Baked Cheesy & Spicy Eggplant Sambal with Rice

Sambal and cheese.
It is certainly not a "classic" flavor combo, no?
But I couldn't help it.
When I see cheese, I have this unstoppable urge to grate them on top of something savory and bake them until they're gooey and golden.
I don't think you'd blame me.
It is, unsurprisingly, delicious!


Eggplant Sambal Recipe
- 1 eggplant, wash and cut into bite sized chunks
- 3 cloves of garlic (oh yeh), minced
- 4 shallot, sliced thinly
- 3 large red chillies, seeds removed (or you can also use a few smaller, hotter ones and include the seeds if you like it really hot)
- oil, salt, pepper, sugar, ground corriander, cumin
Saute garlic, shallot and chillies in a couple tablespoon of hot oil until super fragrant, add eggplant, mix about, season and spice it until you reach a balance between savory, spicy and sweet, cook until the eggplant chunks absorbed the spicy goodness and are nice and soft.


In a baking dish, add rice (I just used some leftover rice), add eggplant sambal on top of it, add lots of cheese (I used mozzarella and parmesan), bake until golden brown and garnish with crispy shallot if you like. Addition of freshly chopped coriander would be perfect. Too bad I didn't have any (why don't I ever have any coriander in my kitchen! T_T)

Sambal Goreng Tahu Tempe - Tofu & Soy Bean Cake in Chilli Paste

Another "keeping it real" post.
No food styling, no pretty utensils, no pretty food pictures.
This is how dinners are consumed in the haus of Mochachocolata-Rita.
Additionally, since the arrival of baby Marcus, dinner duration has been reduced from 15 minutes (!) to generally under 5 minutes (!!!)

(We know, we know...eating too fast is unhealthy T_T)

But don't underestimate this ugliness.
This is what I always call ugly delicious.
Extremely tasty and addictive. Those who avoid carb should kiss this dish goodbye, as it would be hard to limit ourselves to eat less rice. I ate triple portion of rice because of this dish!
Although this dish is vegetarian, you'll get enough protein from the tofu puffs and tempe.
Totally satisfying.
Burp~

Recipe
- 1 block of tempe, cut into chunks (1x1x3cm)
- 10 tofu puffs, halved (or 1 block of firm tofu cut into cubes)
- oil, salt and pepper
Simple chilli paste
- 1 tomato (optional)
- a handful of chillies (remove seeds and choose less hotter varieties if you don't want it too spicy)
- 2 garlic
- 4 shallot
- oil, salt, pepper, sugar, ground corriander

Lightly season and pan fry tempe cubes until they're a bit browned, set aside (you can totally skip this step to minimize the use of oil). Throw all the chilli paste ingredients into a food processor and pulse until everything's mixed well but it doesn't need to be fine and smooth. Heat up a bit of oil, add paste, add tofu and tempe chunks, season with salt, pepper, sugar and ground corriander, mix well, serve with lotssss of rice.

Burp~
...and reaching out for another bowl of rice yet again.
Excuse me.

Grilled Turmeric Chicken (Ayam Panggang Kunyit) & Sambal Kecap (Chilli & Sweet Soy Condiment)

I know exactly what you wanna say...
- I can't believe she grilled a bird again!
- Can she do anything else other than grilled bird?
- If I saw another grilled bird on this blog, I'm gonna...(fill in the blank)
- Another bird? That's it. I'm gonna unfollow, unsubscribe, unfriend, and everything else starting with "un" her.

Hehe.

I know, I know, I know!
But I just can't help it.
I like easy and tasty, and these grilled birds are.

This time, I tried grilling chicken using Jamie's duck grilling method. Obviously, because it is easier than my old method, which involves marinating, covering, uncovering, lowering and cranking up heat etc. All those steps got eliminated and I wonder if it would still end up as good.

Ingredients
- 1 (relatively small) chicken
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 6 cloves of shallot or half an onion, thinly sliced
- 1 cm ginger, sliced thinly
- turmeric powder, ground corriander seeds, cumin, salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 180C. Rinse chicken, pat dry, I removed neck, feet, tail, tip of wings and excess fat. Stuff some garlic, ginger slices and shallot in the chicken's cavity and or in between skin and flesh. Rub chicken all over with salt, pepper, ground corriander seeds, cumin and turmeric powder. Generously. Remember the cavity and in between the skin and flesh. Place chicken on baking dish and grill (uncovered) for 1 hour, flip and grill for another hour (total two hours).

Crispy, golden delicious skin, tender, juicy and tasty flesh.

I mentioned that the best way to consume this sorta chicken is with Indonesian sambal, right?
This time I made sambal kecap.

Back home, we'd use mortar and pestle to make the paste. Alternatively, we could use a blender or food processor to do it. But since the thought of having to wash a food processor, the vessel, the blade, the cover, etc scared me beyond belief, I decided to chop all of the ingredients. Whew!

