Cantik means pretty while manis means sweet. It's straight forward translated from its name. Even though the name is cantik manis, I reduced the sugar amount from the recipe that I saw in my Yasa Boga cookbook. It's very easy to make, no steaming or baking process. Cantik manis is also popular during Ramadan in Indonesia. Usually, there are evening markets that sold traditional goodies before the Iftar time, so people can buy and bring them for breaking their fast at home or mosque.

Anybody who wants to participate in Joy From Fasting To Feasting (season-III) who is hosted by Lubna Karim, feel free to click the link above. You don't have to be a Muslim to join the event. The more the merrier, don't you think?




Originally, these little cute dessert cakes are wrapped individually in thick plastics or banana leaves. However, I couldn't find thick plastic wrappers and too lazy to thaw and shape my frozen banana leaves. I used my bite-size brownie squares 24-cavity silicone and putu ayu moulds. Below is the pictures.






Cantik Manis
- Indonesian Sweet Pretty Cakes -

Ingredients:
� 100 g colourful sago/tapioca pearls (Indonesian: biji mutiara)
� 50 g mung bean flour (Indonesian tepung hunkwe)*
� 500 mL coconut milk (If you use a 400 mL coconut milk in a can, just add another 100 mL water)
� � tsp salt
� 90 g sugar (the recipe calls for 100 g)
� 1 pandan leaf, knotted
� banana leaves or plastic sheets, for wrapping (I used moulds)



Methods:
� In a boiling water, put sago pearls and cook until done and transparent and strain.
� Dilute mung bean flour with some parts of coconut milk and set aside.
� Boil remaining coconut milk and pandan leaf with salt, then add mung bean flour mixture and stir. Add sugar, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add sago pearls, stir well and remove from heat.
� Pour the mixture into moulds. Leave to cool. Unmould the cakes and serve.

Cook's Note:
* For people who can't find tepung hunkwe, you may substitute for the Korean mung bean starch by reducing the amount of mung bean flour that I used in this recipe.


Mung bean flour is known as tepung hunkwe in Indonesian. However, there is a bit different with the Korean mung bean starch on the right hand side picture. If you notice tepung hunkwe is translated as flour not starch since it's mixed with vanilla. The Korean one is pure starch.

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Anybody remember the folk song of binte bilihuta? It's not only a song title, binte biluhuta is a corn soup from Gorontalo.

Gorontalo province is known as the largest corn producer in Indonesia. Beside as an export commodity, sweet corns are main ingredients in the Gorontalo signature food, Binte Biluhuta. In addition to corns, this dish is also used other main ingredients, such as cakalang (known as skipjack tunas), tenggiri (king fish mackerels) and shrimps. Binte biluhuta or milu siram is a soup base dish that has very unique flavour. Sweetness from the corns, sourness from bilimbi and lime, hot from chilies. If you desire to complete the taste with bitterness, you may add chopped papaya leaves. The dish is very suitable during the cold weather, especially for those who are catching the flu.

You may wonder why I made this whilst it's summer now. Don't you think it will be too hot to enjoy this. Winnipeg's weather is entering the fall.  Some days are hot and the other days are gloomy, rain and cold. I chose making this soup in the gloomy weather since I still have had fresh corns.

In the local language, binte or milu means corn, biluhuta mean flush or pour. I guess, I can translate binte biluhuta as corn soup.

Gorontalo is located on the northern part of Sulawesi island and was established in December 2000 after splitting from North Sulawesi province. No wonder if this dish uses cakalang and lemon basils which are popular in Manadonese food as well.

Again, I said I'm lucky enough, surround by the Filipino community.  I can find frozen cakalang at Asian stores. You got to know the science names in order to find fish names in other languages. Through this fishbase list, I found the Tagalog's name for cakalang. Thou many Indonesian sources stated that cakalang has a bigger size than tongkol (another variety of tuna which is very popular in the west part of Indonesia), cakalangs in Winnipeg are sold in big and small sizes.



Binte Biluhuta - Milu Siram
- Gorontalo Corn Soup -
recipe by Hayatinufus Tobing, modified and translated by me

Ingredients:

• 425 g sweet corn kernels
• 300 g cakalang*
• 200 g peeled small or medium size shrimps
• 100 g frozen grated coconut
• 1 L water
• 4 shallots (8 shallots for smaller size), thinly sliced
• 0 bilimbi, sliced
• 25 lemon basils
• 4 key limes

Spices to be ground:

• 3 long red cayenne pepper
• 5 bird eyes chilies (add more if you are able to handle spicy food)
• seasalt

Directions:
For Broiled Cakalang:
1. Clean and rinse off the cakalang under running water.
2. Drizzle 2 key limes over and rub with salt. Set aside for 15 minutes.
3. Broil each side for 2 minutes at high. Cool down and shred the meat by hand.

