Coconut Coffee with Ginger –Bajigur (Indonesia)

Bajigur is a hot and sweet beverage originated from West Java (Indonesia) by the Sundanese people, Indonesia. The local population (the Sundanese) love this when the weather is cold, or when temperatures are decreasing or for example when one is travelling through the mountains.

The main ingredients of this beverage are with coffee, coconut milk, palm sugar, ginger and spices.

Traditionally the fragrant pandan leaves were added, but you can add some vanilla powder or skip this ingredient.

Bajigur is very easy to prepare and adapt it to your taste. If you have the possibility to find fresh coconut flesh, you can add it to the ready beverage.

Coconut Coffee with Ginger –Bajigur (Indonesia)

• Servings: 4
• Time: 20 min
• Difficulty: medium
• Print

Autor: https://artandkitchen.wordpress.com/

Ingredients for 4 cups:

• 2 tablespoon finely grinded coffee, best if you find “Robusta” variety
• 1 cm fresh ginger, thinly sliced
• 1 dash fresh grated nutmeg
• 1 pandan leaf or 1/6 teaspoon vanilla or 1 cardamom pod crushed
• 1 stick cinnamon (or 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon ground)
• 2 cloves (optional)
• 1 teaspoon lemon grass, minced (optional)
• 2 cup water
• 2 cup coconut milk (or 1 cup coconut milk + 1 cups cow milk, to taste!)
• 1/2 cup palm sugar (substitute brown sugar)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons young coconut flesh (optional)

Procedure:

1. Boil coffee, the ginger, nutmeg, pandan leaf (knotted), cinnamon, cloves and lemon grass in 2 cup water. Simmer lightly for 10 minutes.
2. Turn off the heat, allow sit for a few minutes.
3. Strain the solids from this liquid (this step is optional, but it’s my choice).
4. Heat liquid again and add the coconut milk, palm sugar and salt. Simmer gently for 2 minutes.
5. Add the coconut flesh and serve immediately.

Saté Ayam – Chicken Saté

A typical Indonesian smell at pasar malam (night market) in Indonesia! No wonder, this dish is one favorite not only by tourist but by local people as well.

This is more than a dish this for me as this let me dream from Indonesian and brings me back to my first trip there.

Bandung, Indonesia 1988. Landing in Jakarta we went straight to the train station and took the first train to Bandung.  We passed on the mountains, saw tea bushes and arrived in Bandung. We found our room and hungry we went to the square. An old lady near a smoky BBC served us the first warm mean in Indonesia: Sate skewers with a rich brown sauce and nasi putih (plain rice). I still have images of this meal in my mind, something like a short movie. For me it was the first time I felt I’m we were in another world, far away from everything, surrounded by poor but so friendly people.

Twenty-five years later at a pasar malam I enjoyed this dish with my children, my son was amazed by this dish and he wanted more and more.

I prepare this sometimes at home and the comment was: one of the best Asian dishes!

You need:

• 16 skewers

Meat and marinade:

• 500 g chicken breasts, cut into dices or long strips
• 4 tablespoon sweet dark soya sauce (Kecap manis)
• 1 teaspoon coriander ground
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

Sauce:

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 garlic cloves chopped
• 100 g peanuts, fresh or roasted, finely chopped or grinded
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
• 150 ml coconut milk (some people use simply water instead)
• 1 teaspoon sambal oelek (optional)
• 5 tablespoons sweet dark soya sauce (Kecap manis), to taste
• 2 tablespoon lime juice

Preparation:

1. Marinate the chicken with soya sauce, coriander and ginger for at least 2 hours.
2. Place your skewers in water to soak at least one hour.
3. In the meantime prepare all the ingredients for the sauce.
4. Heat oil and fry garlic for 2 minutes, add quickly all the other ingredients. Cook stirring until sauce gets a thick consistence. If necessary adjust the taste with more soya sauce
5. Prepare your skewers and grill until through.
6. Serve immediately with the sauce.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense (Balinese Offer)

These small offering baskets that Balinese offer to their God several times a day appeases the spirits and brings prosperity and good health to the family.

This dayly tradiotion havs an impact maintaining a balanced relationship with spirits, people and nature.

In this basket you can see flowers, incense  sticks, rice and a candy.

Posted for Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense

Ayam Goreng Balut Kacang (Fried Chicken with Peanut Coat)

This is another dish we enjoyed so much in Bali and we replicated it at home.

