Recipes

The Perfect Dish

When people talk to me, they have this impression that I hate Croatia. However hate can't stem from nothing, so there was once love as a reference point; I cannot mention her name, but the simplicity of the experience and the stories that she told me along the way created this life I could picture in my head, my future and teaching my kids the things that their mother taught me. I don't know if love made this recipe amazing, or it is just typically amazing due to its simplicity, either way it is my one of my favorite dishes from one of three women that I have ever fallen in love with.*

Step 1. Be a girl who grew up on the coast and wake up very early and pick up the freshest sea bream that you can get your hands on. Stick that in the fridge and go for your morning dip, and then have an early morning espresso while reading the morning news.

Step 2. Wake me up with the smell of coffee and a light kiss. Then I have to catch up on the news at the café, while you order your second cup of coffee. A dip in the sea for me is optional at this point, as I haven't showered yet.

Step 3. On the way home, take the long way around and tell me about the history of your town. While you tell me what used to be, that you sold sea shells to tourists as a kid for ice cream money, you would be picking up random greenery and explaining that, "This is laurel (lovor)." and give me a whiff of the natural spice, straight from the trees.

So now we get to the ingredients:

1. Orada (sea bream) fresh from the fisherman's hand, cleaned and in the fridge.

2. Potatoes from the garden.

3. Plucked laurel leaves from someone else's garden.

4. Plucked rosemary branches from across the camping grounds.

5. Plucked wild basil near the northern wall of the town.

6. Olive oil from whatever family member makes olive oil.

7. Sea salt from Nin.

8. Ground pepper with a knife.

9. Bread from the local bakery with a conversation to catch up on the year that she has not been on the coast.

Salad?

1. Tomatoes from the garden.

2. Arugula from the garden.

3. Red wine vinegar.

4. Olive oil from that same family member.

5. Salt and pepper to taste.

FJAKA!

So about 45 minutes before lunch, clean, skin and cut up the potatoes into slices and then boil them. Preheat the oven to 125 C. Clean and gut the fish if you haven't, then in a large aluminum foil, lay the fish on it and generously salt it. Crush the pepper with a knife and sprinkle it on. Pour a large amount of olive oil and then cover the fish in and out. Stuff the rosemary and basil in all the crevices and put a laurel leaf on the fish.

Put the foil pack in the oven and then wait. Once the potatoes are fork tender but not falling apart, drain the water and plate it. After 20 minutes, the fish should be done (25 minutes maximum). Open up the foil and carefully transfer the fish to the plate. Pour the juices over the potatoes.

Mix the vinegar, olive oil, pepper and salt in a cup. Slice up the tomatoes into wedges and mix with the arugula. Pour the dressing over in a bowl.

Slice a couple slices of bread (she likes the end piece, so give it to her). Then may your "tek" be "dobar".

Don't forget to kiss the chef.

<3

*I'm sure the women who influenced my life do not want me to post their names online, so the first is D.M.D., the second is L.K. who I planned to marry, and the third is I.L.

Yeop's Chicken Ramen

Here's the first recipe I posted. It is inspired by Naruto. Since he loves ramen noodles, I decided to make my own. I don't do things by instant (although the Indomie Instant Mi Goreng is hilariously addictive that I end up buying 10 packets of them whenever I go to Graz).

Instead, I like to start from scratch and do things by the basics, because if you know the basics, you can manipulate the recipe around and create something new and exciting! Not like this ramen. This is just ramen. Since I am Muslim and ramen soup is usually made with pork, I make with chicken and it actually turns out pretty tasty.

The most important part of ramen, besides the noodles, is the broth. So I'm going to start with that because the broth has to be left alone cooking for most of the preparation. I'm usually cooking for two, so just multiply everything by the appropriate amount. Here are the ingredients that you need to start with:

The Broth:

1 large onion

1 or 2 green chilis

2 cloves of garlic

1 large carrot and other vegetables/roots for soup

1 star of anis

2 or 3 cloves

2 or 3 cardamom seed

chicken bones for broth

1.5L hot water

Chop the onion and chili and fry with anis, klincic and cardamon seed until the onion is a little soft. Add the garlic, chicken bones and water to make the soup. Let the soup boil for 10-20 minutes while adding salt to taste.

After it starts to boil, take out the chicken bones and scrape off any additional meat and dump it back into the soup. Add the carrots and your choice of vegetables and let boil until vegetables are soft. Leave the soup to simmer.

The Noodles:

Here is where it gets weird. If you can get proper ramen noodles, get them! If you live in Croatia like I do, I'm limited to either spaghetti or tagliatelle. I prefer tagliatelle because they're thinner noodles and are more similar to ramen.

After dealing with the soup, start boiling the noodles. After the spaghetti, tagliatelle or ramen is soft, drain the water and wash all the noodles in really cold water until it's not sticky anymore.

The Garnishing:

2 eggs

2 stalk of spring onion

2 chicken breasts

salt and pepper

more chili :)

If you have an extra pot, just start boiling the eggs. Marinate the chicken breast in just salt and pepper. Chop the spring onion and chili.

