Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Daring Cooks Challenge with Nut Butters

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and
Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies . They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Nutrition research suggests that nuts are good for your health. Nut butters, or pureed nuts, make it easy to use nuts in cooking. Although peanut butter is a staple in North America, most popular as the star ingredient in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and beloved in peanut butter cookies and other sweets, it's seldom used in preparing savory dishes. Nut butters -- including not only peanut butter but almond, cashew, and walnut butters -- are common ingredients in many Asian and African countries, used in a wide array of savory dishes. Nut butters add complex & interesting flavors to dishes, provide body & thickness to sauces, and can be used to replace the dairy fats or other oils in recipes.

I was very excited with this month's challenge as using nuts in cooking can be found in a number of Asian recipes. I decided to go all out Asian this month and be even more adventurous than normal. In fact I decided to come up with two recipes. The first recipe is Gado-Gado or Indonesian Salad with a Peanut Sauce.

Photobucket


gado 1


Gado-Gado (Indonesian Salad with Peanut Sauce)
Recipe Adapted from "Meals from Asian Kitchen"
Serves 4 - 5


Ingredients for the Salad:

300g water convolvulous (kangkong), cut into 3" length, blanched
500g beansprout, cleaned and blanched
200g longbeans, cut into 3cm length, blanched
300g cabbage cut into bite sized and blanched
400g cucumber, cut into bite sized pieces and blanched
4 hard boiled egges, cut into quarters
3 large soya bean cakes (taukwa), fried and cut into 1" cubes
200g boiled potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces
3 pieces of tempeh (fermented soya bean cakes), fried and cut into bite sized pieces
2 - 3 cups of prawn crackers

Ingredients for the Sauce:

500g raw peanuts
20 fresh red chillies
150g shallots
4 cloves garlic
2" x 2" piece shrimp paste (belacan)
80g palm sugar (gula melaka) cut into small pieces
50g tamarind paste, soaked in 225ml water
Oil
Salt to taste

Method:

1) Prepare vegetables and other salad ingredients and arrange on a large platter. Set aside.

2) Grind chillies, shallot garlic and shrimp paste and set aside.

3) Roast the peanuts, cool and remove skin. Pound coarsely. Boil the peanuts in 1 litre of water for an hour over low fire. Stir occassionally

4) Fry the grinded paste with 3 tbsp oil until fragrant. Remove and add this to the peanuts which have been cooking for 1 hour. Stir well to mix and cook for 5 mins.

5) Now include the palm sugar, tamarind sauce and salt to taste. Simmer for another 5 mins. Transfer to a serving bowl.

6) Serve salad with prawn crackers and peanut sauce.

Photobucket


Photobucket


My second recipe is Glutinous Rice Ball or Tang Yuan (汤圆 in Chinese), also known as Ah Balling, is a Teochew Chinese Dessert. Basically, it comprises glutinous rice balls served in a hot sweet soup, such as peanut soup or even ginger soup. It has a filling which can be made of peanut paste, yam or black sesame paste. In Chinese culture, it is traditionally served on Dong Zhi, the winter solstice. By eating tang yuan, you welcome in the winter and become one year older. Tang yuan makes a delicious winter snack and is easy to prepare. Despite its association with mid-winter, it can be enjoyed at any time of year. I decided to make mine with a black sesame paste filling.

tangyuan 2


Glutinous Rice Dumplings with Black Sesame Paste (Tang Yuan)
Recipe Adapted from Rasa Malaysia

Ingredients:

8 oz. glutinous rice (sticky rice) flour
180 ml water (3/4 cup water)
1/4 cup black sesame seeds
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 stick unsalted butter (1/4 cup or 4 tablespoons)

Ginger syrup

50g of fresh ginger
80g of sugarcane rock sugar
10g of pandan leaves (tied into a knot)
10g of chrysanthemum flowers
4 cups of water

Method:

1) Lightly toast the black sesame seeds over medium fire until you smell the aroma of the black sesame seeds. The sesame seeds will start popping when they are heated, so use your lid to cover. Don’t burn the black sesame seeds; transfer them out and let cool as soon as they smell aromatic.

2) Use a mini food processor to grind the black sesame seeds until they become fine. Transfer the ground black sesame into a wok, add sugar and butter and stir well to form a thick paste. If they are too dry, add more butter. Dish out and let cool in the fridge. (This will make the filling easier to handle)

3) In a big bowl, mix the glutinous rice flour with water until it forms a smooth paste and no longer sticks to your hands. Divide it equally into 16-20 balls (depends how you like the size, the bigger the size, the easier it is to do the filling). Flatten each ball in your palm, and then use a pair of chopsticks to pick up some black sesame paste and lay it in the middle of the flatten ball. Fold the edge to seal the dumpling. Lightly roll it into a ball shape using both palms, very gently and delicately. Set aside.

