Lactation cookies recipe

Heyya readers! How's it going? My days aren't so bad, in fact every day is a fun day.. be it with my kids or my fellow housewives here..

When I got Fahim, I really wished that I could breastfeed him fully, as long as I want. Alhamdulillah until now he is on breast milk like 95% of the time (100% from birth to 10 months). Right now he is showing keen interest in finger food. So yeah, I give him occasionally baby biscuits and fruits that he doesn't really have to chew.

Okay, I wanna share something that I took for months when breastfeeding Fahim. This is a good kind of snack. Very healthy for the mom and the baby. It's called lactation cookies. This helped me a lot in getting enough milk for Fahim. I'm proud to say that I managed to donate my milk to 3 different babies too. Alhamdulillah this time around Allah made it easier for me.

Yeah, exactly we can always purchase. But 500 g of lactation cookies costs about RM50 RM60 in Kuala Lumpur, so it definitely burnt holes in my purse as I eat my cookies like munching peanuts, lol. I got this recipe after a lot of browsing and watching Youtube videos. I love this recipe as it is easy and crunchy for me :)

The main ingredients for lactation cookies are rolled oats, flaxseed meal and brewer’s yeast.. I bought the items online at:

www.littlegreenplanet.com.my

www.organic4u.com.my 

Group A 

• 4 eggs
• 4 tablespoons of butter (can substitute with low fat Vitalite margarine)
• 2.5 cups of brown sugar (the sweet toothed ones can add more if they like)
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 tablespoons of vanilla extract 

Group B (mix all these ingredients together in a bowl)

• 2 cups of whole meal flour
• 4 tablespoons of flaxseed meal (increasing this will not affect the taste of the cookie)
• 3 tablespoons of brewer’s yeast
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of soda bicarbonate

Group C

• 3 cups of rolled oats, grounded
• Other GOOD ingredients of baker’s choice (pick any 2 or 3, or even better, all!)

a. 1 cup of Raisins

b. 1 cup of Almonds (Coarsely grounded)

c. 1 cup of Walnuts (dubbed as the brain food) (Coarsely grounded)

d. 1 cup of  Dates (chopped)

e. 1 cup of  Hazelnuts (Coarsely grounded)

• 2 cups of Chocolate chips (so far Hershey’s chocolate chips are the best)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven for 155 deg C (oven with fan) or 170 deg C (oven without fan)
2. Beat Group A together in a cake mixer, until all are mixed well 
3. Add in Group B bit by bit until the batter is even.
4. Pour in bit by bit the grounded rolled oats and your chosen good ingredients. Stir well with a large spoon.
5. Lastly, add in the chocolate chips. Mix well.
6. Scoop the mixture bit by bit onto the baking tray to form like a biscuit (size is up to you). 
7. Press the individual scoop with a fork to flatten it (if you like it to be flat)
8. Put the baking tray in the oven and bake for about 15-20 minutes (the smaller the cookie size the faster it will bake)

I so love these cookies.. only nowadays I don't really make them cuz I haven't found flaxseed meal and brewer's yeast here yet..

Do give it a try.. you won't be disappointed!

Happy baking, and happy breastfeeding!

Dubai kitchen: Jom masak nasi lemak!

Ha, dah namanya homemaker kan.. what is the fun of being a homemaker without some noise in the kitchen, haha.

Ok today I wanna share with you nasi lemak recipe. I've been cooking several times already, but I think this one I'm sharing is my fave way of doing it.

Nasi lemak comes with a few condiments. They are really simple to make, really. Trust me :) 

Let's prepare the rice first. We will need:

• Rice (depends on how much you wanna cook.. for more people, cook more rice)
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 centimeters of ginger, chopped
• 1 stalk of lemongrass, finely chopped (some just like to hit it and directly put it into the cooker. Well, lemongrass is one of the most effective herbs to prevent cancer. So, please, eat it!)
• Coconut milk; amount will be of the same level as the rice in the cooker (if you like the rice to be softer, add in coconut milk slightly more)
• 1 tsp of salt
• 2-3 pandan leaves, tied together

Some may prefer diluted coconut milk, and some may prefer it to be more 'milky'. I like it to be a little diluted.

