Fried rice (nasi goreng) is my dad’s speciality. He likes to treat us by cooking his version of fried rice for breakfast. Back when I was younger, my dad would make it even more special by making a nasi goreng wrap. The wrap is nasi goreng wrapped in a thin layer of egg crepe. I remember that his egg crepe was always so thin and pretty looking goldish yellow. Sometimes he made it even more special by adding a sunny side up with runny yolk that would run when we cut it open. So so good!

Anyway, my husband and I love to cook his recipe at our own kitchen because it’s so easy and quick. We could make this dish within 10 minutes and it’s always so delicious. For our version though, we like to add a bit of greens (usually choy sum) just to make it feel healthier. Heheh.

Easy Fried Rice

• 2 servings of cooked rice, refrigerated for at least 2 hours
• 150 gram of smoked ham, cut small. Trim the fat for oil.
• 1 egg, beaten
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoon of oil - Alternatively, use the fat from smoked ham
• a pinch of pepper, to taste
• 2 stalks choy sum, cut to an inch (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat oil (or smoked ham fat) in a wok and stir fry garlic until fragrant.
2. Add egg, wait until it’s slightly cooked and scramble it.
3. Add smoked ham and cooked rice, vigorously flatten them so rice are separated. Use high heat to fry the rice.
4. Season with pepper to taste.
5. Serve and enjoy!

Other than chicken noodle (bakmie ayam), my man loves hainanese chicken rice. So it is fitting that after I finally get my bakmi ayam recipe right (can be found here), I then try to get this recipe right as well. The verdict, one happy husband and a satisfied wife. Haha.

This dish is very easy, simple and relatively cheap. The only let down is the lengthy cooking time because you’ll need to have the chicken stock ready before cooking your rice. The approximate cooking time is 1,5 – 2 hours, depending on your rice cooker cooking time. However you can always cook this dish in bigger portion and fridge it for next meal.

While the recipe is loooong, it is actually very simple. Let me know if you have tried this recipe through comment box below or tag me on instagram @jessneva.

Enjoy!

Hainanese Chicken Rice

1. Hainanese Chicken:

• 4-6 chicken thighs, on the bone
• 5 cm ginger, sliced
• water, enough to cover chicken by 2 cm
• salt, to taste

Instructions

1. In a large pot, boil water and ginger over medium high heat.
2. Trim excess fat and skin on the chicken, and gently score the meat near the bone. Keep the bone attached.
3. Once water is boiling, add chicken and salt. Add water if necessary to cover the chicken.
4. Let boil for 15 minutes then remove the white/brown scum and fat produced on the soup using ladle.
5. Reduce heat to medium low and let simmer for 25 minutes, then check if the chicken is cooked. To check this, removed chicken from soup and poke the chicken. If clear liquid comes out, the chicken is cooked otherwise continue cooking.
6. When cooked, remove from heat and drain the chicken. Slice chicken thighs and set aside.

2. Hainanese Rice:

• 8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 cups uncooked Jasmine Rice, washed
• 3 cm ginger, sliced
• 2,5 cups chicken broth (from part 1) to cook rice (or depending on your usual rice cooker measurement)
• a pinch of salt, to taste

Instructions

1. In a frying pan, heat sesame oil and vegetable oil. Add garlic and sauté until garlic is brown. Remove and set aside. This will be used in cooking the rice (this part) and the soy dipping sauce (part 3).
2. In the same frying pan, add 3/4 part of the fried garlic above, ginger slices and the uncooked rice. Stir fry for about 5 minutes over medium high heat.
3. Transfer the “fried” rice into a rice cooker and add the chicken broth and salt. The amount of broth should follow your usual rice cooking measurement. Remember that we’re aiming for fluffy hainanese rice.

3. Soy dipping sauce:

• Fried garlic (from part 2)
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• 3-4 tablespoon chicken broth (from part 1)

Instructions

1. In a bowl, mix al ingredients and set aside

4. Ginger dipping sauce:

• 8 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 stalks of green onion, finely chopped
• 3 cm ginger, finely chopped
• 5 tablespoon vegetable oil
• a pinch of salt

Instructions

1. In a bowl, mix al ingredients and set aside

Steamed egg is another comforting and delicious dish that I love to cook. It’s simple and quick to prepare, and most of time I have all the ingredients needed. When I have stock (usually from soup leftover), I will happily use it in lieu of water. I however use water most of the time and it always tastes as good.

