It has been brought to my attention that I haven't written any recipe in a while. I wished I could say it's because I have been busy saving the world. Alas, the real reason is sadly bereft of muscle, blue spandex, inside-out bright red panties with matching flying cape, and heroic actions.

Have you ever had Butter Chicken made by real Indian mom with authentic recipe? Would you tell me how is it tastes like? Is it always as sweet as the one at the restaurant?... Honestly, all the butter chicken I have had was from restaurants and it's always very sweet, almost like candy sweet. I wonder is it supposed to be that sweet?... Today I made my version of Butter Chicken, and it is not as sweet as the one at the restaurant. I like it better this way. How do you like your Butter Chicken?

So we got a new bbq, nothing fancy tho, just a small simple propane fueled one. Much like the one we had previously, the only different is this one is a portable, isn't practical?! So this chicken wings was basically the first thing I ever cooked on that new shiny bbq, and believe me, it was damn good (the chicken wings that was, obviously :P )

I got the idea for today's recipe from a Russian stuffed chicken leg recipe but I added a little touch of Asian flavor into the filling and it turned out ahmaaazingly good! You can compare it to chicken sausage, but trust me, this one is waaay better, especially if you grill it to perfection where the skin become golden brown and crispy. It's juicy and flavorful. 

Okay, the pic really don't do justice for my pie and the title of this post. If you ask me what was the hardest part to make on this article, the answer would be taking the photo. Seriously, no matter which angle I shoot from, my pie just didn't look Tastespotting worthy. But although my pie was not that photogenic, it did taste gloriously good and ridiculously easy to make.  

Ummm.. how do I describe this dish... I think its like Indian chicken curry with a hint of Asian touch. You know, double awesomeness. It might look 'heavy' with all that spices and coconut milk, but it balanced out with the freshness of lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves. 

One of my all time favorite street vendor snacks is Siomay. Its steamed fish dumpling with vegetable (steamed potato and cabbage), tofu and boiled egg, served in peanut sauce. Traditional siomay made of ikan tenggiri (Wahoo fish) meat altho it is common to substitute the fish with shrimp, or mackerel.  

Opor Ayam Kuning is one of my comfort food at it best. Super flavorful chicken curry, a mix of coconut milk and spices infused into a divine creamy soup. Many said that cooking a curry dish requires a plethora of spices and laborious work and they are not totally exaggerating. I will not say cooking Opor Ayam is hard, but it does requires a lot of cooking time.

Opor Ayam is a must-have dish on Ied Fitr in Indonesia. Its one of the Ied Fitr signature dish. I absolutely have no idea what made the tradition to have Opor on Ied Fitr, but as far as I remember, every family I know have Opor as one of their menu on the said day. 

There are two kind of Opor Ayam; Opor Ayam Kuning (Yellow Curry) and Opor Ayam Putih (White Curry). The different between the two lays on the spices. Opor Ayam Kuning has a bit more of the spices and it tastes slightly richer than the Opor Ayam Putih. Today I am cooking the Opor Ayam Kuning. As you will see on my recipe, it is not that complicated and the spices needed are not far off from Indian curry. I paste all my ingredients using electronic processor, I add oil instead of water to avoid excessive liquid and I can sauté the paste right away. 

This is another recipe inspired by one of my best friends. I mean, you can not talk about a food and how good it is without making me drool and end up trying to cook it (or get it somehow). This lovely friend of mine has a special chicken nugget recipe (her chicken nuggets are so good, people who tasted it beg her to make more for sell). Unfortunately today recipe is not her chicken nugget recipe because her recipe requires a lot of skills of cooking which I don't possess. Laziness is what I possess. So today's recipe is an easy and fool-proof one. The kind of recipe everyone loves, and the only kind that I am able to cook. 

If there's a 3D printer that can print an actual edible food, I'd definitely would get one but that will be the end of this recipe blog and the beginning of a new blog about my journey into becoming morbidly obese :P

My paternal grand-aunt is totally the champion of steam cooking. I regret that I didn't learn much from her especially on wrapping food with banana leaves for steaming (I also suck at wrapping Christmas presents). Banana leaves are used a lot in Indonesian recipes as wrappers, especially for recipes with steaming and grilling methods, we call it pepes. It does do a very good job as neat wrappers, it also allows the heat to penetrate and cook the ingredients inside properly yet at the same time keeps the delicious juices in. Plus, it gives the contents with a slight grassy aroma which I find very nice. If green color has smell and taste, it must be like that. 

