To Me, From Mak, With Tandoori Chickens

Some of you asked what’s my mother’s inspiration for being quite the chef in the kitchen. I would say the AFC Food Channel on Astro TV but she’s been stuffing the family faces long before cable TV became the vogue.

I supposed it had to do with being the eldest daughter of 9 siblings and miscellaneous relations and friendly neighbours. The entire community knew the Jailani family very well. Anybody had a problem, refer to the freakishly huge noisy family. Country-mice aren’t like town-mice after all.

I can see why my dad, being a very quiet and private person, had to gather some 5 years of courage after meeting Mak before he could formally ask Yayi for her hand.

But I’m wandering here. Mak likes to cook because she grew up pretty much next to the kitchen stove. There’s always mouths to feed and even today, I got uncles and aunties coming in for no reason every other week or so.

But this time, my folks are taking on a long trip, more than 2 weeks. They’re going to fly to Iran to ski on mountain snow and see the springtime flowers. Then they’re crossing the border to Turkey to shop and eat and shop s’more and eat s’more.

So they’ll be nobody to feed me.

Hey, I’m cool actually. I can live on mamak food. I was planning to buy a nice tandoori chicken with naan bread from this restaurant called Fazila Maju. I told that to Mak and was budgeting my finances (secretly, I still want to buy a paperback novel!).

Soooo, as usual before she flies to a land far, far, jet-plane-trip away, she made a feast big enough so I can make myself some sandwiches for the next day. Tandoori chickens.

Red hot from the oven!


Did Mak roast a whole bird? Yup, she did.

Her excuse was that tandoori chickens are much, much healthier than me making pies (can’t argue with that). Mak’s first tandoori chicken cooking was a melting failure and so I guess she’s trying to improve where she did wrong.

I’d say this one was great! It’s not as dry and flaky as the mamak tandoori chickens; quite juicy on the inside and meaty-chewy on the outside. She used a better tandoori mix too, great colour, spicy but not overly tongue-burning hot.

You should have seen the cooking pan under the metal bar-trays thingy used to cook the chicken on it. All the bird fat dripped on it was black and brown to a crisp. I should have taken a photo but it was ugly and I was too distracted by the chicken itself (I’ll have to scrap it clean later too, urg...)..


Yummy setting.


Mm-mmm, better than KFC...

Ayah went out to buy freshly baked naan bread from the mamak. Hehe, I guess I’ll know what Mak will be trying to make next!

Too bad we don’t have instant spicy mint sauce mix so the meal would have been perfect. MySis came for dinner too, since she and I were going to send Mak and Ayah to KL International Airport after evening prayers. And she came early after work too, since she heard that Mak was making tandooris.

So there you have it. Mak may not cook for an extensive family anymore; instead she emulated new food and styles of cooking. MySis inherited her baking skills (once she finds a really good oven for her small kitchen, she’ll be making chocolate-smothered brownies and fruity pavlovas again) and I guess I’ll more into casseroles and meat dishes.

Note2self: Must learn to cook this and get it right before next family reunion/meeting open house at Batu Arang. I now got married cousins to impress.
*hehehe!*


Oh yeeeeeeaaahh! Did I mention that she also made some home-brewed pineapple juice? Of course, she’s anak Pontian...

Invaded by Chicken Tartlets!

Do you guys watch Astro’s AFC (Asian Food Channel)? My mom does. My mom and all her 5 sisters as well. Not to mention her Al-Quran reading class and her SPPUM club as well. There’s always some kind of verbal cook-off between them every time there’s a kenduri or an open house or... well, senior housewives after all.

Mak’s favourite area of makes-family-fat expertise are pies and tarts. In fact, anything that can be dumped onto a bread/pastry/carbohydrate-swollen base and baked in the microwave is what Mak loves to do.

Something they work and sometimes they don’t *cough*seafood quiche*cough*.

But her chicken tartlets definitely works.

What I woke up to breakfast this morning.

I guess it had something to do with watching that show a few details about making pies, like egg wash instead of butter to coat the pans. So the night before, Mak made some creamy white sauce and fried some chicken mince meat with mixed veggies and then mixed them together to become the pie filling.


Hey, these look great!

Too bad MySis wasn’t around to learn the pie-making, now that AbangHuzir is back from overseas and their family is at their home (my sister needs to be around people, in case her pregnancy get complicated). She would have swiped them to oblivion (me and MySis are like evil witches. Between us, pies disappear like magic! *hehehe!*).


Creamy insides.