Sometimes when I’m more carefully and patient, I’ll make sure that the mixture have no bubble in the surface to create that silky smooth egg custard. To achieve a smooth surface and minimize the bubbles;

1. Stir egg using chopsticks using cutting movement.
2. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve will minimize bubbles.
3. If there are still some bubbles left, use the back of a spoon to flatten it.
4. Cover and seal the dish when steaming so no evaporating droplets will fall and cause bubbles.

Now, you can see that mine isn’t looking smooth and pretty. You can clearly see that I was tight with time and feeling hungry already… and my rice is cooked. Let’s eat!

Steamed Egg with Minced Pork

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 carrot, thinly sliced using peeler and finely chopped

For egg custard mixture:

• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup of water or stock
• 1/2 tablespoon Chinese cooking wine
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce

For minced pork marinade:

• 150 gram minced pork
• 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/2 tablespoon Chinese cooking wine
• a pinch of pepper
• 1 stalk green onion, finely chopped

Instructions

1. In a bowl, combine all the pork marinade and mix well. Leave to rest for at least 10 minutes.
2. In another bowl, break egg using chopsticks. Add the other ingredients and strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
3. Heat a pan in medium heat. Stir fry the marinated minced pork and break it into smaller pieces using spatula. Ensure that the meat is cooked through.
4. Take the meat off heat and arrange it in a shallow bowl / plate. Pour the egg mixture over meat and top with the finely chopped carrots. Flatten any bubbles with the back of a spoon.
5. Cover the bowl with a cling wrap.
6. Steam the dish over high heat for about 15 minutes. To test if the dish is cooked, insert a chopstick into the middle of the mixture. If clear liquid comes out, it is cooked.

Oyakodon is chicken and egg rice bowl. In Japanese, Oyako means parent and child so it’s indeed a smart word play to name this seasoned chicken and egg rice bowl (donburi). I made this dish following my Japanese week in the kitchen and this is one of the easiest dishes I’ve made in the kitchen.

The whole dish is oil free and is boiled. It’s basically a one pan dish (which I love due to little washing) and it’s fairly quick. The recipe here is for one bowl because it’s easier to do so. Multiply the recipe to the amount of serve your require. Don’t forget to cook some jasmine rice to go with the Oyako or otherwise it won’t be Oyakodon without the “don”.

Enjoy!

Oyakodon

• 1 chicken thigh, cut small into bite size
• 60 ml /4 tablespoon Dashi (Japanese stock)
• 1/2 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon Mirin
• 1/4 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 green onion

Instructions

1. Add dashi, sugar, soy sauce and mirin in a pan. Heat until boiling.
2. Reduce heat to medium, add onion and cook for a minute.
3. Add chicken pieces and cook for around 4 minutes until chicken is cooked.
4. Pour egg over the chicken and onion. Cover and cook for a minute.
5. Prepare rice in a bowl, ready to go with the chicken and egg.
6. Take off heat and pour the mixed chicken and egg over your rice bowl. Garnish with green onion.

Bakut Sayur Asin (Pork Ribs with Pickled Mustard Green) is my dad’s favourite dish whenever he comes to Bandung. Not any Bakut will do and his favourite is Bakut Ahon at Pasir Kaliki. Bakut or Paikut is actually pork spare ribs, while the pickled mustard green is what the name implies. In Indonesia, pickled mustard green can be easily found in supermarkets and if you’re overseas, it can be found at Asian groceries in the fresh/chiller section.

I love to make this dish because it’s so easy to cook and always turns out yummy. I love using my slow cooker to cook this dish because I prefer super tender ribs rather to chewy ones. But really mainly because I don’t like the idea of checking on the pot every now and then. However the dish is totally doable on a conventional pot which will take about 2 hours to cook. Towards the end of your cooking, don’t forget to reduce the oil by either cooling the pot and then scrap the oil using spoon or use oil absorbing paper.

Bakut Sayur Asin

• 500 grams pork spare ribs
• 5 garlic cloves
• pickled mustard green, cut into 2-3cm pieces
• water, enough to cover spare ribs by about 2cm
• a pinch of salt, to taste

Instructions

1. To reduce the saltiness of the pickled mustard green, stir fry the pickles in a pan over medium heat. Take off heat once the pickles is a turning dry.
2. Put garlic, pickles and cleaned spare ribs in a slow cooker (or conventional pot), and cover with water up by about 2cm. Turn on slow cooker and cover for 5-6 hours until meat is tender. If using conventional pot, turn the heat to medium high until boiling then reduce the heat to simmer and cover the pot. Let cook for 2 hours or until meat is tender.
3. Reduce the oil by spooning the surface or use oil absorbing paper.

