A Homemaker’s Diary

After almost a decade, the blender that comes with the food processor I have been using for cooking gone kaput. I was using it to blend ginger and garlic and when I wanted to pour the paste inside the container, the bottom part of the blender got stuck, the black rubber ring got loose and everything became a mess, a garlicky ginger mess..haha!

Actually I have been planning to buy a new blender that has a dry mill for quite some time before the garlic ginger incident happened. Since my first blender was a Panasonic, I decided to get a new one this time.

What I like best about Panasonic blender is that the jar comes with a stick that proves to be useful when you need to stir whatever you are blending. Phillips doesn’t have that stick in their blender.

I also noticed that for this blender model, the jar is one piece. You don’t have to take out the bottom and upper part of the jar when you need to clean it, thus there’s no rubber ring to be worried about. You might need a long brush like the one you use to clean bottle if you need to scrub the part below the blades.

I have also tested the dry mill. I put about 10 black peppercorn in the dry mill just to check how strong the blade could be. Almost all the peppercorn were reduced to small particles. I am yet to try grinding some other ingredients.

For this particular blender set I bought them through Lazada. With delivery charges it costs me less than RM90. Overall I am happy with my purchase. My son said the new blender is quite noisy compared to the old one we have but for me it’s OK as long as I can get the ingredients for my daily cooking blended nicely..haha!

Same as the first pregnancy, I have this tendency to try new recipes at home. I told Hubby that I want to make Roti John at home when we bought groceries at Tesco last night. It turned out that the recipe is quite simple.

You just have to fry the minced chicken or beef with some onion, garlic, ginger and curry powder. I always have blended paste of onion, garlic and ginger in the fridge so it was not a hassle at all. Then if you like daun bawang or daun sup, you can chop them finely and put in the fried minced meat. Add seasoning like black or white pepper and salt.

Take out the cooked meat. Put a bit of butter in the non stick pan, put the minced meat the size of the bread. Pour the egg which you must beat earlier. Put the bread on top of the egg. Wait till the egg turn brown and flip the bread.

Garnish your Roti John with any condiment you like. My favorite will be chili sauce and mayonaise. Add on vegetable like butterhead lettuce, thin slices of cucumber and tomato. Eat your bread hot.

Finally the Raya season is slowly coming back to normal pace as people getting back to work after a long break and daily routine is on…pheww!

We made ketupat palas as usual for Raya though this time our ketupat tend to be lembik and lack of rasa lemak because I put too little salt in the santan..huhu! And daun palas we bought from pasar were all too small, some were like 3-4 jalur.

Nevertheless I considered the mission to make ketupat palas a success since it was really challenging trying to cook with an active toddler like our son. Hopefully next year it will be better and less stressful..sigh!

Well, how many ketupat or lemang you guys had during this year Raya? I wonder if people still make ketupat for open house..haha!

I bought 4 medium chunks of tapioca on Sunday, boiled all of them into ubi rebus and ate with my sambal bilis.

But since I didn’t eat much of the ubi kayu rebus, I kept them in fridge until today (Tuesday).

I think I overcooked the tapioca since they were over mushy. So the best thing and the fastest way to turn them into something edible again is to fry them in oil.

For this recipe, I pounded 4 garlics, rub the tapioca with salt and fry in hot oil.

As I was rushing to take out the fried ubi kayu from the hot pan, the flame from the stove burned my kitchen paper towel..huhu! I was panicked and tried so hard to extinguish the burning paper. I can’t put the plate full of fried ubi kayu in the sink and used running water to douse the flame. What I can do was to blow the fire out..huhu!

Luckily the fire subsided once it reached the part where the paper was soaked in oil from the fried ubi kayu. So much adventure and challenge for trying to come out with ubi kayu goreng for tea..huhu!

I gave some to my neighbor via her Bibik and in return got a container of rendang daging..rezeki!

I am not a good baker..isk..I can bake but the outcomes sometimes are total disaster (not up to the standard that I wish for..huhu). But every now and then, I managed to bake simple dessert like cheese cake for SIL and butter cake for Hubby. For dinner and lunch, I could manage to bake fish, beef and chicken (or is it considered as roasting? I am confused between all the cooking terms and glossary)

Regardless of that I still have interest on Holiday baking recipes like cake, cupcake, tart and pie..only that I wish I have the time and chance to really practise and learn the right methods. I am really bad when it comes to bake cookies, the last festive cookies I tried to make came out all wrong. Luckily Hubby seems to have the talent for that, so he was the one baking all our Hari Raya cookies..hehe!

I am a visual person so watching baking lessons on video online or on cooking program on TV could really help me learn a thing or two. My favorite shows are Sugar by Anna Olson and Chef At Home by Chef Michael Smith. I also found a website – ivillage.com that has a very great pictures of food and video about cooking.

I am currently browsing their Easter menu – their Roasted Potatoes and Carrots with Citrus does look yummy even though it’s just vegetable. I guess with nice presentation, even the most boring food could look tasty on the screen..heh!

Oh, for those looking for ideas for their Easter basket goodies, what do you think of this “egg”?

Nice, huh? These eggs are meant to be cracked. (How else to show off the decadent chocolate insides?) The shell, yolk and white are made from solid dark and white chocolate. It is sold as set of 2 for $40 at Dean & Deluca.

Coming back to the baking story, I hope by the time my son is old enough to understand the joy of birthday celebration, I would be good enough in baking his birthday cake or cupcakes to be sent to his playschool..in the mean time I do have to practise more..few more years to go!