For Binte Biluhuta:
1. In a pot, add water, corns and ground spices until the corn cooked.
2. Add grated coconut, shallots and bilimbi. Cook for the next 15 minutes.
3. Add shrimp and cakalang shredded; simmer for the next 5 minutes. Drizzle 2 key limes and add lemon basil. Stir and remove from the heat. Ready to serve.

Cook's Note:
* Feel free to substitute for cans of skipjack tuna if you can't find fresh/frozen cakalang (skipjack tuna)

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I envy you whoever can buy and get chocolate sweetened condensed milk in a can

For those who have never been to Indonesia, I bet you will say what Chocolate Sweetened Condensed Milk is. In Indonesia, we know two kinds of Sweetened Condensed Milk, one is the regular and another one is flavoured with chocolate.

We use this milk for our avocado shake, cake and dessert thingy, drizzle over our bread and beverages. Well, for you guys who live in Singapore, you can get that flavoured milk at www.belanja.com.sg.

For your information, the well known brands of sweetened condensed milk in the country are cap bendera (frisian flag), indomilk and dairy farm. Are there any other new brands come out? I have no idea. Those three are the ones that I recalled.

I have been in Winnipeg for 5 years and not seen the flavoured sweetened condensed milk yet. If I want to get it, I have to buy it from Indonesian food online stores.

Then, I decided to make the homemade version as I have a chocolate bar, El Rey Gran Saman Dark 70%. This chocolate was a gift from a good friend of mine, Mindy or I call her Mindoel. She resided in Caracas, Venezuela and this August, she moved back to Germany for good. Thanks, Ndoel! Hope you settle soon and we can chit chat again :D.



By the way, I also made my own chocolate spread and syrup with this chocolate bar.  How to make this homemade chocolate sweetened condensed milk? Sorry, no measurement here.


"You will use a double boiler method. Just mix and melt the chocolate bar and a can of sweetened condensed milk in a bowl. In case your mixture is too thick, add evaporated milk. You may put some more of sweetened condensed milk, but I found it will be too sweet for me."

So, what is the difference between evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk? Those two are very similar, but the sweetened one add more sugar. There is a bit distinct between sweetened condensed milk South East Asia and other places. In SE Asia, the sweetened one is also added by palm oil to reduce the cost.

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This is not a typical food that I cook everyday. I only make if I'm lazy or no time to cook.

As I'm a person who likes using a bit heat in food, I throw some slices of red chili. The dish looked too pale for me, so add parsley to give more colour. Three things that didn't come from a package were onion, parsley, and red chili.

When I was a kid, I vividly recalled that I enjoyed snails as sate bekicot (snail sate) and snail chips. Let see how those snails or the French says "Escargot" came in a can.




How did I make this lazy meal?

You will need:
1/2 onion, chopped
1 red chili, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can garlic butter snail
1 small jar (170 ml) marinated arichoke hearts, drained and chucked
200 g macaroni
water
pepper

Methods:
1. In a pot, boil water. Add salt, a bit olive oil and macaroni. Cook macaroni until al dente. Drain and save a bit of water from cooking pasta.

2. In a skillet, combine olive oil and butter that you saw on top of the snail can, with yellowish colour. Saute onion and red chili for a minute.

3. Add macaroni, a bit water from cooking pasta, artichoke hearts and snail. Cook until they mix. Sprinkle over, parsley and pepper. I don't add any salt since the snail already salty enough. Ready to serve.

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Longing to make this Ayam Garo Rica for so long! Ayam Garo Rica (Manadonese Chili and Lemon Basil Chicken). In the local dialect, Garo means stir fry and Rica means chili pepper.

All I had to do was being patience until my red long cayenne pepper grown more. Yes... I was yielding long red cayenne pepper, lemon basil and turmeric leaves from the pots before they get hit by the cold weather.

The long red cayenne pepper is very useful for Indonesian cooking. To the best of my knowledge, there are two variants of long cayenne pepper that we use in Indonesia. One is cabai merah keriting (curly red); the fruit has a smaller diameter compare to the other one, cabai merah besar (big red). The curly one is slimmer, dense and has a wavy shape. In term of taste, curly red cayenne pepper is more spicy than the big red ones. In this recipe, I used the curly type.

I was messaging Ellen back forward whom native to North Sulawesi and lives in England to get more knowledge about her Manadonese or Minahasan specialty food. This is what I quoted from one of her posting.

