South Africa Meets Malaysia – cooking steak South African-style, accompanied with Malaysian sides
When I started my food business, my specialty was satay (bet you didn’t know that) – I used to cook them on charcoal grills and sell them at the monthly Kirribilli and Mosman Markets in the mid-90s, back when I was still working in an office during the week. And I used to make a…
Everybody loves to eat spring rolls (aka egg rolls in America) and while you can buy pre-made spring rolls easily, in my opinion it always tastes better when you make it yourself at home. Not only that, you get to decide exactly what ingredients go into it. Nowadays in Australia, you can find frozen spring…
The word “kaya” has two meanings in Malay – it can mean “rich” as in “wealthy”, or it can refer to a coconut and pandan jam that’s universally loved by Malaysians. Making kaya at home properly can be laborious and time-consuming – back in the old days you would cook it in a double-boiler and…
Most of you are too young to remember, but if you lived in Australia in the 80s like I did, you’d know how hard it was to find Malaysian ingredients anywhere. That was why I had to learn how to make everything myself when I wanted to indulge in my craving for Malaysian food….
This was my second attempt at a vegan version of Kaya; the first time around, I used mashed taro (=> https://jackiem.com.au/2017/02/23/make-vegan-kaya-onde-onde/ ), which basically tasted like sweetened mashed taro. Nice, but you’re not fooling anyone who has any inkling of what kaya is like. This new recipe is adapted from one I found at MoreThanVeggies.sg;…
This is the same acar recipe (mixed vegetable pickle with crushed roasted peanuts and sesame seeds) that I used for my restaurant except for the omission of shrimp paste (belacan) in order to make it vegan. Please note my philosophy of “agak-agak” ie. guesstimating is in full force here, especially where the sugar is concerned,…
This prawn paste is sometimes called shrimp paste (not to be confused with belacan/terasi; I know, it’s confusing), and it’s best known as the base for Penang rojak aka fruit rojak, and as a topping/dip for Penang Assam Laksa. It’s molassy, dark brown, sweet and pungent. In Chinese it’s known as Hei Ko, and in…
My seafood shopping choices are heavily dictated by budget, in the sense that I would pick up something simply because it looks cheap, and figure out how to make it palatable after the fact. This explains why I often use squid instead of the more expensive calamari; contrary to popular opinion, squid can taste pretty…
This iteration of yam (taro) cake which I made during my Twitch Live Asian Kitchen broadcast did not start out being vegan, but it became so when I realised I did not have anywhere near enough dried shrimp for it. I did have some minced preserved radish, however (the stuff you use in Pad Thai,…