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.

Oseng Oseng Tempe

Another dish I always miss from back home...it's a no meat dish, it's a sweet-savory-spicy-ish soy bean cake dish, but it's oh-my-gosh so hearty and satisfying. It's super tasty, and it's something that can make you finish plates after plates of rice, or "ngelawuhi" in Javanese ^_*

Here's my attempt to recreate what my nanny used to make at home...

Recipe
- 1 block of tempe, cut into rectangular chunks
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 3 cloves of shallot, thinly sliced
- 1 large red chilli, sliced
- 1 large green chilli, sliced
- 1 block of palm sugar, dissolved in hot water
- a couple of Indonesian salam leaves
- vegetable oil, hot water, salt, pepper, sweet soy sauce

Saute garlic, shallot and chillies in hot oil until fragrant, add tempe chunks, add seasonings and spices, cook until tempe chunks absorbed the flavors, serve with rice or as one of many side dishes ;)

I should've probably stopped after my second plate of rice...but it was a small plate (me and my good excuses ^_*)

Bean Cake Fritters - Tempe Mendoan

It's the dreaded time of the year....when I have to do my work performance appraisal. Don't get me wrong. I am pretty happy with my performance. What I hate is tracing and putting everything I did on paper. Man! That was one heck of a tedious job....but I was glad I did. I was amazed by how muchhh I've done...and I found things I can do to improve.

It got my thinking about my food related performance. It's been a little over a year since I started cooking regularly in Hong Kong plus a few months of blogging. Let's see how well I perform based on my key performance indicators (which I've briefly discussed in this post) hehehe:

1. My fear of baking
Performance overview:
It's been kinda cured. Although I've been doing just simple, basic baked goods, but I bake. In fact, I think I've been using my oven wayyyy too frequently...my air con could not handle the heat of summer + the heat from my oven and decided to go on strike by leaking in more than 3 places lol
Customer feedback: there were hits and misses
Challenges: my stubborness and my lack of measuring devices made me could not follow recipes exactly...and naturally, my modifications do not always bring better results :p
Action plan: procure a measuring device of some sort and do more baking until hits get greater than misses ^_^...and I promise not to always do banana, no matter how much I am in love with it. Try other things for supermarket's sake!

2. My Fear of Cooking from Scratch
Performance overview:
Be it Indonesian food or other country's food, I learnt bit by bit not to always use spice packets, and I had a lot of fun grinding spices using my wooden stick (I long for a traditional Indonesian stone spice grinder aka cobek + ulekan...or a food processor! ^_^)
Customer feedback: sous chef can't really differentiate the quality difference between things made from scratch of spice packets. Is this a clue for me to simply don't bother? Hehe
Action plan: The heck with customer feedback! I want to be able to say proudly that I made something from scratch!

3. Complacency and Boringity
Performance overview:
OK. There were certain all time favorite items that I've done repeatedly, such as beef & veggie in soy sauce or banana muffins (haha!). But throughout the year I've tried hard to bring variations to the table...and see how my customer think.
Customer feedback: sous chef has the memory of...(I know elephants have excellent memory, who is the most forgetful creature then?)...well, something that forgets as soon as, if not before it finishes a meal hehe. So, sous chef won't remember the thing he eats yesterday, let alone last week LOL. This is a double edged sword. The benefit is...I could repeat a dish as often as I want, and I realised the disadvantage when I asked "What do you think is my best dish so far?" (SC's brain went to panic mode "OMG! Shit! This is a trick question! A wrong answer and I should say goodbye to home cooked dinners!")...and SC always replied with whichever dish I just cooked previously. It means, no matter how fabulous I cooked a dish, SC won't even remember sob sob. Hmm, anyway, I think I can live with that :)
Action plan: Continue trying to cook more variety of food and I found that this food blog is the best way to refresh SC's memory hehe

Here's one of my latest attempt of my favorite Indonesian snack...
Tempe Mendoan - Bean Cake Fritters

Recipe
The Bean Cake
- 1 pack of tempe (bean cake), sliced to 3-5 mm thick pieces, marinate with salt and pepper
The Batter
- 6 tbsp all purpose flour
- 3 tbsp corn starch
- 1 egg, beaten
- a spring of chives or spring onion, finely chopped
- 1 small clove of garlic, finely chopped
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp ground corriander
- a dash of nutmeg
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- a dash of pepper
- a pinch of baking powder
- couple tablespoon of coconut milk
The Dip
- sweet soy sauce (the dominant element)
- light Soy sauce
- chopped red chilli
- chopped shallot
- a dash of vinegar
or you can eat it with chilli sauce or Indonesian sambal or do what the Indonesians do and just bite some small green chilli along with the bean cake fritters (warning: those are HOT!)

Mix batter ingredients well, heat up some oil for pan frying. Dip bean cake pieces into batter and fry on medium heat until golden brown. Serve with the dip and iced sweet jasmine tea.

Let me see how many times I can get away from repeating this dish before sous chef noticed hehe

Kering Kentang & Tempe - Caramelised Soy Bean Cake & Potatoes

Friday was a day off (yay! doing my little day off dance at the background), and I was thinking how to spend the day.

I ofcourse chose to conveniently "forget":
- an avalanche of dirty laundry at the corner of my bedroom (and living room, and bathroom, and dining room) screaming to be brought to the laundry shop
- floor desperately needs vaccuming
- furniture begging for dusting
- the bathroom laughing hazardously every time I almost slipped on the life threateningly dirty tiles
- clean dishes, pots and pans mocking me as they took over my tiny kitchen
...the list is endless...

But all I could think about was how I've been missing kering tempe, and how inconvenient it is to do kering tempe on work days. So, dodging the dirty laundry, pirouetting past the dusty furniture, pranching over the dirty floor, I went straight to the nearest Indo shop and bought myself a pack of tempe (Indonesian soy bean cake), and got it going. I love the wet and moist version, not the dry and crunchy one, but both are delicious. :)

Ingredients
- 1 pack of soy bean cake, diced
- 1 medium potato, diced
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 4 cloves of shallot, sliced
- a bit of ginger, crushed
- 3 red chilli, remove seed, sliced
- palm sugar
- kecap manis
- salt, pepper
- 3 tbsp of coconut milk
- cooking oil


Soak palm sugar in a bit of hot water (I used 3 of those) until totally dissolved

Tempe - the soy bean cake - tempe can be used as a meat replacement

Dice the tempe into a tiny rectangular shape, sprinkle with salt

Fry until golden but not too dry. This can already be eaten. I had to fight myself not to "sample" too much
I like the softness of potatoes as a contrast to the crunchy tempe. Fry the diced potatoes until golden.

Saute garlic, chilli, shallot, ginger in hot oil, add tempe and potato, add the dissolved palm sugar, salt, pepper, kecap manis, stir in the coconut milk, bring it to boil, serve.

Serve with hot steamed rice.

OK. I couldn't live in a dirty flat. So, finally spent the whole afternoon off cleaning. The kering tempe made a perfect reward :)

PS. Retno of Kedai Hamburg also made her version of Kering Tempe. Check it out! :)