Weekend round up : Kerabu Daun Selom

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh..

I have tonnes of things to settle over the weekend (over every weekend actually). But I keep on postponing and the list keeps piling up. The only thing that I am more than willing to do during weekend is cooking and trying out new recipe, and invite people over for lunch/dinner.

The other week, I had Annie and Geoffrey, Pak Anton and WK for dinner on Saturday and just yesterday I had Chiew and Theresa, with Lirang and her husband, Ignace for lunch. I've had successes with few recipes :) but too bad I was rushing it most of the times that I did not managed to take proper pictures.

For last weekend, here are some that I tried.

Sedihnya gambar blur... :(

I have been collecting chicken carcass in the freezer, there must be like 4 of them. So how best to use them, except to make chicken stock ! The recipe is super easy, taken from one of the earliest JO's book. I ended up with 3 containers of chicken stock, and quite a considerable amount of boiled chicken flesh mix with vege. It should taste good when I made into sandwich filling or pie filling or something. For now all goes into the freezer. Mental note: Beli rosemary, it was required in the recipe. but I did not have it then, to lazy to go to the shop, so less one ingredient there. 

Off late, I have been seeing a lot of kitchen hacks posting, mostly on FB, one of those is this, so instead of throwing the top of the carrot away, I want to try growing it... we'll see how it goes, this is day-1. 

Vanilla Ice Cream with crushed ground nuts

I have come to be accustomed of having something sweet after main meal. Salahkan mat saleh dan orang-orang di sini..hehehe.. mesti nak ada dessert. When I had my open house last year, one of the guest brought me a 4L tub of vanilla ice cream, freaking 4L!! How am I supposed to finish that? I did not touched it last year, until I hosted the fun run the other day. I made Eplekake and served with vanilla ice cream :)

I still have half of the tub, and somehow it feels not right just having the ice cream as it is... Childhood memory kicks in, I blended coarsely some ground nuts. You would not believe the things that I stocked up in my pantry. I have almost everything..hahaha... Sprinkle the nuts on top of my ice cream and voila!! Sedapnya....

Tekak mengada pulak...lama tak makan masakan pedas kekdahnya, and my daun kunyit in the garden has slowly turned yellowish, so might as well I made something out of it. I was very lazy to take out other protein and thaw it, so the easiest is to make Masak Lomak Tolo. No cili api, only cili afrika yang pedas nak mamps!! I underestimated the hotness level, and hamek kau, super podeh!! Should know how to estimate next time :)

For dessert yesterday, I made banana cake, the batter is fine, but I wanted to lined the bottom of the cake with sliced banana. I was not sure how it would turned up, so I made a testing batch using this ramekin :) It does not turned out good. Then I thought of lining the top with slice banana, but seeing that the cake rise quite a fair bit, I scraped the idea. So in the end I just bake the whole cake without any sliced banana anywhere, and since I halved the sugar content, the cake was not sweet. To add a bit of sweetness, I served it with my vanilla ice cream..hahaha.. selagi tak habis, selagi tu la any kind of dessert, will be served with ice cream :P

Ginger torch flower or Bunga Kantan

This is not from my garden, I had some planted, but no flowers yet. This was taken from the activity center. Its growing everywhere here and most of the time it just died there. So when I saw some good ones at the activity center, I took some and have it frozen. I took some out just to take photo..hehehe.. and used one to make kerabu daun kesum.

Lauk semalam, Lirang and Ignace love the kerabu, and of course all of them loved the Sambal Terung Pipit. I can live with these two dish every day and not a single complaint :)

Sharing the recipe so that I won't forget.

Kerabu Daun Selom :

Ingredients:
3 red chillies (*)
2 tbsp dried shrimp (*)

Half of red onion (*)

Half cup of grated coconut

3 tbsp of kerisik (#)

Lime juice

Salt

Brown sugar

Daun selom (sliced coarsely) (~)

1 stalk ginger torch flower (bunga kantan) (sliced thinly)

1. Pound all the (*) together. Saute without oil, add a little bit of water, to make sure that chili is well cooked.
2. Add in the coconut and kerisik, stir well and use low heat.
3. Add in lime juice and salt to taste, its ok if the taste is a bit strong as this will be added to the chopped daun selom and ginger torch flower
4. The original kerisik would have a hint of sweetness to it, but the packed one that I bought was not sweet. I suspected they used the coconut that has already been extracted out the milk, that is why it was not sweet. So to balance the flavor, I added in some brown sugar.
5. Cook until it is dry. Let it cool and mix with the chopped daun selom and ginger torch flower. Ready to serve with white rice and all other dishes. 

(#) Kerisik is another coconut derivatives. Its easy to make, but a bit labour intensive, Take grated coconut and saute without oil on low heat. Stir continuously to avoid the coconut from getting burned. When all the coconut has turned brownish, pound (using mortar and pastel) until it becomes oily (shiny). Pounding it while its hot helped to extract the oil better. Use it as additive in various types of Malay dishes. Instead of pounding it, you can also use the dry blender, or food processor, but the result would be a bit different, I guess.

(~) Daun selom is mainly found in South East Asia, but its not a common vegetable. In Malaysia, those that are familiar with Malay dish will be used to it, but I know some (many non-malay Malaysian) that don't even have a clue about the leaf. The taste is bland by itself. We used it as ulam (ulam is any raw vege that you eat with pounded chili concoction - sambal belacan). 

In the north (Kedah) where I came from, we used daun selom as one of the condiments in Laksa Kedah. 

Initially I don't know what is the English name for daun selom, but thanks to Google here it is water dropwort. But I bet, the mat saleh also would not be able to recognize this leaf. I brought it all the way from KL and planted it here. As I said, I can eat it everyday, so I do need the constant supply :) 

After quite sometime not posting pictures, I realised, I am losing my photography skill. (Not that I am super talented in photography to begin with). So, new year resolution (yeah right!!) I need to get back on with my DSLR and take better pictures. Sedih doh tengok gambaq tak semenggah tu... huhuhu..

Till next time, wassalam...