Nasi Goreng Recipe

~ The Author

Rice is something that we always have at home, whether uncooked and stored in the pantry, or cooked and on the kitchen counter top or dining table. There’s usually a pot of steamed rice in the kitchen, waiting to be devoured at the next meal. But steamed rice can become a bit boring sometimes, so occasionally, we’d have something different, like Nasi Goreng.

Nasi Goreng is a very popular Indonesian dish. It is fried rice mixed with a bit of meat or veggies, so it can be a complete meal by itself, especially when seasoned perfectly.  If you have cold cooked (not freshly cooked) rice in the house, that would be perfect for this dish, and if you have some bits of veggies in the fridge, you can prepare this dish for tonight’s dinner.

(Note: I’ve added a few substitution ideas, in case you do not have the fresh ingredients on hand, but have the preserved versions in your pantry.)

NASI GORENG

INGREDIENTS:
Olive oil
4 eggs, beaten lightly
1 brown onion, coarsely chopped
6 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
25g ginger, finely chopped (or a generous dash of ground ginger)
2 long red chillies, chopped (or a dash of ground cayenne pepper, to taste)
200g chicken fillet, sliced 1 inch squares or short strips
1 chicken cube
A handful of oyster mushrooms (or 184g can of champignon pieces and stems)
1/2 green capsicum, chopped coarsely
1/2 red capsicum, chopped coarsely
200g fresh baby corns, chopped coarsely
4 cups (cold) steamed jasmine rice
2 cups bean sprouts
3 green onions, sliced thinly
3 tablespoons soy sauce (or adjust to taste)
2 tablespoons kecap manis (or adjust to taste)

PROCEDURE:
In a wok, heat oil. Add egg to make a thin omelette. When cooked, remove omelette and let cool.

Saute brown onion, garlic, ginger and chilli. Add chicken and chicken cube, and stir fry until chicken is cooked. Add mushrooms, capsicums and corn and cook until tender.

Add rice, bean sprouts, green onion, soy sauce and kecap manis. Stir fry.

Cut omelette into strips. Add omelette strips to the mixture in the wok. Mix well. Remove from heat and serve hot.

Lalimar Beach Resort

~ The Author

One may think the rural town of La Libertad in Negros Oriental has not much to offer other than nice views of the sea and wild vegetation everywhere, but when we got to Lalimar Beach Resort, I was quite surprised and impressed. This resort was quite an unexpected gem in this humble town!

At first, I and a friend (who was not from that side of the island) speculated that the resort might be owned by a rather wealthy foreigner who has married a local of the place, but we were wrong. It turns out that Lalimar is being run by the local government. No wonder the place looked like somebody had a really big budget to develop it!

We had a large group with us (extended family and a few friends), so Hubby had to stop by the reception desk to find out how things work in the resort. There was no entrance fee (which was great!), so you only pay if you’re going to be swimming in the pool, hiring sheds or cottages, or for corkage if you’re bringing in liquor. No fees either if you choose to swim only in the sea and not in the swimming pool.

As of our visit (October 2019) the rates were:

Cottage (Air Conditioned, Double Occupancy, Hot & Cold Shower)
Cottage No. 1-4 —— P 1,540.00
Cottage No. 5 ——— P 2,420.00
Cottage No. 6 ——— P 3,740.00
Cottage No. 6a ——- P 2,640.00
Cottage No. 6b ——- P 1,760.00
Cottage No. 7 ——— P 3,080.00
Cottage No. 8 ——— P 1,980.00
Additional guest —– P 220.00/Head

Budget Room (Fan, Dormitory Type)
Room 1-5 ————- P 220.00/Head

Venue
Main Hall ———— P 3,000.00
Annex Hall ———- P 2,000.00
Function Room — P 1,500.00
(Aircon)

Swimming Pool
Adult ————— P 55.00
Children ———– P 30.00
Infant (free)

Umbrella
10-Seater ——— P 330.00
8-Seater ———- P 275.00
Extra Chairs —— P 11.00
Extra Table ——- P 44.00

They also had a little shop where you can buy souvenirs. I wasn’t able to go in and have a look as I ran out of cash. Hahaha! The unfortunate thing about a lot of places, especially in the rural Philippines, is that they accept only cash. Your cards and cheques are useless around here.

This is their Main Hall, which could accommodate possibly over a hundred people. When we were there, a large group was having a seminar. I’m told this venue have also accommodated weddings and grand parties in the past.