The filling consists of minced chicken, mixed veggies, white sauce, tiny cubed potatoes and chopped mushrooms.

Mak really goes free with the white sauce this time. When eaten hot, it’s like biting into a pastry cupcake of thick chicken and mushroom soup. I hope she remembers to re-heat it before she serves them to her reading class but it’s nice when eaten cold as well. Kind of like a picnic food.

Speaking of picnics, I hope Mak doesn’t mind me sneaking a couple of these for my lunch! *hehehe!*


Aiyo, better remember not to open my bag during class. Their nicely-baked smell is kind of strong.

Recipe: Breakfast Pepper Mix

Haha, this one is especially for Raising Mercury requesting healthy recipes. My family isn’t really a super-duper health concerned family other than always keeping our sugar intake to absolute minimum (family history has occasional diabetes), like tea with no sugar.

Although this recipe frys the food, I still say it’s healthy because there’s a lot of ingredients; the balance of veggies, meat and carbo. Mak only makes these in a huge batch in the morning so she could eat it again by noon (unless big brother Arsenal drops by, then the Pepper Mix is gone before mid-morning).

I don’t have the step-by-step photos, mainly because I wasn’t around when Mak cook this (too lazy to get out of bed) but as all you need is a wok and a large pepper grinder, it’ll be cool.

Pepper Mix.

Ingredients:
Some whole grain bread slices, 4 at least.
Potatoes, thickly sliced.
Carrots, sliced.
Broccoli, chopped.
Japanese cucumber, sliced (optional).
Onions, chopped.
Canned button mushrooms, sliced OR soaked shiitake mushrooms, sliced (optional).
Hot dogs
At least 2 burger patties (optional).
Lots and lots of grinded pepper.
NO SALT!

1. First up, boil the hot dogs until it’s soft and meaty, then slice them. Fry the burger patties on a pan (I used Ramly brand) until they’re half-cooked, then add in the sliced hot dogs. Fry them together until they’re done (frying the hot dogs gives it a grilled taste).

2. If you don’t want to use meat, use mushrooms! Slice some canned button mushroom or some shiitake mushroom (after it’s been soaked long enough to turn soft) and fry them in cooking oil.

*Note: Mak usually use meat or mushrooms as an excuse to reduce adding salt, or not add salt at all. You can still use both meat and mushrooms but it’ll be very, very filling (Ayah complains it’s Mak’s fault that he’s fat).*

3. Remove the meats/mushrooms from the pan and put them in a serving bowl. If you’re cooking burger patties, cut them into smaller pieces. Now fry the potatoes until it’s cooked. Poke it with a fork to see how soft you want it to be.

4. Remove the potatoes and also add them into the serving bowl. Now fry the carrots slices and chopped broccoli until, yes, soft and juicy. Occasionally, Mak often adds sliced Japanese cucumber into the frying veggies for more vitamins.

5. Once veggies done, that too goes into the serving bowl. Now you can fry the onions. To add a bit of spicy-ness, chop a bit of fresh chilli and fry them with the onions.

Note: If you’re wondering why all this stuff had to be fried seperately, it’s because the potatoes cook longer than the onions and the veggies don’t fry well if the heat is too high. Frying everything at once also takes longer to cook.*

6. For the last bit, toast the whole grain bread slices and then cut them into squares. Mix in all the cooked ingredients by tossing them like salad with a healthy dose of pepper. It helps if you had pounded the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar first.

7. Add an easy spray of oil and best served hot. It still taste good after it cooled, which you can eat it as a snack throughout the day.

This recipe was made soon after BabyNabil got over his teething and wanted to bite into everything. We can’t let him eat our too-long-french fries or thick daging masak merah so the Breakfast Pepper Mix was a hit because of the bite-sized pieces.

However, there is this mysterious phenomenon, but maybe it’s only in my house. Take note though. If you cook this with the meats and left the food on the open table, the meats tend to disappear to a smaller amount from time to time.

Either cooking this creates a black hole in the serving bowl, or somebody kept popping food into his mouth with his fingers when no one is looking. Maybe I better ask big brother Arsenal as this happens most often when he’s home.

Recipe: Southern Chicken with Onions

Mak’s food fest continues. I think she’s trying to experiment a few recipes she took from Astro’s AFC channel, especially now that she knows 3 of her sisters takes food ideas from the TV too.

Of course, there are times when the meaning of family means being test-dummies for bizarre experiments (I’m still gagging on her beef quiche). But often, some recipes work well.

Here’s one of my favourites chicken recipes.

