Hello 2012!

Wow, I cannot believe that I have not written this blog for a LONG time now!
What is new with me? Well.. I  have been married for almost 2 years now (woo, time does fly, doesn't it?)...I have been in NC for also that long...
Love the weather for sure but I really miss the food back at home in Ames.. :(
Especially now that I am PREGNANT.. (yes, now I can tell the world! No more hiding!!)... I am craving for Ames chinese food and also Indonesian food :(
Both food that I cannot find anywhere here in NC.. very sad..
Anyway..just want to give an update that I created another blog for my journey with Baby Ma..
Here is the link: http://preciousbabyma.blogspot.com/

See you there!! :)

Mony Cozy Kitchen

I decided to move all my food related post to my new blog...

http://monycozykitchen.blogspot.com/

I am not a fancy cook/chef by any means. I am just a girl who has free time while waiting for her husband to come home and don't want to go crazy by doing nothing at home. So I experiment a lot!

Some days I don't do well, other days I think I do a pretty good job. The key is if my husband does not like the dish, that means, I consider myself failing because I trust his taste :P

Once I get my working permit and blessed with a job, I don't think I'd cook as much so let's have some fun while I can. :D

Terima Kasih! (thank you in Indonesian) :)

Baked Potato Chips

Today I feel very inspired. I have 1 potato left from my soup but I don't really want to add potato to my oxtail stew. So, I thought maybe I'd just try to make baked potato chips.

The thing is, I don't have slicer ...sooo...the only idea I have is to use my peeler. LOL...

If you have slicer or you can slice the potato really thin, you are so blessed. Peeler works fine for me too, but it just takes time and the shape is not as pretty. But I think this is good for the first try-out. Turned out yummmm-oooooooooo! :)

Baked Potato Chips

Ingredients:

• 1 potato
• kosher salt
• olive oil

1. Slice potato really thin
2. Oil the baking pan so the chips won't stick
3. Place the potato on baking pan and brush oil on potato surface. Sprinkle with kosher salt.
4. Preheat oven at 375.
5. Bake potato for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
6. Move the chips to cooling rack right away before it starts sticking to the pan.
7. Enjoy! :)

What would you do?

I try to talk to my parents as often as I can..say maybe once in 2 days at the very least. They live in Jakarta, Indonesia which is thousands of miles from where I live.

Since I was a little kid and been taught that we should pray before bed, I always pray for God to give my parents a long and healthy life. This is almost like a everyday chanting before bed and in my first prayer list. LOL. I have always had this fear..a fear that I can't quite describe..a fear that someday my parents will be gone and I will be alone.. that thought always gives me chills and depression. I know...everyone dies one day, right? But, I just want to be selfish and don't want to lose anyone I love.

Few days ago I called home and as usual, I asked for my dad but he was away so I talked to my mom. Out of the blue, my mom started crying, telling me that something is wrong with my dad's heart, ..that my mom only got my dad and no kids or anyone else to help..my mom is still fighting her sleeping problem, bla bla bla. A feeling of terror and panick started to crawl and quite honestly, I did not know what to say to my mom. I did not know how to comfort her knowing that I was freaking out myself. Nevertheless, I tried to stay calm and told my mom that I'd call my dad right away.

Long story short...my dad said he is fine..the doctor said the test result said that his heart condition is better than last year. He said that his life is in God's hand so we just have to surrender to Him... *sigh*

What made me feel worse is..knowing that I cannot be there and be with my parents. Sometimes I wonder if I made a wrong decision by pursuing college degree in the US, away from my parents.

Now that I am married to my husband who is a US citizen, it has sealed the deal that my future is no longer in my home country.

What would you do? What should and can I do?

I just need to get this out of my chest...otherwise I will go nuts. I don't know if there is going to be a right answer to my situation. I just pray that God will take care of my parents because He is the only one who can do that... Amen..

Butter Cookies with Chocolate Sprinkle Coat

I just bought this awesome cookie pan from Michaels. It's so cute! Thought I'd try make a butter cookie with this pan.

I really love the pattern on the cookies. Makes it really look professional although this is the first time I bake butter cookies. LOL.

I took 2 pics of them, one before I coated with dark chocolate and one after coated.

Recipe (makes 30 cookies):

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1.75 sticks unsalted butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

optional: i saw Martha Stewart added 1 tsp cognac, i'd like to try them next time with cognac :P

Direction:

In the bowl of a standing mixer, add the butter and mix on medium-high until fluffy and light. Add the sugar, salt and the eggs, mix until combined. Add vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the flour to the butter, sugar, egg mixture. Mix until batter looks smooth.

Next, sprinkle flour to your cutting board. Take out the batter from the mixer and put it on the board. With your bare hand, starts to knead the dough until it is evenly mixed. Make it into a big ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Put it in the fridge and let it chill for 2.5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Shape your cookie dough into any shape you like. (I used my fancy pan). You can roll out the dough and shape it with cookie cutter, 1/4 to 1/8 inch tick. Transfer to a baking sheet. I did not use any butter on the pan since the cookie has enough butter. Just make sure after it is baked, you quickly transfer the cookie to cooling rack (or in my case, another baking sheet) right after you pull it out from the oven so it won't stick to the pan. Another trick is to just change the position of each cookies and let it cool.

Bake it for 8 minutes or until golden brown.

