Malaysian cooking part 2

normally when I cook the kithcen resembles a bomb site

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since my first experience of Malaysian cooking went so well, I have decided to experiment with the flavours and skills I learnt. I held another gathering at our house and enlisted the help of a friend who is a chef to guide me and keep me from giving my guests food poisoning. We made the same dumplings as we did in the first session but used chicken mince as well as pork mince, we also decided to try make a cheese and chilli dumpling. We adjusted some of the flavours in the meat dumplings by adding some chilli to the mix but not too much that masked the other flavours or set fire to the our mouths. For the cheese dumplings (which I’m sure doesn’t belong to Malay style dumplings, but tastes good) we made a cheese sauce from: 

2 tbsp butter or margarine
2 tbsp plain flour
1 cup of milk
¼ tsp salt

½ cup grated cheese

 Melt the butter or margarine in a saucepan.

Add the flour and salt and stir until it is bubbly.

Add one-third of the milk and stir all the time until the sauce boils and thickens, repeat this twice until all the milk is added.

If you keep stirring the sauce constantly until it boils, you should get a smooth creamy sauce, add the ½ cup of grated cheddar cheese after you have taken the saucepan off the heat, or the sauce will become stringy. Add the chilli’s till you get the flavour you want. At this stage I added some corn flour to get the right thickness for the dumplings the thicker the better as it will be easier to work with when making the dumplings.

I again found that everybody wanted to be around the food and be involved in its preparation. It was quite sociable and we all had involvement in stuffing the dumplings bringing a sense of belonging to the people involved.

everyone helping out (source: Janine Emmott 2012

 The thing I have found with this experience is that cooking is fun. Whilst shopping for the ingredients, which is from local Asian supermarket, I am chatting and getting more knowledge from experienced shoppers, one of these shoppers told me to try making spring rolls I will write about this in my next blog. I feel that my culinary skills are growing and I am becoming a more rounded (in both senses of the word) cook.