Today i'm cooking Tum Ayam, another popular Balinese recipe made out of ground chicken. The spices used in this recipe were quite a lot which made it very flavorful and rich. I am sure you can make a vegetarian version of it by using white tofu instead of ground chicken. I might try it one day. 

I just found fresh Kaempferia Galangal or Peacock Ginger (Kencur) at the local Asian market and I am so happy!! There are a lot of medical benefit of this roots, but to be honest I adore it simply because of its aromatic scent. I have powdered one too but the taste is not the same. I prefer the fresh one (obviously). It is hard to find fresh aromatic roots for cooking here in my city, so whenever I find them, I always buy it in bulk, clean it, cut it into a quarter of an inch, put it in a sealed bag or tupperware and keep it in the freezer. I do this even for ginger. It stays good for quite awhile and taste better than using powdered one. So far I have a jar of each of this; fresh turmeric, ginger, galangal, and kaempferia galangal and am pretty happy with my collection. I have almost all the roots I need for cooking basic Indonesian/ Asian recipes.

Kencur is used a lot in Indonesian cuisine, from fried rice to medical beverage. It has this typical aroma to it that reminds me of back home. Not really explanative about how it smells, isn't?... I associate smells with memory of an event or habit in the past. Yeah, my brain is weird like that. Most or my cookings have this personal nostalgic touch to it, well thats the reason why this blog was born anyway. So for today I make bbq chicken with Kencur taste for the sake of old memory and oh it was so good!!

Pecel Ayam is one of the most famous dish that you can find on every corner of the street in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta. The vendors of this menu are everywhere. If there is a statistic survey on it, there are probably more number of pecel ayam vendors than the amount of bulbs of traffic lights in Jakarta. It is that many. Am I exagerating?.. Maybe.. A little.. 

Why are there so many pecel ayam vendors? Simply because this menu is easy to prepare and it fills our tummy easily. It consists of most of our favorite food; rice, sambal, fried stuff, fresh vegetables (cucumber and tomatoes, usually we also have thai basil or kemangi leaf to go with). I literally had this menu almost everyday when I was at the university. It was cheap yet it gave me enough energy to keep me going for the whole day.

The key of this menu is actually on the sambal. Everyone has their own touch of the sambal they make, either on how many chillies they put or other secret ingredients. I think this is why the vendors survive despite the tight competition. 

So what is the Kremes part? kremes means crumbles. In this menu, the crumbles made from the broth of the chicken, which makes it tasty. Somehow I just love to have different texture on each bite; the softness of the rice, crunchyness of the kremes, chewiness of the chicken and the freshness of the raw vegetables on the side. 

From Nangbus' Kitchen

The recipe for today is a traditional soup recipe from Tana Toraja (my beloved homeland). This soup is one of the most popular dish in traditional celebrations. It is easy to cook this soup and it uses common ingredients. Nowadays we can find this dish as one of everyday meals in Tana Toraja. 

I personally love to have it when I am not feeling well, especially when I am having cold or fever. Its not only it brings home comfort, but also its actually good for your health. 

Don't be intimidated by the floating chillies on the picture, trust me, its not that spicy, especially if you put the whole chillies (without cutting it) and you put it at the end of cooking. 

For this particular recipe, I am using the chicken that bred and raised in the country side (like my grandma used to do). The chicken mostly a bit skinny and less fatty. its growth-hormon free chicken. 

The spices; like the ginger, lemon grass, chillies and pepper in the soup gives you this warm and comfort feeling on everyspoon. Perfect for cold weather.

For this particular recipe, we both tried it on our kitchens at the same day, and both turned out awesome!! We always try our recipes at both kitchens before we upload it, just to make sure its worth the taste and easy to do. We did had fun mocking each other when one of us failed, and there are also tons of moments where we grief together wondering what went wrong when we couldn't nail a recipe. Cooking is fun!!

What crosses your mind the first time you look at the picture above? Yummy spicy chicken? Chicken with volcanic sauce made in hell?… hihihihi.. Don't you just love of how red the sauce is?! 

Today's recipe called Ayam Rica Rica, originally from Manado, North Sulawesi. Rica Rica itself means hot and spicy. So as you can imagine, this dish does have a kick of hotness.

A lovely friend of mine was inviting us for a gathering in her place and she said that she missed this particular dish. So I braved myself to make one for her. At first I was worried the dish will be too spicy but at the end of the day, everyone survived and no victim down from burning belly. What a relief!! hahahaha… In fact, everyone loved how tasty the chicken was and the level of spiciness was just perfect for them. So for those of you folks that love spicy food, this recipe is a must-try one!

