I just can't get enough of cooking casserole! Its easy and it makes left over for the next day lunch.. This casserole is a classic in my family. My mom always make it at least once when I was still living with herand it easily became one of my comfort food. 

Today's recipe was based on Mie Aceh recipe (mie means noodle, Aceh is a province of the northern Sumatra in Indonesia). As many other dishes from Sumatra, this Mie Aceh has thick influence of Indian and Middle Eastern spices. 

Today is sassy casserole day. I love making pasta casseroles. All you need is few ingredients, put it together, let it cook for awhile and voila, you will end up with a big batch of food that can feed a whole village (and even left over for lunches).

I have few favorite casseroles recipes I collected over the years. Today I am going to write my take on this perfect recipe from kevinandamanda.com. I have been cooking this recipe over and over again and its always been a success. After few attempts with slight modifications, I managed to have my favorite version of the recipe. Here it goes!

Baked Mac and Cheese, although it is not a traditional Indonesian cuisine, it is very well-known dish in Jakarta. We serve it mostly as snack. My mom used to make it in a big casserole, my brother and I would dip it in spicy sauce then gobble it up in no time. The ingredients used for this recipe like cheese and milk were expensive so my mom didn't cook it as often as we wished. She made it mostly on special occasions or when we had guests that she wanted to impress. It was kind of a luxury snack for us.

Last week, a lovely friend of mine invited us to her place for dinner. She served Mac and Cheese on bite size for appetizer, brilliant!! I love heavy dishes that come in bite size. It leaves me a reason to eat more because hey, its only a bite size anyway :P 

I love udon, I think almost every recipe using noodle is better if we use udon instead. There is something about udon that makes it just perfect for my taste; the gooey texture, the thickness of each string and somehow I find that udon absorbs the sauce better then any other noodle. Luckily a store nearby sells fresh udon. Is there any dried udon out there anyway? I have never seen one. Fresh stuff usually always better for cooking anyway. 

Today I cook easy stir fry udon with heart and chicken gizzard. Three of my fav ingredients in one plate, yummmmm... Thats the joy of cooking, we can cook whatever ingredients we like in what ever manner we want. Yay for the freedom of expression on a plate :) 

For those who doesn't eat chicken heart and gizzard, don't worry, you can substitute it with beef or chicken. 

Ingredients:

2 servings of fresh udon noodle, process according to package instructions and drained

the sauce: 

1 tbsp gochujang paste (korean red pepper paste)

2 tbsp mirin/sake

3 tbsp japanese soya sauce

4 tbsp sugar

200 gr Chicken heart

200 gr Chicken gizzard, cleaned and cut into bite size

2 cm of fresh ginger

1 cube of dehydrated chicken broth

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tbsp duck fat or normal oil

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

2 carrots, sliced

1 zucchini, slice diagonally (optional)

6 shiitake mushrooms, sliced

3 scallions, chopped

1. Whisk the sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside,

2. On a nonstick skillet or work, sauté garlic until it fragrant, add chicken hearts, gizzards, ginger and chicken broth. Cover the skillet with a lid and continue cooking until the gizzards are tender enough.   

3. Once the gizzard are tender enough, add in carrot and zucchini and the sauce. Stir. Continue cooking until the carrot tender. Add the mushroom and continue cooking for 2 minutes. 

4. Add the udon noodle and stir gently and thoroughly. Do not over mix and break the noodle. Let the noodle simmer in the sauce for around 2-3 minutes. 

5. Add the scallions and gently stir it again. Continue cooking for another minute.

6. Et voila, the udon is ready to serve! 

Happy Cooking!!

This is another food-hawker-inspired recipe. Mie goreng or fried noodle is one of the famous one dish meal that you can find easily anywhere in Indonesia, from the fancy restaurant to the hawkers that passes on the front of your house every night. On my mom's residence area, we have one favorite mie goreng hawker that passes exactly every 11 PM every night. His serving hour might be surprising for some people, but trust me, we, Indonesian, love to have one dish meal as a snack after supper. Most of the mie goreng hawkers will knock the handle of his food cart  made out of wood or bamboo with a piece of wood stick and make the sound like: "dokk dokk dokk" whenever they pass. Thats why sometime this mie called as mie dokk dokk. The hawker version of this recipe would use egg noodle instead of udon. There are a lot of versions of this recipe, but my favorite is always the hawker's one. Its simple and yummy.  If only there are these kind of food hawkers that pass in the front of my house where I live now, I would be one chunky happy lady. I wouldn't have to cook, then again it means this blog would have never existed :P

Do you ever wonder why spaghetti meatballs have to be so huge and intimidating? In my opinion, the person who cooks those giants spaghetti meatballs is very efficient in time management. Making balls can be time consuming. Today I have a day off so I told myself to make my own bite size spaghetti meatballs. Et voila, here is the recipe.. 

This is one of my favorite recipes for potluck night. Its easy to make and it is very versatile. You can substitute the meat and the veggies with whatever you have in the fridge. 

This dish has all the good simple stuff I love; sausage, mushroom, carrot, bell pepper, corn and pasta.

Last night I made Chicken Sesame to cook on the stone. It was delicious but it didn't last long enough for me to take picture. However, I have some left over for tonight`s meal. I decided just to grill it on Bbq and made spicy soup Pho style to go with it.

Left over roasted duck turned to new dish!

I have a left over duck from last night dinner (Nangbus has uploaded the recipe on previous post, go check it out!), I was thinking to make some kind of a soup to go with it. A light soup. Then I ended up making Noodle Soup with it. LOL.. so much about light soup, eh?!

Mie Ajam is one of my favorite street food. Every Mie Ajam street vendor has their `secret`recipe. Thats why you can not compare one Mie Ajam to another. Each one has their own unique taste. The key of a great Mie Ajam is on the chicken sauce. Strangely enough, the best meat to use is not on the chicken meat itself, I prefer to use the neck or heart and gizzard. This time I make mine with chicken heart and gizzard.