Last week was the Superbowl Sunday and I had the whole appartement to myself. Usually, when I am left alone and have nobody around to impress, culinary or physically, I do stuff that is not considered as an appropriate material for this kind of blog. However, last Sunday was different. After a long break of serious cooking, I pulled myself together and decided to eat like a real human being. 

Bakwan sayur is an Indonesian national vegetable fritters. Well, okay, I might exagerated a bit there saying it is a national dish, but you can ask any Indonesian if they know bakwan sayur, and big chance that they do and they love it, no matter what region in Indonesia they come from. 

This Sunday is my me-time day, and what is a me-time without eating your fav food? This is the exact question that inspired today's recipe. One of my fav food is fried stuff. I know, I know, its not very healthy, but what can I say, I love it. Fried food is my definitely sinful delights!

Lengko rice is Javanese rice (Cirebon) serve with fried tofu and tempeh, cucumber, beansprout, and a big dollop of peanut sauce. Indonesian food uses peanut sauce often as salad dressing (Gado-gado, lotek, Pecel, etc). In my case, I am a peanut sauce fanatics, I even eat my dumplings with peanut sauce. There are three things that I eat with any rice meal whenever possible: peanut sauce, Ketjap Manis, and shrimp crackers. Those stuff are my holy trinity.

When I move to Canada, I met too many people that are allergic to peanuts, which I find sad. On the other hand, I don't think I know any Indonesian that is allergic to peanuts, perhaps because our parents introduce us to peanut at very early age, so we develop some kind of body immune to it? I have no scientific explanation about it but I am glad that I am peanut tolerant :)

Okay, back to the awesome Nasi Lengko. This dish is very simple and can be prepared in an instant. The signature flavor of this dish I must say comes from the Kaempferia Galangal (kencur). Some recipes mix the peanut sauce with coconut milk, but I prefer not to. I find it too much in flavor. Plus, if I make a big batch of peanut sauce, it can not be kept too long since the coconut milk will get spoilt easily. 

Sayur Lodeh is Indonesian version of vegetables curry. It has thin soup but very flavorful. Vegetables used in this dish usually are chayotte, eggplants, unripe jackfruit, and green bean. You can even add tofu and tempeh too. Back at my mom's place, she serves this dish with fried chicken, steamed rice, and shrimp chips (kerupuk udang), yummmm.. 

Nice colorful salad, healthy and easy. When you need vegetable as side dish yet you are lazy like me, this recipe can be the savior of the day. 

Nangka or Jackfruit is a native tropical fruit from South and Southeast Asia. It is widely use in cuisines from the regions. Ripe Jackfruit tastes sweet and parfumy, perfect for desserts or just to eat it like that. Unripe Jackfruit is also edible but it needs to be properly cooked. The texture of unripe Jackfruit is stringy and a bit chewy. On this stage, the fruit has no strong smell and it absorbs well the spices you mix in with. I have been told that once its cooked, unripe Jackfruit tastes like meat. Which is make sense, regarding how chewy flaky and stringy the texture is. 

Today I am making Gulai Nangka. Gulai is a curry dish with sauce. Gulai Nangka originally comes from West Sumatra, the local name is Gulai Cubadak. The real Gulai Cubadak uses also long-bean and cabbage. Since I have none of those extra vegetables, I improvised by adding quail eggs. The cooking process takes a bit of time, but its only because I like the sauce to be thick than soupy altho usually Gulai Nangka is a bit soupy.  

There are two things I like to do the most in life and those are eating and make friends, and what happen when I combine both at the same time? Its guaranteed there will be unforgetable moments with lots of laughs and good food. and I consider myself very lucky being surrounded by awesome people from different cultural background. Once in awhile, we have dinner together and bring our best dish to share.

One day, a friend of mine brought this lovely chickpeas salad. Honestly, I have never eaten chickpeas before and its actually tastes pretty good. I like it!... Like any other salad, this salad is healthy and easy to prepare. The only down side from this salad is that the chickpeas make me gassy.. hahhahaha.. Poor people around me!

This soup is best to be served with rice cake like ketupat. There are many different variation of this recipe from almost each region in Indonesia. Usually each region modifies a bit of the ingredients or the spices but they are all have similar taste. This soup is a classic soup on Eid day. Eid day celebration is not complete without having this dish on the table for dinner with family. 