This week has accidentally turned into a Japanese food fiesta. This didn’t last for the whole week though because I went out of town for the second half of the week. Anyways, my Japanese week started when I realized that I still had a pack of shabu-shabu cut beef in the freezer. As the days have been quite hot and humid, making it into shabu-shabu wouldn’t be a good idea. At the same time I had been wanting to eat HokBen’s cabbage & carrot salad. After some recipes flicking on the web, I decided to go with Beef Teriyaki because I have all the ingredients and it’s one of the simplest to cook.

Of course, when I cook I always try my best not to use canned/bottled sauces. So the same principle goes in cooking this beef teriyaki. Instead of using bottled teriyaki sauce, I mixed some ingredients available in the pantry to make the sauce. The result? Tasty and yummy for a quick 30 minutes spent in the kitchen. Awesome! And don’t forget to cook fluffy white rice to go with this dish.

P.S. For the carrot and cabbage salad, I used bottled mayonnaise instead of homemade mayo because currently I’m not allowed to eat fresh mayo.

Beef Teriyaki with Carrot & Cabbage Salad

Beef Teriyaki

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup mirin (Japanese rice wine)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
• 500 gram beef (I used my leftover shabu-shabu slices)
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon oil
• Green onion, thinly sliced

Instructions

1. Pour soy, mirin, sugar, honey, sesame oil, garlic and ginger in a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Once boiled, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Let cool.
2. Prepare the washed and dried beef in a shallow bowl and pour the mixture in. Cover and let it marinate for 15 minutes.
3. Heat oil in a pan and stir fry onion until translucent. Do not overcook (brown) the onion.
4. Add beef and cook it to your liking. A thin slice would only require around 2-3 minutes and the dish is done!
5. Transfer the dish into a serving plate and garnish with green onion.

Carrot and Cabbage Salad

• 1 carrot, julienned
• 1/2 cabbage, thinly sliced using mandolin
• mayonnaise

Instructions

1. Mix carrot and cabbage in a bowl, and mix with mayonnaise to your liking.

Bakmi Ayam or Chicken Noodle is my dear husband’s favourite dish. He would happily eat chicken noodle anytime on any given day. Lucky him, my late grandpa from dad’s side was a noodle expert. By expert I mean he was in noodle making business. Of course then, by default my grandma became a noodle chef expert. Whenever we’re at her place, she makes sure that we’re not short of food and the fastest meal for her to cook is… noodle!

Imagine this, my husband who is very open about his love of noodle and I arrive at my grand’s. She’s obviously very happy to see us so she cooks us a meal. Lots and lots of yummy noodle.

noodle making at grandma

This kind of noodle is somehow only common available in Indonesia – or Indonesian restaurants for that matter. I’m not sure why this is the case so can someone give a clue? Here in Indonesia, it’s very common to have noodle as breakfast or lunch. My family (and so many others that I know) have a habit of having noodle for lunch after church on Sunday. This was something that I used to miss back in Melbourne.

The recipe that I’m going to share is probably one of the simplest variations of chicken noodle. My husband prefers boiled/steamed chicken so I didn’t proceed to cook the chicken further after I boiled it to make broth. You could add champignon mushrooms to add more texture to the dish or if you’re like me and my brother, we love to have fried meatballs as our side. I have posted the “cheese-infused” version of the meatballs here.

Before I proceed to the recipe, I have to make a big shout out to my dear husband with whom I developed this dish. As an avid noodle eater, he was so excited to hear that we’re having homemade chicken noodle for dinner. Of course he wanted to make sure that this noodle is on par with his favourite.

