The "Green Tea and White Chocolate Chips Cookies" Project

Having inherited plenty of cooking materials, inter alia flour, green tea powder (matcha), and baking powder, I thought of making good use of them rather than allowing them to go to waste.  Baking came into mind, but being a total novice in baking, it took me some time before I decided that I was finally ready.

This is my debut project involving cookies. As a start, I've decided to try something humble, one that's easy to follow through.  

Thanks to the author of Da Washoku Kitchen, below is the result of what's adapted from her recipe (please click the link to be directed to her original recipe) - the Green Tea Matcha and White Chocolate Cookies.

With the necessary ingredients and tools from my brother's chef toolbox (my brother did chef training before, but is retired from the kitchen now), but not knowing what to expect since this is my first time, here's a pictorial summary of the preparation and baking processes:

Dry ingredients: 150 g flour, 1 tbsp matcha, a pinch of salt, and 1/4 tsp baking soda 

100 g butter, 50 g granulated sugar, and 100 g brown sugar in mixing bowl

Butter and sugar.  

Mixture of butter, sugar and eggs.

Approximately 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Mixture of dry and wet ingredients

My first batch of hand-drop cookies prior to baking.  I made it into the size of a dime.

Cookies freshly out of the oven.

The original recipe intended these cookies to be chewy, and they should be baked at 330 deg F (about 166 deg C) for between 6-8 minutes.  

However, as I intended to bake ordinary cookies for this time, i.e. those that crunch as you chew on them, I've modified the baking temperature to 170 deg C for 20 minutes.  

Overall, I'm glad that the baking project went fine, except that I ended up with pain on my wrists during the night after I finished baking and cleaning up.   Speaking of pain, it's either due to not being used to doing small things one by one all by myself, or due the bodily change occurring within.  

The cookies here looked less green than I've expected, perhaps the matcha I used is more olive-green than green in colour.  Taste-wise, each bite gives rise to a hint of matcha aroma. Thus, these cookies make ideal treats for green tea lovers.

Kiddy's grandma would have been happy to try the cookies; I used to tell her I wanted to learn to bake cookies, but she'd just missed the chance to witness it by a year!  These cookies could have been good for  Mother's Day.          

Simple "Red" Soup

Here's a humble dish of Red Spinach (bayam merah) soup with dried anchovies (ikan bilis) prepared over a weekend... to soothe a soul that longs to revive something familiar from the past.


Suddenly missing my mother's cooking as well as contemplating the need to incorporate extra fibre into my diet at the same time, I bought some bayam merah at the local night market on one fine Friday evening. It was sold at only RM 1 per stalk (but I'm not sure how many gram was it). This soup is very simple, easy to prepare and delicious.

The ingredients and method are as follow:

Ingredients:
1. Red spinach
2. Garlic (minced)
3. Dried anchovies (soaked in hot water for a few minutes)
4. A small piece of ginger (lightly-crushed)
5. Salt (and seasoning or ikan bilis stock if you like) to taste
6. A bowl of water

Method:
1. Stir-fry the garlic, anchovies and ginger in a wok until golden brown.
2. Add water directly into the wok and allow to boil.
3. Add spinach into the boiling water.
4. Add salt (and seasoning if you prefer) according to your taste. For this soup, I only used salt and a very minute pinch of seasoning.
5. Continue boiling until the spinach soften, but please do ensure that they're not overcooked.

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes

Steamed Chocolate Moist Cake

My latest and humble kitchen project in conjunction with the recent lunar new year is the steamed Chocolate Moist Cake. I found the recipe in my mother's collection, given by one of her friends after we enjoyed the cake very much during Raya a few years ago.

This is a simple yet delicious cake, best served for tea time.

The Ingredients:

2 cups of flour

2 eggs

1 can of evaporated milk

2 tsp soda bicarbonate

2 tbsp cocoa powder

2 cups of cooking oil

2 cups sugar (I used 1 1/2 cup of brown sugar)

Method:

1. Sift flour into a large bowl.

2. Put eggs, milk and cooking oil into a blender. Blend until the mixture turns smooth and fluffy.

3. Pour the blended mixture into the bowl of flour. Add in cocoa powder, sugar, soda bicarbonate and mix.

Note: As I do not have an electric mixer, I mixed everything manually for about 40 minutes, using the same direction (i.e. if you're mixing them clockwise, just maintain the same direction... and vice versa).