Method: Put all ingredients in the rice cooker. Give them a stir. Then turn on the cooker and just let the rice cook.

Ok. Next let's prepare the 'sambal' or chilli gravy. We will need:

• 3 red onions + 2 cloves of garlic + some anchovies + some water (grind them together in the blender)
• 4 tablespoons of chilli paste (or chilli boh as they usually call it). If you like hotter sambal, you can add in more chilli paste
• 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup (you can replace this with tamarind extract) Tomato also has the sour taste so using it kinda meets the same purpose of using tamarind extract. Oh, my husband doesn't like it when I use tamarind extract. That's why I use tomato ketchup instead.
• Some fried anchovies
• 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil (use it because it's anti-cancerous and anti-inflammatory!)
• Salt and sugar to preferred taste
• You may add 'belacan' (anchovies paste) if you like. I don't because husband doesn't like it. Oh well..

Method: 

Pour the olive oil in the pan and heat up the pan

Pour in the blended ingredients and stir. Wait for the oil to surface

Add in the chilli paste. Stir well. Again, wait for the oil to surface again

Put in the fried anchovies and tomato ketchup. Stir. If you think that the mixture is kinda thick, add in some water.

Put in salt and sugar according to your liking. I like it to be a bit sweet.

The condiments:

Eggs: You can choose sunny side up or hard-boiled eggs. I like hard-boiled eggs. Less fat.

Fried groundnuts

Fried anchovies

A few slices of fresh cucumber

Easy peasy, don't you think?

 Macam nak bawa bekal pergi sekolah pulak kan.. haha

Kung Pao Chicken: Let's get cooking!!

I had a good one week break from work last week. Maybe ada yang noticed that suddenly my instagram and facebook uploads were surging. Haha. Well.. memang banyak leisure time when staying at home kan. Especially when I have done the house chores in the early morning. And.. of course,  when I have a husband with great helping hands (do you know my husband cooks too? He aspires to be in Masterchef! )

Oklah, today I wanna share the recipe of Kung Pao Chicken, one of my fave dishes especially when going to chinese muslim restaurants. 

But I must warn those who dislike hot dishes - this can be a bit biting to your tastebuds.

Tapi sedap :D hehe.

Ok mari mulakan.

1. Marinate the chicken. Ingredients:
   a) 3 tbsp of oyster sauce
   b) 1.5 tbsp of corn flour
   c) about 500 g of chicken breast

  Mix them well and leave for 30 minutes. Heat the frying pan with cooking oil mixed with a bit of sesame oil. Fry the chicken until the color is golden brown. Then take it out from the pan. Use about 4 tbsp of the oil from the frying for sauté-ing the garlic and ginger later.

2. The sauce. Mix well all the ingredients below in a bowl:
   a) 1 cup of chicken stock (you can use the cube)
   b) sweet soy sauce. I like it sweet so I used like 5 tbsp.
   c) 2 tbsp of chilli sauce
   d) honey. Can be substituted with sugar
   e) 1 tbsp of corn flour. If you wish to make the gravy less thicker,  use less corn flour
   f) salt to taste

3. The sauté-ing ingredients. You will need:
   a) 3 large cloves of garlic
   b) 1 inch of ginger
   c) 5 dried chillies (or more if u like it hotter). Cut them into halves. Get rid of the seeds if you want.
   d) half capsicum, diced. I used red. You can choose the yellow or the green too. Adds colors to the dish.
   e) sliced carrots
   f) peas (you can definitely substitute this with your other favourite greenies)
   g) grilled cashew nuts, about half a cup

Ok now let's begin our cooking!

Pound the garlic, the ginger and a few dried chilli halves together. Sauté them for a few minutes. Then add in the remaining dried chillies. Let them fry for a while.

