Recipe for homemade Satay Sauce.

To serve with Nasi Goreng or with sate sticks, or even as a sauce on top fo french fries.

Here is the recipe for sate sauce.
All you need is:

a jar of crunchy peanut butter
a diced onion
some sambal (the chili pepper sauce again, may have to dig out a recipe for that one as you can't buy it here very easily :lol: )
some Indonesian herbs ( ground ginger, ground cumin, and some others of which I don't know the English version, basically some tumeric I guess and of course some garlic)
some soy sauce
some lime or lemon juice
some sugar/brown sugar
some milk

Put some oil into a sauce pan and heat it.
Add the onion and fry until it is soft.
Add the peanut butter and the herbs, the sugar (1 teaspoon), the sambal (1-2 teaspoons), the soy sauce(table spoon full) and stir, heat till warm.
Slowly add milk until it is a smooth sauce (will thicken during heating so you will probably need about 200ml)

I don't even need the recipes for these 2 any longer, just put them in as I find them and done. Absolutely love them.

If you want sate, all you need to do is get some diced chicken or pork, put in a marinade of Chinese or Indonesian herbs, sambal and soy sauce and leave to soak for about half an hour. Then put the pieces on some bamboo sticks or skewers, put under the grill for 10 minutes, turning over half way and ready, just add the sauce and you're done.

Another nice one is to boil some mixed vegetables (carrots, broccoli, green beans, peas, some cabbage, some beansprouts, some cauliflower for about 3 minutes, drain. Then put in a oven dish or large platter/bowl, add some slices of boiled egg on the top, some prawn crackers and the sauce again. (this dish is called Gado Gado in Indonesia and in Holland)
A lovely dish to add to a rice table. Can be really quick due to getting some out of the freezer (mixed vegetables) and using these.

I think I will need to stop now, getting too hungry now :lol: ;)

Jo's recipe for a salad to accompany your barbecue.

Yeah! The weather is great, time for a Barbecue. Here is a recipe for the salad I usually prepare for our family. It should give you enough salad for a family of 4-8 people, depending on how much of an appetite everyone has.

I'm afraid you need to set a little bit of time aside for this, certainly not something to do last minute due to the need for some of the ingredients to cool down.

So, what do you need to make this salad?

• 1.5-2.5 kg potatoes
• 3 cups petits pois
• 1 big carrot
• 1 apple (Granny Smith)
• 8 gherkins
• 3 eggs
• 150g tin of ham
• Some pickled silver-skin onions
• 3 tablespoons mayonnaise, and some to garnish
• 5 tablespoons salad cream (I never said it was healthy)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• some paprika powder to garnish

And here is how to make the salad:

1. Peel, cut and boil the potatoes in a large pan.
2. Dice the carrot and boil with the petits pois.
   
3. Boil 3 eggs (hard boiled).
4. Once the potatoes have been boiled, mash them up, add the mayonnaise and salad cream with the cinnamon and nutmeg (and salt if wished) and mix.
   
5. Peel, core and dice the apple.
   
6. Dice 5 gherkins (the other 3 are for garnishing).
   
7. Dice the ham.
   
8. Add the apple, gherkins, ham and boiled carrots and petits pois to the potato mix and mix in with it.
9. Put the salad in a large bowl and it's time to start garnishing it.
   
10. Peel and slice the eggs and put them on top of the salad.
    
11. Part slice the 3 remaining gherkins and put them on top of the salad.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
12. Add the silver-skinned onions.
    
13. Put a little bit of mayonnaise on top of the egss and sprinkle this with the paprika powder.
    
14. Your salad is ready, put it in the fridge to cool down and keep cool till your barbecue.
    
15. ENJOY!

Hope you'll have a lovely day everyone, the weather is absolutely gorgeous! Have a great weekend!

Love,

Jo.

Christmas pastry wreath, a recipe.

Morning all,

Here is a recipe using the home made marzipan, the Marzipan Filled Pastry Christmas Wreath. 

This is traditionally eaten in The Netherlands at Christmas.

Christmas Pastry Wreath

You can find the recipe for the marzipan here.