Ingredients:
A whole bird, cut into quarters
Some salt and pepper
A good amount of paprika and chilli powder
Some all-purpose flour
Some butter
1/2 cup of oil
Some hot water
A whole onion, sliced
Potatoes (only as much as you can eat)

1. Firstly is to marinate the chicken quarters. Mix in all the salt, pepper, paprika and chilli powder and rub all those spices on the meat until they’re covered completely. Leave that in the fridge for at least 6 hours.

Look, Ma! I’m marinating.

2. With the potatoes, peel off the skins and cut into chunks. Then dump the potatoes into a saucepan full of water and bring it to boil.

3. Take the marinated chicken out of the fridge and then coat them with a layer of flour. This will give it a nice, fried, golden brown colour.

4. Heat the oil in another pan until quite hot. Then fry the chicken quarters.


Don’t fry all of the chicken at once. Other wise the oil will cool and lose heat and it takes even longer to get cooked.

5. Keep cooking the chicken until it has a nice, fried, golden brown colour. If your chicken quarters are big and you’re not sure if they’re fully cooked, you can put them in the microwave heat. Use High and for about 2 minutes at least.

6. What’s left on the pan are the oil and spices residue. This will turn into gravy. Turn the heat low and add a bit of hot water (hot water prevents gravy from cooling) and stir. Add flour to make it thick, add water to make it thin. You can also add the rest of the marinating spices for more flavour.

7. When the gravy is consistently mixed, add in all the onions. Keep frying until the onions had turned soft.


Mm-mmm, looks like a witches’ brew...

8. Once done with the chicken and onion gravy, your potatoes should have done boiling and be soft enough for mashing. Take the potatoes off the heat and drain the water out.

9. Add butter, a bit of salt and some pepper to the potatoes. Mix and mash them (for extra smooth potatoes, add some sour cream).


Here’s some hard-knock smashing. You can use a wooden fork or the bottom end of a plastic cup but I got this special potato masher from Ikea.

10. And then you’re done! Serve the fried chicken, onion gravy and mashed potatoes with steamed vegetables of your choice (Mak always serve Western cooking with steamed broccoli, carrots and cabbage).

Personally, what I like great about this recipe is how the onion gravy can be eaten with the mashed potatoes, quite a different combination of taste.


EAT!!!

Gift Food in My Mouth

School’s out this week due so my dependency to the virtual world hangs on RM$2.50 an hour at the littlest cyber café. I got me a couple of really nice books for Thesis Project homework but I’m going to need most of my time doing online researches.

So it’s only a picture-filled quickie post today. Plus, I’m getting a little suspicious about my mother these days. She’s a good cook but she only cooks well during the weekends. On other days, she just buys lauk from the street market and take-outs from nearby restaurants.

Starting with what’s she’s been cooking in the kitchen.

Breakfast 2 days ago: Pepper Mix.

Mak doesn’t usually cook breakfast. Seeing that we kids are old enough to fix meals ourselves. But she made a Pepper Mix. I called it that for lack of a better name. It’s a fried jumble of all sorts of pretty good stuff. Buttered bread, potato slices, burger meat chunks, sausage pieces, carrots and other marinated vegetables fried with strong pepper seasoning.


Dinner 2 days ago: Shepard’s Pie.

It was me who taught Mak how to make the best mashed potatoes from original potatoes. It made her Shepard’s Pie even better. Baked layer of mashed potatoes with a thin centre of freshly shredded carrots and a thick base of spicy taco meat. We never made any gravy with the Pie by compensating with creamier mashed potatoes.


Lunch yesterday: Carrot rice with Roast Chicken.

This is when I was beginning to suspect a hidden plot. Mak makes nasi minyak lobak merah very, veeeeeeeery rarely. It’s not hard to do but it’s one of her best cooking, especially delicious when made with her signature roast chicken with soy-sauce gravy.

She’s up to something and then I’m beginning to suspect what it is.


Dinner tonight?: Bread base, pasta sauce, white mushrooms, etc

And now she’s planning a pizza. But... Mak has never made pizza with these mushrooms before. They’re not our usual canned mushrooms.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that I knew something was up with my mother. It was while my father was watching the Al-Jazeera news on TV. Usually he’ll want to discuss current events with Mak, like US elections or Middle East conflict or the bad ice storm China is having for Chinese New Year.

As usual, Mak was sitting next to him but she’s not paying attention to the news or to Ayah this time - and Ayah, despite all the extra good cooking, was a bit sour that his wife wasn’t paying attention to him. Mak, oblivious, was reading a new book.



