LACE CREPES ~ ROTI JALA

This was my father's favourite must have for the festive season and I remember mother sitting on a squat stool in front of a very low stove (she did not want to stand for hours) assembled as a temporary stove the night before, probably by my father, and twirling roti jala-s on the morning of raya.....

....agitated and stressed out..... because she had to make quite a fair bit and then rush to take a shower, put on her make up, do her hair and slip into her prettiest dress so that she looked breathlessly beautiful before the guests arrived. (Pun not intended)

I don't blame her. Because to make a fair amount of roti jala takes up quite a lot of time.

And in those days you couldn't simply step out the door and buy food. These, however, are sold by the kilo nowadays by housewives who run little home food catering businesses. Very convenient.

Or do like I do. Make them ahead of time, freeze them, thaw them and when the day comes steam them, in small batches at a time, a few hours before you're expecting your guests.

These are served cold with a warm beef or chicken curry so there is no worry about keeping the roti warm. 

The making of roti jala is therapeutic but only when it's not done under the duress of time.

It's all in the wrist. It uses a simple plain crepe batter only slightly runnier so that it flows smoothly and unhindered through the spouts of the roti jala mould. 


I enjoy the twirling of the mould, feeling the flow of the batter push through the spouts, the dancing of my wrist, watching the delicate lace pattern appear on the griddle, folding and rolling the dainty lace-work and then seeing the pretty pile grow higher and higher. I can be so silly. True.

The recipe ~

Flow' and 'Smooth' would have to be the keywords for this recipe because if you don't have a satiny smooth completely lump free batter you will not have the batter flowing freely through the tiny spouts of the mould. And your experience would be far far away from therapeutic. Trust me. 

The roti jala mould looks almost like a miniature watering can but with multiple spouts pointing downwards. They come in plastic and brass. 

Now if only roti jala brass mould makers had more passion and some desire for perfection they could make this very elementary kitchen tool look quaint, pretty and charming. Like the roti jala itself. And I would have a pretty collection.

Unfortunately the workmanship was as rudimentary as a tool from the bronze age. :(

2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 cups minus 2 T thin coconut milk (the consistency of skimmed milk)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp tumeric powder


Note : you may have to adjust the consistency of the batter to make it thinner by adding water a tablespoon at a time if you find that it is too thick to flow out from the spouts smoothly. 

Sift flour into a medium bowl. Add salt and tumeric powder. Break 2 whole eggs into the flour and pour in half the coconut milk. Mix with a whisk adding the remainder of the milk slowly until the batter is smooth and free of visible lumps.


Pour the batter through a fine sieve into another bowl to ensure a completely lump free and smooth batter. This is essential otherwise you may find that the spouts may get clogged by tiny lumps of undissolved flour. Pour into a jug for easy handling later.


Heat up a cast iron griddle or a heavy non stick pan. Swipe some oil on its surface using a kitchen paper folded into a pad. Let the surface heat up again and lower the flame to small-medium.


Place the roti jala mould on a flat and wide bowl so that it stands upright and will not topple over. Pour the batter from the jug into the mould about halfway up the mould. 

Bring the mould and its supporting bowl near to the griddle and lifting the batter filled mould, by holding it over its top with all five fingers rather than by its handle, quickly make small circles over the griddle by twirling your wrists clockwise and at the same time moving your hand  along so that you will be forming a larger circle made up of those small circles. The final small circle will be in the centre. The first piece will always be sacrificial.

Let the crepe cook and firm up. About 1 -2 minutes. 

When done remove the crepe with a spatula and place on a flat plate. These crepes are usually about 8 inches in diameter. 

Fold the crepe or roll it up as you like. I usually do this when I have another crepe cooking on the griddle.

Repeat the process until all the batter is finished.

This is traditionally served with a curry or lamb/mutton rendang or a beef rendang.

Roti jala literally translated would be 'net crepes'. Simply because the word lace does not exist in the Bahasa vocabulary. So the closet description of its likeness in Bahasa would be net which I believe it resembles more of anyway. 

But lace sounds prettier. And I'm a sucker for prettiness. That's how shallow I can get.

And the fineness of a roti jala depends very much on the size of the spouts and the smooth flow of the batter. 

Many roti jala makers in the old days take pride in each piece appearing as lace-like or as net-like as possible. I doubt mine would pass the test.

