Sometimes, you know, my thoughts go back to the UK and I think of my family and friends there that I miss so much. Right now, they tell me, the weather is icy, frost lines the branches of trees and the grass has turned to thick white, iced strands. I miss the beauty of an English winter, even if I don’t miss the aching pain of frozen feet. Nor do I miss having to chip ice from the inside of my windscreen, as I had to do last winter when the temperatures were regularly -5° to -9° C.
I do have other problems here…. I get out of my air conditioned car and my specs steam up; here, my hair is permanently limp in the humid heat. Minor, I know, but constant. That’s the thing about the Tropics. We have no seasons, no changes… sunrise and sunset are at much the same time every day, twelve hours apart and the weather is pretty constant. Sometimes it rains a bit more than other times but, generally, one day is much like any other.
When you are inside, with air conditioning however, the weather can look very different… I looked out at this, dark and stormy skies and the promise of a thunderstorm and rain later. It looked like November in the UK. Yet I knew that once I was outside on the balcony it would feel hot and humid. It’s quite disconcerting at times.
It did make me think of cold days in the UK and I remembered the last meal I cooked for friends in Nottingham before we left for Malaysia. It was a fabulous night where we laughed till we cried, we ate till we were fit to burst, we drank cocktails and wine and then moved on to whisky and we even danced across the floor in the early hours of the morning…. we finally said our goodnights at about 4am.
Maybe it was all the drinking. I blame one of the puddings for that as I am sure we wouldn’t have had the whisky if we hadn’t had a tot to go with the Whisky Toffee Almond Tart….
I’d seen the recipe in Delicious a couple of years or so ago (maybe even more) and I’d saved it, wanting to cook it for a special occasion. Us leaving the country seemed pretty special to me and besides, one of our lovely guests is Scottish and he loves whisky… and even more to the point, we were moving somewhere we couldn’t take our whisky anyway! Waste not, want not, I thought.
All I had to do (and it was a pretty simple recipe – always a plus point when you are cooking lots of things) was make some pastry. 200g of plain flour, with 100g of chilled and chopped unsalted butter needed to be rubbed through (or, easier still, whizzed on pulse in a processor) until everything comes together into fine crumbs.
Add about four tablespoons of cold water and mix it together so it comes into a ball, then roll it out into a circle
I’m pretty useless at rolling evenly as you can see, so if you are the same, don’t worry, it works even if you have to piece bits together when you put it into a 23cm/9 inch fluted flan tin.
Don’t handle it too much and leave the edges hanging over. You can trim them off later so it is all neat and anyway, pastry shrinks when it cooks, so you get a better fit.
Prick the bottom with a fork so that when it cooks the steam can escape and you have a flat bottom to it and just put it in the fridge to chill right down for 30 minutes.
After you have wiped up the mess you will have made after dusting the board to roll the pastry on, you have plenty of time to get the rest done. Put the oven on to heat at 200°C/fan 180°C/390°F.
You can put the pastry shell into the oven, lined with baking paper and baking beans to weigh it down, for fifteen minutes. After that, take the paper and beans off and put it back in to bake until golden… but no more than five minutes. Take it out and let it cool.
Now for the good stuff…. you’ll need 300g flaked almonds, a 284ml carton of double cream, 225g granulated sugar and some single malt whisky. You don’t need much, so before the whisky lover in your family shrieks at the thought of cooking with fine whisky, assure them it is for the best of reasons and anyway, you only need 4 tablespoons….
Put the almonds into a pan and add the sugar
Add the cream….
And mix it together. It’s looking good so far……
And then, select your whisky…. I chose anCnoc, a smooth and almost sweet Speyside single malt.
Measure 4 tablespoons of the good stuff, pour it in and then just stir it all round and add a pinch of salt to round out the flavours…
… and then heat it all through, gently, until the sugar dissolves and it thickens slightly. This will take about twenty minutes and you will see it turn a beautifully pale golden colour. Take it off the heat and put to one side.
Turn the oven down to 180°C/fan 160°C/355°F.
Pour the filling into the pastry shell
… and then smooth it out. (Yes, the mixture DOES taste delicious) and then bake it for another ten minutes or so until it looks golden. Don’t overdo it and don’t worry if it looks like it hasn’t set. It does that as it cools.
After you have put it on a tray to cool slightly, drizzle it with just a little more whisky so it sinks in as the filling cools and firms up.
Let everything cool completely before you trim off the edges to make it look neat and put on a cake stand, ready for serving.
And then, of course, you are ready to serve it with a wee dram to go alongside it at the end of the meal..
Slice it…..
… and serve it with a dollop of really good, thick cream.
It really was lovely.
Was it a success? Well, that picture was taken after we’d had the whisky toffee and almond tart, at the end of the meal. I think the blurring of the shot says it all.
I can’t blame the tart for that, I suppose, but it certainly was a fine ending to a lovely meal with our friends.
A fitting goodbye to those we were leaving behind us and an excellent start to the laughing and dancing that followed.
Maybe you could make this? Not necessarily because you are leaving the country… but how about as a dessert for a Burns’ Night supper? Then the whisky is justified… not only justified but essential.
Tags: almonds, Ancnoc whisky, cream, Delicious tart, delicious. magazine, dinner party dessert, dinner with friends, excellent pudding for a Burns' Night supper, make ahead dessert, saying goodbye to the UK, special dessert for dinner party, whisky toffee and almond tart
I know… this is hardly the start of the year, is it? I have an excuse though. Since New Year’s Day I have been suffering with a vile cough and cold, which seems to me to be really unfair. OK, if I was still in the U.K. in the depths of winter… but here? In the heat and the sunshine? I have spent the last two weeks, moaning and coughing but I am finally feeling slightly more clear headed and sounding less like a chesty old pit pony.
Time to start again.
When I look back on 2011, from where I am now… well, it seems unbelievable. At the start of that year we had no idea that we would be moving anywhere, never mind half way round the world. I suppose if I had thought of moving it would have been to a house, instead of our apartment, because I had been longing for an outside oven. I would have thought I’d have carried on cooking things like Beef and Ale Casserole with dumplings. or maybe the glorious Black Pudding and Haggis on Apple Mash (after all, it will soon be Burns’ Night again) or, or of our favourites, Bacon and Apple Risotto with Black Pudding. Everything rich and delicious and sustaining to get us through the cold and the snow.
