Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream

Thai iced tea is probably one of my favorite drinks... there's just something about the creaminess and aroma of it that complements spicy Thai food so well.  The internets tell me that the special taste comes from strong brewed black tea combined with a varying combination of cardamom, orange blossom water, star anise and tamarind. Plus it's got that crazy orange color.

Tim found some loose Thai tea at our grocery store here in Jakarta, so we bought a big old bag of it.  For some reason, the idea of an ice cream based on Thai iced tea popped into my head.  I figured someone out there had already made this delicacy, and lo, they had... I followed this recipe from Use Real Butter, which in turned followed ice cream king David Lebovitz's basic ice cream base recipe.

In a nutshell, you steep the tea in the milk until it turns that distinctive orange color, strain out the tea and then proceed to make a pretty basic custard that you freeze in your ice cream machine.... in the end you have this tasty, bright, fragrant dessert, perfect for a hot day.

Plaid Anda Top

 I made this top this weekend and already wore it out for beers- quite comfy.  I made it using Burdastyle's Anda pattern (the same pattern I used for my Fraulein Maria dress), but shortened it to the "add length here" line and put in an elastic empire waist.  I'm quite proud... I made the whole thing with french seams (using this tutorial) so the inside is clean and pretty.  I still struggle a little bit with the bias tape (both making it and sewing it on), but it's getting a little bit better with each garment I make.

The fabric is from the Real Martha. I believe she purchased it circa 1981. I'm not kidding.  She also sent some bias tape made in 1978.  It's older than me.

Lincoln helped with the top... and by "helped" I mean that he pulled each of the pins out as I put them in.

Grilled Corn Salad and Fresh Mint Ice Cream

Tim and I were invited to a BBQ here in Jakarta this past weekend... the hosts made an awesome spread of great Aussie sausages, a whole baked red snapper with rosemary and some tasty steaks.  Our contributions to the meal were of the side-dish and dessert variety:  a grilled corn salad with feta, tomato, cilantro and a cumin-chili-lime dressing and fresh mint ice cream with chocolate chunks, both of which seemed to go over quite well with the crowd.

The salad was really tasty and easy.  Grill corn right on the cob until it's slightly charred, cut it off the cob and mix it with cherry tomato, chopped red onion and cilantro, and a lime vinaigrette flavored with chili powder and powdered cumin.  The only changes I made to the recipe was to toast the spices for the dressing in a dry pan until fragrant before adding them...  brings out the flavor.  Also, I skipped adding the whole cumin seeds, as ours were a little "off."

The mint ice cream was a big hit... while it wasn't florescent green like the stuff you get at the store, but it was better since it was full of natural mint flavor from steeping a bundle of fresh mint leaves in the cream before making the custard.  Awesome. 

Evolution of a Top-Down Knit Cardigan

A couple of months ago I saw that the Lion Brand Yarn blog was hosting a knit-along for a top-down raglan cardigan that was already queued up in my list of to-makes, so I decided to join in.  While I didn't exactly keep up with the knit-along or really customize the pattern in any way, I found it helpful to turn to the blog entries for guidance as I got to each turning point in the pattern.

The top-down raglan approach is similar to that used for the baby cardigans I have been crocheting- you start with the collar, increase the number of stitches each row at 4 strategic spots around the shoulders/armpits (creating that line of lace), then pinch the armpits together and keep knitting down the bodice until you get the length you want.

I ended up frogging (apparently knit-speak for unraveling) a crochet project I had been working on before, a tank top, after realizing it was somewhat ridiculous and I would never wear it (it helped that Colleen made fun of it when I mentioned it over Skype last fall).  I used the yarn from that project (which I had purchased with a Groupon at DC's Looped Yarn Works), Berroco Comfort, for my raglan cardigan instead.

