Pork Meatballs and Seaweed Soup

I like to cook and do stuff  from scratch and that answers my craze with traditional bread-making. Which means, I will  try my best to stay away from bread machine or food processor, which make cooking and baking so much easier and instant but les fun and adventurous! I remember that in the past I was very intrigued with handmade bread and with how to knead bread dough. I failed a lot of times but would anyway tried again every time. Experience is the best teacher! It tells us our mistake, so we can avoid making the same mistake!

But I have to honestly confess how much I love the mini mincer I bought many years ago, which has been made into functioning only recently. With it I have made fish and pork meatballs. Very easy to use, but not without effort! And I can proudly claim that these meatballs are handmade! :-)

Recipe:

for the meatballs:

400 grams of picnic shoulder porkmeat

1 tsp salt 

1 tsp starch/tapioca flour

a pinch of white pepper 

for the soup:

a packet of dried seaweed.

1 1/2 - 2 liters of water

2-3 Tbs salt for the soup

a pinch of white pepper

Instructions:

1. Grind/mince porkmeat, using mini mincer or chopping knife. Add salt and pepper, stir well. Form meatballs, using hands.

2. Soak the dried seaweed in a large bowl, wash it a couple times. 

3. Boil water in large pan, bring it to simmer. Put in the meatballs for 1 minute and then insert the seaweed. Bring it to simmer and boil for 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper. Serve.

Healthy Pancake

One of my friend had posted a recipe of healthy pancake she had wanted to try on FB. The ingredient is very simple. Only 1 medium size of ripe banana and 2 eggs. Honestly, it was very intriguing for me and shortly I found myself in the kitchen peeling and smashing bananas...

The result of my first experiment was not so good, as the amount of the eggs made the pancake texture mushy and more of scrambled eggs, which I don't really fancy. So the next day I modified the recipe and the result turned out satisfactory! It renders a sturdier and thicker texture, just like pancake but with the taste of banana!

And here is the recipe :

4 medium size bananas
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
margarine or butter to grease

Copycat of Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls

Cinnamon Rolls is also one of my favorite! I had tasted the sinful Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls and it had been my favorite ever since. I've been wanting to try to make it myself but has just recently found the recipe on Pinterest. It is indeed very nice when it's still warm. Therefore, at the 2nd attempt I decided to modify the recipe by using 60% of bread flour and 40% of all-purpose flour in order to make the texture softer especially overnight. And it was a success! Fyi, I serve the cinnamon rolls without the cream cheese topping and it's already very yummy!

First Attempt

2nd Attempt

My youngest niece, Isis, was helping to grease the fresh-from-the oven cinnamon rolls.

Recipe taken from The Girl Who Ate Anything

Ingredients:
1 cup warm milk
2 eggs (room temperature)
1/3 cup butter melted
2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 cups all-pupose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1 packet yeast

Filling:
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 1/2 Tbs ground cinnamon (you can add if you like)
1/3 cup butter softened
Raisins (optional)

Icing:
3 oz cheese cream softened
1/4 cup (4 Tbs) butter softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners (powder) sugar 
1/2 tsp  vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Microwave milk for 45-60 seconds in the microwave. Dissolve yeast in warm milk in a large bowl. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour. Mix well. Knead dough into a large ball, using your hands dusted lightly with flour. Put in a bowl sprayed with cooking spray and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place about 1 hour or until dough has doubled in size. *Our house is so cold I have a hard time getting things to rise. If I turn on the oven and then put the rolls on top of the stove, the oven generates enough heat for them to rise.
2. In a small bowl, thoroughly combine brown sugar and cinnamon. Spray surface with cooking spray or sprinkle flour on it. Roll dough into a 16x21 inch rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Spread dough with 1/3 cup softened butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough starting with the longer side and cut into 12 large rolls (or 18 smaller rolls). Place rolls in a lightly greased 9x13 inch glass baking dish. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. *After this I would put them in the refrigerator for the next morning if you are doing them the night before.
3. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden brown, about 18-20 minutes. While rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract and salt. Spread frosting on while they are still warm so that the frosting melts into the roll. That's what the Cinnabon people do (I asked them). Makes 12-18 rolls.

Homemade Sushi

Sushi has been one of my favorite food, but it's quite pricey to eat sushi at a fancy restaurant in town. So when my eldest niece, Ernestine, was leaving to further her tertiary studies at ITB, Bandung, she dropped off: two packets of roasted seaweed sushi wrap, a packet of powder sushi rice vinegar, a packet of shredded seaweed and a slim sushi roll mold that she had bought earlier but had had no time to make some herself. My first reaction was "Woo hoo! I've got to experiement!!" And here is the result...

Looks great, isn't it? But it's also very Yummy! :-) 

Basically, I filled the sushi with some red snapper steak (which I seasoned overnight with salt, Worcestershire sauce, and a or two pinch of ground black pepper) and some boiled/steamed carrot and baby corn, and scramble eggs (optional). And I just use regular rice grain which I cooked regularly and mixed with some powder sushi rice vinegar. You can also add some mayonaise to enrich the taste. It's very easy and renders such a great result! My younger niece, mom and even my tuition student loved it!

You may notice that some of the above sushi are a little messy, where the fillings are out of place and the rice are not sticking solidly. That's because at that point I ran out of Nori (sushi wrap) and had to roll the rice using a transparant plastic. For the filling I added a sheet of crispy-grilled seaweed and other ingredients as well. It was not easy to roll because I don't have a sushi roller, and that's how it became a little messy. But it was still very yummy! :-)