That door leads to the ladies toilets/showers. Again, after having visited Campuestohan Resort in Bacolod City prior to this, I was impressed with Lalimar’s facility. The showers were clean and there was no foul odor, unlike at Campuestohan. The shower heads and faucet taps were also in good working order.

Another snapshot I took of the pool. The deepest part, at the middle, was only 5 feet deep, so it’s not so scary for non swimmers.

The pool was probably the only area without trees or plants, so even if you’re not going swimming, you can still keep cool while enjoying the breeze under the shade of the trees or sheds.

We were at Lalimar Resort from around 10am to around 2pm. I haven’t taken photos of the sea, but though the water was super crystal clear, the floor was all stones. Hubby told me that in many parts of Negros Oriental, the people in the past have abused the shorelines by collecting the sand to turn them into hollow blocks for constructing buildings. My reaction was, “Uh…did they think the shores would naturally grow some sand again like weeds grow in gardens?” Quite sad. But Hubby plans for us to visit Lalimar again in the future and possibly stay for a few nights to enjoy the pool at sunset so we don’t get sun burnt… fingers crossed!

Unfortunately, it seems that they do not have a website or other means of booking online. There is an unclaimed/unofficial Facebook page, but I don’t think you can book through it. They only have mobile phone numbers you can try contacting.

Lalimar Beach Resort
San Jose, La Libertad, Negros Oriental, Philippines
Mobile Phone Numbers: (+63)9082127683 / (+63)9177071409

Chocolate Mud Cupcakes Recipe

~ The Author

When somebody in the house is having a birthday, but work schedule is not letting you have a party, what do you do? In our case, we’ll just have cupcakes!

I found this simple chocolate mud cupcake recipe in one of my books, but as usual, I had to adjust parts of it to suit my preferences. Whatever works for you, right? So, here is how I made the chocolate mud cupcakes:

CHOCOLATE MUD CUPCAKES

Ingredients:
300g plain chocolate chips or cooking chocolate
300g butter
5 eggs
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 cup self raising flour

Melt chocolate and butter in a pan on the stove, or in a bowl in the microwave oven. Stir well and set aside to cool a bit.

Beat eggs and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale. Sift 1/2 cup flour into the egg mixture, then fold. Sift the remaining flour into the same mixture and fold again. Stir in the melted chocolate and butter until well blended.

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. (I prefer turning the oven on when I have already finished mixing the batter and just before I transfer the batter into the cake tin, as I find that if I start preheating the oven before mixing anything, it reaches the desired temperature waaaaaayy before I’m finished making the cake batter, so it’s just wasting energy for quite a while afterwards, until I put the cake in.) 

Spoon the mixture into paper baking cases in a muffin tin. This recipe should yield around a dozen cupcakes. Bake for approximately 20 minutes. The cupcakes are expected to be soft and gooey. Remove muffin tin from the oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before removing the cupcakes from the tin.

You can dust the cupcakes with cocoa powder or icing sugar, or decorate them with your favourite icing.

Carrot Cake Recipe

~ The Author

Many many years ago, when I was a child, I learned to bake cakes while helping my aunt. We made chiffon cakes, chocolate cakes, fruit cakes, and many other baked goodies. But when my aunt decided to retire her side business of making cakes, I stopped baking as well.

It was only a few years ago that I decided to bake cakes again. After nearly two decades of not baking cakes, I was a bit lost, without a single trusted cake recipe, neither a single baking tin, nor a single decorating tip.

The funny thing is, I cannot remember how I met this carrot cake recipe. But this is the cake recipe that got me baking again, and I have made this carrot cake so many times. We love how it’s moist and not too sweet (in contrast to a bakeshop-bought one we’ve tasted once, which was the complete opposite – too sweet and dry!). But then, the best way of creating a moist cake is not over-baking it – when it’s done, take it out of the oven right away!

So anyway, here’s the delicious carrot cake recipe, tweaked to suit the taste of me and the crowd I feed. Enjoy!

Ingredients:                                       Icing:
Olive oil (for greasing)                        250 g    spreadable cream cheese
2 (300g) carrots, finely grated           1/3 c     icing sugar
1   c   self raising flour                          1/2 t      vanilla essence
1/2 c  plain flour
1   t    bicarbonate soda
1/2 t   ground cinnamon
2/3 c   brown sugar
3/4 c   organic olive oil
1/2 c   maple syrup
3        eggs
1   t    vanilla essence

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius, or 150C if using a fan-force oven.  Lightly grease a cake pan with oil and line with baking paper.

Sift flours, bicarb soda and cinnamon in a bowl.