In Bali we got it with plain rice (nasi putih)  and a tomatoes salsa served in a pretty tomato basked; at home we served it a pineapple salad (pineapple, yellow and red bell peppers, green onions, grated ginger, soya sauce and some drops roasted sesame oil).

This was a great success at home as well; I need to keep this recipe in a safe place!

You need:

• 1 kg chicken pieces, cleaned

Marinade:

• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Batter:

• 4 tablespoons wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup water

Coating:

• 1 cup peanuts, without skin and chopped

Preparetion:

1. Cut chicken into 2 inch pieces or to taste.
2. I removed the skin (personal taste) and left drumstick in one piece.
3. Sprinkle chicken lemon juice, add garlic, ginger pepper and salt.
4. Let rest for at least 30 minutes.
5. In a bowl combine all the ingredient for the batter and stir until smooth.
6. Dip each piece of chicken into the batter.
7. Sprinkle and coat with the chopped peanuts.
8. Fry in hot oil until dry lot and mature or fry in a pan on both side until golden and keep in the preheated warm oven until through and ready.

Serving suggestion: Serve with rice. You can serve it with a tropical salsa or with tomatoes salsa enriched with sambal.

Pisang Rai – Balinese Banana Bites with Coconut

We have been in Bali and we came back with a lot of photos and the souvenir of many tasty dishes.

We spent some days In Munduk, a cute village in the north of Bali (Indonesia) set on a ridge running down from the northwestern rim of the volcano. It was there where we had the opportunity to try the delicious Pisang Rai.   The girl working at the restaurant explained me that the best way is to use a mixture of rice, tapioca and corn flour in the same quantities. The coating was green, because of the pandan leave. She explained the steps and the first thing I did home, it was to look in the internet what I could find about. Well, about the flour mixture nothing. At home I did not have the pandan but I had some colored flour I bought in a supermarket in Bali.

I found out that the coloring four was mung been starch… with food coloring. In my recipe I used only a teaspoon, but you can skip it or uses some green food coloring or pandan leave paste instead.

You need:

2 bananas (firm but ripe), diagonally sliced

Brown syrup

1-2 tablespoon palm sugar
2-4 tablespoon water
50 g corn starch

Batter

50 g rice flour (from sticky rice)
50 g tapioca flour
50 g sugar
Green food coloring (optional)
Hot water

Coating

Coconut flakes (preferably fresh)

Procedure

1. For the syrup melt palm sugar in a small saucepot and cook until desired consistence. Set aside.
2. In a bigger saucepot bring about two liters water to boil.
3. Mix flours, sugar and food coloring together. Add hot water until a thick smooth batter is formed.
4. Dip banana slices in the batter and coat well.
5. Drop them one by one in boiling water.
6. After a few minutes when they rise they are done.
7. Coat with coconut flakes and place on a serving dish.
8. Drizzle with the brown sugar and serve.

Food Merchants (Indonesia, Java 1988)

One more impression taken on the ways in Java.

Original and processed image

Java (Indonesia) Market Live

Market in  Java (1988).

Original picture from a slide:

Possible solution after processing:

The Tailor of Bandung

Process and restoring photos is not only a possibility to remember the past but also to discover details that we missed at that moment.

The photos of Bams’ parents woke in me the souvenirs of our first trip in Asia (Indonesta 1988). We still stored our slides, but we never took us time to make digits photos of them.

Finally, yesterday I did it! Now I have the photos and I tried to process them.

We still didn’t use digital cameras and we didn’t take so many photos as we do now.

We arrived in Jakarta by plane and we went straight to the train station to our first destination: Bandung.

I will never forget out first meal there in a square were we bought 10 sate daging (Grilled skewerd meat) enriched with a delicious peanuts sauce served with nasi putih (plain rice).

Out guide (I mean the book) said that sarongs would be very useful and we should by some. We found some, in brown tonalities. The vendors sold them on a towel on directly on the street. How many places in the world we visited bringing our sarongs with us. Still now we always have our sarongs in vacations: we use them as cover, as scarf, as bag, we used them to carry or children and we bought some for presents. For my mother love them as towel.

In one of those streets where we bought our sarongs there was a tailor selling his services directly on the road.

I tried different effects with the picture, sometimes cropping it and once covering the motorbike.

Who is looking who? What is hanging behind the tailor? From where is the light coming? There are many things to discover…

The first picture is the original transferred directly from the slide:

Water painting effects +less contrast:

Colored pencil:

Mix of different effects and texture:

Vintage effect:

Crosshatch: