SMOKE IN MY KITCHEN

Fried Cempedak

It was almost at the end of one-on-one session with my new client when suddenly a whiff of ripe cempedak perfumed my office. 

"What are the things you think you want to change at this...........errr....do you smell that?"

"What? Not me I hope." He turned his head to his right shoulder and sniffed.

"No, no. I apology. I think I'd just smelled one of my favorite food from childhood. Never mind, the tree doesn' even grow in this climate, lets get back to your statement earlier."

After I left my office, I walked up to Ming Supermarket on Washington Street, six block away from my office. There were six frozen cempedak left at the bottom of the freezer. The cempedak was imported from Vietnam. On a clear plastic wrap, it said mini jackfruit. They should have sticked to cempedak, instead of mini jackfruit.

I use the last handful of rice flour to make the batter which was a little watery, but paird with a cup of hot chai, I finished all of it while reading The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins.

Blueberry Cells Reactivated

  I made bluerberry compote three months ago, put it away in a freezer and forgot all about it. This morning while tying up my shoes laces I remembered I made the damn thing and never tasted it. And I don't know why shoe laces got anything to do with blueberyy compote.

Perhaps sitting down on the toilet, bending my head down from waist, some cells in my brain bumping into each other and the cells that carry blueberyy information were reactivated.

Roasted Sweet Peppers & Zuchini

It has been a while since the last time I wrote an entry in Smoke In My Kitchen blog. It's not that I stop cooking. I still do. But I don't prepare much Malay dishes like I used to. I buy plenty of green leafy vegetables: romaine lettuce, Boston lettuce, arugula, and my favorite is baby spinach. I don't get them all at once.I buy two different leafy vegetables every week, and baby a spinach is one of them.

To add to my vegetables basket, I would add zucchini, yellow squash, avocado (when they are on sale), sweet potatoes.

Last week I bought a packet of combination of orange, yellow and red sweet peppers. I couldn't resist them when I saw them sitting on top of each other in a clear plastic container. I knew it immediately what I wanted to do with them. Just roast them, I thought. And that was exactly I did. I sliced them, removed the seeds, tossed with sea salt and olive oil.

I ate them with couscous on Monday and on Thursday I made a sandwich using rye bread. A sprinkle of goat cheese made my sandwich sinful delicious.

Blueberry Fluffy Pancake

It has been a while since I had a fluffy pancake for breakfast, but last Sunday after all day running around Boston with Mama Z I made my fluffy pancake. When I said running around, it wasn't actually we ran. We walked four miles, along the boardwalk and two laps of Castle Island. Later, we went to fabric shop on Morose Blvd. Mama Z wanted to make some vests for her daughter Shayna.

We went back to my apartment to change clothes and went to the beach. Mama Z read The Glass Castle which I highly recommended and I'd just dozed off. What a lovely way to polish off the weekend. It was almost 5:00 pm when we left the beach.

I was hungry, but I didn't feel like making some salad although I had the baby spinach, lettuce, soft tofu, cherry tomatoes, avocado and some left over of goat cheese.

I wanted something sweet, something heavy something fluffy.

How  about fluffy pancake?

Brilliant!!

And you have a fresh blueberry

Double brilliant!!!

Sardines Over Polenta

Sardine has always been my favorite food. When I was a kid I didn't get to eat sardines as much as I wanted to because my mother's motto was: Sardines was only for an emergency. "I'm not going to feed my family with sardines three or four times a week. Only lazy women do that."

Mak always made sure she had two or three cans of sardines in food cabinet. By the end of the month if there was no emergency cases in our family, she would prepared the most delicious sardines curry on planet earth.

I came home from school and caught the aroma of bubbling sardines curry in a pot from the kitchen and I was like: "Yeayyyy......we eat sardines curry today." I pictured the silky gravy poured on my white rice with a lot of soft tomatoes and onions. And the ultimate prize was a huge chunk of sardines sat beautifully on top white rice in my plate. Ohhhhhh Mama.......

Last week I was leafing through 2004 Food and Wine magazine in a doctor's office I came across polenta recipe. I don't remember when was the last time I had polenta, but polenta reminds me of Mike. He owned a diner in financial district Downtown Boston where I was one of his sandwich makers/cooks.

Every three months he would add a new item on his menu. He offerred them free to his regular customers (90% of his customers were regulars)for three days before he officially add the new one on the menu.

Unlike others food, polenta didn't catch on. Every time the customers walked in he would ask them: "Would you like to try polenta? They are awesome".

He was lucky if one customer out of 20 customers he asked said yes. After three days not even one polenta was tasted by the customers. The following week he made a new batch. By the end of the day only one customer tried his polenta. Mike was excastic. But that was it. Nobody wanted the polenta the next day and the following day. Mike cancelled his plan of adding polenta in his menu.

After I left Mike's Diner/Cafe, I've always associated polenta with Mike.

For dinner tonight I made sardines over polenta.

Colorful Taste Buds

Friday was a long day. I was drained when I got home. The bare naked trees, the melting snow on the ground and the gray colored sky didn't help much.

When I passed the third building apartment next to the building where I live, an excessively profanity used by a Puerto Rican woman cussing at her baby's father from her third floor bedroom was enough for me to block everything out.

The woman kept spitting out the words, "Nigger this and nigger that...." to her Puerto Rican baby's father who stood on the ground under the woman's bedroom window who in return called her fat ass bitch.