I’d have been glad of the cold as we tucked into Jansson’s Temptation, my favourite potato dish ever. Maybe I’d have been making slimming soups, like Skinny Tomato Soup , in an attempt to lose weight after eating all of that lovely hearty food…
I would wake up and look out of our windows, in our apartment, down onto the frosty city below
And yet here we are, a year later, living just off the Equator, steaming gently in the Tropical heat. Now I wake up to dawn, over a vibrant city, with the Petronas Towers appearing through the mist.
I’m cooking things like Rendang terlagi-lagi and Sambal santan udang. I’m buying things in markets that I have no idea what they are and then trying to work out what to do with them later.
Some things are the same, though. I look ahead to the rest of the year, knowing that THIS will be the year that I get thin and fit….I’ve had that as a resolution for years. And I haven’t done it.
Maybe I will this time. After all, we are living in a place where I can swim each day (and that means, of course, putting on a swimming costume. Not a good look at the moment, I admit)
The fruit and vegetables here in Malaysia are incredible….. there’s an abundance of fish and seafood. All of which are fresh and tasty. All of which are just waiting for me to try.
And we have a wonderful new space, with a lovely, large dining table so we can invite our friends round….
We can sit ten round there (OK, ten at a push. Comfortably, we can seat eight) and I have two large kitchens to work in. My old friends back home can come out to visit and my new friends here can come round to eat.
It’s all such a change from Nottingham!
If we can go through so much change in one short year, I wonder what can happen in the coming year?
What WILL happen is that I am going to cook more and write more. There are so many delicious things to experiment with here, so many wonderfully tasty recipes to tell you about and, I have to say, so many things I cooked last year and didn’t have time to tell you about.
This year there’ll be a mix of Southeast Asian and British dishes as I look back at what I’ve done and look ahead to new experiences.
My resolutions, therefore, are to explore, remember, taste, experiment, enjoy and, most of all, to tell you all about everything!
Happy Belated New Year!
Tags: 2012, adventures in South East Asian cooking, cooking in a new food culture, Kuala Lumpur skyline, life changing events, life in Malaysia, life in Nottingham, New Year's Resolutions, Nottingham city views, the big move, view from my window
When I first met the Bear, I knew he was pretty special. I knew, in that deep down way, that he was someone I wanted to spend my life with. There was this sense of recognition. I know people always say you will KNOW when you meet the right person, but I suppose I never really believed them…. except, it’s true. I knew when I met him that he was the one for me. He was perfect.
Well…. almost perfect. He had some pretty fixed ideas about food……and that didn’t suit me. Broccoli? He’d get a stubborn look on his face and turn his head away. Shellfish? Nope. He wouldn’t eat that either.
Well, ask yourself, do you really think I was going to let him get away with that? I was determined that my life’s mission would be to make him truly omnivorous. I wanted him to know how wonderful fresh and tasty prawns were… what about the joy of eating oysters fresh off the boat? By refusing shellfish he was refusing so much.
I had a plan… and it was a plan that worked, too. He said he would refuse broccoli forever but when I made Broccoli that a Bear will eat he not only ate it without complaint but actually asked for it at other times. The Broccoli and Stilton Pastryless Pie was a winner in his eyes and he liked having it in his lunchbox to take to work. When I made Baked Polenta Pie he loved it…..and all of those dishes had broccoli in them. How did I get round his stubborn refusal? I suppose you could say that I hid the broccoli. Whenever I served the dreaded vegetable it was covered in either a deliciously light creamy sauce, or baked into other delicious stuff. It got him to eat broccoli and while he still won’t eat plain, steamed broccoli, he will eat it without complaint and a certain enjoyment. Maybe that’s what you will have to do if you have equally stubborn food-faddists.
So, I had success on the broccoli front. What I needed to work on was shellfish. We started by making him eat one prawn – just one – whenever I ordered prawns. He admitted that he was missing out on stuff and if we ever ended up living somewhere where shellfish was freely available then it would be a waste if he didn’t try. He wasn’t really enjoying it at first but he persevered. One prawn at a time. Then one day, he ‘phoned me from a trip abroad to say that he had eaten a prawn, voluntarily without me having to make him do it….. he was on the way to liking prawns!
He still wasn’t really convinced though… and then we moved here, to Malaysia. Here I can buy beautifully fresh king prawns for very little and so I started, in earnest, searching for the perfect prawn recipe that would make him love prawns. And you know what? I found it.
I’d bought a marvellous little recipe book by Betty Saw, a really well known Malaysian cook and writer, called ‘Malaysian’. It’s where I found that recipe for rendang that everyone likes. In it was this recipe for sambal santan udang, or prawn curry… it sounded delicious.
I bought 600g of king prawns (that’s 1lb 5½ ounces) and they needed to be cleaned and peeled. That’s simple enough, just tear off the head and peel off the shell
… and then once that’s done, take a sharp knife and run it down the curved back of the prawn and pull out the black vein… you can see it there. That’s the intestinal tract and you don’t want that in there.
Then, put them in a bowl in the fridge and get on with the rest of the preparation. Of course, if you can’t get fresh prawns, use prepared frozen ones. And if this makes it too expensive for an everyday meal, save this for a special occasion. You’ll thank me for it later.
As with all Malaysian cooking, the next bit involves ingredients to be ground.
The recipe book said two onions, but as a couple of mine were really small, I used three of them. Five chillies needed to be deseeded and sliced, four fat cloves of garlic had to be peeled along with four stems of lemongrass and one inch pieces of ginger and turmeric needed to be peeled. The turmeric is the bright orange piece in the middle there…. it looks like a piece of carrot.
When I first bought some, I thought it was just a differently coloured ginger… I mean, it’s not as if the label suggests anything else, is it? Anyway… if you can get some, I’d suggest you wear gloves when preparing it. Otherwise, your fingers, like mine, will turn a bright yellow and stay like that for days. If you can’t get fresh turmeric, you’ll have to use dried… maybe just under a teaspoonful will do it.
The other ingredient is belacan, which is dried shrimp or prawn paste. I know you can get this in the UK, so there’s no excuse for not getting some. I think the Malaysian belacan is a bit milder, so whereas I am using a half inch square piece, you may want to use a quarter of a teaspoon or so.