4) Prepare the ginger syrup by boiling the water. Add the ginger and screwpine/pandan leaves (optional) into the water and boil for 10-15 minutes with medium heat. Add sugar and chrysanthemum flowers and boil for another 5 minutes. Lower heat to simmer and reduce to about 3 cups of water. Add more sugar to taste if you like.

5) Heat up another pot of boiling water. Drop the dumplings into the hot boiling water. As soon as they float to the top, transfer them out and into the ginger syrup. Turn off heat and serve the black sesame dumplings in a bowl immediately.

Cook’s Notes:

Don’t be too greedy with the black sesame paste. Use moderate amount for your dumplings or else the dumplings might “burst” when you roll them into balls. They might also “burst” during boiling.

You want to boil the dumplings separately so the ginger syrup doesn’t get cloudy. In case some of your black sesame dumplings burst, you will not ruin the ginger syrup.

If you wish to have the black sesame dumplings without the ginger syrup, just boil them in the hot boiling water and serve your dumplings with that hot water. Eat only the dumplings, but not the hot water.


tangyuan 1


tangyuan 3

24 comments:

  1. Jo, I love both your Gado Gado and Tang Yuan recipes! Gado Gado is such a exotic salad dish!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aiyo! So tempting - the gado-gado, one of my favourites. Unfortunately my friend, tummy doesn't permit me to eat such food yet. :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. They look good. Love the peanut sauce.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Both these dishes look great and so different! I will have to try them!! Great job with the challenge this month!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love them both and I made gado-gado almost the same recipe. Well done on this challenge I loved the information on the Glutinous Rice Balls very interesting nice photos also. Cheers from Audax in Sydney Australia.

    ReplyDelete
  6. They all look so delicious. I love to try the gado-gado. The glutinous rice is similar to a Filipino delicacy (Masi) stuffings could be pounded peanuts or sesame paste.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ooo gado-gado!! I love that dish but have never made it myself. Great idea to make that for this challenge! Both recipes look amazing!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Those are two dishes that I had never heard of before, and now I am so tempted to try both of them. You did an absolutely amazing job on both dishes for the challenge, and your pictures are scrumptious! Awesome work.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh my... the salad caught my eye and I was thinking how great it would be... then I saw the rice dumplings with the sesame seed paste. I'm now drooling, those look SO good!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love both~ will take the gado gado first then come to the dessert ;D

    ReplyDelete
  11. Wow. Just, wow... Your recipes are amazing, your photos are beautiful, and your descriptions are mouthwatering... Wow!!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. You really went all out, great challenge, beautiful pics!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Wow, great recipes! I'm usually not a huge fan of veg but the gado gado looks amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Wow, your Tang Yuan looks amazing! I have never heard of it before. I love seeing foods from other parts of the world.

    Kelly
    British Columbia, Canada

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sesame seed dumpling is my favorite "flavor". And I like how you made the peanut sauce from scratch. I get to learn. I usually use store-bought peanut sauce :O

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wow your gado-gado and glutinous rice balls look so delicious! Excellent job! Great looking photos and beautiful presentation :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Both your recipes sound wonderdul, and very adventurous indeed! Beautiful job!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Both recipes look great. The peanut sauce is calling my name.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Gado Gado looks great - so delicious! The peanut sauce is great - nice consistency.

    Cheers. Anula.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Your dishes sound like they tasted great. We'd like to give the dumplings a go one day, but the gado gado probably not due to the chillies in the sauce.

    Well done on coming up with 2 dishes so far removed from what was suggested.

    Stay JOLLY!
    D&S

    ReplyDelete
  21. jo..hands down one of the most creative takes on this challenge. I am loving the glutinous rice dumplings with black sesame paste and the gado gado is simply awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hi all, thanks so much for dropping by and leaving me your comments. Loved reading every single one of them! Yes, I did have fun with the challenge and it certainly was mind boggling with the number of ways I could have chosen in terms of recipes.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Both dishes look awesome. I love your version of gado-gado for the Daring Cooks Challenge.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Your Gado Gado looks absolutely scrumptious! Lovely texture as well. I think I might give it a try - thanks for the recipe!

    ReplyDelete