For this recipe you need:

• Home made marzipan
• Puff pastry (about 350-375 grams)
• 1 egg
• Apricot jam
• Glaced cherries
• Edible decorations (like chocolate santas, marzipan figures, chocolate holly leaves, etc)

This recipe is relatively easy (provided you don’t elect to make the puff pastry yourself, which is very time consuming).

All you need to do is:

Roll out the puff pastry into a strip of around 8 cm wide. (or get ready rolled)

Roll the marzipan out in a strip which is slightly smaller in length than the pastry strip.

Place the marzipan on top of the puff pastry, lining it up to the edge of the pastry on one side and leaving a bit of room on the other end. (be prepared to lick your fingers after as this is very sticky work, yum yum)

Wet one side of the pastry with some water (to allow it to stick to the other side), roll it up around the marzipan and stick the pastry together.

Form the filled roll to meet at both ends, put the filled end in the open end (and stick pastry together) and make it into a circle. (this is why the strip of marzipan should be shorter than the strip of pastry)

Spread beaten egg over it, place the wreath on a wet (water) baking tray and leave it for 15 minutes.

Place in a preheated oven at 200 Celsius for 40 minutes.

Leave to cool, then spread warm apricot jam on top of the wreath and add decorations (the jam acts as glue).

Ready and ENJOY!

Love,

Jo.

Home made Marzipan, a recipe.

Morning all,

I am sure you are all looking forward to Christmas at the moment already. I know my kids are certainly some of those that simply can't wait. It may therefore be quite a good idea to start preparing for it already. I have therefore put the following recipe on my blog for you.

Home made Marzipan

I would certainly recommend trying this recipe out if you like marzipan. Do not expect this to be anything like the marzipan you buy in the shop, but if you are familiar with the marzipan stollen, it is quite similar to the marzipan used in that.

It is quite easy to make and is absolutely gorgeous if you like marzipan, like I do. It is ideal to use in Danish pastries, a Christmas pastry wreath and almond marzipan stollen for people who love that.

You need to prepare it at least one day in advance to give it the best possible taste.

To make it you need:

Weighing scales

A bowl

A fork

200 grams of ground almond

200 grams of caster sugar

1 medium egg

A few drops of lemon or lime juice.

Mix the ground almond, caster sugar, egg and the drops of lemon or lime juice together in a bowl using a fork.

Once nice and smooth (it is also very sticky, so a good excuse to lick your fingers, yum, yum) add the lid to the bowl and place in the fridge for later use. Leave there for at least 24 hours before using it in your recipe.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I (and my family) do.

You can find the recipe for a Christmas Pastry Wreath (the same one that forms the Inspiration Picture at CRAFT Challenge this week), here.

Love,

Jo.

CRAFT Challenge 124, Recipe.

Morning all,

Another Thursday brings another challenge for us today at CRAFT Challenge again, this time our challenge is 'Recipe: 1 ribbon, 2 shapes and some glitter'. So, any project with this subject will be eligible for a prize.

This week we have as our sponsor Sassy Studio Designs. The prize they offer is 4 images of choice from their shop.

And here is my card for this challenge. Hope you like it. Photo quality is not very good this time I'm afraid, the darker days are on us again.

Have fun with our challenge and good luck!

Thank you for looking, all comments very welcome and much appreciated. The image is from Sassy Studio Designs, the red back ground paper is from my Valentines Day papers.

Love,

Jo.

Recipe for 'oliebollen', deep fried fruited dough balls.

Evening all and a very Happy New Year to you all!


This is another traditional Dutch New Year’s Eve treat. Freshly baked on New Year’s Eve, with a dusting of icing sugar, quite often heated up again before eaten. They are lovely and definitely worth a try.

I did not have any time to make any of these this year, and I think only some of the kids and myself like them.
You need (for about 40):

500 grams of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
450 ml of lukewarm milk
1 sachet of dried yeast or 30 grams of fresh yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 egg
125 grams of mixed fruit
1 diced apple
25 grams of nuts (optional)
some lemon or lime juice

Directions: (you can also put it in the bread maker on dough programme with adding the fruit at a later stage)

To make the mixture:

Put the flour and salt in a bowl.