And then, as they say, have at it with a pestle and mortar. Or, if you want to, give it all a quick whizz with a blender, but don’t reduce it to a smooth paste… you need it to still have bits. (Remember, you can do this quickly and easily if you use the jars of ready prepared spices)
Now you are ready….
Start by frying the ground ingredients in three tablespoons of oil. This will take five minutes or so and you’ll smell everything coming together and the oil separates.
Pour in a can of coconut milk and stir everything round, bringing it to the boil.
Now, if you were to taste the creamy coconut and spice sauce you’d like it, but what it needs is something to lift it… and you get that from tamarind. Here, I buy tamarind paste that still has seeds in it and what I have to do is mix a dessertspoonful of the paste with four tablespoons of water and then strain it out. You might be able to get paste without seeds, so that makes it a bit easier.
The sharpness fromn the tamarind really brightens the taste of the sauce… it is still rich and delicious but it isn’t cloying.
Then… add the prawns….chuck in a pinch of salt….simmer for five minutes….and you’re done. The best prawn curry ever.
I served it over basmati rice that I’d added a handful of grated coconut to. I do that because I like it and because I can. Served over plain rice this would be just as delicious.
And that was it. Simple and quick. The finished curry is not mouth searingly hot, but well spiced. The flavour is rich and creamy but not cloying. In fact, it is delicious.
So delicious that Bear is now a convert to prawns. And he’d said it couldn’t be done…..all I have to work on now is spinach.
Tags: belacan, best prawn curry, Betty Saw 'Malaysian', Betty Saw food writer and cook, chillies, delicious prawn curry, dried shrimp or prawn paste, garlic, how to make someone like prawns, king prawns, lemongrass stalks, Malaysian recipe for prawn curry, sambal santan udang, tamarind paste, turmeric root, yellow ginger
If there’s only one thing you cook from reading my Malaysian adventures then it has to be beef rendang. Unless, of course, you are a vegetarian or a vegan….because, quite frankly, beef just won’t work. Or unless you can’t eat coconut because that, too, would mean the beef rending just won’t cut it for you. But let’s not bother with ‘unless’…let’s focus instead on the most delicious Malaysian recipe ever.
Rendang is an iconic Malaysian recipe – a mouth-filling melange of spices, coconut and slow cooked meat making an aromatic dish that has you longing to eat it again and again. The first friends I made in Malaysia, Roger and King, took me to lunch at Madam Kwan’s where we had her delicious rendang. Her version has the beef slow cooked and shredded and it is rich and delicious so little goes a long way with plain rice. King swore that this was the best rendang in Kuala Lumpur and who was I to argue?
I spent a long time looking for a recipe that would give me the right taste – every cook will have their own version. Eventually I came across (in a small, inexpensive Malaysian cookbook by Betty Saw, from Marshall Cavendish, that cost 9.90 ringgit, that’s just under £2) Rendang terlagi-lagi. ‘Lagi’ in Malay means ‘more’ and I was assured that having eaten this dish people would ask for more….and more. That had to be worth trying.
Now, before we go any further, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that authentic Malaysian cooking doesn’t rely on the kitchen gadgets that make our lives so easy. Most recipes involve spice mixes that are ground…and when they say ground they mean that they been pounded into a juicy rubble with a pestle and mortar.
What also might be worth pointing out is that while pounding produces an authentic roughness to the mix (some bits are pounded more finely than others) the pounding itself is hard physical labour. I have done this in an authentic a fashion as possible but in the interests of getting you to try this, I think it will be perfectly acceptable to use a blender to get the spice mix made. Don’t keep pulverising everything to a smooth paste, though, try and keep a certain roughness to it.
Also, if you are trying this and don’t have access to the same fresh ingredients that I can get here in Kuala Lumpur, don’t worry. Do your best. Supermarkets sell jars of ready prepared ginger, lemon grass and garlic. Use them if you can get them…it will be a lot easier than pounding.
The important thing is that you try to make this. If you like it enough you can always attempt pounding on the next go. Or maybe if you like it enough you can carry on using the prepared spices because that will mean you can make it quickly and easily. Just make it, right?
What you’ll need to make this is first of all 600g (1lb 5 oz) of beef.
The first time I made it was with deep frozen Indian buffalo which is all I could find in the supermarket and the resulting rendang was delicious but tough. Eventually, I found some nice beef cubes that made a deliciously tender rendang. Rendang is not cooked for a long time so try and avoid those cuts that will need hours of slow cooking.
You’ll need some dried chillies (maybe 8 or 10, say) and some thick dark soy sauce (this has a roasted almost caramel taste)
4 stalks of lemon grass (I think that 4 teaspoons of the prepared lemongrass in a jar would be the equivalent); a can of coconut cream ; some tamarind paste; and some kerisik (essentially grated coconut, roasted in a pan until golden brown and then ground finely. I think you could use desiccated coconut instead. It is important you make this, though there’s no real work involved, because it adds a gloriously rich, deep and sludgy level to the sauce surrounding the meat )
The next set of ingredients are classed as the ones that are to be ground – 300g/11 oz shallots, 4 garlic cloves and a 1 inch knob of ginger, peeled.
So, once you have everything assembled, you’re ready for the off. This is really a simple recipe and now I have done this a few times I can prepare it quickly. I make the ground spice mix first and put it in the fridge so I can split the work. If you were using prepared spices you’ll be able to do this really quickly.
First, cut the beef into strips, maybe a quarter of an inch thick and one and a half inches long.
Fry the beef over a moderate heat in 125 ml/4 fl oz/ half a cup of oil, for 15 minutes.
Take the beef out, leaving the oil in the pan as you’ll need this later.
The beef needs to be pounded lightly while it is still hot – I use the pestle that I used in grinding the spices. Use a steak hammer if you have one….what you are aiming for is a flattening of the pieces of beef, breaking down the meat fibres so they can absorb the flavours better and the beef becomes more tender.
This really is just a light pummelling so don’t go mad and destroy the beef pieces.
Then pour a tablespoon of thick, dark soy over the meat, stirring it round so the pieces get covered, then pop the meat into the fridge for at least an hour. I’ve done this the night before when I have been cooking this for guests and it works out pretty well.
