Week 13 - Denmark and Indonesia

This is getting really hard, but then I found out you could have meat on Sunday's during Lent - so we had our favourite way of cooking pork chops, the Danish way. Each chop is lightly seasoned and dipped in beaten egg, then covered in seasoned breadcrumbs. Shallow fried in butter and then popped in the over for 25 mins. Lovely... I served it with new potatoes and a salad, as the weather was unusually warm for the time of year.

We found out that Indonesian contains about 17,000 islands and, apparently, takes up the same space as America! It also has quite a few volcanos, of which 127 are active, and only 23 are silent. The big dragons live out there too and they are the worlds producers of Nutmeg, which is lovely with meat dishes. Lots of stir-fry food, as you might expect, so it was possible to conjure up something without using meat. I did make a very simple Indonesian stir-fried rice (Nasi goring), some recipes I found had lots of ingredients and steps and I am sure tasted wonderful, but mine was simple and just as nice. I found Cap Chay, which in Hokkian language means 'everything mixed together'. It seems that is what this dish is all about, you can throw anything in there you just need to add corn flour at the end of cooking to make the thick glistening gravy, which is integral to the dish.

Nasi Goreng (Fried Rice) Recipe

For 2 adults

Ingredients

• 4 c Long-grain rice
• 8 Shallots or 1 small onion
• 4 Red chillis or 2 tsp chilli -powder and 2 tsp paprika
• 4 tb Vegetable oil
• Salt
• 2 ts Sweet soya sauce
• 2 ts Tomato puree

Directions

The name Nasi Goreng means simply ‘fried rice’, and it is really a collective description of an indefinite number of slightly differing dishes. You can vary the trimmings and garnishes to suit your taste; but even the most elaborate Nasi Goreng is quick to make. It is a particularly good luncheon dish.
Boil the rice a good long time before you intend to fry it; you can fry freshly boiled rice, but the Nasi Goreng will be better if the boiled rice is allowed to cool. Two hours is a satisfactory interval. Leaving the rice to cool overnight, however, gives less good results-the rice has time to go dry and stale. An important point to note here is that rice for Nasi Goreng must be cooked with the least possible quantity of water; this prevents it from becoming too soft. For 1 cup of rice, use 1 cup of water. Assuming you have now got your cool, boiled rice, proceed like this: slice the shallots or onion, seed and slice the chilli (or pound the shallots and chilli together in a mortar). Heat the oil in a wok; it makes no difference, by the way, whether you use oil, fat, or butter. Saute the shallots and chilli for a minute or so, and season with salt, soya sauce, and tomato puree. Put in all the rice, and stir it continuously until it is well heated: this will take 5 to 8 minutes. Serve in a good large dish, generously garnished with sliced cucumber, tomatoes, fried onions, and Krupuk.
Source: http://www.asian-recipe.com/indonesia/indonesian-vegetarian-dishes.html#nasi (accessed 26APR2017)