It Mayo Shock U - Chocolate and Passion Fruit Lamingtons

I am so glad the home internet is working again... and let's just hope *fingers crossed *touched wood there will be no power shutdown as well today and forever... amen.

For those who don't know, my friend Peter over at Delicious Delicious Delicious blog is back hosting his annual Re-Inventing the Lamington event. It's a lot of fun and there will be a prize to win.  So check out the post here (also the prize you might win) and join in the baking fun!

For my first ever lamington experience, I combine two flavours that go so well together... chocolate and passion fruit. The richness and the sweetness from the chocolate work really well with the sharpness of passion fruit.  Utterly delicious.

The chocolate cake is inspired by and adapted from the brilliant Adriano Zumbo, one of Australia's best known chef.  There's a recipe from his book Zumbo called it mayo shock u, which is a chocolate loaf cake with raspberries.  What fascinates me is the use of Japanese mayonnaise in place of eggs, so I just had to give it a go. The result was... shocking... Not only the cake is super easy to make, but the result cake was incredibly soft and moist too.

You can get Japanese mayonnaise, such as Kewpie at your local Asian grocery store.  Japanese mayonnaise is different than the usual western mayonnaise.  I learn that it has a higher egg ratio and also made with rice vinegar. 

To make it easier to cut and shape into lamingtons, I bake the cake in a square cake/brownie tin.  The passion fruit element for the lamingtons comes from passion fruit curd.  You can make your own if you want to... I just bought a really good one.  Give me a break.

Chocolate and Passion Fruit Lamingtons

For the chocolate cake
145 gr Japanese Mayonnaise
100 gr caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
150 gr plain flour
3 gr baking powder
3 gr baking soda
35 gr unsweetened cocoa powder
140 gr water

Passionfruit Curd
Freshly grated coconut/desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Line and lightly grease a 18 cm square tin.

To make the chocolate cake, in a mixer bowl (free-standing or hand) add the mayo, sugar and vanilla bean paste and mix for few minutes until the sugar starts to dissolve.

In another bowl, sift the dry ingredients, the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder.  Then add this to the sugary mayo on a low speed.

Slowly pour in the water.  Don't panic if the mixture gets a little lumpy... just continue mixing and it'll be fine. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Let the cake completely cool in the tin.

When the cake is cooled, take it out from the tin, remove the baking paper and cut the cake into 2 x 2 cm square.  Take one square of the cake and add a little dollop of the passion fruit curd then sandwich with another square of cake.  With a pastry brush, brush the cake with more curd on all sides.  Then roll in the coconut.  Continue with the rest.  Thinking about it now, it'll actually be easier if you cut the cake into rectangles, so go do that instead.

Babi Kecap - Braised Pork Knuckle in Sweet Soy Sauce

Hello, friends!! How is everyone doing? I hope all is well and eating deliciously. 

I have had a crazy busy few weeks, from all the baking leading to Chinese New Year, followed by various family visits and more baking in between... so my apologies for the lack of posts and I am very behind with e-mail queries, blog reading list and I look forward to catching up soon. For now, I am just so happy to have a time alone. 

Without sounding like an anti-social, I am also pleased to not have plans to go out for both Valentine's day (I'm single, anyway...) and lantern festival tomorrow. I'm just gonna stay home, and have a Modern Family or Law & Order marathon, still to be decided.

Those of you who are following me on Instagram (@michael_toa), know that I eat embarrassingly loads (just an expression obviously... I'm actually pretty proud of my ability to eat loads) from the pictures I posted. Living in a Chinese household, the past couple of weeks is feast celebration.  Between the baking and social visits, foods everywhere and no gym... which is not good, because I'm going on holiday in few weeks time. My friend Cian and I will be travelling across Java (Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta), Bali and Lombok very soon and I am very excited.  If you have any foodie recommendations, do let me know! :) 

Anyway,  one photo I haven't posted is my mother's babi kecap... and I want to share it with all of you now. It's seriously good and so easy to make.  Often mom would cook this using pork belly, but for the special occasion, and because the family loves it too, this time (as pictured below) is pig's feet/knuckle... yum.

Not a lot of spices here to be honest... none actually... just a simple homey dish we grew up eating.  Start with gently frying finely chopped shallots in a little vegetable oil in a big pot that comes with a lid.  Then add the cleaned and cut up knuckle or use pork belly and continue frying until they brown up a bit.  Pour in enough water/chicken stock/combination of the two to cover the whole thing... add the rest of the ingredients: fried tofu, hard-boiled eggs, lots of garlic (whole and unpeeled)... the garlic will become sweet and soft and in my family, everybody fights for it... and last but not least the sweetened soy sauce. Let it comes to boil and simmer with the lid on until the pork is very tender. Season with salt and white pepper to taste.

You can eat the pork straightaway with rice, but what I would suggest if you have the patience, the braised pork, like many other stews tastes better the next day or even few days after the cooking... after it's been cooled and reheated again.  And because I like to get rid of some of the grease; in the fridge, the fat rises to the top and solidifies, making it easy to scoop out.

Last thing I want to tell you is, my wonderful blogger friend, Peter from Delicious Delicious Delicious blog is back hosting his famous re-inventing the Lamington event.  You can read more about it here if you want to get involve.  I have an idea of the kind of lamington I want to bake.  I now have to test it and hope that it'll work, so watch this space!