Then, start on preparing the ground ingredients. Either do it with a pestle and mortar or use a blender or use prepared spices. The garlic and shallots and ginger get crushed to a gritty paste. If you use a blender don’t go as far as a smooth mush… part of the joy of this is in the texture of the sauce.
Dried chillies need soaking separately until they are soft and then need pounding or blitzing. It’s easier if you chop them first before pounding them and make sure you keep your hand over the top of the mortar to keep chilli splashes away from your eyes. I speak from experience.
Fry the ground chillies for two to three minutes in the oil left over from the beef
Then add the ground ingredients (shallots, garlic and ginger and the lemongrass).If you decide to pound the lemongrass first, it’s easier if you chop it into little pieces. Otherwise use the prepared lemongrass in a jar. Fry the mix until it is fragrant and the oil starts to separate out. This will take maybe 8 to 10 minutes over a gentle heat.
Once this is done, add the beef and stir it round well.
Add the coconut cream.
One tablespoon of tamarind paste needs adding to 5 tablespoons of water and stirring round and then strained off, leaving the pulp and stone residue behind. Add that liquid to the beef and stir in. You will probably be able to buy tamarind paste without the seeds in… here, I can’t get that and I have to sieve out the seeds. You do need the tamarind though because it adds a sharp hint that brightens the deep and satisfying richness of the meat.
Bring everything to the boil and then reduce the heat and simmer gently until the colour has darkened and it is almost dry. In that picture I had just crushed the lenongrass and I had to pick it out later. It’s better when you either use the ready crushed into a paste version or chop it into small pices and then pound the living daylights out of it.
Next you need the kerisik. This is toasted and ground coconut.
I can buy bags of freshly grated coconut but you could manage with some dessicated coconut, I reckon. My Malay friends think it will be OK, so I’d go along with that.
I dry fry a cup full until it browns
Be careful because it can suddenly go from white to burnt, so do stand and stir and keep checking while you are roasting and toasting the coconut.
and then I grind it to a fine powder. The first time I did it I used the pestle and mortar….after that I used the Bamix and the spice grinding attachment. Far quicker.
Anyway….add in the kerisik, a teaspoon or so of sugar and some salt to taste. Stir it all in and keep stirring until it begins to look like this….
And that’s it. Taste it. Realise you have made the most delicious rendang…..
I serve it over plain boiled rice that I have added some of the fresh grated coconut to and some chopped coriander.
And then all I do is hope that there will be some left over to either eat the next day or freeze. It is a rich and deliciously tasting meat with layers of flavour becoming apparent as you eat it.
I think this has become one of our favourite Malaysian dishes and when we get back to the UK I will use (because I’ll have to) the shortcuts I’ve told you about. I’ll do anything, really to keep on eating this. It is rich and delicious, spicy but not mouth burningly so and the simple mix of spices blend together to make a complex, mouth-filling in its intensity, taste. It is deeply satisfying.
Try it… try it then tell me what you think of it. I’ve done my best to make it easy for you… now you do your best to make it!
Tags: beef, Best beef rendang recipe, chillies, coconut, coconut milk, coconut rice, dried chillies, fresh grated coconut, garlic, ginger, how to use lemongrass, iconic Malaysian recipes, kerisik, lemongrass, Malaysian food, more, pestle and mortar, Plain White rice, pounding spices, shallots, slow cooked rendang, terlagi-lagi means more, The most delicious Malaysian recipe ever, using a Bamix to grind spices
We’re here… and we are almost sorted. They say (well, Lao-tzu said, anyway) that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. A journey of 6,570 miles must also begin with a single step then… and an awful lot of boxes in the container and a car full of bags and suitcases to drag with us.
It was odd, driving through the night to Heathrow and knowing it would be months before we would be back in the UK. Odd and strangely sad. All we had, as we walked into Departures, was each other and those few bags.
The glass of champagne that the Bear insisted we started the journey to our new life with, took the edge of the sadness though and we raised a glass to each other, toasting the start of our biggest adventure yet.
Then, after many hours of flying, there was Malaysia below us. That was where we were going to live… how strange it seemed. We looked at each other and laughed. Our new country!
We got through Immigration with only a few questions, though I have to say I was a bit put out when the Immigration Officer studied my passport, stared at me, studied my passport again and then asked if I was that woman in the photograph. I said I was and she didn’t believe me. Trying to explain that a photograph taken in a booth, when you know that this is the photograph you will be stuck with for ten years, so you’ve taken particular care with makeup, your hair is brushed, you look as good as you are going to get…..well, that photograph is a good one. It may not, as the Immigration Officer pointed out, look very much like the face that was staring back at her from the other side of the desk. That face, however, did not have the benefit of makeup, the hair had not been freshly blowdried, and travelling from the Saturday night till the Monday morning does wreak its own awful havoc.
Eventually, though, because if I was a criminal I might have made more effort to look like the person in the passport, she let me in to the country and we grabbed a cab and set off. Our suitcases were jammed in the boot, on the front seat next to the driver and on our laps (Malaysian cabs are quite small) and we started on the trip into Kuala Lumpur.
There’s a smell to Malaysia… a green and sweet smell that makes you smile. The roadsides are green and bursting with shrubs and palm trees. It rains every day so everything grows rapidly and the rain washes the dust away leaving everything clean and fresh. I suppose the smell is rather like a fresh air version of a tropical hothouse, if you can imagine that.
And then we were in the city. We stayed in the rather wonderful Grand Millenium Hotel while we got our bearings and while I started looking for a place to live.
The Bear went straight to work and I spent my time searching the internet and looking for apartments to rent. I sat in the Executive floor lounge, drinking coffee and looking out over the city and wondering where we would end up next.
Each night the Bear would come back to the hotel and we’d sit outside, 20 floors up, with a drink and a snack, talking about what we’d done each day. I’d tell him about the apartments I’d viewed and he would tell me about his work.
One night there was a surprise for him….
It was his birthday and the lovely staff from the Executive Floor and the managers of the hotel came round the corner, bringing him a cake and singing Happy Birthday. If it wasn’t for the fact he is such a shy and retiring Bear, I’d show you a picture of his surprised and beaming face as everyone joined in with the singing.
