Comfort on the weekend

My mom has been wanting to make a simple butter cake for a long time but we kept postponing the plan. Last weekend it finally materialized and we made an orange butter cake since we had oranges lying down in the refridgerator. Making the cake reminded me of my childhood days. Those days when anyone made cakes we would hopefully wait until the batter is dished out into the baking pan so that we could relish the sweet creamy batter of sugar,butter,eggs and flour stuck to the dish. The taste experience was orgasmic. But now when I'm all grown up and much more educated, I simply could not bring myself to consume the mixture of raw eggs for the fear of Salmonella and all. But then, those were the good days ain't it? I'm not putting down the recipe here but its basically a 8-6-6-4 combination with orange rind and raisins and the juice of one orange. The outcome: The house was infiltrated with the heavenly aroma of the oranges and the texture of the cake was soft. The cake was made on Saturday evening and now there isnt even one piece left. I guess that should explain everything right.

Sweet Rice Porridge

This is my 2nd post in 2 days and thats kinda good actually..but then I'm free now and bumming around so I can post often.

There was a lot of milk lying around in the fridge since our milkman dutifully delivers them daily yet we were not religiously consuming them. Not wanting it to go sour, I thought I'd transform it into a sweet rice porridge dish known as "Kheer" in north india and "Payasam" in the south.

• I made this with approximately 1 litre of milk, boiling in in a saucepan over medium heat while stirring. The key is to allow it to thicken slowly.
  
• Into that I added about 4 tablespoons of sugar and continued stirring.
• After the milk has thickened about perhaps maybe 3/4 or half of its initial consistency, add in about 2 serving spoons of cooked rice ( or as you like) and continue stirring.
  
• Add in some pounded cardamom for taste.
• In a separate pan, I heated up about 1/5 teaspoon of ghee ( Its fattening I know, but it contributes to the taste). Add in some raisins and chopped nuts if you have (I didn't). Wait till raisins grow plump and fat..I love the smell that arises at this time.
• Add fried nuts and raisins to porridge and stir.

Easy to make and nice to eat especially when its chilled. Apparently some people adulterate it with condensed milk for added thickness but I'm seriously not interested in consuming Palm oil+ Milk Whey+ lots of sugar in my kheer. No thank you but I'll stick to ole simple milk.

Have a nice weekend people.

Prawn curry for dummies

I have been making Prawns' curry with this particular method for a couple of times and has always gained thumbs up from everyone. The curry is slightly sweet from the essence of the prawns and the tomatoes and is creamy and spicy with the myriad of spices added.

To make it at home:

1. Blend 1 large onion + 3 cloves garlic + 1 inch ginger + 1 medium sized tomato
2. Prepare spices as below
   
3. Add about 1-2 tablespoons oil into wok and add cinnamon and star anise first- wait till cinnamon expands slightly.
4. Add in coriander and fenugreek seeds and let it brown slightly then add in mustard and cumin.
5. Once the mustard and cumin seeds start to splater - add in dried chillies and curry leaves. Stir as they cook fast. When both start to crisp, remove all the fried spices and keep aside.
6. Add in the blended items into the wok and allow to cook as you stir. Once it starts to thicken, add in about 2 tablespoons of Fish Curry Powder (or more if u have a more spicy taste, but don't overdo it)
7. Continue stirring under medium heat to allow the fish curry powder to roast, when it starts to brown slightly, add in about 1/2 cup of water.
8. Put in pieces of potatoes ( 1 potato cut to 16 pieces) and cover to cook.
   
9. Once potatoes are about half cooked, add in prawns and stir. Cover to cook.
10. Continue until prawns look shriveled up and potatoes can be poked thru easily.
11. Take tamarind or "asam jawa" about the size of a kaffir lime or "limau kasturi" and squeezed out its essence with about 1/4 cup of water.
12. Add back the fried spices from the start.
    
13. Add that in at this stage with salt to taste.
    
14. Stir well and put off the flame. Decorate with chopped coriander leaves if desired.
    

Not bad huh. Its quite healthy actually, not much oil used and the taste and texture is lent from the spices used. Best eaten hot with rice and a side serving veges. I had mine with stir fried mustard leaves( "sawi")

The officiating post

Hello people,

This is my first ever blog post in Masala Heaven. I had always planned to start up a food blog or "flog" if you might call it but was hindered by many factors. Basically, I don't really eat out that much and previously I never really had the time to cook. However, I had the passion towards good food and regularly visited food blogs to satisfy my yearnings.

Now that I have time, I do indulge in the things that I like and have started adopting new hobbies. There would not be a better time to start of my blog, besides I have no come across a food blogger of Malaysian Indian descent with the exception of Swiss based Pushpa who is currently on a break. I wonder if I'll be the lost one in the Malaysian pool, but I certainly hope not.

Stay on for more posts. I'll try to be as regular as possible.