Add in the capsicum and the carrot. Stir the mixture well, and then add in the sauce (item #2). You will notice the gravy will thicken in a short while. 

Then add in the fried chicken. Stir well.  Then comes the peas, and lastly,  the cashew nuts.

Don't forget to taste your dish. Do some adjustments on the sugar-salt balance according to your preference :)

And now, your Kung Pao Chicken is ready to be served!

Syebu and Khai, hope this recipe works for you :)

A hint of Edinburgh and jom masak II: Mutton Lasagna

Oh well, I decide to kill time with blogging in this cold morning. It is drizzling now outside the hotel and Princes Street is not as busy as it was yesterday. I am very lucky because the view from my room is breathtaking, and that there are many outlets for me to do my mini shopping along Princes Street. I'm so excited :)

 

Edinburgh Castle on the distant hill. And this Gothic structure is the Scott Monument, dedicated to the Scottish author, Sir Walter Scott

The left-side view of my window: Looking toward North Bridge and Balmoral Hotel

Okay, let's get on with our lasagna! Fellas, this recipe is simple yet tasty, and I'm sure you can do it too!

This recipe is for 4 - 6 persons. So if you're making it for a smaller number of people, you can just decrease the measurements, but you know, it's always good to cook a little bit more, in case someone wants second or third helping :D

Alright. The things you will need:

Lasagna sheets of course! I bought the one that didn't need pre-cooking.

Oh yeah, don't forget to preheat the oven.

For the minced mutton gravy:

1. 300 grams of minced mutton (yeah, you can definitely use meat too, it's just that it is easier to get halal mutton here in Reading)

2. 1 can of sliced button mushrooms

3. 500 g of lasagna sauce (I use Dolmio's, but yeah, any lasagna sauce will do)

4. Salt, sugar and pepper to taste (white or black, up to you. I like both :D)

5. A hint of oregano

6. 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Here's how I do it:

Heat the olive oil into the pan. Then put in the minced mutton and let it fry for about 4-5 minutes, or until all the parts have turned brown. After that, pour in the lasagna sauce and stir well to get the mutton to blend well with it. Simmer for about 2-3 minutes, and then put in the mushrooms. Add in salt, sugar and pepper until the taste meets your expectations.

My gravy looked like this! I love the colour

Ok. Now, the white sauce:

1. 50 grams of butter

2. 3 tablespoons of flour (if you want the sauce to be thicker, you can use more flour)

3. 500 ml of fresh milk

4. Chopped cheddar cheese (amount up to your liking)

5. Salt and sugar to taste

As usual, heat up the pan and put in the butter. When the butter has melted, put in the flour, half tablespoon at a time. Stir well before adding more flour. After that, pour in the fresh milk, and mix it well with the flour and butter. Add in the chopped cheddar. Stir until the cheese has completely dissolved in the mixture. Add in sugar and salt to your preferred taste.

Mine was made to be a bit thick.. and I put in half block of the cheddar

Now, let's begin layering the lasagna. First, spread the gravy evenly in the baking tin. The place the first layer of lasagna sheets on top of it. Spread again the gravy, and add the white sauce on top of the gravy before covering with the lasagna sheets. Repeat the process until the gravy is all used up. After placing the last layer of lasagna sheets, spread the top with the white sauce.

 

 Just like this

Now it's ready to go into the oven. 170-180 degrees Celsius, 40-50 minutes. I prefer slow, not-too-high-temperature cooking. So I tend to lower the heat a bit toward the final 10 minutes of the cooking to 160 degrees and add in extra 5 minutes.

And so, voila! The lasagna! Nyum2~ tastes better than the lasagna of Suria KLCC level 2 food court

Sian sayang.. I spoilt his healthy eating habit! Sorry sayang.. seronok ada kawan nak teman makan.. so comes the appetite :D

Jom masak: Rendang daging!!