I don't want to bore you, and I'm no physicist, but in making these roti pressure from the amount of batter in the mould does matter in getting a fine or coarse 'lace'. So adjust the amount accordingly. 

The height from which you hold the mould above the griddle matters as well. Not too high or the batter will drop in polka dots and too low it will give you a thick line. Adjust accordingly.

If you have pained and suffered this post I will now reward you with another photo. You're welcome.

CHOCOLATE TART - FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This is the second fortnightly Food for Thought meme the brainchild of the very talented Jain from Once in  Blue Moon and of Food With Style.


 The Road Home
**** and a half

Few things could be worse than losing a spouse to sickness and death, and when it happens and you have loved, it changes your life forever.

"Lev pressed a damp towel to his face and prayed that the heartache would pass, like a brief storm, like a nightmare from which it's possible to wake. But it wouldn't pass and so he stood there weeping....."

"When men cry it's never for nothing..."

It was the premature death of his wife, Mariana, that Lev wept for.

Lured by the opportunities of a capitalist country Lev had travelled to London from Auror, a deprived village in Eastern Europe, in search of a new life for his daughter and his mother back home.

Lev spends a year in London, with memories of Mariana tucked into his heart, sometimes reliving his past at will and at other times helplessly. 

It is a story of Lev, as an immigrant in London, his shift from one ideal to another, the loneliness he encounters, the displacement he feels, the despair of poverty, the friendships, the love affair, his foolishness and finally the discovery that he dared to dream.

This is a story that is profound, enchanting, painful and bittersweet. I loved it.

Because ..............

Tremain writes with such depth and intensity for every character. She makes them breathe and pulsate so I could touch them; each one fascinating and complete. Each precisely and expertly chiselled that it leaves you without a doubt to whom and what they are.


Tremain made me savour the book like a sweet not wanting to go too fast lest I lose its sweetness too soon.


Tremain made me tender and kind towards Lev's despair, his confusion, his rage and even his blunders because he was kind, gallant and genuine.


Tremain made me laugh thorugh Rudi, Lev's wild, impulsive and unpredictable friend.


Tremain made me cry.

It was woeful........It was wild...........It was beautiful.

Ruffled only by.................. 

An ending that was too predictable too soon before the end; it felt like a deja vu. If she had not let on a little too early and had ended the story with an optimistic hope rather than as a gift too neatly wrapped it would have been perfect. This was one of the three little brown spots in the apple. But I'm not going to make mountains out of molehills. I'm not going to nitpick.

It won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

This book proved perfect for Food For Thought because the story centred around Lev starting out as a dishwasher and later as a vegetable cutter at GK Ashe, a classy, high end restaurant, where he observed the chefs as they worked. So I had a vast uppity choice from paragraphs of detailed descriptions through Lev's eyes and mind.

I chose my favourite. A dessert named chocolate tart. 

It was also the dish on which Lev's mother, Ina, made her first comment, after a long and stubborn silence, marking her recognition and approval of Lev's dream.

She said, " I liked the taste of that. It reminded me of sleep."

The recipe...........ceated by Sydney's Aria pastry chef, Andrew Honeyset.......

This is a recipe I had extracted from a beautiful blog I had only recently discovered called Citrus and Candy. I had scrolled down innocently. And quite shockingly I found myself face to face with this gloriously evil tart. We glared at each other. I ~ stunned. It ~ proud. And I realised.......

That I had come. I had seen. And I had been conquered.

ARIA CHOCOLATE TART

The recipe is as exactly as I had found it. I dared not fluster a speck... 

  Chocolate pastry :

320 gm plain flour
60 gm cocoa powder
160 gm sugar
pinch of salt
160 gm cold butter, diced 
2 eggs


Filling :


270 gm good quality chocolate, chopped
60 gm butter, diced
315 ml cream
3 eggs
2 egg yolks


Chocolate glacage :

300 gm dark chocolate, chopped
240 cream
300 ml chocolate sauce (recipe follows)

Chocolate sauce :


60 gm cocoa
200 ml water
120 gm sugar
25 gm butter, diced

Make chocolate pastry :


Place flour, cocoa, sugar,salt and butter in bowl of food processor and process till fine as breadcrumbs. Add eggs and process till it holds together. 


Turn onto a lightly floured boared and gently knead till just smooth.Shape into a disc and cover with plastic wrap. Place in fridge fro 10 mins to rest. 