This is what you do to do it all at once! Start marinating the chicken. Prepare the soup. While the soup is boiling, start egg and noodles. Once eggs and noodles are done, fry the chicken, peel the eggs and cut it in half. I'm experimenting with breading the chicken and marinating it in different things. We'll see how well that turns out.

After everything is somewhat ready, put the noodles in a bowl. Pour the soup over the noodles. Put the egg halves in the bowl. Chop the chicken into slices and place it on top of the noodles. Cut the spring onions into slices and sprinkle over the dish.

Seems like a lot of work, but if you prepare everything properly, it takes about 30 minutes. I've also made a fish version of the ramen and it's great. You can probably try to change the ingredients around to make it taste more salty, spicy, etc. You can even cheat and use chicken stock to make it taste more potent or just boil the chicken bones longer. I hope you enjoy the first recipe that I put up. If I forgot anything, I'll revise it.

Dobar Tek!

The Culinary Universal Remix of Rendered Indian Sauce (Curris)

So basically like every Bolognese recipe, curry has been horridly massacred. After following Rick Stein across India, I finally realized that "curry" is not really curry, but a sauce made from a mixture of spices that foreigners labeled as curry. So basically every sauce is technically a "curry".

However, each sauce has its base and they are somewhat similar and they can all be manipulated to taste. That said, I grew up with a certain type of chicken curry that my mother or roti canai stalls have made and I made it better. Apparently this type of curry came from Bangladesh, but I took a piece of love from every region.

Ingredients

Onion

Garlic

Ginger

A whole chicken

A bunch of tomatoes

Coconut milk

Spices

Turmeric

Star of anise

Cloves

Cardamom

Coriander seeds

Black mustard seeds

Ground dried chili

Fennel seeds

Cumin seeds

Curry leaf (or laurel)

Coriander leaf

Instructions

Rip apart the chicken into its designated pieces and start boiling the chicken to soften it and for broth. Chop everything else. Tomatoes into cubes, garlic and ginger finely, and the onions into tiny cubes. In a tablespoon of oil, lightly fry some turmeric, fennel, cumin, cloves, coriander, ground chili and black mustard seeds. After the aroma starts, pour in a few tablespoons of coconut milk. The coconut milk will then mix with the oil and make a nice aroma. After the coconut milk releases its oils, dump in the onions and fry until softened.

While this is going on, dump a cup of coconut milk and mix with turmeric and anise. Then remove the chicken from the boiling broth and dump all that in a bowl to marinate. Set aside.

After the onions are soft, dump the quickly marinated chicken, garlic and ginger and fry quickly. After the chicken has regained fried consistency, add in the rest of the marinade, tomatoes, the rest of the spices and curry (or laurel) leaf. Top off with more coconut milk or that chicken broth you forgot to save, cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour (until the tomatoes die). Pour in a nice serving bowl, sprinkle freshly chopped coriander leaves.

Let cool and serve with basmati or jasmine rice.

The reason I didn’t put in how much of each spice you must use is because it really depends on what type of curry you’re making, where you’re from, what you want it to taste like and how much your mother yelled at you for putting in too much chili (or other spices). My goal is a well-rounded curry to match everybody’s palate. So I usually put in 2 star of anise, 6 cardamom seeds, 12 cloves, two tablespoons of coriander, three table spoons of black mustard seeds, a spoon of ground chili, one spoon of turmeric to fry with, two spoons of cumin, half a spoon of fennel and two leaves. Oh yeah, about 1 kg of tomato for a 2 kg chicken. This I found, gets the best compliments, because most Europeans don’t know what real curry tastes like. :)

The Better Bolognese

People think that Bolognese sauces are that really red saucy mess you put on spaghetti, but according to The Telegraph, the Italians are really angry that the recipe has been "abused" all over the world. Although my recipe is SLIGHTLY different from this recipe, it still comes from an Italian grandmother and I think it IS a little bit better. Just because of a few changes.

The Ingredients

1. Olive oil

2. Pancetta or bacon chopped into small pieces

3. Freshly ground black pepper

4. Two fresh bay leaves

5. A nice large juicy Italian sausage chopped into large chunks

6. Two chopped large onions

7. One kilogram of minced beef

8. A LOT of crushed garlic cloves

9. Two large glasses of red wine, preferably a shiraz or not-so-sweet red wine

10. One kilogram of chopped fresh tomatoes

11. A handful of capers

12. A handful of freshly picked chopped basil

13. Salt and freshly ground black pepper

14. One kilogram dried thick spaghetti

DO NOT BREAK PASTA, IT IS BAD LUCK! Ptooie ptooie!

15. Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

The Sauce

Put a hefty amount of olive oil to lightly coat the bottom of the pan on medium heat and fry the bacon. Then fry some ground pepper and the bay leaves, and add the bite-size chunks of the Italian sausages. After getting that hit of that amazing bacon and sausage aroma, dump in the two large onions. I usually use three large onions and tried it once mixed with white, red and yellow onions. That didn't make any difference. After softening the onions, dump the meat and garlic in.