We went out that night to celebrate, with friends on Jalan Alor
This is the famous street of food at night in Kuala Lumpur and a must-visit destination if you are ever here. It used to be the red light district but is now the home of what seems like hundreds of restaurants and hawker stalls, where you eat in the street. You get the most delicious food here – there’s so much to see… and eat.
And the best place of all in the street is this restaurant… better known as the restaurant with yellow tablecloths. I think I’ll tell you more about Jalan Alor another time…
When we finally got back to the hotel we thought (briefly) about finishing the night off by going to the nightclub but realised that we were probably too old; too fat; too full of delicious food and too casually dressed for that. A club where customers routinely have bodyguards was too smart for us. Besides we were exhausted. … and there were going to be many more long days ahead of us as I tried to find us somewhere to live.
We needed to rent somewhere in KL that we’d be happy with for the three years we are going to be here. I had so many things on my wish list and the person that was going to help us was Roopa. Probably the best letting and relocation agent in KL. She spent days with me, rocketing around the city in her car, showing me condominium after condominium, searching out the best deal possible. The Bear left on a trip to Arizona and it was just me and Roopa. She drove through crowded streets even on Fridays (the worst day to drive in KL) in her attempt to get us the best place to live and we narrowed the search down to one particular condo.
The apartment we were looking at had a large dry kitchen…. in Malaysia it is common to have both wet and dry kitchens. The dry kitchen is usually attached to the living area and this is where the less messy bits of preparing food go on. This one had an induction hob in the central island, a large two door fridge freezer, an oven, microwave, more cupboards than I would have thought possible and a sink.
So far, so good.
Then, behind the sliding glass door was an enormous wet kitchen, with yet another fridge freezer; a dishwasher; a double sink; even more cupboards…and a waste disposal unit (probably one of my favourite kitchen gadgets – just think how useful that will be at getting rid of peelings and food scraps when the temperature is always over 80 degrees C)
…. and best of all, a gas hob! It was everything I wanted in a kitchen.
And rounf the corner from the wet kitchen was the laundry area and a huge storage room.
It really was perfect.
I could cook and prepare stuff in the wet kitchen and the smell of frying wouldn’t be all over the rest of the apartment. I would have been prepared to sign up for the apartment there and then but Roopa had more to show me….
The living area was huge with windows on two sides and a balcony running the length of the room
There was a massive dressing room, off the master bedroom…
… and the master bathroom had doors that opened onto its own private balcony.
How could we say no to all of that? The kitchen alone swung it for me. And so, the deal was done.
There was one problem though…… we took the apartment unfurnished which meant that we moved in with what I could buy quickly.
Which was a table and a couple of chairs from IKEA and a bed.
All I had in the way of kitchen stuff was what I brought over – two plates; two bowls; two sets of cutlery and two mugs. I went out and bought the bare minimum of kitchen ware – a pan, a chopping board and a knife – and we settled down to wait for the container.
But I didn’t mind too much…. I had the kitchen I had always longed for.
We were home.
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Finally, we have a half decent internet connection. It’s still slow to load pages but we can cope now, after Unifi finally arrived to install our internet connection. For the last six weeks or so we have been trying to manage on a mobile router device, or going to sit down at the poolside, where there’s a free wifi zone.
That’s fine, you know, in fact, that is gorgeous, but as a place to try and work? Well, it was too hot in the daytime. We used to go down at night and try and catch up with things. Thing is… it took forever to upload any pictures. The other thing is that the mosquitoes caught up with me. The Bear, of course, wasn’t troubled at all but I ended up with huge, horrible bites. I suppose it says something about the tastiness of my blood….
In the end we went and bought the mobile router so we could at least sit in the apartment and use the internet.
Of course, our other problem was that the container hadn’t arrived and all of our pots and pans , cutlery and crockery, knives and tools were miles from us and weeks from delivery. I did go out and buy the bare minimum…and when I say the bare minimum, that’s what I mean. I wasn’t going to replace everything when I had boxes and boxes of kitchen stuff on its way to me, so I ended up with a chopping board; one knife for cutting and one for bread; a colander and a pan. It was fine. It worked and I kept to the simplest of dishes. I steamed fish by wrapping it in tinfoil and adding ginger and garlic, adding a few drops of water and putting it in the oven. In my pan, I cooked rice and stirred shredded coconut through it (oh, the bliss of finding fresh, shredded coconut in the local food market!) and then quickly sauteed baby kailan leaves… we ate on the balcony, sitting at the only table and chairs we had. Thank goodness for IKEA, otherwise we would have been sitting on the floor!
Eventually, after many excuses by the shipping company, we got our container and the kitchen was filled with all of my lovely things… time, I thought, for a decent meal to celebrate. I sat on the balcony at dawn and started to consider what I could cook. Isn’t that a fabulous view? I sit there every morning with my coffee and plan what I am going to do while the Bear is at work.
I had been out and bought a small Malaysian recipe book and I really wanted to try a recipe I had seen in there – Ayam Golek – chicken boiled in coconut milk and spices and then roasted in the oven so the skin crisps up beautifully.
Malaysians love chicken… there are stalls at the roadside cooking chicken and the hawker stalls at the back of most shopping areas always have a fried chicken stand. Everywhere you go you will find chicken cooked in various ways and this recipe sounded perfect.
First, get your chicken. That was easy. I went to the local food market and picked up a chicken and all the ingredients I needed to make ayam golek. I bought coconut milk ( it did say make it yourself from fresh coconut but there were no further instructions, so I ended up buying three cartons to make the 750ml I needed); some shallots; garlic; three stalks of lemon grass; a knob of galangal; a knob of ginger; some cumin seeds; white peppercorns and fennel seeds.
I came back and started to sort out the ingredients so I could prepare the meal ready for the Bear to get home from work…..
Oh dear. That will teach me to wear my specs when I go shopping….
What the heck was I going to do with that? There was nothing in the recipe book about chicken heads!
Nor feet! I know I had seen chicken feet for sale… but I’d never wanted to eat them. The horrible claws… like long fingernails…oh it made me shudder.
And the neck….it just stuck out horribly and I had to hack away at it. Just shows how sanitised everything is in the West. Our chickens come prepared and all we have to do is start cooking. Well, I got it ready but maybe next time I will look more carefully at what I am buying. Maybe I will wear my specs.