"Manadonese or Minahasan almost never use coriander, cumin and kaempferia galangal (or kencur) in food. The basic spices that we call "bumbu" mainly use garlic, shallot, a bit turmeric, lots of ginger, lots of lemon grass, lemon basil, tomato, tons of chillies, pandan leaf, mint leaf, daun tebal (Coleus Amboinicus. Lour) similar to thyme or oregano, kaffir lime leaf, cloves, nutmeg, mace and white peppercorn."

I found out also that Manadonese food applies many kind of leafy ingredients that I have never known before. For example:

- Daun Gedi
  Botanical name: Hibiscus manihot L.
  Other names:
  * English: Edible hibisus
  * Indonesian: Daun dedi, Daun belender
  * Tagalog: Lagikuway
  * Thai: Po fai

- Daun Leilem
  Botanical name: Clerondendrum minahassae
  Native to Minahasa (Indonesia) and the Philippines
  Other names:
  * English: White glory bower

- Daun Pangi
  Botanical name: pangium edule
  Other names:
  * Indonesian: daun keluwak

- Daun Nasi
  Botanical name: Halopegia blumei (Koern.)K.Schumann
  Other names:
  Indonesian: Daun patat (Sundanese), jelantir (Javanese), langkuwas (Kangean)

- Daun Tebal
  Botanical name: Coleus amboinicus Lour
  Other names:
  * English: Country borage, Indian mint, Mexican mint, Cuban oregano
  * Indonesian: Bangun-bangun (North Sumatra), daun kucing, daun kambing
  * Chinese: Zuo shou xiang, yin du bo he, dao shou xiang
  * Japanese: Kuuban oregano
  * Vietnamese: Tan day la

- Daun Werot
  This leafy plant is quite unique, because most people know as an ornamental plant, croton varieties. But, the Minahasan uses for cooking croton varieties of plants. This leaf is added to reduce odour of beef, chicken, pork, and water buffalo.
  Botanical name: Codiaeum variegatum
  Other names:
  * English: Garden croton

Woooo, what a long list for leaf seasonings. Let's move on to the recipe. Make sure, you click read more.

Ayam Garo Rica
- Manadonese Chili and Lemon Basil Chicken -
recipe by Ikaray, modified by me

Ingredients:
500 g chickens (thighs and drumsticks)
1/2 cup lemon basil (or you can use thai basil)
10 kaffir lime leaves, torn
3 pandan leaves, thinly sliced
2 turmeric leaves, thinly sliced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup frozen ground lemon grass (available at Asian markets)-> originally, it was used 2 lemongrass and thinly sliced
5 calamansis
3 tbsp EV coconut oil
sea salt
1/2 tsp sugar to season

Spices to be ground:
6 shallots (use 10 shallots for smaller size)
10 long red cayenne pepper
10 bird eye chilies
3 cm peeled ginger
1/2 tsp seasalt

Methods:
1. In a medium bowl, drizzle 2 calamansis and sprinkle sea salt over chicken. Set a side for 15 minutes in the fridge.

2. At medium-high, heat oil in a wok. Stir fry ground spices until fragrant.

3. Add chicken, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, panda leaves, and turmeric leaves; stir well.

4. Reduce to low heat, place the lid on and let chicken simmer until tender and cook through

5. Open the lid and continue simmering. Add sea salt and sugar to season, taste.

6. Add lemon basil and green onion, cook until the mixture is slightly thicken.

7. Remove from heat, drizzle 3 calamansis over and mix well.

Serve with steamed rice.

Resources of the herbs: Many sources from the internet

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If you follow my flickr, you may see this picture before. I have posted on there and kinda didn't feel to post on my blog at that time. But, I changed my mind.   I should tell you that I love this shot. Not only the shot, I do love the taste of this chocolate, fill with the goodness of A�ai and Blueberry.

Before I continue telling you what A�ai is. In the US, the products have a slightly different name. In Canada, the company sells under a name Dark Chocolate A�ai & Blueberry while in the US, it's Dark Chocolate A�ai with Blueberry.

You may not familiar with the name of A�ai. A�ai (ah-sigh-ee) berries are the fruit of the a�ai palm tree.

According to wikipedia, eight species are native to Central and South America, from Belize southward to Brazil and Peru, growing mainly in swamps and floodplains. A�a� palms are tall, slender palms growing to 15�30 meters, with pinnate leaves up to 3 meters long. The berry has been harvested for hundreds of years as a staple in the local diet.