Roll out pastry according to the tart pan or mould you're using. It's important that you use a tart tin with a removable bottom. You could roll out the pastry between 2 sheets of baking paper. Let the pastry be about 3mm thickness. Line the tart tin. Place in fridge for 15 mins to rest. 


Line pastry with paper and fill with beans or rice and bake 10 mins, take out, remove, beans, and bake again for another 5 - 10 minutes or until firm. Keep aside.


Make filling :


Preheat oven 160 C.

Place butter and chocolate in a bowl. 

Place cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour hot cream over th ebutter and chosolate and stir until it all melts and the mixture is smooth. Stir in eggs and stir until even and smooth again.


Pour the mixture into the tar shell up to about 3/4 full leaving enough room for the glacage.


Bake 25 minutes until the centre is just cooked and the top just set. Take tart out and allow to cool to room temperature before topping with the glacage.


Make chocolate sauce for the glacage :


Combine cocoa,water and sugar in a saucepan and stir over heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil, stir in butter till melted. Strain through sieve placed over a bowl and set aside.


Make Chocolate glacage :


Place chocolate in a large bowl. Place cream in saucepan and bring to a boil. Add in chocolate sauce. Stir to mix well and is smooth.


Assemble :


Pour the glacage over the cooled cooked tart up to the rim. Put in refrigerator to set and firm up. 

Serve. UMMMMPPPPHHH.....

It was rich, deep and sonorously soothing  ~ like sleep.

AUNT MONTEL'S SUGEE CAKE

She must have been about 17 or 18 and I about 4 or 5 because I remember standing in my grandaunt's kitchen having agreed, with a nod, to a cookie or something when my young aunt had asked me if I wanted a snack.

Kneeling in front of me she tried to coax and bribe me out of my shyness so that I asked for it by speaking up. I couldn't. 

So I simply stood there, blinking, head down, tongue tied while I felt my lips pursing up, hoping she would give it to me still because I really, really wanted it. And of course she did. 

That was my first memory of my Aunt Montel.

Thirty years on I found myself coaxing recipes from her instead. Recipes that she would not normally share because those were her trade secrets. 

Food was a constant in her home even at the oddest hours.  I think she was born with a whisk and a wok in each hand and landed feet first in the kitchen.She was a foodie in every sense of the word.

Sadly, she passed on a couple of months ago, a little too early. She will be missed by those who knew her through food and by us, her nephews and nieces, because she never did have children of her own, her husband having died a day after their wedding. And she, never having remarried since.


But she did not depart in vain. I have kept a couple of her treasured recipes that I had pried from her over the years. And of course the memories.

So when Ju, The Little Teochew, emailed and asked me if I had a sugee cake recipe that I could share with her my Aunt Montel came immediately to mind. 

I searched for the brown tattered exercise book where I had scribbled the recipe. It was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered that I had had it typed out, printed and filed safely between plastic covers in my old recipe file. I wiped the years of dust off and emailed Ju.


And now Aunt Montel's sugee cake is going to be famous-amos because I'm blogging about it in synchrony with Ju, The Little Teochew, the first person I am sharing it with. And, strangely, with the rest of the world as well.


I'm quite sure my aunt would have proudly and happily consented and I'm quite sure too that she is now happily reunited with her husband.


I knew Ju was going to bake it as beautifully as she always does and make my aunt very proud.


She did a spectacular job!!! Just look at that cake!!


Ju did however make some adaptations to the original recipe and please credit Ju, The Little Teochew adapted from Cherry on The Cake, if  you decide to follow her adapted recipe. 

Thank you Ju! I think this makes Ju and I related no?   :)        

~ wipes tear~

The original recipe...............

250 gm butter, softened
250 castor sugar
125 SR Flour
1 tsp baking powder
125 gm semolina flour
50 gm cashews, ground
1/3 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp buttercream essence
5 eggs plus 1 yolk, the whole eggs separated


Preheat oven to 150 C,


Stir semolina flour, Self Raising flour, baking powder and nuts together in a bowl and leave aside.


Seperate all the eggs. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time. Add cold milk, vanilla extract and buttercream essence and mix well.


In another bowl beat egg whites till stiff. Fold in flour mixture into creamed mixture. Then fold in beaten egg whites gently until well mixed.


Bake 150 C for 50-60 mins until skewer comes out clean.


NOTES FROM JU, THE LITTLE TEOCHEW.....