In another bowl, whisk brown sugar, oil, maple syrup, eggs and vanilla. Pour this mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Stir in the grated carrots.

Place the mixture into the pan and bake for approximately 55 minutes. Then, let cool in the pan for a few minutes, before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing, combine the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla essence in a bowl, using a wooden spoon, until well mixed. Spread the icing over the cake.

Topped with fruits for the ward conference luncheon.

Golden Snitches Dessert Recipe

~ The Author

To produce golden snitches in food form when I threw a Harry Potter theme birthday party for hubby (why not?), I didn’t want to do what others have done, which was to create round cakes (cake pops) and cover the snitches with artificially coloured icing to make them look like snitches. Besides, I had too much on my plate then to bother intricately decorating each cake pop. I just wanted something that was relatively easy to make.

Then I recalled a homemade sweet called Yema. I knew a few people whose mums used to make these sweets and get them to sell these to other kids at school. The brightness or dullness of this dish’s natural yellow colour depends on the ingredients you use and their proportions. Some can be quite pale, while others darker and almost brownish. In addition, you can also coat the yema balls with raw sugar or glaze them with caramelized sugar (which is a bit more tricky).

For the duration of hubby’s Harry Potter party, I called them not yema, but Golden Snitches. Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

10 egg yolks
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, or zest
Raw sugar for coating

Procedure:

In a non-stick pan, combine egg yolks, condensed milk and lemon until well blended. Place pan on stove, over low heat, and stir constantly until thick enough to be formed into small balls. It is important to keep on stirring and scraping the sides and bottom of the pan while cooking to avoid burning parts of it.

Remove from heat and let the mixture cool. When cool enough to handle, shape them into small balls, about an inch in diameter, which seems to be just a good size for a snitch. Roll each ball in raw sugar.

Arrange in a serving tray with enough spaces in between the snitches so they don’t look too crowded when you add the wings.

I made the wings days in advance so they’re ready to add to the golden snitches on the day of the party. I used toothpicks, aluminum foil and double-sided tape to make them, while seated on the couch, also watching an action movie with the hubby. 🙂

Chicken Pasta Soup Recipe

~ The Author

A friend of mine makes this lovely chicken pasta soup and posts it online for others to salivate on. It always looks so irresistibly good, so I decided it was time to cook some at home too. After all, a nice bowl of delicious soup fresh from the stove is always good to have these cold winter nights.

Because this soup has meat, veggies and pasta in it, you can eat it by itself and it’s a complete meal. The first few times I made this, I cooked a lot. But as is common with pasta dishes, it’s always not so great anymore if you try to reheat it for the next meal. The pasta is already soggy or bloated, and the soup has mostly disappeared. So, recently, I came up with an idea on how to enjoy this dish for more than 1 mealtime, without compromising the pasta.

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CHICKEN PASTA SOUP

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups chicken fillet, skin removed and cut to cubes
8 cups of water
Dash of salt
4 tablespoons butter
1 brown onion, minced
6 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1 large carrot, diced
3 stalks celery, minced
1 cup ham, chopped
1 chicken cube
Boiling water
1 ½ cups chopped cabbage (optional)

225g elbow macaroni (can be substituted with any similar pasta)
1½ cup thick cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Grated/shredded cheese (optional topping)

PROCEDURE:

Heat water in a pot. Add chicken and salt. Let boil until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

While the chicken is cooking, melt butter in a separate pan. Sauté onion and garlic until they are cooked, then add carrot, celery and cabbage. Cook for about 3 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the pot once cooked, but let the pot remain on the stove. Cook pasta in the same water and pot for 10 minutes.

Quickly shred cooked chicken into strips. Add chicken, ham and chicken cube into the pan with the veggies. Cook for 2 minutes.

When the pasta is almost cooked, carefully add the veggie-chicken mixture into the pot containing the pasta. Stir well.

Add cream, salt and pepper into the soup. Cook for about 2 minutes. Be careful not to get the pasta overcooked. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve with grated cheese on top.

It’s best to eat this soup in one sitting, otherwise the pasta will absorb the soup and become bloated and dry by the next meal time.

However, if you are time or energy poor (as many of us are) and wish to prepare this soup for two meals, but don’t want to compromise the quality of the cooked pasta, prepare the dish as is, BUT cook only half of the pasta required. Then, add only half of the veggie-chicken mixture and cream to the cooking pasta, reserving the other half for the next meal.

For the next meal, boil the remaining pasta, then add the reserved half of the veggie-chicken mixture when the pasta is almost cooked. Add the remaining cream and season according to taste.