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October 2014

Viewing posts from October , 2014

12 Oct 2014

For Your Spice Rack: Baby Bam

By Faizah

I’m trying out Emeril’s Perfect Roast Chicken today, which requires this Baby Bam spice mix.  Looks like this spice mix is used in quite a few more tasty looking recipes I wanted to try, so I decided it was worth the trouble to make a batch.  The only spice I didn’t have on hand was the celery salt, but I actually happened to have the ingredients required to make my own, so I did just that.  You can probably find celery salt in grocers such as Village Grocer, B.I.G., etc., but you can just simply substitute, since the amount needed is just too small to merit buying an entire bottle.

Recipe by Emeril Lagasse.

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10 Oct 2014

Nutella Chocolate Chip Cookies

By Faizah

So recently I received a lot of Nutella.  Like, a lot.  Even worse, add it to the whole lot of Nutella I already have at home, and I have even more Nutella.  Of course, this is by no means a tragic thing.  The question is, what do I do with it?

I recently also started thinking of what sort of foods make good favors or gifts.  So here is potentially a good candidate for what I was thinking about, and also perhaps the start of a whole chain of Nutella recipes.  🙂  They’re surprisingly addictive; I popped one in when Kak’mbang was putting them away into jars, and immediately reached out for another.  Next time I’m going to try adding chopped hazelnuts – they’ll taste even yummier!

Based on the recipe on Taste.com.au.

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08 Oct 2014

Project RayaFest 2014: Sambal Arab

By Faizah

A Middle Eastern rice dish will not be complete without some type of Arabic salsa as an accompaniment, so for the Beef Kabsah I made during Hari Raya AidilAdha, I tried out Chef Ammar’s Sambal Arab.  Hot and tangy, it was perfect to counter the greasy fattiness of the beef.  Definitely a must, if you’re thinking Kabsah or Mandy for dinner today.

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06 Oct 2014

Beef Kabsah With Basmathi Rice

By Faizah

I’ve been waiting for Chef Ammar’s spices and recipe book to go mainstream for a very long time, but somehow it never did.  His books are not sold in any major bookstore, and his bottled spices are not sold in any major grocer or supermarket.  His stuff is only sold online by seemingly home-based distributors – on Facebook, mind you – a very amateur, “Hubungi kami untuk menjadi stokis kami” kind of affair.  Personally I think a chef as popular as he should totally go with the big distributors, but that’s a discussion for another day.

So I finally caved and got my hands on his cookbook and his Kabsah and Bukhari spices, and for this Hari Raya Aidiladha Kak’mbang and I decided to try something new.  The original recipe this dish was based on was for lamb shank, but we modified it for the beef we bought from the market.  

We served this with his Arabic Salsa (Sambal Arab).  It was a real hit among guests, and was the first thing to run out.  Will definitely be making this again!

Thank you Chef Ammar!

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04 Oct 2014

Weekend Cooking: Perfect Roast Chicken

By Faizah

Nowadays, whenever I went to the supermarket, while I would usually have my fresh chickens cut into x number of pieces, I would usually leave one bird whole.  This is so that I have more flexibility in deciding what new dish to try out, and I can cut it according to what is required by the recipe.

So this time around, I used the whole chicken to try out this Perfect Roast Chicken by Ina Garten.  It was really good, and my kitchen was full of wonderful aromas while it was cooking in the oven.  The breast meat did come out a little dry – more reason to keep making it until I get it right :-p.

I suspect I’ll be trying many more “Perfect” roast chicken recipes to come, in search for the One.  Lol.

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