~ I used a rectangular 6x9x3 inch pan


~ I reduced sugar from 250 gm to 220 gm


~ I did not beat the eggs separately and it still turned out ok


~I used ground almonds instead of ground cashews


~If you don't have buttercream essence use brandy instead or rose essence


~ I increased the vanilla extract from 1 teaspoon to 1 1/2 teaspoons


~ I have seen recipes where a pinch of cinnamon is added. Just a thought.


~ Tent the cake batter with foil because the high sugar content makes the cake brown too quickly


~ For topping I used almond slivers, Gently sprinkle them over the cake batter before putting it in the oven



Hop over to Ju's for more photos!!!!!

Photos by courtesy of JU...

CHURROS AND A HOT CHOCOLATE DIP

A 10 mm star nozzle was what I thought I had for these churros. I was wrong. But I had to have it. So I dug, I dig and I dug. 


Finally I settled for the disc-cum-spout star nozzle from a cookie press and used a piping bag to sheath the nozzle with. Very awkwardly I might add. I won't even begin to describe how the contraption looked or worked. But for few odd moments it did. 

The reason I did not use the whole cookie press thing was because it jammed up and it would not press.


However, to cut a long story short the churros turned out looking just the way I wanted them to look. 

Long and slender, 
long and slender, 
Each little churros 
A lady's finger.

And delicious? ~ Utterly ~ Utterly ~ Utterly ~

Then I made a bitter hot chocolate
As a dip or a drink
And the sweet little churros 
I dipped within. 

Were they delicious? ~ utterly ~ utterly ~ utterly~

The recipe..............adapted form Vogue Entertaining and Travel with some necessary  tweaks.......

The dough for these churros are very like the dough for cream puffs or eclairs. The only difference being they are fried not baked and are sweeter. They are also denser inside and not hollow like a cream puff would be. 

And did I say they were delicious? ~  utterly ~

1 cup (4 oz) plain flour
1 cup (4 oz) self raising flour
11/2 cup sugar Or less Or much less

2 cups water
a knob of butter
1 whole egg + 2 egg yolks

cinnamon
lots of cooking oil


Mix 1/2 cup of the sugar with a pinch of cinnamon in a plate and keep aside for later.


Sift both flours together and put aside.


Put the water and 1 cup of the sugar and the knob of butter in a large heavy based pan and bring to a gentle simmer stirring until the sugar dissolves.


Once the sugar has dissolved and the small bubbles appear in the syrup pour both flours in. Stir immediately and vigorously until it becomes a smooth and quite stiff paste and the dough leaves the sides of the pan. Almost. 

If it appears not too smooth, don't worry. Just throw it into the mixer bowl and turn on the machine with the paddle attachment and let it do the work for you for about 15 to 20 seconds.



(Transfer the dough to a bowl of an electric mixer and using the paddle attachment turn on the mixer.) While the mixer is working throw in an egg yolk and beat until the egg yolk is well beaten in. 

Put in the whole egg next and continue to beat. If you find the mixture a little too stiff still add in the other yolk as well and beat well. By this time the mixture should be firm and not too soft but not too stiff either otherwise it will be difficult to squeeze out the dough through the nozzle.

Prepare a piping bag with a 10mm star nozzle if you wish of a plain nozzle if you prefer. Fill it up with half the mixture.


Heat up a medium pan with oil enough to deep fry the churros. Heat up the oil until a piece of bread browns in 10 seconds.


Have a small knife ready near the stove. Pipe the paste directly into the oil as long or as short as you like them to be. Mine were about 10 cm in length and using the knife cut the pastry off from the nozzle. 

Do a few at a time depending on how large or small your pan is. Fry them for about 2 minutes turning so they get evenly brown all over. Finish off the rest of the dough. Drain on kitchen paper and toss teh fried churros in the cinnamon sugar.


Serve with a chocolate dip or a hot chocolate drink. Utterly delicious. 

The hot chocolate drink...........from Chocolate Cooking by David Schwartz...

6 oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces
6 fluid oz hot water
1/4 pint (450 ml) milk


Thicker than hot chocolate, this beverage in Spain is served with churros for breakfast.


In a saucepan, melt the chocolate with the hot water, whisking until teh mixture thickens. Heat the milk in another pan. Divide the melted cocolate between 4 hot mugs and, without stirring, fill each with hot milk. Serve immediately.