The batter

4. Pour the batter into a greased cake tin and steam for 1 hour.

Fresh from the steamer and despite the cracks on top, is a smooth-textured chocolate cake. Note that such cracks are not unexpected, just like what we frequently come across in other steamed food such as "pau".

Of all things, I was too busy eating until I forgot to take a picture of a slice of this cake!

Overall, I was glad that the cake turned out fine. Probably inheriting the rare gene from my paternal grandma who's a total non-sweet-tooth, I naturally prefer less sweetness in my food. And so, I reduced the amount of sugar and used brown sugar instead (my brother a.k.a. the retired-chef told me that brown sugar tastes milder than white sugar).

Cakes out there in the market are mostly catered for the liking of the general public, but not those whose "teeth lack sweetness" i.e. non-sweet-tooth. So the only way is to make my own. This is a cake ideally-adjusted for my personal taste bud, but definitely not my sweet-tooth husband who'd prefer the original recipe comprising 2 cups of white sugar. Have I told you before that my husband is a complete opposite of me? :P

My Cooking Project

Finally, I'm back to doing one of my hobbies - cooking. Contrary to what appears to be my lifestyle when I used to live away from my family (I've never cooked in my former landlord's kitchen), I actually love to cook. Now that I finally have a kitchen of my own, I'm free to cook, yeessss!

Chicken curry boiling in claypot... yum.


Today happens to be the first time I cook in more than 5 months, and also the first time I prepared curry. Thanks to the delicious but easy-to-prepare "Kari Ayam Tanpa Santan" (or coconut milk-free chicken curry) recipe shared by blogger Naz on her blog "CUTE OVEN, SMALL KITCHEN", I was able to come up with this curry which my dad and I enjoyed very much.

Do check out Naz's blog, which has a comprehensive collection of interesting recipes (as per the link provided above).

The curry looks like any of those that we frequently come across, but sans coconut milk. Hence, this curry is a healthier alternative to ordinary chicken curries that contain coconut milk. There's a subtle taste of "asam jawa" (or tamarind) in this curry which I liked very much. If you prefer less tamarind taste, you may reduce the tamarind paste to half a tablespoon instead of one spoonful.

My 1st time home-cooked curry as served on the dining table... with traces of gravy all over the bowl. Not as if I was bothered to garnish it nicely, hahaha...

I bet my mom would have loved this too, and she'd missed sampling her daughter's cooking by just 5 1/2 months.

Apart from chicken curry, I cooked two other humble dishes:

Mixed vegetables comprising carrots, broccoli, baby corn and fish cake with oyster sauce...

and:

Simple spinach soup. Just stir-fry some finely-chopped garlic with whatever you like (fish ball, fish cake, or any meat of your choice), add water, allow to boil, add vegetables, add salt to taste, and allow to simmer.

Three dishes with rice for lunch and dinner over a Sunday had indeed made my day. I'm no professional cook, but only inheriting some of mom's cooking and seeking to learn more.

10 years ago, I could not have imagined myself preparing food for folks at home in the kitchen. But today, I cherish cooking as much as the people I love. Cooking per se is fun, but washing is not... there are just so many things to wash and clean up after cooking.

I look forward to plan my next cooking project soon, only if everything goes well of course.

My Lazy Delicacy

When it comes to sudden pangs for certain food, something is better than nothing.

I really need to stock up with curry powder, fish/chicken, potatoes, spices, vegetables, etc soon or else I'll be completely deprived of my favourite and deeply-missed dishes that I seldom get to enjoy on nowadays.

And in this case, since I have no convenient access to real Laksa or authentic-tasting curry noodles to pacify the crave for something hot, I prepared something very instant using the limited supply of raw materials I have in my kitchen.

Curry-flavoured Maggi instant noodle with egg and mixed vegetables...



.... to soothe the curry-craving soul.

Taste-wise, this instant preparation is not bad. But nothing beats preparing what's original for the sake of culinary satisfaction.