Balinese Chicken Satay and Peanut Sauce

While relaxing in Ubud, Bali (where there was less praying and loving than eating), Liz, Meghan and I took a cooking course (or "culinary experience," if you will) with the Lobong family, described in detail at my other blog.  The course was pretty awesome and I think we learned a lot, but recreating the recipes at home was a bit of a challenge, as once I looked in the recipe booklet we were sent home with, things were a little bit unclear, to say the least.  I may have to volunteer my editorial services (not like my blog is a paragon of perfect writing by any means, but this cook book is really struggling in the areas of English writing and completeness).

I decided to start with what I thought might be the simplest recipe we learned, Balinese chicken satay with peanut sauce.  In the end it's not all that time consuming, with the caveat that you've made the basic Balinese spice paste, base gede, in advance.  The spice paste is not difficult, but does involve unwrapping about a million garlic cloves and shallots, as well as peeling ginger, turmeric root, and galangal (or, in this case, lesser galangal or kencur).  Luckily I had a brand new peeler from Amy for this task (THANKS, AMY!).  The spice paste recipe makes a ton, can be frozen in ice cube trays for future use, and is used in a lot of Balinese recipes.

Once the spice paste is made, you basically just have to cut the chicken, toss it in some paste along with some keffir lime leaves, palm sugar and salt, marinate while you heat up the coals and then grill it.  The peanut sauce is pretty straightforward, too, although I couldn't get mine to thin out into a sauce- it was pretty thick and peanut-buttery despite all my best efforts.  I tried using my new big ole' mortar and pestle, but it was a little too much elbow work for my post-work arms, so I moved on to the food processor to finish off the peanut sauce.  Perhaps therein lies the problem.

Once I hear back from Lobong on the vagaries of their written recipes, I'll post the recipes here!

Rosemary Gin Fizz

I bought some rosemary last week on a whim and didn't get around to using it (turns out lots of rosemary recipes involve roasting... in an oven... which I don't have.)...  rather than let the rosemary go bad while I am gallivanting around Indonesia with Liz and Meghan (yay!),  I decided to make a rosemary syrup to mix with gin for a welcome drink for them:

Rosemary gin fizz... pretty good!  The rosemary plays off the gin pretty well!

More Batik...

Buying batik is addictive, as is making the super-easy Sorbetto top and envelope-style pillowcases.

Here's a couple more pleat-less Sorbettos I made from some cool botanical batik I found:

And here are some pillowcases I made for our daybed.  One is made from the same piece of batik as the second top above, and one is actually made from 2 napkins I found that were just the right green for me:

Rice with Pineapple and Beans

Tim and I bought a fresh pineapple last week, and after eating most of it straight, my tongue was going a little numb from the acid.  I decided I needed to cook the remaining fruit a little to tone it down, and thought I might mix it with some beans and rice.  (As an aside, I thought I was buying black beans, but somehow ended up with red kidney beans... oh well.)

  I sorta made the dish up, loosely based on some recipes I found online:

-In a small pot, saute a couple cloves of garlic (minced) and some chopped onion in a pan, add 1 cup of rice and then 1.5 cups of chicken stock- cook until rice is done

- Meanwhile, in a frying pan, saute a couple cloves of minced garlic, 2 or 3 chopped green onions, a couple minced hot peppers (I think I used 3 or 4 birds' eye chilis) and about a teaspoon each of cumin and coriander until fragrant.  

- Throw 1.5 cups of chopped pineapple (and any juices that accumulated) and a 15 ounce can of rinsed beans into the frying pan heat up and carmelize a little bit.

-  Mix the rice and bean mixture, add salt and pepper to taste

- Top with lime juice to taste and lots of coarsely chopped cilantro.

- Eat!

Pretty good!  Tangy, sweet, spicy, earthy.  You could probably make it healthier with brown rice, but that's hard to find here. 

Baby Sweater: Try, try again

It seems like for every finished crafting or cooking project I put up here I have at least one, and sometimes multiple, failed attempts before I get a success.   This time it was a baby gift for Amy and Adam's impending baby boy using this blue, yellow and green yarn from Bernat.

First, I tried knitting a pullover sweater, based on this cute pattern.  The body came out great, albeit a little curly at the edges.  But it all went to hell when I tried to add the sleeves...  my knitting skillz are apparently not advanced enough to know how to troubleshoot and eliminate the hole that kept appearing in the armpit.  Sigh.

Then I tried to make a baby blanket using the same yarn.  Initially I was winging it, just doing stripes (not unlike the baby blanket Chuck made last year), but I didn't like the way it looked and felt:

Next I tried a blanket based on this "Purely Square Baby Throw" pattern from Lion Brand Yarn, but I think my yarn was too thick.  The blanket was heavy and stiff and draped awkwardly (although I liked the pattern... maybe it would be nicer in a finer yarn):

Ultimately I ended up going back to an old, reliable, fool-proof favorite...  ye olde crochet baby cardigan. 

Works every time:

Roasted Salmon with Lime and Cilantro

Tim and I saw some salmon at our local butcher shop, and although it was clearly not local, it looked so good and so different from everything we've been eating over the past few months, so we got some.

We cooked them according to this recipe from the Other Martha- roasted until super tender and moist and then topped with lime juice, cilantro and a little bit of soy sauce.  Served with a side of garlic-sauteed green beans and couscous with garlic and green onion to soak up the sauce.  Delicious! 

Cream Cheese Brownies

Last week Tim went on a wild work trip that took him to Bangkok, Hanoi, Phnom Penh and back to Bangkok. On his way back through Bangkok he stopped to get us bagels at BKK Bagel Bakery, as good bagels are quite hard to find here in Jakarta.  I had read about BKK last year in the Wall Street Journal right before we left DC, mentioned it to Tim, and somehow the idea stuck in his head.  I'm glad it did, because they were pretty good!

They're not very Irish or St. Patrick's Day appropriate, but I put them on a green plate.  That counts for something, right?

This is a really round-about way of telling you why I made these brownies:  I bought cream cheese to go with the bagels, had a bunch leftover once the bagels were gone, wanted something sweet to eat... hence cream cheese brownies.  

The brownies were rich and delicious.  So good.  My only complaint about the recipe (from the Other Martha) is that it instructs you to "whisk cream cheese with 2 tablespoons room-temperature butter."  Ummm... even at room temperature, cream cheese is not really whiskable. Creamable? Yes. Whiskable?  No.