Ondeh Ondeh (Pandan Glutinous Rice Balls)

Ondeh ondeh (or "onde onde" as some spell it) is a Malay kuih. I have eaten this many times in my hometown but I did not know of its name until a long time ago. A friend at university told me he loves Ondeh Ondeh and he usually bought them from the Bengawan Solo (cake shop) store from the university hospital near our faculty. He taught me how to appreciate this yummy juicy (melted sugar inside the 'ball') kuih. You have to put the entire ball into your mouth, so that when you bite into it, the melted sugar inside oozes out.

I did not realise how easy it was to make this dish. I found quite a number of recipes online but I came up with this easy (maybe a cheat's) version. And it tastes great!

There were 2 shades of green because of the different amount of pandan paste I added

(makes about 40-50 balls)

500g glutinous rice flour

1 tsp pandan paste

1 cup water

desiccated coconut (I prefer this to shredded ones)

about 200g gula melaka or palm sugar

2 tbsp white sugar

Stir pandan paste and water together in a jug. In a large bowl of half the amount of glutinous rice flour, pour a bit of the pandan mixture. Mix and knead with your hand and slowly pour more mixture as you go along, until you achieve a dough that has a consistency like that of playdough.

Using a grater, grate gula melaka (I bought my cylindrical shaped dark brown version from Singapore) or palm sugar finely. Add sugar and mix well. Make small balls out of the dough. Flatten each ball and place half a teaspoon (the amount depends on how big your ball is) of sugar mixture in the centre. Wrap around the ball so that the sugar is inside the ball. Ensure that each ball is smooth and round.

When I try it the next time, I hope to make this flat dough thinner. That means the dough has to be smooth and not dry.

In a saucepan of boiling water, drop the balls in. Gently stir through so that the balls will not stick to the bottom of the saucepan. You only need to create enough movement to swirl the water. You will know that they are cooked when they float onto the surface of the water. Using a slotted spoon, remove the ball out of the water and place it in a bowl of dessicated coconut. Swirl the bowl to coat the ball. Serve warm.

This is a dish that should be eaten soon after it is made. Do not make a mistake (like me) of making the balls and leaving them overnight in a container to cook the next day. Some sugar inside the balls dissolved in the moisture and leaked into the container. I managed to salvaged most of the balls and cook them immediately in the morning.

Ideally, you should use pandan juice (pandan leaves blended with water). However pandan leaves are not easily available in Australia. Hence this particular brand of pandan paste is good enough and it is convenient too!

This pandan paste can be found at Asian grocery stores

Postscript: A better recipe and more info available here.

Marinara Pasta with Tomato Base Sauce

I love seafood and definitely marinara mix. I have shared 2 recipes with cream sauce to cook with marinara. Here is a simpler, shortcut way for a tomato-based sauce.

500g marinara mix

1 bottle of Bertolli tomato and basil sauce (This Bertolli range has no added preservatives nor MSG and it was on sale when I bought it)

shaved or grated parmesan cheese to serve

400g ribbon pasta

1 brown onion, finely diced

Cook pasta in salted boiling water, according to instructions on the packet, until al dente.

In the meantime, heat a frying pan. When heated, add olive oil and onions and cook until they are lightly softened. Add pasta sauce and cook for 1 minute. Add seafood. Cover and cook for about 2 minutes or until seafood is cooked through, and the sauce has come to a simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste. Dish the sauce over cooked pasta on a plate. Top with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.

If you want to use store-bought pasta sauce, make sure you read its food label for the sodium (salt) content and if any preservatives are added (check the ingredients list). Try as much as possible to go for those with no preservatives and lower sodium content. They do not necessarily cost a lot more than those that have preservatives.

Lebanese Bread & Pizzas

"Made from unbleached flour, this circular-shaped flatbread is typically used to wrap hot kebabs but also makes the ideal cheat's base for homemade pizza." Donna Hay Magazine Jun/Jul 2009

Before I read the above, I have already been using lebanese bread as my cheat pizza base at home. I love thin crust pizzas and this is a good, almost-near substitute for it. I will only pay at most A$2 for a pack of 5 wholemeal ones. When they are really cheap (sometimes at Cocos at Market Square), you may find them for close to A$1 for that same pack of 5.