Some friends (and at times some busybodies too..) asked me what do I do at home when hubby's off to work. Well, I would say my life so far has been really great and I am well-occupied. Cooking, cleaning the house, doing daily shopping, browsing for new recipes, doing the laundry, quality times with hubby, etc. So far, every weekend is spent traveling around. Not too much of shopping activities as yet (so perhaps, some acquaintances can forget the idea of asking me to get them something from the factory outlet. I rather fill my luggage with my stuff) As much as I do miss the office, I don't really feel like going back either. Oh well, good times always fly fast.

Speaking of cooking, I made this rendang 2 days ago, after badly craving for something spicy and has a hint of 'raya' (oops.. please don't misconstrue the word 'craving' yah.. I just cooked it because I love rendang)

What was special about this rendang is that I made the kerisik and the chiili paste myself. And best of all, the rendang received a mark of 9/10 from my hubby :D Of course I was excited about it, because his tastebuds are hard to please! Oh, that 1 mark deduction was because the rendang was a bit hot. Hubby doesn't really like his meals to taste hot, unless they are sambal.

Ok so, let me walk you through..

The chilli paste

To make the chilli paste less hot, discard all the chilli seeds by cutting the chillies. Soaking the chillies (which are already being cut) in water may help to get rid of the seeds, in case you don't really wanna get rid of seeds from the chillies one by one.

Then, boil the chillies until they appear softened. Don't forget to add in a bit of salt into the water. You can stir once in a while (well, there's no restrictions to do so!) Then, when you're done boiling, let them cool off for a while. Place them in the blender and add in water and 3-4 tablespoons of cooking oil before blending. The cooking oil will help to smoothen the texture of the chilli paste.

There you go, the finely-blended chilli paste

Ok, let's move on to the next one

Kerisik

I didn't have the slightest idea that morning that I would be making the kerisik myself. I told myself that if I were to look high and low, I would probably find it. But I guess I didn't look as thorough as I should, or maybe because it was just not there. Luckily I managed to find dessicated coconut. So here goes..

Pour in the dessicated coconut onto a pan. No oil necessary. Just the dessicated coconut. Heat it until the dessicated coconut becomes more brownish from time to time. Near-to-dark-brown is just fine.

Mine turned out like this. I wanted it to be dark brown so that my rendang will turn out darker :)

Next, blend the brown dessicated coconut with 3 tablespoon of cooking oil. No water needed. Well, yeah it's kinda difficult to blend without water. But, yeah, just try to do it anyway.

So this was my kerisik outcome. Yeah, a little coarse, just the way I wanted it to be :)

Okay, so now it's time to make rendang!!

Well, these are basically all the things you need :)

The back row: Cooking oil, cumin powder (jintan manis), coriander (ketumbar), nutmeg powder (serbuk buah pala), fennel seed (jintan putih), salt;

In the bowls: tamarind juice, chilli paste, blended ingredients (1 large onion, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 inch of ginger, 1 inch of galangal, 3 stalks of lemongrass, 1 tablespoon of turmeric powder) Remember the blended ingredients are estimations for 300 grams of meat. If your meat weighs more, then you may need to double the numbers. Still, it depends on your taste of rendang. I mean like how you expect it to be;

3/4 Can of Carnation evaporated milk (to replace coconut milk), 300 grams of meat, palm sugar (Gula Melaka), kaffir lime leaf and of course, cinnamon, star anise, cardamon and cloves. I call them 'the four friends'.

Right, so we are ready to start cooking our rendang!

Heat the pan. Pour in the cooking oil and wait for it to get heated up. Then pour in the blended ingredients and the four friends into the pan. Stir well and until the oil emerges on top of the ingredients, then put in the chilli paste. Stir thoroughly and again, wait until the oil emerges.

Then pour in half can of the evaporated milk. Stir well, then put the meat in the mixture. Let it cook until the gravy looks thick enough.

It will look something like this

If the gravy is getting thicker and the meat is not yet well-cooked, feel free to add in water in the amount that you feel is good enough to get the meat to tender. Remember to cook on medium heat.

