Black Pepper Steak

This recipe is dedicated to my son Afif who has finished his end of year exams and is set to enjoy his first summer abroad.

Ingredients:
4 fillet steaks- 2cm thick, 150g each, trim excess fat.
2 garlic cloves-crushed
1 tablespoon coarsely grounded black peppercorns
1 tablespoon coarsely grounded white peppercorns
50g butter
1 tablespoon oil

Sauce:
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon light soya sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon beef stock granules
1/2 cup stock
1 tablespoon vinegar

Method:

Flatten the steak with a steak mallet. Spread garlic on both sides of steaks. Sprinkle and press in the grounded peppercorns into the meat and leave in a plastic container, covered and set aside for 30 minutes.
Heat butter and oil in a heavy based frying pan and cook the steaks over medium high heat for 5 minutes to seal the juices, turning once. Remove the steaks from the pan and if you want the steaks to be well done, cook them in an oven for about 10 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, turning frequently and dipping with butter now and then to prevent the steaks from drying up.

Meanwhile, stir in the combined sauce in the heated pan and bring to a low simmer until sauce thickens.

When the steaks are done, place them on serving plates with 2 steamed corn on the cob, some French fries and 2 slices of fresh tomatoes.

To serve, add a dollop of tomato sauce or chilli sauce and some mustard.

Another method


You can marinate the steaks with the garlic, peppercorns and sauce ingredients for a minimum of two hours in the fridge.Next, toss the steaks from the marinade and cook them in an oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes, turning frequently and dipping with butter to prevent the steaks from drying up.

The balance of the marinade is cooked as above. The serving of the steaks is also as mentioned earlier.

Kerabu Kacang Boto or Kacang Kelisa ( Angled Beans Salad)

INGREDIENTS:

Pound and mix the following in a stone mortar and pestle:
3 fresh red chillies
4 shallots
1 tablespoon salted shrimps, toasted
2.5 cm belacan (shrimp paste), toasted
some tamarind juice

Slice:
300g angled beans
2 onions
2 fresh red chillies
1 fresh green chillies

a little salt if necessary, that is if the salted shrimps and belacan are not salty enough
 a little sugar to taste
1/4 fresh coconut, grated, fried till golden and pounded (that is made into kerisik). (Nowadays you can also buy ready -made kerisik or use dessicated coconut to replace fresh coconut).

Mix all the ingredients in red font, blue font and purple font together and serve as part of accompaniments to hot boiled white rice.

To act a little oomph to you 'kerabu' you may add 1 sliced wild ginger flower (bunga kantan).
The angled beans can also be substituted with long beans. You do not need to preboil the long beans.Just cut into 2 cm strips.

Steamed Siakap in Plum Sauce

Nurul , my eldest daughter is home this week. She is on duty at the CPRC (Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre), the Ministry of Health, Putrajaya for 3 days.

While she is here, I took out the siakap (sea perch) I have had in the fridge for about 2 weeks. You see, the fish is too big to cook for 2 so I had to wait for another person to join us before I cooked it.

My son Afif loves the plum sauce eaten with steam siakap. This time Nurul helped me made some changes to my normal steam siakap. The dish was prepared as follows:

Ingredients:

Fish:

1 siakap, gutted, scaled, washed and marinated with a few squirts of Thai fish sauce and a little oyster sauce.

2.5 cm ginger root, chopped

1 onion, sliced into rings

1 stalk lemon grass, sliced

1/2 carrot, cut into strips

6 button mushrooms, sliced

Sauce:

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic

3 tablespoon plum sauce

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 tabsp oyster sauce

2 sprigs kafir lime leaves (daun limau purut)

2 pieces salted Chinese plum (asam boi)

Some water

Method:

Fill the steamer with water and place on heat. Place a ceramic plate or a metal dish in the steamer and before the water boils, lay the fish in it. Scatter the the other fish ingredients on the fish and steam till the fish is cooked (about 15 minutes). Turn off the heat and remove the plate of fish and set aside.

Meanwhile you can prepare the plum sauce by frying the chopped onions and garlic in the cooking oil. Add the plum sauce, oyster sauce, pepper,lemon grass and kafir lime leaves, Chinese plums and about 2 cups of water.Cook till the liquid volume is halved. This would allow the Chinese plums to integrate into the sauce. If the sauce is too salty you can add more water and/or more plum sauce.

You see the plum sauce do not need additional salt as salt is already present in the ingredients.

The plum sauce is poured on the steamed fish and you can enjoy it with rice and vegetables.

Our dinner that night also consisted of ikan pekasam (fish fermented with fried rice) and squid curry. Ummph, delicious.