Before I dumped my sling back on the floor, I put on Violin Adagios CD on my pc and then removed my hat, sling bag, scarf, and jacket.

I was hungry, but I wanted some extra color in my food. The music soothed and calmed me down. I put the kettle on for a cup of tea.

I rinsed a cup of sushi rice until the water was clear. I put the rice in a large measurement cup, added three cups of water and five drops of red coloring.

I poured a half cup of orange juice on salmon, a dash of ground cardamom, salt and pepper. I put three slices of tofu, two halves of small eggplant and tossed them together in a bowl. I turned the oven on and washed a handful of spinach.

The tea was almost gone when I slid the tray into the oven. I tossed a knotted screwpine leave in a rice pot and set the heat at #3 got into a shower.

I felt like I had peeled some of bad day layersoff my body when I came out of a shower 20 minutes later, I turned over the salmon, tofu, onion rings and egg plants. The rice was almost done. The red color was vibrant. I whacked a piece of garlic, removed the skin, added a dash of pepper and cooked the spinach with minimal water.

It was simple and jazzy dinner with a soft music on the background.

It Is Akok Because I Said So

I'm a sucker for Malay sweet kuih. The sweeter the better. I wrote about my discovery of Kuih Akok when I went to visit my family in Taiping in October 2006.

I've made a few attempts to try my hands on akok. They failed miserably but I ate them all.Then when I read Zawi's blog in Food of Kelantan Part 2 about akok, I thought I missed the big important piece. He said they use duck egg white only. That was how Akok get the wrinkles. The more wrinkles the better.

Only if we had the same idea about our wrinkles. The more the better, eh?

First picture, 15 seconds out of oven.

I didn't get the duck eggs nor did I used egg white.

I used four large eggs, a half cup of coconut milk, two tablespoon of flour.

After I removed them from the mould I realized I forgot to add sugar. That's when my maples syrup came handy.

I had this fattening scrumptious akok for brunch after my weekend brilliant run. 

Ooohhh My Baby Corns, Baby Zuchinni.

I missed my lunch earlier today. When the meeting was over it was already 4:15 pm. I hopped on the train back to downtown did a quick one hour run on the treadmills.

When I got home I was shaking with hunger.

I quickly marinated salmon, baby corns, baby zuchinni, two sliced of apple, red pepper and few sliced carrot by adding two TB spoon of OJ, pepper, a dash of seasalt and a dash of groundnutmeg.

I put everything on griddle on low heat. Before I jumped into a shower, I washed and rinsed a two cups of basmati rice. I fried the rice the way I learned from Nina van Der Veen, added water, put on the lid and lower the heat.

When I got out of shower, the rice was cooked, and everything on the griddle was ready to be turned over.

It was pretty good healthy meal and I no longer shaking.

Slow Baked Lamb Leg and Dried Fruits

Sometimes I don't have a plan to buy an organic grass fed lamb meat, but when I see on the shelves Harvest Supermarket, I won't hesitate .

Before I went to bed on Monday night, I made a korma paste (a combination of ground coriander, star anise seeds,cumin, white pepper, nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon and almond paste for thickening agent). I added tamarind juice to the paste as well.

I smothered my a half-lamb leg, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and went to bed.

The next day, on Christmas day, before I went out to run, I set the oven at 100 degree, removed the plastic wrap, arranged four organic carrots, two sweet onions, one cup of mixed dried fruits around the lamb leg. Overnight, the juice from the lamb have formed nicely at the bottom of the pan. I covered the lamb with aluminum foil to form a tent. I filled a half cup of water in a bigger pan and placed the lamb pan in it.

When I got back 2.5 hours later, the lamb was done. All juicy and tender and my tiny kitchen scented up with heavenly aroma. I covered back the tent to trap the heat while I heated up the leftover basmati rice and baked a bottom part of spaghetti squash for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I dug in....

Note: I seldom follow any cooking or kitchen rules. When I am in the kitchen I do what I feel right for taste buds. My style of cooking is I cook the way I FEEL it.

Stuffed Baked Butternut Squash

I haven't cooked serious dinner lately. Soups have become my regular since October. I made pomegranate/split peas soup twice last month, pumpkin soup in October (no, I didn't use pumpkin from Halloween, I used turban pumpkin instead), tomato soup two weeks ago, barley and lamb shank soup the day I got a mammogram test result.

I left the office two hours early (two hours from working late last week) after I completed a new client intake interview. I missed my lunch. I  had two slices of multigrain oatnut toast with apple/redpepper spread and almond nut for breakfast.

I was hungry when I got home. I had a couple of wheat crackers with Habanero Jack cheese to hold my hunger at bay.

I rinsed and cooked basmati rice, turned on the oven to 400 degree, cut the butternut squash into two sections. Put away the top part back in the refrigerator. I scooped out the seeds, seasoned with lemon juice, sprinkled a dash of salt on top. Filled the pan with  2/3 glass of water, placed the squash in the pan, cover with aluminum foil and baked for about 25 minutes or until it's tender.

I chopped two cups of baby spinach and made cream spinach. When the cream spinach was ready I carefully placed it into a hollow of baked butternut squash.

I was amazed how delicous the combination of creamy spinach and baked squash were. Nutty, creamy and explosive.