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.

Cooking Vegetables-Chinese Style

I love vegetables and feel incomplete if vegetables are not included in main meals.Fortunately, my children all eat and love their vegetables as well.

I do not like too much spices in vegetables. The Chinese method of preparing the vegetables suits my taste.

This is how I cook the Chinese stir fried vegetables.

Ingredients:
4 pieces each of 3 types of any mushrooms;(button,, abalone or black mushrooms)
4 pieces abalone
4 young corn
100g broccoli
6 pea pods
100g carrot
2 pieces bean curd
100g cauliflower

You can also use other vegetables you fancy such as water chestnuts, asparagus or celery.
All vegetables except the bean curd, and abalone are washed and cut to bite sizes and scalded in boiling water for 3 minutes and set aside.
Mix 1/2 cup chicken stock with 1 tbsp corn flour in a small bowl. Add 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp black pepper powder and 2 tsp soya sauce and set aside.

Heat a little oil in a wok or large frying pan and fry 4 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped.Add abalone. Add vegetables and bean curd (quartered) and stir fry lightly for 2 minutes.Stir in the stock for 2 more minutes until gravy thickens.

Enjoy hot with plain white rice.

KERABU TAUGEH (BEAN SPROUTS SALAD)

Any kind of sprouts is good for you as sprouts supply the nutrients to the young plant. Try making your bean sprouts from mung beans (Kacang hijau). I am sure many of us learn how to do this in our Science class in primary school. The sprouts you get from the d-i-y lasts longer and tastes better. It is crunchier too unlike the ones you get from the market which turn soggy and sour after a day or two.

The beansprout salad is a nice change from the ordinary stir-fried vegetables.


Ingredients:

500g bean sprouts
1 cup oilfree toasted grated coconut, pounded for use as kerisek. You can use desicated coconut if you are not accesible to freshly grated coconut or you can buy ready made kerisek in the market.
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup cooked shrimps
toasted sesame seeds
2 fresh chillies,sliced
1 sprig cilantro, 1 sprig spring onion and 1 sprig celery (daun sup) chopped
a liitle sugar and salt for seasoning

Boil some water and pour over the beansprouts to scald them. You can also use the microwave oven to do these.
Mixed all ingredients except the bean sprouts in a large bowl till evenly mixed. Finally add the bean sprouts and serve.

ACAR CINA or CHINESE PICKLES

I wonder why it is called Chinese pickles in my recipe book. I have never seen it in Chinese cooking. At a wedding my family attended on Sunday, this vegetable dish was served. It is actually a Malay dish normally served at weddings. Perhaps the Malays adapted it from a Chinese recipe.

The ingredients are:
1 cucumber(remove the core), 5 strands of long beans (French beans if you cannot find long beans), 1 carrot, all cut into 5 cm strips.
2 fresh red chillies, 2 fresh green chillies, split halfway into 4
5 shallots, cut into 2, or 2 onions,cut into 4

To be grounded:
4 fresh red chillies,
5 cloves garlic
2.5 cm ginger
3 shallots

Other ingredients:
1 tsp mustard seed
a handful of oil-free toasted sesame seeds
4 tbsp vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
a liitle salt
3 tbsp oil

Heat oil and fry the grounded ingredients in a saucepan till fragrant. Add vinegar, sugar and salt. Add the vegetables and cook quickly but not for too long so that the vegetables remain crunchy. Remove from the heat and sprinkle the sesame seeds.

Cucumber Pickle (Acar Timun)

This acar timun is normally prepared during wedding feasts or can be eaten with normal plain rice,tomato rice or beriani.

3 cucumbers-remove the centre and cut into strips of 3 cm each.
1 carrot-shredded or cut into strips like the cucumber
1 big onion-sliced
2 red and 2 green chillies-halved
2 tbsp roasted sesame seed
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar, or to taste
1/2 cup vinegar
3/4 cup oil

Ingredients to be blended:

6 cloves garlic
3 cm ginger
2 cm fresh turmeric
10 dry chillies
10 candlenuts

Mix vegetables with 1 tsp salt, using a strainer, press out the juice.Heat oil in pan and fry blended ingredients.Fry until fragrant.Add sugar, salt and vinegar.Fry until sauce thickens and the oil seeps to the top. Leave to cool.When cooled, add the vegetables and sesame seeds.