Mak has a crush on a new guy.

Hi-ho TheProton! Away!

For this blog entry, I would like to introduce to you the stalwart companion of mine. She’s as old as my maturity, maybe even more. We met when I was in primary school and today I indebted to her for ferrying me back and forth between home and school.

Ain’t she a beauty?

Aww... my Proton Iswara Aeroback.

Okay, technically, it isn’t mine; it’s my mom’s. And all this lovey-gooey ooziness over a mechanical vehicle that’s worth its weight in petrol and maintenance bills may sound overdone.

But I drive this car. It’s mine. It takes me places.

This is one of the earliest (and least publicized) Iswara Aeroback produced by the company. In family, the extended family, it’s the only Proton Iswara so everybody identifies it as the Iswara. In my nuclear family, it’s dubbed ‘TheProton’.

“Where’s TheProton?”
“Ayah must have taken it out to go to the mamak corner again.”
“Okay then. I’ll call him to feed the car as well.”

“There’s a car outside the gate. Can somebody move it so I can park inside?”
“It’s TheProton car. Your sister must have forgotten to lock in the handbrake again.”
“Luckily it didn’t roll into the neighbour’s Volvo like the last time.”

“I can’t accelerate TheProton too fast or it’ll jerk.”
“She’s an old lady. Be careful.”
“I know all about being careful around old people. I got two of the still paying the mechanic’s bills.”

Oooh yeah.

TheProton had been in three road accidents, each belongs to every family member who had just got their driver’s license. She had been clamped in Kelana Jaya and fined in Uptown Damasara. Captured on police camera in various highways. Broke down in the back roads between Kuantan and Kuala Terrengganu. Radiator overheated just before the Rawang exit. Up and down the Genting Highlands roads until her brakes got too old to carry her weight, our fat luggage and our fat-asses.

She’s been to waaay more places than a Toyota Avanza TV commercial, more durable than a Mercedes M-Class attacked by a dinosaur and more versatile than a Japanese cellphone. And a favourite bird-poop target every time she parks in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail.

Her most exciting incident was when a convoy of military trucks was passing her from the left, somewhere on the road going out of KL, sometime in the 1990s. The front most truck driver (in his big dark green truck) was probably wearing his stylish movie-inspired sunglasses to complement his full soldier boy uniform.

Didn’t see TheProton.
Boom!
A couple of bangs and a shaking as high as 7.3 on the Richer scale.
A full 180 degree turn.
Four sets of tire tracks decorated the road with black ribbons.

A mother, her best friend and two kids in the back seat with no seat belts on. Scary, huh?

It’s a good thing old Yayi had taught his daughter how to be a good driver. Mak barely managed to stop the car from turning over (which, however dangerous, would have been really interesting). Me and my little brother, young and stupid as we were (we weren’t even wearing seatbelts!), thought it was the coolest non-roller coaster car ride surprise ever.

The trucking soldier boys did their civic duty (and to stop Mak from logging a police report) by escorting us to the nearest mechanic shop to asses and pay for the damage (all 3 military trucks by the way).

It was the first and only time I got into a damn real military truck, with real soldier boys and their pretty pin-badges on their mud-green uniforms. And I tell ya, the government needs to give these guys some proper suspension and better seat cushions in those moving metal boxes.

Happy for TheProton, she survived to crash into various other non-military, albeit more expansive, vehicles for the next so-and-so years.

So Ayah decided that the old girl deserves a paint job and some expensive repair work.




Whatcha looking at?

Galactic gray, all the easier to hide any unwanted bird-poop splatter.

Oh, and my own contribution.


This old lady’s still kicks ass...

Flash Game: Other Age by Zeiva.

Firstly, thanks to Nessiah for her kick-starting my addiction to flash games. I hope your first Christmas in Australia has the summer weather burn your ass and your family pizza dinner.

If, like me, you liked multiple choice then you must have dreaded all the subjective questions in your secondary school exams. Every question has a 25% of being right and 75% of being wrong. And every question plays a role in determining your score as either an A, B, C and etc, etc.

Pretty much, that’s how you start Other Age, a flash game by Zeiva (who made 5 other flash games, alongside with a gazillion and one superb artwork). A round of multiple choice questions. Hey, not that I’m complaining because this is a really great game. Addictive too.

You play a princess who woke up to her 16th birthday. Tradition in the Zeiva kingdom is that you get to go on a blind date with a gentleman based on the choices you’ve input into this crazy machine that’s a 1/2 a teleporter and 1/2 anR2D2 with fork arms.