First of all, then, I rubbed the chicken with salt and put it to one side while I started on the rest of the recipe.
Malaysians set great store by grinding everything in a pestle and mortar, so I started off…
I peeled twelve small shallots
and then got the ginger out to start peeling that… and discovered I’d made my first mistake
Yellow ginger ISN’T ginger of an attractive hue…it’s tumeric. My fingers and nails were stained for days.
I decided that grinding the seeds and peppercorns would be easier if I did that first, so into the mortar went one teaspoon each of white peppercorns and cumin and one tablespoon of fennel seeds.
… and bashed away until I had a smooth mix. I don’t think I’m going to need a gym membership because that gives you one heck of a work out.
I’d got the other ingredients ready – the twelve shallots; three cloves of garlic; three stalks of lemon grass and the peeled ginger….and decided that I wouldn’t put that ‘yellow ginger’ in after all.
So everything else went in and I bashed away
That’s hard work, that is.. Maybe if you aren’t looking to create a truly authentic dish, you could give everything a whizz with a blender? I think I might do that next time….
Especially when this was the temperature in the kitchen. That’s our kitchen clock, which helpfully confirmed what I thought – it was hot in there.
Finally, I was ready… 750 ml of coconut milk was added to a wok…
…..and the ground spices and bashed lemongrass stalks were added and everything was heated to a slow boil before I added the chicken and a teaspoon of salt.
I was on Easy Street now… all I had to do was simmer that chicken for thirty minutes, turning it half way through so both sides got poached. The coconut milk and spices thickened at that point and it was time to put the chicken into a roasting dish and then into a preheated oven (175°C/350°F) for another thirty minutes……the skin crisps up and the chicken browns…
Ohhh… the smell was divine!
The chicken was moist and succulent and fell apart as I tried to serve it. Just the way it should be if it is cooked properly.
I made boiled rice and stirred a handful of fresh grated coconut through it, with a few bits of chopped coriander (or, as they call it here, Chinese Parsley. I spend lots of time in the food markets sticking my nose into things to work out what things are)
Was it worth it? Very definitely. I’d suggest that if you do it, you use a blender unless you want a real work out. That would be so quick and easy and if you were to get the ready prepared chopped garlic, ginger and lemongrass (because not everyone has access to the fresh ingredients) no one would blame you. Be as authentic as you like or as lazy as you like, but do try making it because the flavours are delicious. The simmering in coconut milk make for the most incredibly moist and juicy chicken while the roasting crisps the outside and adds a final layer of taste to it all.
Oh… and maybe don’t buy a chicken with its head and feet…….
Tags: Ayam golek, baby kai-lan leaves, chicken, chicken head and feet, chicken roasted in coconut milk, Chinese Parsley is coriander, cilantro is coriander, coconut milk, coconut rice, cooking Malaysian recipes, coriander leaves, delicious Malaysian recipes, galangal. galangal is blue ginger, garlic, juiciest roast chicken, kail-lan leaves are Chinese broccoli leaves, lemongrass, loveliest, Malaysian food, new life in Malaysia, view from my window, what to do with a chicken with its feet on, yellow ginger is tumeric
I know, I know… it’s been so long since I last wrote anything. Still, in all that time we have packed up in the UK and moved half way across the world, found somewhere to live and finally managed to get internet access. We have no belongings yet, other than the things we brought with us in suitcases or what I have had to go out and buy, just so we can manage.
The story, so far, then, or at least the first part of it….. those last few weeks in the UK were a chaotic scramble as I worked up until the last fortnight and the Bear was away for most of the time. I managed to sell my house in the north and we brought the contents to Nottingham. What that meant, of course, was that I then had double the kitchen equipment and friends were given box loads of the spare stuff. I had to empty the cupboards of all my spices and ingredients, all those delicious things I had collected on my travels and hadn’t used up and still the kitchen was overflowing with plates, cutlery and equipment.
It all had to be packed away…..
The pile of boxes stood taller than me and filled the kitchen area
And the living space… and that was just upstairs. Downstairs was just as bad. Boxes everwhere we looked and it wasn’t as if we were taking furniture apart from a bed, a desk and a chair. All of that was just things….
Boxes and boxes of things
That all had to be packed into the sea container, ready for the long journey from the UK to Malaysia.
Eventually it was all done and we could look around at our empty apartment.
That was my kitchen – so small and yet so much went on in there. I always called it a Footballer’s Wife of a kitchen – pretty to look at but precious little to recommend it in real life. It was badly planned, with the small fridge and freezer on either side of the oven and the drawers where you would keep cutlery and Stuff at the very end of the workbench, as far as you could get from where you would need it.
(Everyone has a Stuff Drawer – it’s where you put bits of string in case you need to tie anything up, or where your Swiss Army penknife goes, just in case you meet a horse with a stone in its shoe and where you put the collection of red rubber bands the postman drops outside the letterbox because he can’t, quite frankly, be bothered to put them in his pocket. Stuff. It collects everywhere and needs a drawer of its own. I bet you all have a Stuff Drawer)
When I look at that kitchen I think of how much more I want from a kitchen. I want the space I’ll be working in to be away from the sink which is jammed in a corner. I can’t count the times The Bear has come over and wanted a cup of tea when I was trying to work . I want a fridge that I can stand at and look into, rather than having to kneel on the floor and practice advanced packing techniques to get the bare necessities in there. To be fair to the planners though, they probably weren’t thinking of me when they did the apartment, they probably thought the people living in there would go out to eat all the time.
When we moved in, the person we bought the place from had left a huge pile of takeaway menus and the oven had never been used.
I really want gas – that electric hob has been the bane of my life because I love the speed and responsiveness of gas. We always planned to put an induction hob in but we just didn’t get around to it. We had just decided to go and get one in the sales when the Bear got this new job in Malaysia.
I want more storage space – we did build a larder when we moved in, where there was some wasted space at the top of the stairs, but I want more cupboards to put things away easily.
As Bear says, all I’m saying is “I want… I want” but I was determined that I would think of all this when I went looking for a new place. The kitchen is probably the most important place for me and while I can, and have cooked quite successfully in that tiny space, if I can get somewhere better then I should.