Buy them when they are cheap and either:

1. freeze them with a paper towel in between each piece; or
2. make up 5 pizzas (or however many bread you buy), bake/cook them. Allow them to cool before freezing the entire pizza or pack into single portions (depending how much you eat each meal) in freezer bags and freeze them. You can take them out when you want an instant meal. Pizzas can be heated up from frozen(preferably in the oven as microwaving them will make the base soggy) and you will be able to have a meal in minutes!

We made our own pizzas last Tuesday night (this is probably cheaper and healthier than cheap Dominos pizzas on Tuesdays). I decided to make 2 different toppings on 1 pizza (lebanese bread). The left (in photo) was tomato paste, ham (from the deli) and cheese (I omitted the pineapple) and the right was (homemade) basil pesto, (leftover from the night before) chicken shreds, cherry tomatoes (from my garden), (leftover from some time ago) fetta cheese. For such pizzas, it only took 10 mins in my oven at about 180C.

Use any leftover meats, etc, that you have. Be creative! If you like thin crust pizza, using lebanese bread to make your own pizza would be a winner!

Lemon Juice

Need lemon juice and don't have them in your fridge? Fear not! You can buy a bottle of lemon squeeze/juicem either Berri or Coles home brand ones from the supermarkets. The small bottle only cost about A$1. Once opened, leave the bottle in your fridge and use them whenever - baking, jazzing up seafood, when you need to make honey lemon for your sore throat, making lemon tea, etc... This is cheaper than buying lemons.

Speaking of which, if you like to bake like me, here is a good way to deal with lemons or limes when they are on sale, you want to buy them but not use them now: use a grater and grate the zest into a small container, label and freeze them future use. With the 'bald' lemon or lime, cut it into half and get the juice out into small containers too (or put it into ice cube tray to make ice lemon juice). This way, you are able to use the lemon/lime juice in future and need not fret that they are expensive at the time when you want to use them. Read more about it here.

Vanilla Ice Cream with Mango Coulis

I wanted to make Aussie Mess (aussie version of Eton mess) from the Masterchef cookbook but in the end only made the mango coulis from the recipe, because I wanted to use up some ripened mangoes that I have. Coulis (a french word pronounced koo-lee without the s) is basically made by pureeing the mango flesh.

Thinking that I have an extra box of vanilla ice cream in my freezer, I thought I will bring the coulis and ice cream to church to share it as an arvo tea. It was such a hit! The mango coulis also came in well with the random trifle that Steppi made just because she wanted to use up ingredients in her fridge, post Christmas and New Year.

Here is the simple recipe:

Puree the flesh of 3 ripe mangoes. Bring it to simmer in a saucepan. Cook over med-low heat until it is reduced  by half. If fruit is not particularly sweet, you may like to ad a little sugar. Allow to cool. Scoop it over ice cream :)

You can also make raspberry, strawberry coulis with the same method. But you will have to put it through a sieve to remove the seeds. Easy and versatile, isn't it?

Quick Way to Cook Veggies

The pyrex glass dish set is my best investment ever. We bought a set before we got married and we were given another different set for our wedding gift. (This has made me get a set for my sister now that she is getting married)

Frozen whole green beans and fresh carrots

Place cut broccoli, califlower, carrots, whole beans, potatoes (basically the 'hard' or root veggies) into the dish, sprinkle or fill it with some water, cover it with the lid (yes the lid is microwaveable). Choose the relevant setting on the microwave (my Panasonic has a "vegetable" setting) and wait for it to be cooked!

The result is like your steamed or boiled veggies and is good enough to be eaten on its own (you have to drain out the water). I usually like to add some oyster sauce and a drizzle of olive oil or throw in a dollop of butter (woo, I love to see the butter melting into the hot veggies) or just a dash of salt and sesame oil over. And there you have healthy veggies.

If you prefer stir-fry, you may still cook it the same way and quickly stir-fry them in the fry pan with oil and other seasonings you like. But remember to only cook for a short time, because you do not want to lose the nutrients since they are really already cooked in the microwave.

If you are keen to get your own pyrex dish set (you can also put them in the oven but without the lids, please), you can find them for as cheap as A$20 and a max of A$40 for a set with the blue lids, depending on what sizes of the dishes you want. Check them out at Big W, Kmart or Target when they have their pyrex or homeware sale.