In Canada, A�a� can be found in the forms of frozen pulp for smoothie mix and juice. It's one of suprefruits and has the high antioxidant property. Two times more than Pomegranates, three times more than blueberries and ten times more than red grapes. Also, it has a fatty acid ratio resembling olive oil and the same protein profile of an egg.

I found this product on sale at that time at the Shoppers Drug Mart.

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Can you believe that I made this dish in a microwave. Our AC didn't work (and still doesn't, the maintenance guy is still on holiday), in order to reduce the heat, I made the soup with microwave. It was really hot here. About 32 �C with the humidex feel like 40 �C.

Since this dish came from North Sulawesi (Manado), an ethnic group of Indonesia that has a large Christian population, the soup traditionally uses pork bones. For you who don't consume pork, you may substitute for beef ribs or marrow or oxtail.

My husband is a pesco vegetarian, so I made the soup into vegetarian version. Just a little bit background about pesco vegetarian. Pesco-vegetarianism, also called pescetarianism, is the practice of a diet that includes seafood and excludes other animals. In addition to fish and/or shellfish, a pescetarian diet typically includes some or all of vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs and dairy.

In the original recipe, it didn't add any mushroom or mushroom broth. It was just my idea to substitute the meat and meat based broth.

As updated on August 15, 2010, I added the method for making this soup with the meat based broth.

Sup Brenebon
- Manadonese Red Kidney Bean Soup -
recipe by Ikaray, modified and translated by me

Ingredients:
150 g red kidney beans (I added more beans about 300 g), soak in water for 3 hours
1.5 L water, for cooking the beans
500 g pork hocks (substitute these for beef ribs, marrow or oxtail if you don't eat pork. I myself used 250 g cubed king oyster mushroom)
1.5 L homemade veggies and shittake mushroom broth (If you are going to use beef or pork, use 1.5 L water)
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 tsp ground white pepper
1/2 nutmeg, grated (can be used 2 tsp ground nutmeg)
6 cloves
1 tsp margarine (I used unsalted butter)
2 green onions, finely sliced
fried shallot, for garnish

Methods:
For Vegetarian Version:
1. Boil red kidney beans in 1.5 L water until tender but not mushy. It will be faster if you use a pressure cooker. Drain the cooked beans.

2. In a pot, add the mushroom broth and cooked beans; bring to a boil.

3. Meanwhile stir fry onion and garlic in butter. Add chopped king oyster mushroom, nutmeg, and ground white pepper, then continue sauteing until the mushroom tender.

4. Transfer the sauteing mixture to the pot. Add cloves, stir. Taste the soup and add sea salt as you need. Simmer for the next 15 minutes. Ready to serve and garnish with green onions and fried shallot.

For the beef/pork version:
1. Prepare two pots. In pot 1, cook soaked red kidney beans with 1.5 L water until tender but not mushy. In pot 2, make meat based broth by boiling beef/pork with another 1.5 L water. After the pot 2 is boiling, simmer for next 10 minutes and remove from heat.

2. After the beans are tender, transfer to pot 2. Start pot 2 to simmer again while you are stir frying onion and garlic in butter. Add nutmeg, and ground white pepper.

3. Transfer the sauteing mixture to the pot. Add cloves, stir. Taste the soup and add sea salt as you need. Simmer for the next 15 minutes. Ready to serve and garnish with green onions and fried shallot.

Cook's Note:
I have changed the direction of cooking as well since I didn't use any beef or pork products.

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Starting August 11, 2010, it will be a holly month for all Muslims around the world. We will fast from dawn to sunset. It will be hard for those who live on the northern hemisphere.

During Ramadan, I still will post some recipes which I will do it after I take my iftar (Arabic: ??????). Iftar refers to the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

The joy of Ramadan...The joy of blessing month... Have a blessed Ramadan for those who celebrate it.

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I was first interested to b�nh tr�i when I saw pictures of Vietnamese foods that taken by one of Indonesian foodies during his travel to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and Hanoi. At one of his pictures, he stated that he forgot the food name and described how it tasted. Then, I was asking Anh what that was and she explained it to me.

B�nh Tr�i is actually similar to Indonesian klepon. While in some parts of Sumatra, people call it onde-onde which is the same as the Malaysians do. The difference, klepon is covered with grated coconut and filled with palm sugar or coconut sugar. B�nh tr�i is sprinkled with roasted sesame seed and sugarcane rock candy as its filling.  Yep! Most of Asian countries have their own sticky rice dumplings!  Shame on me! I haven't made my own klepon yet.^_^

Short story, I was browsing the recipe for it. I found two recipes which one was in Vietnamese and another one was in English. The one in English was to complicated to follow. I decided to choose the Vietnamese one. For the first time, I was following a recipe that is not in the language that I speak. Off course, I used google translate. Even though google didn't translate to a proper English, I quite understood with the recipe.