The apartment looked empty now – well, empty of boxes, anyway
We were leaving our furniture behind and the plan was we would rent out our place and then rent an apartment in KL. On our first trip out we had looked at some condos and a lot of them were available furnished so we thought that might do us. We didn’t have anywhere sorted but at least we had an idea which part of the city we wanted to live in and the type of place that would suit us. Besides, our container wouldn’t arrive for a good six weeks after we got there so there would be planty of time to sort all of that out.
We stood on the balcony and looked out over the city for the last time, wondering what the view from our window would be in Malaysia.
We headed back to the north to say goodbye to the family
and then we turned round and drove away……
Tags: Goodbye to the UK, old kitchen new kitchen, packing for an international move, sea container, view from my window, what I want from a kitchen, wish list for a cook's kitchen
It’s been some time since I managed to sit down and tell you about something delicious… but as you know, I have rather a lot on. I’ve been so busy trying to sort out our move to Malaysia.
I swear, I thought I was a relatively organised and tidy person… but going through all the paperwork I have to sort out before we go, it appears I have been slowly, but surely, turning into one of those women you see on television programmes where their hoarding has got out of hand. I must have just filed every single bill and statement that I ever received and do I need them? No, I don’t.
Ballpoint pens…. who needs over a hundred half used ballpoint pens? I mean, hardly any of us write any more – we email, we text… but there they were…pen after pen in drawers and on shelves, in handbags. And the paperclips? Where did they come from? I am almost certain that I have never in my life bought a box of paperclips so they must have come with stuff I’d received and I kept them, thinking they’d come in useful at some point. There were rubber bands, half used Post-It pads and that peculiar dust and grit that seems to collect in any drawer that has Stuff in. I reckon we all have a drawer with Stuff in – it’s where we put things that don’t have a natural home anywhere else. That might explain why I also found two Swiss Army penknives, a small toffee hammer, a ball of string, my old cat’s vaccination record, a nail file, instructions from an old iPod shuffle, a broken travel alarm… oh the list went on.
And that was without starting on the clothes.
Twelve huge bags of clothes on the first sort….. The Great North Air Ambulance were getting the lot.
After all, we are going to south east Asia for three years and the temperature there is roughly 28 degrees C all year round. I wasn’t going to need all the warm things I had to have so I could live without frostbite on the north east coast. I wouldn’t be working for a start, so all of my business suits were going.
I seem to have kept every pair of jeans I ever owned……
……..and I have finally come to the conclusion that I will never fit into those 24 inch Levi’s again. I looked at them and wondered how I ever did get into them…and why I thought that with a little cutting back I would get anywhere near them. Still, it shows my optimistic side, which is always a good thing.
It also seems that I won’t be getting anywhere near the 26 inch, the 28 inch and the 30 inch Levi’s….. there’s a pattern emerging, do you see? I have grown fatter, year by year. It’s been gradual and it has been over couple of decades… I always thought, though, that maybe one day I would regain my teenage litheness.
It wasn’t to be, of course. Age does that to a person. As does eating delicious things.
Delicious things are one of the great joys of life and sharing something delicious with friends increases the general happiness quotient of any get together. What follows is one of the delicious things I can blame for the no-longer-fitting Levi’s.
The Bear and I had gone to our friends’ house for lunch so we could take a break from packing and sorting and all talk about our move to Malaysia. C&C had lived there for 18 months, some years ago and still go at least a couple of times a year, so they are an absolute mine of information. They were doing the main bit of lunch and I said I would do the pudding.
I wanted to do something different and I had something in mind.
Remember when I took it into my head to make Strawberry Surprise Marshmallows? I’d found some freeze dried strawberries at Healthy Supplies and realised that their sweet almost-crunchiness would be perfect hidden inside some home made marshmallow. Healthy Supplies really is a treasure trove because I also found freeze dried strawberry powder there that made the most delicious sweet coating to stop the marshmallows sticking together. There are things in their on line store that you’d never get in a supermarket – go and look, you’ll be amazed and delighted at what they have.
Brendan from Healthy Supplies had liked what I’d written about his freeze dried fruit and asked if there was anything I’d like to have a go with and after looking through the list, I spotted mulberries. How could I resist that? Something I’d read about but never tried… AND they were called Pearls of Samarkand! With a name like that, they just called out to me…
There are two kinds of mulberrries, black and white. Aren’t they strange? Knobbly and bulbous – but what really matters is the taste of them. The white ones taste almost honeyed – they are sweet and musky – and the black ones are sharper and fruity and after nibbling a couple I’d started to get an idea…
I’d made a polenta and honey cake before and I liked it but I thought there was room for improvement. Polenta in a cake gives it a wonderful dense and grainy texture; adding honey to the cake and serving it with cream makes it into a wonderful dessert.
Because the white mulberries tasted like honey they would be marvellous with a honeyed cake and the black, sharper mulberries could go in the cake to add a deliciously fruity contrast.
So… to begin.
First of all, get the oven going to preheat – you will need it at 170 degrees C/325 degrees F. The cake takes only a few minutes to prepare so you need to have the oven on at the start.
330g of plain flour was mixed with 150g of fine polenta (cornmeal) and 2 tablespoons of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt.
I sliced up some good butter and melted it in a Pyrex jug in the microwave on a low setting
I was going to need 250 ml, so just pack it into the jug till you get the rough measure – anything extra you can use to grease the baking tin.
Mix the melted butter with 2 eggs, 180ml of runny honey and 435 ml of milk and pour it into the mixing bowl.
Then whizz it all round gently – don’t whip it to death, just make sure it is blended.
This is going to be a lovely deep and square cake, to be sliced easily at the table so I used a smallish baking/roasting tin (if you’re interested, it measured 13×9 inches) That was greased with the residue from the melted butter
You can see the graininess of the polenta – that will add fabulous texture.
Because I didn’t want all the fruit to sink to the bottom of the cake, I scattered most of the packet (saving a mainly white ones) on top of the mix. I dusted the fruit in flour to stop them sinking too quickly and then put the tin in the oven for half an hour.
While the cake was cooking, I needed to make the honey syrup that was going to be drizzled over the cake so in a pan I gently heated 125ml of Acacia honey
And because I wanted it to have a light and flowery hint about it (and because I had a bottle of it and I need to use it before we move) I added a good amount of English Provender Essence of Orange Blossom Flower water… maybe 4 tablespoons or so. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any – you can miss it out… or perhaps use orange juice instead?