If you have a butcher to mince the meat for you, that is MUCH better! Remember the lifestyle in the Mediterranean, where everything is market fresh and not really store bought. Plus you get to go to the market and gossip with your local butcher, fruit and vegetable vendors, the local whore (more known as my ex-girlfriend), etc.

After the meat has browned, pour in the red wine and let it evaporate until half and then add the tomatoes. Soften the tomatoes and let the red wine soak in, occasionally stirring. Start cooking the pasta (I still like to use spaghetti, because I reserve tagliatelle for my Alfredo recipe). After the tomatoes have really softened (it should look more brownish than reddish) and the flavors mixed with the meat, cut off the heat, add salt and pepper to taste, throw in a few capers and the handful of freshly picked basil. Then stir and enjoy the aroma!

The Alternative

My next step is just a suggestion that even Italians didn't think of, but seem to enjoy. Drain the "al dente" spaghetti and put in olive oil, salt, chopped garlic, pepper and basil and refry for a 30 seconds. This makes the pasta edible on its own, and each bite is a burst of flavor! Then you can serve the pasta with the sauce on top. That is if you don't want to do the next step of...

The Presentation

Drain the "al dente" spaghetti and mix it into the sauce you just made! What's the use of having a perfect Bolognese without the environment? Besides having a sun-filled vineyard and an open outdoor balcony that you can eat in, on a table with a white table cloth blowing in the wind, you can enjoy the rest of the Italian experience by completing whatever table you have in whatever environment you're in by adding the following:

1. Make an arugula and lamb's lettuce salad with a nice vinaigrette dressing (whisk olive oil, red wine vinegar, crushed garlic, crushed pepper, salt, a dash of water and a dash of brown sugar)

2. Beef soup (see my beef soup recipe)

3. Freshly baked bread (see my pizza dough recipe)

4. A plate of fresh cheeses, pancetta and prosciutto, and olives

5. Bottle of red wine straight from your vineyard and a bottle of water to tone it down on those hot days

6. A few candles on the table with wax dripping onto the table cloth

7. An old senile grandmother dressed in black

8. A busty, flirty but married Italian woman

9. Her husband who does not seem jealous that his woman is constantly talking to you

10. Your neighbor who "just seemed to drop by" right when you JUST finished cooking so you have to add that extra plate

11. That girl that you never seemed to have noticed, but you would end up marrying

12. Your girlfriend or soon to be ex-girlfriend

13. Music optional

15. Italian accents and a lot of yelling is a must!

Yeop's Sicilian-Style Pizza

This is my Sicilian-style pizza. Ok, so I’m not even Italian. So I can’t claim recipes, but even in Sicily, they don’t make it this way. It takes an Italian-American to create something this flavorful. Either way, Sicily is famous for their “bready and doughy” pizza crust. Americans are famous for filling it up with too much fat.

So here’s how to make the Dough:

1. Yeast

2. 1 cup warm water

3. Salt

4. Olive oil

5. Flour

6. Basil

7. Oregano

8. Garlic

Obviously, fresh ingredients are better. Mix the dry or wet yeast with the cup of warm water in a bowl. Put in a healthy dab of salt and about ¼ cup of olive oil. Chop two cloves of garlic and put them in the bowl. Then put in a good Sicilian chunk of fresh basil and oregano into the mix. Put one cup of flour and then mix well. Keep adding flour until you get the dough consistency (like making bread). Cover with olive oil, cover with a moist cloth and set aside to let the dough rise.

The Sauce:

1. Tomato puree (you can make this out of fresh tomatoes, just boil the tomato down in a little bit of water and mash later)

2. Salt

3. Basil

4. Oregano

5. Garlic

6. Pepper

Basically take one cup of puree and put in a LITTLE dash of salt (cheese is salty), and add the rest of the spices to taste. I like using 1 clove of finely chopped garlic. Set aside to let it fester.

The Finale:

1. A nice thick Italian sausage (which is probably bigger and more sexy than a Malaysian sausage)

2. Gouda or cheddar cheese

3. Capers

Heat oven to 200C. On a 12” pizza pan, spread the dough over (about 0.5 cm thick). I know I used both imperial and metric in the same sentence. Deal with it! Make sure the dough goes about 1” over the side of the pan. Spread the sauce evenly, not making it very thick. You’ll probably use about ½ the sauce. Then cut up the sausages (or mush them with your hands) and evenly spread them around. Dump a lot of capers on there. Vomit the cheese evenly and since you left a little bit over the pan, fold it over and create a nice stuff crust, so every bite of the pizza crust is a mini calzone.

Then bake the pizza for about 20 to 25 minutes. Give the owner of this recipe a kiss for good luck and serve! The secret is not to make it TOO salty. Garlic brings out the flavor the most, but you can make it TOO garlicky. Basil and oregano gives it the awesome aroma.

Bonus Level:

1. The rest of the sauce if you don’t want to make the pizza

2. Horseradish

Take one hefty spoon of horseradish (ground) and mix it into that sauce you made earlier. This makes a PERFECT dip for the crust. You’ll thank me later, because if you are cooking it for your significant other, then you’ll definitely get laid that night and she/he will totally want to try something new. Yeop’s stamp of guarantee.