Friday afternoons

There are some pretty obvious advantages that come with not having any classes on Friday afternoons (actually the majority of my classes are in the morning - not sure if that is by design or accident), but there is one big disadvantage: a part of me is already in the weekend! Sitting at my desk working for three hours is not exactly the most motivating prospect, despite my long to do list. The best approach I've found is to chip away - do one thing at a time, until eventually something gets done ;-) So, in that spirit, here are some of the things I've been cooking.

Baso is a common dish here - it can be found everywhere from street food to restaurants. The word baso refers to the meatballs, which are usually chicken or beef, but can be other things (ok, to be honest calling them meatballs is usually a bit of a stretch), and they are most often served in soup/broth, perhaps with some noodles, vegetables, fried onions and other garnishes. I found some in the supermarket last week, and decided to make some soup. I put corn in mine - which is not exactly traditional - and it was both super easy and quick to make, so it will definitely get a repeat showing.

Siomay are a lot like baso, except they are usually made from prawns or fish. The ones I bought had a wrapper around them, so to me they are similar to dim sims, except with prawns inside. This time I added beaten egg to my soup when it was nearly done, which looked a bit weird but tasted good :-)

Ok, to be honest I only made the rice in this one, in my rice cooker - I thought it was time I made something in it other than cake! A friend came over on Monday (we had a day off) and we had a trade off - I showed her how to make banana cake, and she made smashed tofu. I'm sure it has another name, but I like the sound of that one! It was really easy - just cook lots of onion and garlic in some oil, add the tofu (which was in small yellow blocks - I think it might be the local Bandung version) and break it up with the spoon while it cooks. Then you finish with spring onions. Yum!!!

Last but not least, my other attempt at making something other than cake in my rice cooker. This demonstrates my laziness when it comes to cooking (funny, I will spend hours making tiny sugar flowers to go on someone's birthday cake, but get annoyed sometimes if cooking my tea takes more than 20min or two pans!!). This is the definition of easy - put in rice, diced chicken, diced vegetables and water, then press cook. Full stop. It needed a bit more flavour, so next time maybe some chicken stock, or brown some onions and garlic first, and it was a bit of a gloopy mess because turns out I bought sticky rice instead of normal (it was the only small packet - all the others were huge!!), but it was tasty, filling, and lasted nearly all week ;-)

I'll leave with something to make you smile. My first thought when I found out I had sticky rice was, "great - now I can make rice pudding"! Cake Girl, indeed.