I'm pretty happy with how my first adult-sized cardigan turned out!  There are some twisted stitches here and there (I'm not so good at fixing mistakes, so I just try really hard not to make them in the first place), and my seaming is horrendous (but there's not much of it and it's under the arm for the most part) but it doesn't bother me enough to try to fix them.  I would definitely consider making this again... as the knit-along demonstrated, the cardigan is infinitely customizable.  I think it might be nice in a finer yarn, too, if you could get the right gauge... the worsted weight yarns is a little heavy for Jakarta even though the sweater itself is short-sleeved.

Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut M and Ms

We borrowed Mr. Ben's oven this weekend and baked up a storm of cookies... soft peanut butter cookies with peanut M&Ms. 

Pretty good!  Be sure not to let the cookies overbake; take them out of the oven when they look just not quite done and you'll end up with soft and chewy instead of hard and crumbly.

Cilantro-Lime Chicken and Pineapple Skewers

This recipe for cilantro-lime chicken pineapple skewers in last week's Washington Post Food Section caught my eye, and conveniently, I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand.  

Tim and I have been trying to take better advantage of all of the tasty tropical fruit here in Jakarta, and so we had purchased some mangosteens, pineapple and bananas and were able to use about half the pineapple for this recipe and still have half left over for snacking.  

Super easy and quite a tasty recipe... grilled pineapple is so good.  I used bird's eye chilis instead of the serranos called for, and it was a little spicy.  "A little too spicy" seems to be a running theme here, eh? 

Served with couscous cooked with garlic, green onion, a little butter and chicken stock. 

Spicy Balinese Long Bean Salad with Pan-Seared Tuna

Tim and I tried another recipe from my Lobong culinary experience in Ubud, Bali since many of the ingredients overlapped with the chicken satay and peanut sauce...  tonight's recipe was a pan seared tuna steak on top of a spicy, fragrant long bean and cabbage salad.  

And by "spicy," I really mean, "burned our faces off."  Oops.

Despite the excessively pedas salad, this dish was still good.  Perhaps next time I would use fewer chilis.  Far fewer. 

The recipe seems to be Chef Dewa's riff on the traditional Balinese dish, ikan bakar sambal matah, which is grilled fish with a raw chili sambal.  He put the sambal and fish on some veggies and made it into a healthy and fresh tasting salad.

Here's the recipe, adapted and with my notes:

Ikan Bakar Sambal Matah Salad

Adapted from the Lobong Culinary Experience

Ingredients:

100 grams of tuna (Tim and I upped the tuna factor and got one super fresh tuna steak each)

15 shallots, halved and sliced super thin (This measurement is for the tiny Indonesian shallots... if using regular French style shallots, maybe more like 4 or 5)

10 bird's eye chilis, minced (Based on my experience, I would recommend fewer unless you want to lose functionality in your lips and tongue) 

5 kaffir lime leaves, shredded

4 lemongrass stalks, tender center white part only, thinly sliced

1 piece torch ginger (My grocery store was out of this, so I improvised by grating/micro-planing about an inch long chunk of regular ginger)

100 grams of cabbage, shredded (Chef Dewa says crunchy romaine is a good substitute, too)

100 grams of long beans, sliced into pea-sized pieces (You could substitute regular green beans here)

Handful of cherry tomatos, halved

90 ml of coconut oil (I used the fresh coconut oil made by the Lobong family, which was delicious. The only problem: it had solidified in our air conditioned apartment, so I had to dip the bottle in warm water to loosen it up... didn't that problem when cooking outside at the Lobong compound... don't substitute this with another oil, though, as the coconutty flavor is essential)

Squeeze of lime juice (my addition)

Directions:

1. Toss all ingredients except tuna together in a salad bowl.

2. Lightly salt and pepper tuna steak, then sear both sides briefly in vegetable oil over medium-high heat.

3. Either top the salad with the tuna, or break the tuna up and gently toss it with the salad.

4. Enjoy and cross your fingers that you don't blow up from the heat of the chilis.