"Harm-less" Char Kway Teow - Get It?

I am happy I brought back a small bottle of black sweet sauce from Asia and have been saving it for the big day... voila, my first Char Kway Teow (Fried Rice Noodles) in France. I had all the must-have ingredients except for "hahm" ie. cockles, oh... and lard, come to think of it. Oh well, that makes it all a lot less harm-less, doesn't it? Yes, pun intended.

Financier

I tried out this generic financier recipe using a cake pan instead of the little rectangular molds. Turned out pretty good but not as buttery as I would have liked. Nevertheless, the recipe is so simple that I am going to keep it for lazy days. I will increase the almond to flour ratio next time and see if it tastes better.

FINANCIER RECIPE

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of self-raising flour
3/4 cup of almond meal
1/2 cup of fine castor sugar
4 egg whites, lightly beaten
125 grams of butter, melted
2 teaspoons lemon or orange extract
Icing sugar for dusting (optional)

Preparation:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celcius.
2. Mix sugar, flour and almond meal in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg whites and combine well. Add the melted butter and mix till everything is well incorporated.
3. Bake for 20-25 minutes or till a toothpick into the center comes out clean.
5. Cool and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

Kambing Soup

I learnt to appreciate a good piping hot bowl of kambing soup with "chiam tao roti" from the indian hawkers early in life, an unexpected thing given that mutton is too strong in flavour for my liking in general.

I tried to replicate it with this recipe: http://www.malaysianfood.net/recipes/recipesupkambing.htm The end product was tasty but wasn't exactly as I remembered it. If you have a good recipe for mamak's kambing soup, please please share! Thanks!

Lemon Grass Experiment II

Result of my last lemon grass experiment: The stalk that I stuck into a jar of water started rotting after a few days. Darn.

I have planted another one in soil this time. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Food Tip - Fried Onions

These are great as condiments and as a starting base for french onion soup. Good to fry a big bunch of them, store in the fridge and use as and when needed.

Easy Peanut Sauce - A Keeper!

Salt N Turmeric posts such good recipes! I like very much her mom's extremely simple and scrumptious peanut sauce recipe. Do check out her blog.

Hmm... I think I am going to make some gado gado next!

Now, if only somebody could post a simple/easy/shortcut recipe for ketupat from scratch... Do note that instant and prepacked ones are not available here, neither are the leaves for weaving ketupat casings. Thanks in advance!

Talking about ingredients/food which are unavailable here: these are typically ingredients peculiar to malaysia and singapore, such as candlenuts, instant ketupat, instant roti prata, ginger flower, sweet black soya sauce and delimas premixes, to name but a few. Thank goodness I am able to get chinese and "indo-chine" ingredients without problems, thanks to the small chinese, thai, vietnamese and burmese populations here. There just aren't any Indonesians, Malaysians and Singaporeans in my part of the world! I really ought to remember to bring some of these stuff back next time.

Easy Quiche

Quiches are so easy to make when you've got ready-to-bake puff pastry. I like bacon, mushrooms and lots of cheese in mine. Serve with a a mixed salad.

Lemon Grass Experiment

I would love to have a lemon grass plant at home. I am sticking a stalk of it (yes, leafless and rootless) into water and keeping my fingers crossed :) Let's see if we get some roots in a few days...

Other plants I'd love to grow at home: kaffir lime, coriander, torch ginger. Hmm, how do I get started without a "mother plant" to begin with? Advice, anyone?

On a different note, could somebody point me to TRIED and TRUE recipes for mee goreng, mee rebus and mee siam (the soupy type) please? The few that I have tried yielded disappointing results. Thank you.

And by the way, any of my readers live near northern France? I'd love to meet up.