Chocolate Coat:

Melt Hershey's dark chocolate chip in microwave for 1 min (PS: my niece is allergic to nuts so I have to make sure not to buy chocolate that is processed with the same machine as they process nuts).

After 1 min, you check the chocolate and stir it with spatula to make sure everything is melting. I do it bit by bit. After the chip is melting, you add more to the bowl and heat it up for 10-20 seconds in microwave. Make sure the chocolate is not burnt. Continue do that until you have enough chocolate for your coating.

Take a cookie and dip it into the chocolate and after you are done, sprinkle it with colored sugar. Keep in the refrigerator! :)

Enjoy!

Chicken Satay Recipe

I made this chicken skewer for thanksgiving meal with my "new" family. I was a bit nervous that they may not like it. But I thought, I'd go ahead and brought anyway to introduce them a bit of Indonesian food. Turned out, they loved it! :)))

Here is the recipe. You can google and find hundreds of recipe too but I make my own version to simplify.

Marinade sauce:

4 cloves of garlic- minced finely

4 cloves of shallot- minced finely

4 tbs of sweet soy sauce

1 tbs of soy sauce

sprinkle of salt and pepper

4 basil leaves- chopped

1 tbs ground coriander

1/4 cup of water

Preparation:

First, Cut the skin because we want to make oil out of it. Then, Cut the chicken (I used dark meat because I love the texture) into cubes and marinade it overnight with the sauce. Put it in the fridge. You want to cover it so your whole fridge does not stink (my hubby said it stinks our fridge so bad) LOL..sorry, love! :P

Chicken Oil:

drizzle a bit of olive oil in the pan, and heat it. Put the chicken skin on the pan and on low heat, let all the oil sweat out of the skin. You will know it is done when the skin becomes crispy.

Sprinkle with salt.

Grill Time:

The next morning, put the chicken in the skewer bamboo stick. (Don't forget to soak the bamboo stick in the water before you grill, to avoid it being burnt easily --> tricks that I learned from my hubby)

Brush it with the chicken oil before they head to the griller.

Grill it!

Once its done, sprinkle with lime juice.

Sauce:

Peanut Sauce: I bought from the asian market to save time.

Chilli Sauce: Sweet soy sauce with chopped shallots and thai chilli and 1/2 squeezed lime

Enjoyy :))

Prawn Noodle (Prawn Mee)

Yesterday began with checking my fridge on what stuffs I can cook. Turned out, no grocery left except for shrimps. Checked the pantry, only found canned corn, spaghetti, green bean, etc. Uh...ohhhh!! Errrrr...so maybe cook Shrimp Scampi Pasta? it's supposed to be easy (although I have never made some) and only use few ingredients like butter, onion, shallot, parsley, lemon (that's what the recipe said).

After taking out the butter from the fridge to make pasta, I thought to myself.. I have been eating lots of good but unhealthy food for the past few days..maybe I should not eat pasta made with butter, etc. LOL

Sooo...googling Prawn Mee....found lots of recipes but everything looked so fancy to me. Ayayaya....but let's go ahead and try anyway ...

Here is my recipe.. I only used the ingredients that I had at the moment so I did not make anything fancy. Serving for 2 portions..just for my husband and I.

Stocks Ingredients:

• 4 cloves of garlic - chopped finely


• 2 cloves of shallots - chopped finely


• half of onion - chopped


• shrimp shells


• beef stock cube


• 1 tbs sugar


• 1/2 tbs salt (sugar has to be more than salt, we want the stock to be more sweet)


• paprika powder

Garnish:

• 1 chinese sausage- slicced to small cubes


• deveined, deshelled shrimp


• cilantro


• 1 jalapeno sliced thin - u can add more if u like super spicy


• 2 stalks of green onion- chopped

Noodle:

• I used spaghetti noodle... :))

Cooking steps:

• Soak shrimps (with the shell) in salted water for 30 mins, then take out the shells and put the shells on paper towel to let it dry a bit


• Heat 1 tbs oil and sautee garlic, shallots and onion.....and as the fancy chefs say..let all caramelized for a while with low heat, hehehe


• add a bit of sugar to help with the caramelizing


• add the shrimp shells


• add water and 1 cube of beef stock


• let everything cook in low heat so the shrimp shell can give out the shrimpy taste..


• Taste the stock, u can start giving more sugar and add salt..depending on your liking..


• Add paprika powder- I put 1 tbs of powder to make the soup red and spicy...yummyy


• On different pan, put a bit of cooking oil and brown the chinese sausage (aka lapciong). Once the it's browned and u can see the yummy fat melted a bit, add the shrimps and quickly stir.


• Sprinkled a bit of salt


• Sprinkled with chopped cilantro


• Boiled spaghetti noodle on different stockpot

• Next...get a big bowl for him and her...carefully pour the shrimp stock/soup to each bowls (make sure no shrimp shells poured to bowl).
• Put the noodles in
• Put the shrimp, chinese sausage, cilantro on top of noodle
• Last but not least...sprinkle with the chopped green onion and the jalapeno...


• Voilaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......bon appetiteeeeeee :))

Now..you can google the recipe and found the great recipe out there..we are supposed to use sliced pork/beef, meatballs, etc..but since I did not have anything, I was glad enough to have just with the shrimp and chinese sausage. ehehehehehhe

Enjoyyy..