Stir it all round, over a gentle heat until it comes to the boil and blends beautifully, thickening slightly, making a rich and fragrant syrup.
Check whether the cake is done after 25 minutes or so. Does the skewer come out cleanly?
Now it is out, make sure you have the cake on a rack and you can wipe up any mess from this next step…. you are going to pour the honey and orange blossom syrup over the cake, covering it completely. It needs to cool before you serve it…..
That was the easy bit….we then had to get it from my kitchen to our friends’ house without making a mess.
Still, we got there and settled down for a marvellous time.
I’d brought along the rest of the mulberries and when we were ready for pudding I added them to a bowl of whipped cream…
The cake was firm and studded with mulberries. It wasn’t too dense… there was a light crumbliness to it that you get when you use polenta.
And with a dollop of whipped cream and those honey flavoured white mulberries it was the perfect summery mouthful.
It was even worth eating knowing I would never get back into those jeans. Some things are worth more than being able to wear the jeans of my youth. I know when I was younger I’d never even eaten polenta, never mind had it in a cake and mulberries were the stuff of nursery rhymes. I like being older. I eat better for a start!
So. Mulberries? A definite yes. They were perfect in that honeyed cake. They were delicious to eat by themselves…. thanks Brendan! Keep on sourcing such delicious and original ingredients – I just wish I could have shared a slice of cake with you.
Tags: Acacia honey, Brendan of Healthy Supplies, cake to eat with friends, cooking with mulberries, drawers with Stuff in, English provender Orange Blossom Flower Water, Healthy Supplies Freeze Dried Fruit, honey, mulberries, Mulberry and Honey Polenta Cake, perfect summer Saturday pudding, polenta, quick and easy cake for dessert, whipped cream
Well, then. Here’s something different…
It’s not often you see a palm tree in one of my pictures…
Nor lovely bridges across lakes….
There is a reason for that, of course. At the moment the Bear and I are in Malaysia, just for a quick visit, while we sort things out, before moving here in the summer. I know that back home it is, as it usually is at this time of year, cold and damp and grey, so the warmth and the sunshine of Kuala Lumpur and down here in Seminyeh is even more appreciated. Who wouldn’t want to live here?
It’s not going to be plain sailing, of course, as there’s lots to do and not a lot of time to sort things. I have to go through everything we own and decided whether I keep it and ship it over here or I get rid of it. Some things are easy enough to deal with and go straight into either bags for the bin or to charity shops.
Other things are more difficult. This is where I need your help.
River Cottage Every Day, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall… and yes, there are two copies.
There is a slight difference between them….
One I bought for the Bear as a Valentine’s present and one he bought for me as a Christmas present. Yes, I know he should have paid more attention because I bought him the book first but, you know, he’s a man… what can you expect? And I suppose I have to confess that while I did buy it for his Valentine’s present, it may have been because I knew I could read it too….
Normally, you’d have to hold me to gunpoint to give away a cookery book but really, we don’t need two copies. What am I going to do? Ship both copies half way across the world?
Each one is heavy.
Nearly 1.5 kg heavy. It doesn’t make sense, does it?
What does make sense is that I give one of them away, but the next question is WHICH one? I don’t want to give away the one the Bear gave me and he doesn’t want to give away the one I gave him. We can’t decide… so what we think is best is that YOU decide.
One of you (unfortunately only those of you who live in the UK because I have to pay the postage) can have one of these books…
All you have to do is comment below and tell me why you’d want the book I gave to the Bear or why you want the book he gave to me.
After a week, on 28th March, I will see how many comments there are and use a random number generator to pick the lucky recipient. Simple, eh?
That way we don’t have to choose which of us loses a book the other gave and one of you gets to get a copy of River Cottage Every Day.
Think of it as being like a goodbye to the UK present from us to you!
So… do you want his book to me, or mine to him?
Cooking, for me, is a calming and enjoyable experience.
The apartment we live in has 28 windows running around three sides of our upper floor, so wherever I stand I can see the city below us. I love to work at a bench, kneading or chopping, grinding or mixing and being able to see all around me. The preparation of food can be a meditative experience as I stand and work and gaze out, soothed by the everchanging view of the unpredictable British weather.
Because we are so high up and have so many windows, the views are amazing. I love seeing the seasons change and perhaps the most beautiful time is dawn….
……..the sun rising through the mist that swirls around the trees below us is one of my favourite sights.
Sometimes a stormy dawn will fill the sky with vibrant colours contrasted against grey and turbulent skies….
… and a bright dawn fills me with happiness
In the winter the snow reflects the light back, brightening the morning.
Even on grey and rain filled days the apartment is filled with light. There’s something so cosy about being inside, in the warm, when the rain lashes against the windows.
And the bliss of being inside when the snow piles up on the sills outside while you are inside, surrounded by warmth and the smell of something wonderful cooking.
I do love living here. Not one day is the same as another and each day’s view is different.
Soon, though, the change is going to be more dramatic and you will be treated to a new and very different view from my window.
The Bear and I are off, embarking on an adventure that will mean a total change in the way we live, the things we see and the food we cook and eat. I have to do lots of sorting and packing and sharing out the things we can’t take with us… there’ll be chances for everyone to win DVDs and cookery books. And I do mean everyone. Some things I give away will have to be sent to UK people only, simply because of the postage costs… but a light weight DVD? Well I am sure I could afford to post that almost anywhere.
In six months time or so, we will be living on the other side of the world as the Bear will be working for three years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And I will be going with him.
The Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur
Imagine the difference in the views…..imagine the difference in the ingredients and the cooking…imagine the fun we will all have.
The Bear has been to Kuala Lumpur many times and took the following pictures they will give you an idea of the vibrancy, the colour and the busy bustling city….
Traffic in Kuala Lumpur
Beautifully illuminated fountains in Kuala Lumpur
The KL Monorail
The skyscrapers really do seem to scrape at the sky
… and it’s not all traffic and building… there are palm trees and beautiful fountains everywhere.
Things change all the time and I know this is going to be a big change but that’s good.
Change is exciting and I hope you’ll enjoy the changing views and changing food and recipes with us.
Tags: exciting news, giveaways, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, moving abroad, view from my window
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