Yes, the machine is called that way. Don’t ask me why, I just play the damn thing.

By the way, every gentleman that is transported to you was done so unwillingly so your first challenge was to explain that you’re not going to rape them or anything. Once you figure out what kind of guy you’ve bombed yourself with, pick a date-setting they might like and get starting (cafeteria, library, etc, etc...).



For example, this is my first guy, Neody, bodyguard to Prince Lenz (he’s also my favourite guy). He enjoys long walks in the woodlands so I’ve chosen the, er, woodlands. But like every other dating game, trouble starts and thus I’m plunged into a search-and-rescue survival mission.

Also known as a mini game.



Different guys get you different mini games. Like if your multiple choice got you Zoui (a hungry guy from Zeiva’s other flash game, Genetic Glow), your mini game is to serve him as much good food with the time limit (emphasis on GOOD food). Win and you get Zoui’s Date True Ending. Fail and Zoui gets send back with many apologies from the King and he gets blasted by his friends as in ‘where the heck have you been?’ interrogation.



The same principles go for all your chosen guys. Each possessed a ‘true ending’ when you score and several ‘failed endings’, all depending on how badly you did. There are about 8 guys you can easily find and 2 ‘secret’ guys that are going to take some considerable skill in the multiple choices Luv-Luv robot’s questions to look for.



Warning! Beware of this guy! This is the man you DO NOT want to end up with. Trust me; it’s bad enough just looking at him (worse than some real-life guys I know) but it took me several tries to finally find a method to really get rid of him. You just have to punch his lights out.

The creators of the game kept to the secrecy in their sellable art book, so you’ll have to do some real money purchasing in order to find all the full Other Age secrets (hey, the girls got to make a living).

I have scored on all 8 guys and with the help of a great blog reader I also found the last 2 secret guys! Haha, not what I expected for either of them.

Overall, I duly recommend this game.
Link: http://zeiva.deviantart.com/art/Other-Age-39931316

Again, thanks to Nessiah. You Filipino wuss.
PS: Your Christmas present had been sitting in my file service provider for days. Can’t I just e-mail you the link and let you temp yourself to download it?

PPS: Interesting... My stats show that this blog entry is widely viewed. If you want to know how to get the all 10 guys and win their (mini games) hearts, do leave a note and I'll give the answer.

She's home...

My mother got home from England yesterday. Since that she left the country and left me home with her husband and youngest son to clean up after them for over a week (barely managed not to get the house to fall apart, starting with the kitchen sink) my inner b**ch was ready to dump everything into her travel-weary hand and leave me to play Tradewinds 2.

But she had a sore throat from the cold of England and possibly carrying some air-borne traveler’s flu. And she also got me souvenirs. Three tubes of salami, chicken, beef and spicy, better than any you’ll ever find in a Malaysian supermarket. And so for this blog entry, I ate my crap before I could have it.

Amongst family members, *Mak is the least person I’ll spout and rant about. It would have been quite different say, year and years ago when she hadn’t joined any charity group or Good-Bye Aunties’ groupies. I suppose there some sense into the madness of tart-tongued old ladies and their high-teas that made Mak less a working mother and somewhat a mellower mother.

Advantageous for me at least, because with her, I could share some crap-about-my-day stories which I couldn’t share with anyone else. Like my thesis report and that I got a presentation next Monday (December 3rd 2007) but of course I didn’t go into detail about me possibly failing the paper.

Mak is more sympathetic than my father when it comes to my failures, partially because she had been living with *Ayah for over 30 years and prior to that, she was the eldest girl in a family of nine brothers and sisters (yes, both Aidilfitri and Aidil’Adha holidays are a riot but that’s another story).

Other than that she got home with chocolate and three A+ Grade English salami which I loved (2 of them were over a foot long!). Which is not to say that she didn’t have her moments of b**chery at times. Like when it was her fault that we’re both becoming late on our way trip to Pontian (her hometown) and she took it out on me, seeing that I was the only other passenger.

At the moment for now, she’s probably cooking or cleaning up the mess Ayah and my younger brother made. She’s always cooking or cleaning, one part because no one else would, one part because she’s the woman of the house and one part because it’s her second nature. Eldest sister of nine brothers and sisters always have a habit in cooking and cleaning since coming from the backwaters of Pontian, JB.

My mess? It’s all in my own room thank you very much, which all mothers know that it’s highly territorial to volatile-tempered undergraduate students. I suppose that’s why she brought me home juicy salami.

Mine-ss... miiiiiiiiiiiinee... my preciousss...