Mix the yeast and some of the milk with the sugar and leave in a warm place to rest until some bubbles have appeared on the surface.

Mix in the yeast mixture into the flour mixture with an electric mixer until smooth.

Add the egg and the rest of the milk in and mix again with the mixer till smooth.

Add the fruit and nuts and mix this through with a spoon. Put a wet teatowel or an upside down plate over the bowl and leave to rest for 1 hour in a warm place.

To make the dough balls:

Get 2 tablespoons and dip them in some vegetable oil.

With the 2 spoons form a ball and put it carefully into the hot oil (about 160 Celsius) and repeat this until there are a few balls in the hot oil.

Let them bake for about 8 minutes until they are done and golden brown (they float and look brown on both sides).
Take them out of the hot oil and let them dry out on some kitchen paper.

When no longer wet on the outside, they are ready to be dusted with icing sugar and be eaten.

ENJOY!

I hope you all enjoy New Year's Eve and the recipes I've just uploaded. All the best for 2010 and I will be talking to you again in 2010!

Love,

Jo.

Recipe for 'Appelflappen', Apple Beignets

Evening all and a very Happy New Year to you all!

I thought I would tonight upload the recipe for a traditional Dutch treat for New Year's Eve, 'Appelflappen'.

It is certainly is worth a try and doesn't take very long to make.

I've just returned home from work and the first load is in the deep fat fryer as we speak. Just a moment, I'm just going to get them out and put the second load in.



For this recipe you need (for about 30):

8 big sour apples
50 grams of sugar
Cinnamon
250 grams self raising flour
A pinch of salt
2 medium eggs
250 ml of milk
(Replace half of the milk with ale if desired)
Vegetable oil
Icing sugar

Directions:

De-core the apples, peel them and slice them in fat slices.

Sprinkle a sugar and cinnamon mixture on the apple slices.

In the meantime heat the oil to about 180 Celsius.

Put the flour and salt in a bowl and put 150 ml of milk and the eggs in the middle.

Mix this with an electric mixer until a smooth batter is formed. Now mix in the rest of the milk.

One by one put the apple slices through the batter and into the hot oil for about 4 minutes till golden brown. (they may need a hand turning over)

Let them dry out on some kitchen paper.

Before serving put a dusting of icing sugar over them.

Ready to eat. ENJOY! ;)

Hope you will enjoy this recipe and a very Happy 2010 to you all!

Love,

Jo.

Chocolate soezen, profiteroles, a recipe

Hello everyone,

I thought it would be time to add another recipe again. This time because it was my birthday last Saturday I have done some little chocolate covered 'soezen'. These are just small ones and meant to be a bit of a treat to have while we were waiting for my daughter to come back from her trip to Cadbury World with the guides. Didn't think it would be fair to tell her she could not go, just because it was my birthday.

This is what they look like in their finished form.



For this recipe you will need:

100 ml water
100 ml milk
100 gram butter or margarine
100 gram plain flour
4 medium eggs
some squares of dark or milk (or both) of chocolate, melted
some whipped cream
(and of course some mixing bowls, measuring jug and scales, pan and some spoons)

Step 1:

Heat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius

Step 2:

Put water, milk and butter in a pan and bring to the boil



Step 3:

Take pan off the fire and add the flour in one go, mix it in and put back on fire until well done.



Step 4:

Put in a bowl and mix the eggs in one by one till smooth mixture has developed.



Step 5:

Use 2 tablespoons to form small rounded masses (for these ones I used very small ones to create small ones) and place onto a baking tray.



Pop into the oven at 220 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes till done.



Step 5:

Take out of the oven and leave to cool for a little while. Melt some squares of dark chocolate and spread this on top of the 'soezen'.



Step 6:

Put them in the fridge to cool and for the chocolate to harden again. Once this is done, take them out again, turn them over (one by one), make a little hole in the bottom of the 'soezen' with the nozzle of your whipped cream and put some whipped cream inside.





Next and last step:

Serve and ENJOY!

Hope you like them, I have done an alternative and larger version of them later last Saturday when my daughter returned from her guide's trip.

Hope you like the recipe.

Love,

Jo.