Spicy Roasted Chicken Thighs with Miso and Ginger

As Chinese New Year is approaching in few days time, the Toa household is getting busier... Often at this time of year, my mom takes orders from family and close friends for her celebration cookies and tarts.  So, the past few days we have been baking non stop to meet tight deadlines.

But of course, no matter how busy we are, it's still not an excuse to stop eating well...  And no fast food from the joints either, but just good food, fast, like this spicy roasted chicken thighs in miso and ginger that we had for Sunday lunch earlier.  It is a recipe from The Kitchn, one of my go-to websites for kitchen inspirations. 

This recipe takes no time to prepare and for better flavour, you can marinate the chicken thighs overnight in the fridge.  I did it early in the morning until around lunchtime and it tastes wonderful...  Making the marinade is also a doddle... simple put the miso paste, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, lemon zest, vegetable oil and chili sauce in a blender and blitz until smooth and it's done.

You can use any chili sauce that you like... Sriracha is great, but today I use gochujang which is a traditional Korean chili paste... It is very versatile and a definite staple in my pantry. 

The original recipe calls for boneless and skinless chicken thighs.  I did remove the skin and make a couple of slashes on each thighs to ensure the marinade really seeps into the meat; but I kept the bones because I like to nibble on them :)

I like to serve the chicken with sweetcorn rice and cooked broccoli that I simply dress with soy sauce and sesame oil.  I hope you give this a go, because once you made this, you'll want to make it again, and again...

Anyway, it's past midnight now, and I need to get some sleep, because in a few hours time, the baking fun starts again! :) 

Spicy Roasted Chicken Thighs with Miso and Ginger

For complete list of ingredients and instructions, click here.

Gulai Ayam - Chicken Stewed in Coconut Milk

I'm sure there are hundreds of variations to gulai ayam... I mean, coconut milk is widely used in stews and curries from Southeast Asia to Africa... Chicken is the most common protein for gulai, but lamb or goat are popular as well. 

It is so easy to make gulai from scratch, especially this version of mine. Often when making a stew or curry like this, it involves making a spice paste.  I don't bother with that... not this time.  I just finely chop the ingredients.  So, there's a bit of chopping and grating here which I don't mind doing.  But if you want to speed up the process, you could chop the shallots, garlic, chillies, ginger, lemongrass and fresh coriander in a food processor or in a blender...and what gives the gulai that lovely marigold-yellow and uplifting colour is turmeric.

Again, I only use chicken thighs and legs here because they have more flavours and are cheaper.  But do use the white meat if you prefer that. 

The stew/curry is best served with rice, although I must say, if you have a nice crusty bread to soak up the gravy, it's delicious as well.

Chicken Stewed in Coconut Milk

6 shallots, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 tsp freshly grated ginger
2 red chillies, thinly sliced
1 lemongrass, white part only, lightly bruised
A handful of fresh coriander, stalks finely chopped and leaves roughly chopped
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
8 pieces of chicken, preferably organic
350 ml coconut milk
300 ml water
2 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
Juice of 1 lime
Salt and white pepper, to taste

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the shallots, garlic, ginger, chillies, lemongrass and coriander stalks (I accidentally add the leaves too). Cook for a couple of minutes or until fragrant.  

Add the ground turmeric, followed by the chicken pieces. Stir to make sure the chicken pieces are all coated in the spices. Pour the coconut milk and water.  Season with salt and white pepper.  When the mixture comes to a boil, add the potatoes and let this simmer for 30-40 minutes, stirring from time to time.  

Before serving, add the lime juice, taste and adjust the seasoning.  Serve with rice and sprinkle over the coriander leaves.

Ayam Goreng Jawa - Javanese Style Fried Chicken - Video

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you that the coming year is a delicious one... 

I hope all of you have recovered from the festivity and is excited to start the new year... I look forward to see what's 2014 going to bring and where it gonna takes me... Last year has not been my year, but I am gonna continue working hard to achieve my goals and keeping myself positive that things can only get better from here... One can only hope anyway.

I want to start this year where we left off with my Indonesian food series and also....*drum-rolls... a new video! Honestly, it's been really fun making these videos and I feel like I've gained a new skill as well, that is, to video edit.  When I was a media student, that's the one task I avoid as much as possible. For a group project when we had to create a television programme, I volunteered to write scripts, reports, build sets, everything else, but please don't make me edit. I mean it looks complicated but now that I'm slowly learning from video tutorials and the brilliant tech gurus of the internet, I surprisingly quite enjoy the process. What I still find strange is looking at myself in videos. 

Indonesian style fried chicken is a bit different. In a way that the chicken is cooked in advance by boiling in spices before frying.  The twice cooking step may sound tedious, but I promise it's so easy to do (you'll see soon in the video) and because the chicken is already fully cooked, the frying won't take as long.  

What makes these fried chicken, Javanese... is the spices I use to flavour the chicken. I often add my own take to a recipe, but this time, I'm keeping it pretty authentic with using only shallots, garlic, coriander, cumin and salt.  There's also candlenuts, but its main purpose really is as thickening agent to the spice paste.

Anyway, without further a due, here's the video for my Javanese style fried chicken... I hope you enjoy watching it, and don't forget to click the thumbs-up button if you do and subscribe for more videos :) Thank you!