Today I had to bring a side dish for a cipâtes, a traditional French Canadian meat pie  made with veal, pork, chicken, beef and potato. In old days they made it with deer meat, rabbit, hare, duck or whatever meat the man brought home from hunting. Some pronounce it "cipaille" making the "T" silent. Its super good and it is one of my favorite meat pie dishes. As you see, this dish is pretty 'heavy and filling', so when I was asked to bring a side dish for it, I can only imagine something fresh, a bit sourish with a bit of hot kick. I searched for a good recipes on the internet and this Papaya salad caught my attention. The original recipe called Som Tam, and it uses green papaya. I made a lil' twist on the recipe by using a half-ripe papaya, its still very crunchy and can be easily cut into matchstick size/julliene, has a beautiful pale orange-ish color and it taste slightly sweet. 

Tonight cooking theme was what the french calls touski: 'le tout ce qui a dans le frigo' a.k.a whatever is left in the fridge. I managed to gather some bits and pieces to make myself a tasty and decent salad for supper. I even found a proper drink to go with it :) 

Today I found a block of fried tofu that almost passes its expiry date in my fridge, so guess what we are having for supper tonight?! Yep, a simple dish of tasty stir fry tofu.

October has arrived, it means the pumpkin-frenzy season is here. Its all about pumpkin yet honestly I have never tasted a pumpkin before. This is my first pumpkin cooking and tasting experience, it turned out pretty good. Who ever thought you can make such a nice dessert from a vegetable?! 

I ate this Salmon with Avocado salad as an appetizer on one of the sushi restaurants in town. I really fell in love with the sweet, tangy taste of the salmon melts in your mouth along with the buttery avocado. Unfortunately, for a mini-ants-bowl of this salad was pretty pricey at the restaurant. I was determined to find the recipe and make the salad myself so I can enjoy it as often as I want to. I got the recipe from this site . I am not sure if its the exact recipe that the restaurant uses, but it taste almost identically similar.  

Ingredients:
500 gr Salmon fillet, skin removed and cut into bite size chunk
2 Tbsp Japanese soy sauce
2 Tbsp Dry sherry or Japanese mirin
50g light brown sugar
1 Tbsp Rice vinegar

Salad:
3 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 Tsp sesame oil
1 cup of diced cucumber
1 firm-ripe avocado, diced
2 spring onions, chopped
2 cups of chopped lettuce
2 Tbsp pistachio, chopped

1. Mix Japanese soy sauce, mirin and brown sugar in a container then marinate the fish in the mixture for few minutes.
2. Meanwhile, prepare your cucumber, lettuce and spring onion. To prevent oxidation, cut the avocado before you serve.
3. Heat a non-stick frying, pick up the fish from the mixture and cook it on the pan (don't use oil) for 2-3 minutes. Fold occassionally.
4. When your fish start to change color, add the marinate mix into the pan and let it bubble away for a minute or two. Once the fish is cooked enough to your liking (some people like their salmon a bit pinkish in the middle), pick up the fish and set aside on a plate.
5. Continue cooking the marinate sauce and add the rice vinegar, mix the sauce with spatula often so it doesn't burnt on the bottom. Once the sauce thickens, turn of the stove and set aside.
6. For the waffu dressing; mix mayonnaise with sesame oil then pour in the almost sticky thick sauce from the fish. Mix thoroughly.
7. Put the cucumber, lettuce, spring onion, avocado and pour the waffu dressing sauce over the salad and toss gently.
8. Plate the salad on the serving plate and put the fish on top. Your sweet salmon salad is ready to serve!

Happy cooking!!

One day, a friend of mine introduced me to her native cuisine from Nepal. She brought this yummy Carrot Cardamom pudding as a dessert on one of our potluck nights. It was totally love at the first bite for Nepalese dessert for me. 

Super easy side dish, main ingredients are carrot and soya sauce. Literally. My all time fav, fast and failproof. 

Water spinach is a bit hard to find in North America so when I find one I try to make the best out of it. Good thing with this spinach, it doesn't take much to cook it into a nice simple dish.

Surimi literally means scraped meat in Japanese language. In western world, surimi mostly means fake crab meat. 

Quick vegetable side dish. You can toss in whatever veggies you have in the fridge and it will all come out tasty!