Figure the tenderness of the meat every 15 minutes.. because then the meat is almost okay, then only you can pour in the tamarind juice (well, my grandma said that pouring in the tamarind juice too early will result in the meat hard to be tendered). Also, add in the remaining evaporated milk, kaffir lime leaf , palm sugar and all the spices. Add to your own taste ya. I love the nutmeg powder. And the palm sugar will help to darken the rendang. Stir the gravy well.

The final ingredient to be added in after the gravy has thicken again  is the kerisik. Mix it into the gravy well. Don't forget to put in salt to taste.

So, this was my end-product (well, I cooked it further until it became dry and thicker.. dah malas nak take pictures..) I was glad that that hubby enjoyed it :)

 My rendang!

Of pot-luck gathering and currypuffs... and Tein's birthday

Sorry for the long~~~ pause ya (especially to Iman!) Saya tidak berjaya menjadi pengkarya pilihan anda minggu lepas ya, hahahaha~

Oh well, maafkan saya. I'm GLAD that today ended the series of my Mo0Ody Days I had this week. I guess this time, it was the most terrible mo0Od swing I had! I'm relieved it's over!

We had a great pot luck time at my boss' place @ Bukit Antarabangsa today (penat lalu depan Rumah Dato' K, tak pernah2 terserempak, haha!) Most of the department staff were there, with each of us bringing our specialty meal and delicacies. Spaghettis, nasi ayam, sate, nasi impit... all the good and fattening food. Me? I brought my self-made currypuffs. Kak Nadia said they were good (of course la, acece..) She tapau-ed a few to bring home. Heehee.. I'm honored, and delighted, of course!

Most of my colleagues brought together their spouses and children. Haha, my fave baby would be Zeti's. Iman, nama baby Zeti pun Iman.. tapi it's a boy la.. hehe. All he did was chuckled to all of my weird and funny faces. Tapi, sayangla.. lupa pulak nak took his photos. I will post the pics of the day in my Facebook lar..

Very soon enough August will arrive. I will wait patiently for the passing of the first half of it. I am eager to know what will be the story for me starting from the second half and onwards. It may be exciting. It may be the other way round too.

Hmm.. lastly.. siapa nak tahu recipe kepada pastry karipap yang sangat sedap dan crunchy?? (siyes beb sedap.. ni my Maktok yang ajar ok! Please do try. Intinya, buat la sesuka hati anda ye.. hehe)

The currypuff pastry ingredients: Flour, cooking oil, butter, water, condensed milk, salt. (Sukatan? Terpulang kepada tukang masaknya, asalkan kena dengan selera anda)

The method:

1. Pour the flour into a mixing bowl. I used the whole packet.
2. Heat the cooking oil together with the butter. 2 tablespoon of butter to be heated with 1 cup of cooking oil. Turn off the burner after the butter has fully dissolved in the oil. Let it cool down for a while.
   
3. Pour the mixture of fats into the flour, a little at a time. Mix well until the flour texture turns into somewhat like damped sand.
   
4. Mix the water with a tablespoon of condensed milk and a pinch of salt. Taste it before pouring, so it matches your taste. Then pour it slowly, still a little at a time, so that the portion of the water mixture is just right for the flour-oil mixture to form a dough.
5. You will see that the dough can not be stretched that long. The texture is kinda choppy. That is a sign that your dough is good (good as in it will be crunchy after you have fried the currypuffs) Your dough is ready to be rolled into thin pieces now!
6. Tips: When you are about to fry your currypuffs, make sure that you place them into the frying pan before the cooking oil gets hot. Better if you place them before turning on the stove, so that the fried surface will not have 'bubbles', and your currypuffs will look good =)

Iman, try ok! Untuk gathering birthday Sarah ;) Ke, nak aku buatkan... hehehe...

Hari ni birthday Fatin. Happy birthday Tein =) I will not mention yang ke berapa, cuz even for myself, it's sensitive now, haha ;) sorry aku lambat sket wish (>_<)