Salam dear readers.

Sorry for the silence on my blog and the absence on my Instagram account. I have been unwell but I’m recovering now.

  

Here’s one of the things I managed to do while I was at home with Wan, my mother, last week. I randomly cooked ayam masak sambal tumis for the first time with my mother on 16^th April 2014 for dinner with my husband and the family... and I thought it would be good to just share the ingredients, recipe and step by step pictorial below. I’m sharing the steps translated into Malay Language too at the end of this post.

This is my first ever post on cooking. Many know that I love food very much, yes, I am a foodie. I eat a lot. But it is always either my mother’s cooking (my fav) or us eating outside. My mother loves to cook and I just realized that whatever she cooks is always delicious BECAUSE she loves to cook and she cooks a lot. The skills, the talent and the awesome cooking. It didn’t happen overnight. I can’t believe I just realized that.

I don’t actually cook. I can probably count with the fingers on my two hands the number of times I cooked in this past few years, with my mother. Thought I wouldn’t be good at it as I thought I would never enjoy cooking. Never say never.

Looking back, I have been too much of a career woman that I didn’t actually have time to cook or do housework. When I was in high school, I was busy studying and cheerleading and dancing. When I was in university it was all about exams and campus life (there was a rule that we cannot cook in campus) and after I graduated I was just too busy chambering and busy with work that not only I did not have time to cook (or learn how to cook) but I did not even have time to actually eat at home with my husband for dinner. 110% of my life after university life was dedicated to work. I gave all my time to work before the two major lifechanging events that happened to me this past two years. Those two events made me realize that there are more things to life.

I’ll continue talking about that in another post.

But in this post, I am going to share what I learned when I cooked ayam masak sambal tumis monitored and tutored by my mother. I thought of putting this on the blog so that if I forget how to do it I can go back here to see how it is done. And also, if there are any readers of mine who also doesn’t cook like me, maybe they can also learn to cook too. (Anybody out there?? Anyone?? Just me??) Never too late right?

Baby steps : )

I must say though that it was pretty challenging to cook while taking photos of almost every step. Haha. It took longer because I had to wash my hands every time I wanted to hold my camera! But I just thought that it might be beneficial for myself and probably others?

So, every time I learn a new dish I’ll try to share it here, if God wills it.

Here goes the first dish :

AYAM MASAK SAMBAL TUMIS 

(Sambal Chicken?)

Wan’s recipe

INGREDIENTS :

1 whole chicken

4 big yellow onions (bawang kuning)

6-7 cloves of garlic (bawang putih)

2 inches of ginger (halia)

30 dried chili (cili kering)

2-3 tea spoons of turmeric powder (serbuk kunyit)

2 lemongrass (serai)

1 cup of frying oil

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

Half tablespoon of tamarind mixed with water (asam jawa) or 1 small cup of tamarind juice

You will need two woks (kuali) for this.

STEPS :

The sauce

The chicken

(This should be done right after step 3 for the SAUCE above)

Final step

Now that both the fried chicken and the sauce are ready, it is time to mix it up!

Put in the fried chicken into the wok and mix well till the chicken is fully covered with the sauce.

Try it and add in sugar or salt as you like.

Note : I did this with my mother so it was easier to cook both the chicken and the sauce at once. 

However, if done alone I would probably start off with frying the chicken first and after that is done start with the sauce.

Tadaa!!!

For those who haven’t cooked ayam masak sambal before, try it! This is not the first time I cooked this year (that sounds so bad) but from what I’ve learned from the limited number of cooking experience I had is that we tend to make mistakes. Especially during the first time. So we keep on improving, improvise and try to make it better the next time.

Cooking just like other things in life, will get better through experience. Practice makes perfect.

I didn’t ever thought I would like cooking eventhough I love to eat. But, it turns out, after a number of times cooking with Wan this year I actually enjoy it. Eventhough I am a beginner and still learning I find it quite enjoyable especially when they actually finish eating the dish!

If I can do it, you can too! Hehe.

Do share with me if you have any cooking tips for beginners ya? : )

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Saya ada terima komen dari pembaca-pembaca blog untuk saya terjemahkan beberapa post terdahulu di blog saya. Belum berkesempatan. Jadi ini cubaan pertama saya untuk cuba terjemahkan tulisan saya ke dalam Bahasa Melayu. Memang saya berborak dalam Bahasa Melayu in real life tapi bila menulis saya lebih selesa berbahasa Inggeris kerana  bila saya menulis dalam Bahasa Melayu secara otomatik akan jadi bahasa baku. Awkward. Saya cuba yang terbaik ya? Kalau silap atau salah harap tolong betulkan : )

Cara memasak AYAM MASAK SAMBAL TUMIS

Sos sambal tumis

Ayam goreng

(Mula goreng ayam sebelum masuk minyak untuk sos sambal tumis)

Langkah terakhir

Sekarang kedua-dua sos dan ayam goreng dah sedia masak, jadi sudah tiba masa untuk gaulkan kedua-duanya!

Masukkan ayam goreng ke dalam kuali yang ada sambal yang telah ditumis dan gaul hingga sebati.

Harap terjemahan di atas ini bermanfaat dan bukan jadi bahan gelak sahaja. Hehe.

Selamat mencuba!

PEACE & LOVE!