Distraction..

I have been wanting to do more in this blog, but it seems that I am much distracted by happenings around me, plus the advent of facebook and scrabble on line have greatly distracted me. But as scrabble of facebook takes ages to upload, finally I am ready to let it slide. Partly being such a sour grape on the issue that I seem to always be on the losing side and my statistics have not improved by a single iota....I deem ready to say goodbye to it and stick to the traditional board game....

Kuih Cek Mek Molek and Kuih Keria

Sweet Potatoes or Ubi Keledek, in Malay, is a very versatile tuber. The shoots and tuber can be eaten as a vegetable and also be used in sweet and savoury dishes. In Malay cuisine, these tubers at times, especially during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya, is used as a staple food to replace rice.

There are several varieties of Sweet Potatoes, the more common ones are the orange and whitish-yellow. Purple and red can also be found, mostly imported from Japan. Sweet potatoes can be baked (it can be simply put onto a dying ember and baked until cooked), fried like banana fritters, made into chips like potato chips, or prepared and a sweet dessert called pengat (where the potatoes are cubed and boiled with sugar and coconut milk or in water, sugar and ginger).

The Orange sweet potatoes are sweeter and retains more water compared to the whites . However, the white potatoes give more structure and at times these two are used together in kuihs, like Cek Mek Molek, Belotok, Cucur Badak and Keria.

Cek Mek Molek ( which means "Beautiful Lady") and Belotok share similar looks, the difference is in the filling. Cek Mek Molek (which comes for the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia) is sweet, while Belotok (which originates from the Northern Peninsular of Malaysia) is savoury, with either spicy beef or chicken filling. Cucur Badak, which is also a savoury kuih is filled with prawn coconut sambal. Meanwhile, keria is a Asian version of a doughnut and instead of plain sugar, the sugar is cooked in a thick syrup and then stirred with the Keria to form a delicious crystallised outer layer. Thus, creating a crunchy texture that contrasts against the softness of the kuih.

Following is the method of making Cek Mek Molek and Keria. I hope you will enjoy trying it out!

Boiled Sweet potatoes. Boil the potatoes with the skin on to ensure that it doesn't become too water logged and make sure to remove the potatoes once cooked. Check by piercing with a fork. You can see the fork marks on the sweet potatoes below.

Skins off.
Mash till fine. Remove any stringy particles. Do not use food processor or you'll end up with a gluey mess. It's easier to mash while the potatoes are still warm.
At least 20% weight of flour to weight of mashed sweet potatoes. Meaning if you have a kilo of mashed sweet potatoes add at least 200gm of all purpose flour. Do not decrease. You may increase another 5-10% if the sweet potatoes are watery (That is why it is good to boil the potatoes with their skin on and remove immediately once it is cooked). Do not exceed more than that unless you want to lose the nice yummy sweet potato flavour. Also add a 1/2 teaspoon of salt for every kilo of sweet potatoes. The salt is just to enhance the sweetness.
Mix and knead until you can form a ball. It should be slightly sticky and malleable. Not dry or hard. If initially you have added all the flour and it is still a bit wet, you can let it stand for 20 minutes for the dough to become drier before proceeding.
Divide doughs. I usually weigh the balls 30gm for Keria and 40 gm for Cek Mek Molek/Belotok.
This is where the recipes differ, following is the making of Cek Mek Molek/Belotok. You take a a ball of the weighed dough and flatten it.
Place a teaspoon of sugar in the middle, if you are making Cek Mek Molek, or a teaspoon of the savoury filling if you are making Belotok. The filling of the Belotok is similar to the Karipap (Curry puff) but without the potatoes in it. It tastes more like a rendang than a curry.
Fold the dough into 2 and crimp the edges. Make sure it is crimped nice and tight, otherwise the filling may leak during the frying process.
Roll the dough to make a nice clean 'torpedo' shape.
The completed Cek Mek Moleks ready for frying.
Heat oil, and fry. Continuously turning to make sure that the kuih is fried evenly. Otherwise one side may bloat and cause it to cook unevenly.
Drain on kitchen towels.
And NGAAAAAP!
For the Keria, once you have weighed the dough, shape it into torus (or doughnut) shape, by pushing your index finger in the middle of the dough and at the same time turning the dough around the finger like it's a hula hoop.
Frying is similar to the Cek Mek Molek, only that you don't need to turn it often. Just once the once side is golden brown, you can flip it over to fry the other side.
Drain it on kitchen towels. The camera is a bit blurry because of the steam from the kuihs.
Once the Keria is cooled, you can make the sugar caramel. Around 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoon of water in a kuali or saucepan, heated until bubbly and all the sugar has dissolved. Make sure it hasn't started caramelising. Add the cooled Keria, take the kuali off the heat and stir gently to make sure the sugar will cover the kuih and at the same time create the crystallisation of sugar adhering to the outside of the keria.

