When I was young, one of my favourite breakfast is this fried glutinous rice. I decided to make some for today and tried to find my recipe last night but I could not find it this blog. Sadly it must heave been lost with my old blog.

So today I decided to blog this and at the same time teach my daughter as she is on holiday and she likes this a lot too. Halfway on my camera’s battery died so I took a break and have a cuppa then continues.

In them days, the good old days, the market vendors used only glutinous rice, dried shrimps and eggs – the basic. Then later on some added Chinese sausages – lap cheong. I know some people nowadays will add dried scallops, mushrooms and others but I still prefers it simple. Nostalgia is inexplicable. Maybe I should say ‘nostalgia is the problem?’

Anyway so last night I soaked some glutinous rice and today I served this. I added some char sui because I made some the other day and I have a few strips left so I decided to let the family finish them. This is not a hardcore recipe dish, meaning you can give and take on the ingredients.

I will just post the basics. If you have any problem making just poke me and I will try to explain. Below I explained with my pics. Enjoy.

I decided we are having chicken this week but I have no idea what to cook with it. There is no point in asking the hubby as he will always say “curry!” I wanted to do something different and finally decided late last night I am going to cook it stuffed with glutinous rice.

Roast chicken with glutinous rice – I have not made this dish for a long time. This recipe is also not in this new blog. So I decided to cook, photograph and blog it, least I forget in my dotage.

As soon as I have made up my mind on what to cook, I washed and marinated my chicken overnight, soaked my glutinous rice and the mushrooms. This morning all I had to to was removed everything from the fridge and let all rest to room temperature before I started soaking the dried shrimps, peeling and slicing. Then it was a matter of just firing up the pan frying and stuffing.

When ready it was then placed in my convectional oven for 90 minutes because it is a very ‘Large’ M&S chicken. I preferred to use my single convectional oven over my big fan oven for this because it has a turn table and the chicken will come out evenly browned.

As usual my recipe is a guide. You do not have to add dried shrimps if you don’t want to, or you can use dark soy sauce, which I did not use in this case. You can use dried scallops or oysters even. It is entirely up to you. Today I also added chestnuts to mine as my hubby loves them. You know, sometimes less is really more. However I have used a bit more ginger because I really like the taste and ginger with sesame oil is a match made in heaven, according to my taste buds anyway. Here’s a few TIPs

TIP – When frying your rice, use the soaked mushroom water and make sure the rice is al dente and not too cooked for we do not want mushy rice. Hmmm….. well maybe one day, if I could be so lucky and live old enough to have that ‘toothless’ grin.

TIP – I did not wrap my chicken before baking because I actually like some of my rice ‘crunchy’ If you don’t then by all means wrap your chicken entirely after stuffing and bake for the first hour, then remove the covering and bake the last 30 minutes uncovered for browning the chicken. You may also like to brush your chicken with some honey at this stage (all optional) I brushed mine with a mix of sesame oil and more sherry.

Here is another post hubby was able to recover from the net, from my old block. It’s ‘Chuk bi peah’ I have made both sweet ones and savoury ones.

This ‘peah’ literally means ‘biscuit’ in Hokkien dialect. This is only sold in Kuching in the old days as far as I know. Only those who grew up in Kuching will know this kueh and some have not even eaten them before.

A few times when I phoned my mother she was on and on about this chuk bi peah. She kept telling me how much she misses this kuih. and she’s in her 70ies.

So I wanted to learn this kuih and make it for her one day. Thanks to some of my classmates, their patience with me and guidance, taking pics for me so I am able to make this in UK. Thank you Ron, Cindy and Mary. Hubby extended his ‘Thanks’ too. He said next time in Kuching beers on him!

He preferred the haebee one because of my sambal even though he ate 4 of the tausah cause I fried and served them first! 

I will defo make this again. Love the crunchiness – Happy me.

First published – 1st August 2018

Beef rendang is one of the most well known of Malaysian dishes. It is as synonymous to Malaysian cuisine as nasi lemak.

We, the Malaysian have adopted and embraced this dish from our neighbour Indonesia and made it our own.

Living in the UK we will never make as nice a beef rendang or nasi lemak as we could in Malaysia. This is because we cannot get nice fresh coconut milk. Some may say that the tin coconut milk is just as good but in my opinion, I beg to differ. However as a Malaysian living in the UK I do not really have a lot of choice. I have a coconut shredder chair (yes the old school one) please refer to pic) but I still cannot buy nice enough coconut to give me any worthwhile coconut milk.

To cook beef rendang it not difficult. The hardest job is frying the kerisik kelapa (shredded coconut strands) Please do not buy the ready fried ones. They taste of stale coconut oil – yikes. Buy the frozen coconut strands and fry it yourself on a dry non stick clean pan/wok.