Chicken Noodle

For broth / soup:

• 400 grams chicken breast and thigh, on the bone
• pepper
• salt
• a bunch of bok choy, roughly cut
• 500 ml water

For onion oil seasoning:

• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 stalks of spring onion, use only the white part, finely chopped
• around 2 tablespoon oil to stir fry

For noodle seasoning:

• 300 gram egg noodle
• 3 bunch bok choy
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sweet soy sauce
• a pinch of pepper

Instructions

1. Prepare the broth, simmer in low heat for an hour to two depending on the thickness of the chicken. Turn off heat and discard the vegetable after cooking.
2. Ensure that the chicken is thoroughly cooked, take out and pat dry. Bone the chicken and cut meat into small pieces.
3. For the onion oil seasoning, heat oil on low heat. Add spring onion and garlic and cook until brown. Turn off heat once they turn brown as the heat will continue to cook them.
4. In your serving bowl, mix the noodle seasoning (soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil and sweet soy sauce) and the onion oil seasoning.
5. Boil egg noodle in a big pot for 2-3 minutes. Avoid rookie mistake by not overfilling the pot with noodle. Like cooking pasta, use lots of water to boil the noodle.
6. Take out noodle, set a portion into each of your serving bowl and mix well. Add chicken and bok choy to your liking. Garnish the dish with some finely chopped spring onion (the green part).
7. Add some broth on the side and enjoy your meal!

Kangkong or water spinach is my brother’s all time favourite and we always have it every time we eat seafood. This time however, my brother wasn’t here but I took it as a practice for when my brother come to town. We did have chilli garlic prawn (recipe here) to go with this kangkong and together they’re yum! One important note for this stir fry is to have everything ready to go in the pan to avoid overcooking the kangkong and turning it dark. Other than that, this definitely is a quick one pan dish for a busy night.

Kangkong stir fry with quail eggs

• 2 bunch kangkong, cut
• 10 quail eggs
• 3 garlic cloves, cut
• 3 shallots, minced
• 4 chillies
• 4 tablespoon fish oil
• 2 tablespoon sweet soy sauce
• A pinch of salt, to taste
• A pinch of black pepper, to taste
• Sugar, to taste
• Oil, to stir fry
• 50 ml water

Instructions

1. Boil quail eggs for 5 minutes for hard boiled eggs, or less if preferred
2. Heat up oil in a pan and stir fry garlic, shallot and chilli until fragrant
3. Add kangkong and the rest of the ingredients to pan, quickly mix the kangkong well.
4. Add quail eggs and take the pan off the heat as soon as the kangkong is cooked.

During our groceries errand last week, I bumped into eggplants and was stunned by their tiny shapes comparing to the eggplants I used to buy back in Melbourne. I remembered still having some chillies at home so I decided to cook terong balado (eggplant in chilli sauce). Balado is traditionally from Padang, West Sumatera and words have it that Padangnese use chilli for everything; fish, potato, chicken or basically everything that they fried. In Padang, lado means chilli and so balado means using chilli. The spiciness can be adjusted to your preference but what would a chilli sauce be if it’s not spicy? This dish is also not the healthiest dish due to the deep frying of the eggplant but if you prefer,  you could grill or stir fry the eggplant.

Terong Balado / Eggplant in Chilli Sauce

• 5 eggplants, halves and cut into 3
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cm galangal, minced
• oil, to deep fry & stir fry

For chilli sauce:

• 5 shallots
• 4 cloves garlic
• 5 chillies
• 1 tomato
• a pinch of salt, to taste
• sugar, to taste

Instructions

1. Deep fry the eggplants until cooked. To know if they’re cooked, test if the surface has turned soft and tender. Once done, lined eggplants on paper towel to reduce the oil.
2. While eggplant is fried, mixed all chilli sauce ingredients and grind them using mortar and pestle until we reach paste consistency. You could also use food processor, but don’t overdo it to avoid turning it to puree.
   
3. Stir fry chilli mix paste with bay leaves and galangal until fragrant
4. Add eggplants to the chilli paste and mix well
5. Take off the heat and it’s ready to be served with a bowl of warm rice

Prawn is my most favourite seafood and also one of the few “things with face” that I’m not afraid to handle. Yes, I’m frighten by the thought of handling chicken head, fish head and any other heads. I originally cooked this chilli garlic prawns dish as a ‘meat’ to my vegetable dish of kangkong stir fry (recipe will be added later) but then, I found that this dish would also suit as an entree. To make it as entree, I would serve it with grilled bread instead of rice.

Chilli garlic prawns

• 500 grams prawns, tails intact
• 5 garlic cloves, roughly minced
• 3 chillies, roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 50 grams butter
• coriander leaves, to serve
• oil, to stir fry
• A pinch of salt, to taste
• A pinch of pepper, to taste

Instructions

1. Heat oil and butter over a medium-high heat. Add chilli and garlic, stir fry until fragrant.
2. Add prawns and seasoned with salt and pepper, cook for 4-5 minutes
3. Add lemon juice to the prawns and combine well
4. Take pan off the heat and serve prawns