Yummy!

For My Friend....

who has decided to cut all ties to everything white. Here I have 'created' or rather adapted a delicious oatmeal raisin cookie from Recipezaar that will be an answer to your challenge .

250 gms butter with 250 gm brown sugar and 100g white sugar (you can make it all brown sugar if you want to eliminate all whiteness or you can even eliminate the white totally for less caloric intake) and 1/2 teaspoon salt in the bowl on the top right. 280gm whole wheat flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon baking soda, whisked in the left top bowl . 2 eggs with 2 teaspoons vanilla essence in the small blue bowl. 300gm old fashioned rolled oats in the bowl on the bottom right. Please don't even think of using those instant oats as the cookies will end up tasting like sawdust. Because my son doesn't like raisins, I will divide the dough into two and add 200gm chocolate chips in one half and 250 gm of raisins in the other half. Husband and daughter loves raisins...

Cream butter, sugar and salt until creamy but not overly light.

Add eggs and vanilla essence.

Mix well but do not over do it.

Add and fold in all the flour.

Put in the oats and fold.

I then divide the dough into two, roughly around 650gm each bowl and in one I pour in the chocolate chips and the other the raisins.

Using a #60 scoop, I scoop the dough out to a parchment lined baking sheet. I press the dough slightly flat.

Place in a preheated oven 175C for 11-15 minutes. Rotating when necessary. Cool once out of the oven and Bon Appetit!

Note: I probably would add a 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg in the dough to enhance the flavours.

So, to my white-challenged friend, I hope you will enjoy this cookie recipe. Just remember to eat only one every day, and not 3 in 1/2 hour like I did. ;-)

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie

Who doesn't love chocolate chip cookies? It may not be something that brings back childhood memories (because our mothers didn't bake chocolate chip cookies then) but it does give you warm fuzzy feeling when you have one or a bag full.

My biggest problem was that I never really had a good recipe which didn't need tweaking, or so I thought. I always ended up having to add more of something especially when the first time round the cookies were to flat or too thin.

Cookies tend to be nice big saucer like and this is so unMalaysian. We like lots of coconut milk in our nasi lemak and condensed milk in our Milo or teh tarik, but we can't stand big saucer like cookies. We like them cute and the size just nice to pop in the mouth without biting.

Recently I decided to scour through the many baking books I own to see the difference between one recipe to the other and also whether there were any tips missing in my technique that made my cookie most of the time delicious but flat like a board.

To my surprise! Most of the cookbooks have something same or similar! There may be variations in type of fat used or amount of chocolate chips added in or the optional desire to add other ingredients of nuts or fruits. The bottom line the recipes are basically the same.

A couple of tips that I discovered from the research was that the type of fat and the refrigeration of the dough effects the spread and flavour. Using half butter and half good quality vegetable shortening helps the retard spread and still ensures buttery taste. While keeping the dough an hour to 36 hours in the fridge also helps minimise spread and enhances the flavour. There was a test done in one of the books that claims the cookies baked from the 36 hours dough won hands down.

So here is the recipe:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup vegetable shortening ( I use Crisco)

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 cups of chocolate chips

1. Sift the flour with baking soda. Add the salt and whisk.

2. Cream the butter and shortening with the sugar until creamy and light (4 minutes or so). Do not over cream, remember you are not making cake!. Add eggs, one at a time and mix one minute each and add the vanilla essence.

3. Combine the dry ingredients in two parts and then add the chocolate chips. Fold.

4. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for an hour or up to 36 hours. You can form it into logs to ease cutting and baking or like me I use a small scoop to shape before baking. You can pre shape the cookies and keep in the freezer for up to a month. Make sure it is tightly wrapped. You can bake it straight out of the freezer but you may need a couple of minutes longer in the oven.

5. When ready to bake, preheat oven 175C, cut or scoop dough onto a baking tray. You can use baking paper as a liner. Bake for 15-18 minutes depending on size. Rotate tray halfway to ensure even baking.

6. Leave on pan for 5 -10 minutes before removing from tray and let cool before eating. Keep in an airtight container.

Note: You can of course add nuts if you like, preferably coarsely chopped otherwise it will add to the density of the dough. In Bakewise by Shirley O. Corriher, she added 3 cups roasted, salted and chopped pecans in her recipe. I can't wait to try those, just have to wait until the current batch of cookies are depleted and get some pecans from the shop.

Bon Appetit!