauce as it tastes super good, as good as the sambal served in restaurants. I regretted for not buying an extra bottle as the next round when I shopped in the Asian grocer, it has been out-of-stock. I doubt it would be restocked any time sooner since it is not an item by popular demand.
Anyway, enough with the grandmother story. Let's start cooking now.
Ingredients
1 bottle Way Sambal Sauce (200g)
300g shrimps
2 onions (sliced)
1/2 lime
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
cooking oil
Directions
1. Heat up some cooking oil in the pan, stir fry the onion for 5 min or turn translucent.
2. Add in the sambal sauce. Stir fry for 1 min.
3. Add in the shrimps, sugar and salt. Stir for 3-4 min until the shrimps are cooked.
4. Squeeze in the lime juice, ready to serve.
This is the sequel of my radish cake's affair. Other than the pan fried radish cake which I shared in my earlier post (check out post), another best way to enjoy the radish cake is through stir-fry. Stir-fry radish cake is also one of the popular dishes to order in most of the dim sum restaurants.
One of the key ingredients for the stir-fry radish cake is actually the preserved turnip. Preserved radish is pretty common ingredient for Asian cooking and can be easily found in most of the Asian grocers. They are preserved food with high contain of sodium, hence, you will need to soak them in the water and rinse them under the water few times to mellow down the saltiness taste before you can use them for cooking.
No special technique required for the stir fry. However the sequence of the ingredients added into the wok must be taken note, in order to avoid bitter taste garlic or burned preserved radish.
Ingredients
500g steamed radish cake (cut into cubes)
50g preserved radish (chopped)
4 eggs (beaten)
2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
1 stalk spring onion (chopped)
2 tsp dark soya sauce
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp sugar
cooking oil
Directions
1. Heat up oil in a wok, add in the radish cakes which have been cut into cubes. Pan fryfor 2-3 min.
2. Add in the preserved radish and garlic. Stir fry for 1-2 min.
3. Spread the radish cakes evenly and pour in the egg mixture.
4. Once egg is cooked, flip the radish cakes using the spatula.
5. Add in the seasoning (dark soya sauce, light soya sauce, oyster sauce, salt and sugar) and stir fry for few minutes until all the radish cakes are well coated/coloured.
6. Off the heat, sprinkle some chopped spring onion on top and serve hot.
My last visit to SB was a fruitful one as I brought back home a stalk of fat radish. I used half for my oden soup (check out my previous post) and saved the other half for radish cake. I always order the pan fried radish cake when I patron at the dim sum restaurants. So far the radish cake by Full Moon Restaurant, The Hague tops my list. I simply fall in love with the texture - not too soft or too hard, and you can taste the chunky shredded radish in every bite of the savoury radish cake.
If you are lucky, you may get the ready-made radish cake from the Asian grocers, usually at the frozen food section. Since it cannot be found in the Asian grocers here, I attempted to make my own, in order to satisfy my craving for radish cake. It could be pretty time consuming to make a pan of radish cake, but it could be rewarding after all. I wouldn't say my radish cake is perfect, but I am super proud of my radish cake as they tasted so good. But I regretted for not making it in a bigger quantity.
Ingredients
800g grated radish
300g rice flour
560g water
4 tbsp dried shrimps (soak in water for 20min, chopped)
4-5 tbsp shallot oil
salt and pepper
Oil for pan-frying
Directions
Steamed radish cake
1. In a mixing bowl, add in rice flour and water. Stir well until no lumps.
2. In the pan, add in shallot oil, chopped dried shrimps, grated radish, salt and pepper. Stir-fry for 3-5 min.
3. Add in the rice flour and water mixture. Constantly stir until the batter is slightly thickened.
4. Transfer the radish batter into a baking pan and steam it for 15-18min under medium high heat.
(Do grease the baking pan surface with some oil beforehand).
5. Cool the steamed radish cake in room temperature.
Stir-fry radish cake
6. Cut the radish cake into 4x4cm square.
7. Heat up some oil in the skillet. Pan-fry the radish cake until both sides are lightly browned.
The radish cake is ready to be served. Don't forget to enjoy it with a dash of spicy sriracha chili sauce. Yum!
I made chicken dumplings today and I also made some homemade spicy chili oil to go with the dumplings. The chili oil is very simple to make and you can actually make a big amount and store them in the bottles for later use. The bottled chili oil can last for 2 weeks, if kept in room temperature. You may store it for longer, up to 3 months, when store in the refrigerator.
The chili oil is so versatile that you can use it for almost anything i.e. sauce for dry noodle, spicy soup base for ramen or even any type of stir- fry dishes. Let’s check out how simple it is to make your own chili oil at home.
Ingredients
4 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp grind pepper
2 tbsp chili powder
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp vinegar
2 cloves garlic (diced)
1 stalk spring onion (chopped)
Directions
1. Mix chili powder, grind pepper, salt, sugar, garlic and spring onion in a bowl.
2. In a pan, heat up oil.
3. Once the oil is heated, slowly pour the over the chili mix.
4. Add vinegar and soy sauce. Stir well.