I would have used more galangal but I did not have more. I really love the taste of galangal. You can find it normally at any Chinese supermarket. Galangal is not hard to find.

TIP – In all my curries and cooking I prefer to make my own paste and I always prefers to blitz some of the lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves etc with my paste. This not only gives any dishes more uuumph but thicken the sauce without the need of buah keras (candlenuts)

As for my DIY lemang there is a long story of trial and errors. When I first tried to make it in UK I made tons of mistakes and this is the closest I can get to the real thing now.

Basically it is just mix the drained soaked glutinous rice to a tin of coconut milk, mix in the salt, the pandan leaves, stir and steam for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the pandan leaves.

Then scope some onto your ready banana leaves and more pandan leaves, wrapped and steam again for another 15 minutes. This will cause the banana leaf taste to seep in.

Remove and use a blow torch to torch the banana leaves (you can use gas stove or BBQ) for this to achieve the smoky taste. This give me the closest taste I can get to the real lemang minus the bamboo. When you served your lemang you will see light green on the sides. That’s the taste and look you want.

Again as I have stressed before use my recipe as a guide and create your own to your own taste.

I still recall most embarrassingly the first time I tried to make lemang I actually boiled the glutinous rice then roll them into tube using cling film and of course it tasted nothing like lemang!

TIP – Do not add your gula Malacca till the last hour to limit the chance of sticking.

TIP – Taste and season with salt if not salty enough or add more sugar if too spicy during the last 30 minutes.

TIP – Add some fresh cili padi (birdeye chilli) if not spicy enough

TIP – Cook rendang the day before and let it steep overnight. Then the next day you only need to steam and make the lemang.

Today I am going to make Loh Mai Kai aka glutinous rice chicken. It’s another dish that disappeared with my old blog and now that we are in lock down and it’s too cold to go into my garden yet, I will update to this new blog.

I make this dish once or twice a year only, hence it is not worth it for me to buy the proper bowls. Now that was before. I have since been given a set of stainless steel bowls especially for making this dish. I do not like using tin foil either so stainless steel bowls it is! If you do not have any then using rice bowls is all right too. I will never order or eat this dish outside, especially in London because I do not know how many times they have been steamed and re- steamed nor how long and how many days they have been kept. Have they been kept safely and hygienically and so on.

Once in a blue moon I will order at Dim Sum restaurants just to try but am too often disappointed with the soggy soft mess. I much preferred my glutinous rice to be al dente aka with a bit of a bite. Plus the fact my home made ones has more ‘liew’, toppings.

Mushrooms should be plum thick and saucy, chicken should taste of chicken which one can only get from chopping a whole chicken yourself. The Chinese sausage should be thin but not too thin with a bite to them, not soft so one can taste the different texture.

I always like to serve my home made Loh Mai Kai 糯米鸡 with spring onions and crispy garlic. Freshness from the spring onions and crunch form the crispy garlic, umami taste of the mushroom, sweet Chinese sausage, smell of sesame oil mingling with rice wine …………..

First updated on 19th April 2017 – Old lost blog

Pulut Tai Tai with gula malacca kaya (gift from a friend) Pulut Tai Tai according to Wikipedia – Pulot Tartal is Malacca-based dish where white coconut milk sauce is served with glutinous rice (pulut)

I have always been a bit of a rebel deep down. Hence a green coloured Pulut Tai Tai

I am steamed my glutinous rice the same way I did for my Seri Muka recipe. https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2018/12/26/kuih-seri-muka-special/

Compress the rice lightly but firmly. Do NOT press to hard until your rice are tough! I prefer my glutinous to have a little give myself. However this is again arguably to personal taste.

I also like my rice slightly more salty as it goes so well with the sweet kaya. Again you can adjust to your taste.

If you soak your rice a longer time, say more than 8 hours you might need less coconut milk and less steaming time. It is entirely up to you to try.

Of course it stands to reason then your steaming time also depends on your heat. I used medium. Happy trying.

I have been thinking of making this for ages in fact years. I wanted to make mango sticky rice pudding but with a twist. So as to confuse the senses. Look like Kueh Seri Muka, but is coconut sweet with a coconut sauce aka Thai Mango Sticky Rice Dessert (Khao Niaow Ma Muang)

The colouring are all natural mango bright yellow and the blue is from blue pea flowers. The riper your mango is the brighter the yellow orange colour is. The more blue pea flowers you use the more darker blue the colour is. 

I have a friend coming over to UK for a visit and she is bringing me some more blue pea flowers so I have decided to splash out and use my precious stash. 

(I am going to experiment this using gelatin powder as a setting agent for the mango topping next and will post recipe if it turn out nice) For the moment I feel this is a good eat.

NOVEMBER 24, 2017 BY ADMIN