There is nothing special on cooking technic side, but I must admit, the recipe does ask for lots of aromatic leaves tons of red chillies. That's the hardest part of the recipe, I mean if you live in north America in winter, like myself at the moment. I make a big batch of the dish since I had to bring it to a potluck with more than 10 people. Just cut the recipe as you like, adjusting to the amount of chicken you are using. 

Lets get started!!

Yep this is another Indonesian soto recipes. On winter like this, I do prefer to eat soupy hot meal, especially where I live it can go to lower than -25 C outside, yeah, the weather can be nasty in this part of the world but it makes a good season to try out soup recipes.

Today's soto comes from Medan. The capital of North Sumatra province in east Indonesia. Cuisine from this region, or let say from this island itself (Sumatra) is famous for its spiciness and hotness. This soto in particular, tastes like light curry. Rich in flavor. The broth is made of diluted coconut milk, which is perfect to my taste, it makes it less heavy and fatty plus it served with a squirt of lime juice which gives the fresh taste to it.

As we all know, Balinese cuisine is famous around the world. To be honest, I have never eaten home-made Balinese cuisine. I always had one at restaurants and it was always good. I ate Balinese chicken, Balinese seafood soup, Balinese beef braised but I never really understood what so Balinese about it? Does it requires a particular spices that only grows in Bali? Why do they call it Balinese this, Balinese that? doesn't each recipe has their own particular name? It remained a mystery for me until lately one of my beautiful friends lends me her awesome Balinese Cuisine recipes book. 

The book explained how the culture and the nature in Bali island effect their cuisine. The culture of Bali is as complex as their recipes. I think this is what make their culture and cuisines so special. I found out that in Balinese cuisine, they have base recipes for each type of meat; beef or pork, poultry and seafood. Most of the ingredients for the base recipes are the same. It requires tons of shallots, big red chillies and other spices.

Today I made the spice mix for poultry, seafood and meat. I kid you not, I have never spent so much for spices before just to make spice mix.  The amount of the ingredients for the recipes was way more than what I had in my storage. Just for the chillies, it costed me around 60$!.. Well chillies are expensive here where I live, that doesn't help. It was worth it tho, I got around 500gr of spices for each kind. I separate them into 50gr balls and freeze them. Which is very practical, I will take a ball of two each time I want to cook something with Balinese taste.

This is another recipe for Indonesian bbq chicken. There are tons of recipes for bbq chicken out there, but so far I always prefer the one that you have to cook the chicken before you bbq it simply because I suck at bbq-ing things. I tend to burn the outside yet the inside is still raw, and raw chicken is a big no no. I know, I have to work on my bbq skill.

Today I tried the recipe for Ayam Panggang Klaten. Its literally means chicken bbq from Klaten region. Klaten is a regency in Central Java, Indonesia. This recipe is one of the most famous bbq chicken in Java. The chicken is tender, juicy and full of flavor. The key of the tenderness lays on the piece of chicken you use. The real Ayam Panggang Klaten uses a chicken that has never laid egg. I call it a virgin chicken. Why would a chicken that has never laid egg has a tenderer meat? Well, I have few theories of my own, but I am afraid you will look at me weird if I tell you. The same weird look I get from my local butcher when I asked him for a virgin chicken. The look that says: "mam, are you correct in your mind?  Do you need a chicken for cooking or commit some kind of witchery?".

Anyway, lets move on to the recipe before I blabber too much. Lets keep this blog as a recipe blog instead of a mad-lass blabber blog.

Here is another post of soto recipes! This time is a version of soto Ayam (Indonesian clear chicken soup). There are countless versions of soto ayam, the main ingredients are mostly the same, the one that makes it different from one to another is usually the kind of spices that you put in it. Soto Banjar is origin from Banjar ethnic from East Kalimantan but this soto is easy to be found on a street vendor almost everywhere in big cities in Indonesia. 

Basically this soto is a clear chicken soup with a hint of spices flavour. I remembered when I was still in elementary school, this is one of my favorite lunch menu on our humble canteen. It was simply a bowl of clear broth, rice, few strings of chicken (yeah strings, my lunch was that cheap!), a quarter piece of boiled egg, finely chopped cabbage and beansprout. It was dang good! One of simple stuff that made my childhood full of memories. 

I am a huge fan of sotos. As you might have noticed, soto is classic Indonesian soup, very aromatic and rich in flavour. We can eat it as main meal with a bowl of rice, or as an appetizer. Its all only in the matter of serving portion. Today I decided to make a soto with coconut milk infused and a bit more spices that I  usually put in my sotos.  

Summer is coming, get your BBQ grill out!