Below is another easy to make salad that does not need any cooking.I observe this salad being prepared by the Nasi Beriani hawker near my house.

Easy Cucumber Salad:

2 cucumbers, remove centre and cut into strips as above.
1 carrot, cut as cucumbers,
1/2 pineapple,remove skin, core and cut into strips like the cucumber.(You can use canned pineapples and you need not add anymore sugar).
a little sprinkle of sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup vinegar

Salads and Kerabu

Having only a microwave oven often limits your choice of types of meals to prepare.However, preparing certain salads and kerabu ( the Malay equivalent of salads)does not need any cookers or ovens.

Here is a family favorite,the tangy mango kerabu.Kerabus are popular in the northern part of Malaysia.It must be from the Thai influence.

Ingredients for the Mango Kerabu:

2 unripe mangoes,cleaned and skin removed
100g shallots or onions,sliced
10 bird's eye chillies, sliced
75g dried anchovies
a handful of raw peanuts
1 tbsp dried shrimps, soaked and coarsely pounded

Salad dressing

3 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 tbsp sugar or to taste

Fry anchovies until fragrant and crispy.Dish out and set aside.Heat wok until hot, then put in raw peanuts and salt.Lower the heat and stir-fry constantly for 10-15 minutes with a quick to-and-fro motion.Fry until the peanut skin begins to blister and turns brown.There must be no compromise for this, otherwise the peanuts will end up with a burnt skin outside and still raw inside. Before dishing up, test the peanut by tasting it.Make sure it is crunchy.Remove from the heat and allow to cool before removing the skin.You can do this frying at home where you have the normal cooker if you only have a microwave oven in your rented apartment.For those living away from home,other than in Malaysia, I am sure you will be provided with a hotplate at least.
Shred mango with a shredder.If you don't have a shredder, you can cut it into small strips manually with a sharp knife.Combine mango with sliced shallots or onions, bird's eye chillies and dried shrimps to the salad bowl.If bird's eye chillies are too hot for you, you can substitute with normal red or green chillies.
Mix dressing ingredients together and add into the mango mixture.Toss well to combine.Just before serving, stir in the peanuts and anchovies.

Variations to the recipe above:

You can exclude the fish sauce if you cannot find it in the market.I normally add shredded wild ginger flowers, (bunga Kantan) and the children would love it.

Pecal

My family loves pecal.This is a kind of salad in peanut sauce which we eat with scalded and tossed rice vermicelli or with nasi empet. Actually I learnt to make pecal from my in-laws after I got married.We never had them when I was young as it is a Javanese dish and my husband's family, although not Javanese, live in a majority Javanese community.We have a similar kind of salad which is called gado-gado but the sauce is prepared differently.Nowadays the pecal sauce is hardly being prepared at home as it is readily available at the markets. I still prefer making them myself as I would make them less sweet but hotter.My daughter Zaty is now quite an expert assistant in preparing the pecal.

You can prepare the vegetables simultaneously with the sauce.
First boil some clean preferably filtered water in a large pot.When the water has boiled, dip in the rice vermicelli in a metal sieve or colander for a few minutes.Toss when cooked and place in a large tray.You can line the tray with banana leave if you want your pecal to be attractively served.You cook the rice vermiceli first so that it will remain white after cooking.If you dip it in the hot water after the vegetables, then you may get green vermicelli.

Vegetables:
5 Long beans, 1 bundle pucuk paku (a kind of fern shoots),1 bundle tapioca shoots,a handful of bean sprouts(taugeh), 1 bundle kangkong(water spinach),1 cucumber, 1 turnip (sengkuang).The beansprouts are scalded first. This is followed by boiling the other vegetables (except cucumber and sengkuang) separately before cutting to bite sizes.The tougher portions of the tapioca shoots, kangkong and pucuk paku are discarded.The cucumber and sengkuang are cut into small 2 to 3 cm strips.

Optional:Tempeh(soya bean cake),taufu(soya bean curd)-are fried and cut into bite sizes.

Place all the vegetables, tempeh and taufu in the tray.

This ia how I make the pecal peanut sauce:

600g peanuts
(A)Rest of Ingredients:
30 dried chillies,cut and deseeded
5 shallots or 2 onions,sliced
prawn paste or belacan, the size of the 3 cm diameter ball
3 tablespoon dried shrimps
tamarind, about double the size of belacan
All the ingredients are fried separately in a little hot oil starting with the peanuts.

Once the peanuts are crunchy, you pound them in a pestle amd mortar or grind in an electric grinder.The nuts do not have to be finely grounded.Maybe about 40% are coarsely grounded.If you feel like it, you can also pound the rest of the ingredients together except tamarind, after you have pounded and removed the peanuts into a bowl.

To mix the pecal sauce:

Place the ingredients A in a bowl and add half of the pounded peanuts.Add some sugar (3 to 4 tablespoons)and tamarind mixed with hot water.Add more hot water or peanuts as necessary for a well mixed sauce that is neither too concentrated nor too thin.Taste before adding more sugar, tamarind juice or salt.

You may eat the pecal by putting all the vegetables, vermicelli or nasi empet and tempeh and taufu in a plate and adding the sauce on top.


If you cannot find some of the vegetables, you can still prepare pecal if you have the basic ingredients, i.e. chillies,onions,belacan and tamarind.However, non-Malaysians may object to the smell of fried belacan so you have to prepare pecal or sambal for that matter, when they are not around, that is if you stay in a students' hostel.For vegetables,try similar vegetables if you cannot find Malaysian vegetables.Who knows pecal may taste better with brussel or pea sprouts,carrots,asparagus, parsnip or lettuce.

Kuah Lodeh (Mixed Vegetables in Creamy Coconut Gravy)

Nasi empet served with 'Kuah Lodeh' and 'Kuah Kacang'



 Here is the gravy to accompany the nasi empet and kuah kacang.I have adapted the recipe which I got from a Malaysian-Singapore Students Newsletter years ago, while I was an A level student myself.

Ingredients:
1 carrot, peel and dice
200g long beans (substitute with french beans if you cannot find long beans),cut into 1.5 cm strips
200g cabbage,cut into 2 cm squares
a few young corn,cut into bite sizes
bean thread (su hun), (can find this in Chinese stores)
Dried Taufu Slices( Fu Cuk),cut in small pieces and soaked in water, then drained,(can find this in Chinese stores)
Fried Bean Curd (Taufu),dice
You may add cauliflower florets,brinjals,fried tempe if you prefer.
2 pieces young bamboo shoots, pre-boiled, drained and cut to 2 cm strips
Turmeric Leaves(Daun Kunyit),optional
2 stalk Lemon Grass (Serai),optional, mash the root.
Coconut Milk, quite thick

Blended Ingredients:
4 cloves garlic
2 cm lengkuas
2cm ginger
2 big onions
4 tablespoon dried shrimps
2 tablespoon chilli boh
3 pieces of candlenuts (buah keras)
1 tablespoon turmeric powder, I normally use 2 cm fresh turmeric, though)

Heat some oil and fry blended ingredients and daun kunyit and lemon grass.Fry until dry and fragrant.Add in the preboiled bamboo shoots, carrot,and thin coconut milk.Thin coconut milk means you add more water to make it less concentrated.

When the carrot is half-cooked,add in the long beans or French beans, young corn, cauliflower and thick coconut milk.Add in the other vegetables, adding fu cuk and su hun last. The coconut milk must cover the vegetables. Add salt to taste.You may also add anchovy soup base if you like.

(You may also add fresh shrimps if you prefer.You don't have to blend them.Just peel off the shell and wash before adding to the gravy. You can boil the shells and use the stock in the kuah lodeh gravy).

When I was a student in the UK, the coconut milk or 'santan' came in packets of frozen cream,a bit like butter.You have to cut it and thaw before adding water and putting in curries or creamy sauces.Now they come in UHT packs and cholesterol free so it seems.I do not know how it is sold in India or Australia, or the US for that matter.

Serve while hot or else the gravy will be absorbed into the vegetables.