Ingredients
- 20 red chilli (I removed most of the core and seeds, leaving only about 5 with seeds and OMG! the sambal stil ended up so bloody hot)
- 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
- 4 cloves of shallot, thinly sliced
- juice of half a lime
- 1 tsp salt, fish sauce, kecap manis, olive oil

Heat up a bit of olive oil, saute chilli, garlic and shallot (you'll need a super strong exhaust fan. If you're making this for a party, it is better to do it before your guests arrived, I've experienced suffocating my guests with chilli fume before) until fragrant, add salt, fish sauce, and kecap manis. Transfer to a bowl and drizzle lime juice over it.

Grilled chicken + sambal + hot steamy rice (eaten with bare hands) = undescribable.

I wish I could promise that this would be the last grilled chicken I post....but you know I can't :p

Creamy, Sweet, Tangy, Spicy, Hearty - Minced Meat, Pineapple & Eggplant in Coconut Milk

Somehow, the title of this post kinda reminds me of Spice Girls.
Imagine Creamy Spice, Sweet Spice, Tangy Spice, and Hearty Spice. Spicy?

Ehm, that brought back memories of another thing something I am not proud of...

When I was young, the five of us, my sis, my cousins and I, love love LOVE, a Japanese series Google V. It's a team of 5 heroic characters, fighting various world destroying baddies. We loved the series so much, we watched the series again and again (It was the time when videos were still in! Gowd, I am old) we sang the songs, we remember the tag lines, we remember which bad guys did what, we could imitate the moves/routines, the weapons, the transformation into robot, the robot's moves/routines and the final weapon (which worked every time, I am now wondering why they didn't use it straight away to kill the monster. oh yeah, there would be no series if they did that. gotcha).

We were a bunch of hopeless, geeky, nerdy freaks!

Everyone got to choose their own character. My chubby sis was goggle yellow, my girly cousin was goggle pink, both my boy cousins snatched the blue and the black, just because there were their favorite colors, and I was stuck being red. Actually, I didn't mind as the guy playing goggle red was kinda hot, although my major childhood crush was really...goggle blue.

Why am I feeling more like a loser each time I typed one more word into this post...

Anyway, that was then. My fun filled childhood.

Now, if creamy, sweet, tangy, spicy and hearty are characters out of spice girls or any group/band, I would have a major hard time choosing a character, cos I love 'em all and I like mixing 'em all up in one easy peasy dish, such as this one...

Creamy, Sweet, Tangy, Spicy, Hearty Minced Meat, Pineapple, and Eggplant in Coconut Milk

Recipe
- 1 lb minced meat (I used pork, but chicken will work too)
- 1 pineapple, remove core, cut into bite sized chunks
- 1 eggplant, cut into bite sized chunks
- a box of 200ml coconut cream
- 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 4 cloves of shallot, thinly sliced
- 3 red chilli, chopped
- olive oil, salt, pepper, sugar
- 1 sprig of spring onion or corriander, chopped (garnish)
- crispy fried shallot (garnish, optional)

Saute garlic, shallot, and chilli in olive oil until fragrant, add minced meat, cook for a while until it changed color a bit, add eggplants and pineapple, add seasonings, cook covered until eggplants are cooked through, add coconut milk, mix well, garnish with freshly chopped corriander/spring onion and crispy shallot. Serve hot with steamed rice or between two slices of bread of your choice.

Creamy, sweet, tangy, spicy, hearty.

Now tell me, who was your action hero childhood crush?

Nasi Goreng Sambal Ijo - The Fried Rice that Screwed Up My Diet

I am sure you have heard of the term "slowly but sure". It's good for something you're hoping for, such as success or achievements, but not so great for weight gain. Hehe. Plus, weight gain is normally not exactly slowly but sure, it's more like rapid and unstoppable (at least mine is).

The last few weeks when I realized that none of my pants fit, I had a crazy idea to start an extreme dieting. Skipping meals, eating almost nothing, starving myself to stupidity and the like. How silly of me to think that I'd succeed. The first day I skipped breakfast I felt pretty happy with myself, by the time I successfully had a very minimum lunch of healthy sandwiches I was pretty smug, thinking, I could totally do this. Summer swim suits, here I come!

I went home after work planning to skip dinner and attend an exercise class. Before class, I was preparing lunch boxes for the day after. Something simple. Just putting together a spicy green chilli sauce I made previously, and leftover rice. Everything was going well as planned...

....until I tasted the
Nasi Goreng Sambal Ijo (Spicy Green Chilli Fried Rice)

...and everything went downhill from there.

Recipe
(serves 4)
- 2 cups rice, cooked, refrigerated overnight
- 1/2 lbs minced meat
- 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
- 1/2 onion, chopped
- 8 large green chilli, chopped
- ground cumin, ground corriander seeds, salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce, pepper, olive oil

Saute garlic, chilli and onion in hot olive oil, add ground cumin and ground corriander seeds, add rice, mix well, season with salt, pepper, sugar, fish sauce, and serve.

It might look all simple and humble, but it is fragrant and super tasty. It kinda reminds you of eating hot steamy rice with Padang restaurant's sambel ijo. Yum!

I ravenously downed at least two meals worth of the evil fried rice (super gurihhhh) - ohhhh carb! and the only exercise I could do after that was lying on my couch clicking the remote control watching some bad TV.

So much for extreme dieting. Folks, do not try this at home (the diet, not the fried rice ^_^)