Since those two recipes are slightly different in ingredient. One is with a mix of glutinous rice and rice flours and another one is only with rice flour. Again, I bugged Anh to make sure that I got the correct flours. She mentioned the ratio 9:1 for sticky rice flour and rice flour. Thanks, Anh!

One thing, I changed from the recipe. The recipe applies sugarcane rock candy for the filling. I used Indonesian palm sugar (known as gula aren) that has a darker colour since I don't have any sugarcane rock candy.

This post goes for Delicious Vietnam #4 and is hosted by Bonnibella

B�nh Tr�i
- Vietnamese Glutinous Rice Dumplings -
recipe by Trang Emi, modified by me
 
Ingredients:
180 g (1 cup + 1 tbsp) glutinous rice flour
20 g (3 tbsp + 1/4 tsp) rice flour
190 ml warm water
palm sugar (depends on how much filling you want)
roasted sesame seed

Directions:
1. Combine glutinous rice flour and rice flour. Add warm water gradually to flour mix. Mix well and form into a dough ball--it should be like play dough consistency.

2. Take a small dough and shape into a ball. Repeat the earlier step until all dough is shaped into small balls. From this recipe, you will get about 35-40 small balls.

3. Pinch a small ball of dough and flatten it out into a thin disk.

4. Place a small amount of palm sugar and close the dough around it.

5. Meanwhile, you are busy with shaping the little balls. In a pot, bring water a boil. Once you�ve covered an entire plate and your water is boiling and your little ball soldiers are starting to stick.

6. Plunk your balls into boiling water and wait until they float to the surface.

7. Prepare a bowl with cold icy water on the side. Once the balls are floating, with a slotted spoon or spider, transfer them right away to the a bowl of cold water. Place on a serving plate and sprinkle roasted sesame seed.

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Have you ever seen this herb before? It does look like fingers growing out of a center piece and the reason why it is called Fingerroot in English. This herb is known as Temu Kunci in Indonesian and I have tasted ever since I can remember.

Fingerroot is popular as a medicinal and culinary herb in China and Southeast Asia. It has a strong and dominating flavour. Many people would think to classify this as a medical due that reason. The fingers and the central, globular part of the rhizome have different odour.

Temu Kunci is mostly used in Javanese cuisine, but I haven't found any recipes from other regions of Indonesia using this herb. I surely will share with you two Javanese dishes that I ate for lunch while I was still young and lived in my parents' house. If you wonder what those foods are, please do come back for my two next postings.

Meanwhile, you can look through other common names of this plant.
Botanical name: Boesenbergia rotunda (L.)
English: Chinese ginger, Chinese key, Lesser ginger
German: Chinesischer Ingwer, Fingerwurz
Indonesian: Temu kunci
Thai: Ka-aen, Wan-phraathit, Khingsai khingkaeng, Ka chai, Kra chai
Vietnamese: B?ng nga tru?t, C� ng�i

Source: Wikipedia and Gernot Katzer's Spices Pages

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Sapodilla or Sawo in Indonesian is one of tropical fruits that I grew up with. I'm pretty lucky with many different fresh tropical fruits and vegetables which Asian stores have in Winnipeg. Sapodilla is the fruit of Manilkara zapota. It has an unique flavour, sweet malty flavour.

The unripe fruit is hard and contains high amounts of saponin, which has astringent properties similar to tannin, drying out the mouth.

Common names of Manilkara zapota:
� Chinese: ren xin guo
� English: beef apple, chicle, chico sapote, chicozapote, chiku, naseberry, noseberry, sapodilla, sapodilla plum
� French: n�fle d'am�rique, sapote, sapotier, sapotillier
� German: breiapfel, breiapfelbaum, kaugummibaum, sapote, sapotille, sapotillbaum
� Hindi: ???? chikoo
� Indonesian: sawo
� Japanese: sabojira, sapojira
� Khmer: lomut
� Konkani: ?????? chikku
� Korean: kkom na mu
� Lao: lamud
� Malay: chiku; In Kelantanese Malay, the fruit is called "sawo nilo" which is closer to Indonesian's name
� Marathi: ???? chiku, ?????? chikku
� Nepalese: gudalu, saapotaa
� Portuguese: sapoti, sapotizeiro
� Spanish: n�spero, sapote (Latin America), zapote, zapotillo
� Tagalog: chico
� Thai: lamut, lamut-farang
� Vietnamese: h�ng xi�m, hong xuan dinh, t�m lu'c, xab�ch�

Source: World Agroforestry Centre

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