9 November 2012 by Crave Malay Mail

Friday november 9, 2012 S AT I S F Y I N G

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Celebrate the festival of lights with these favourite recipes from the chefs of Makan Kitchen, DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur

24 COVER PICTURE RECIPE

(These crunchy snacks are a must for the festivities.) Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Slowly add warm water little by little, while mixing it to form soft pliable dough. Knead and place dough through a murukku mould (utensil with a hole). Heat oil in a wok. Using the mould, pipe out the muruku in a circular shape onto a metal spatula. Gently drop

400g rice flour 120g Urad flour 100g unsalted butter ½ teaspoon chili powder 2 teaspoons sesame seeds 1 teaspoon Ajwain seeds warm water oil for frying

(4 servings) 300g onions, peeled and sliced 150g cashewnuts, soaked in 150ml water for 30 minutes 1 kg Indian cottage cheese (paneer), cut into small pieces 80ml oil 4 teaspoons cumin seeds 2 (10g) green chillies, cut into small pieces 2 teaspoons minced ginger 4 teaspoons minced garlic 2 teaspoons chili powder 4 teaspoons turmeric powder 50g tomatoes, cut into quarters 150ml UHT whipping cream 4 teaspoons chopped coriander leaves 2 tablespoons garam masala powder salt to taste 5 cashew nuts, for garnish

Taster Comments:

I liked this delicious dish with the blended cashewnuts that paired well with the briyani rice. ” RACHEL MAH, STUDENT

into the hot oil and deep fry till crispy and golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towels. Leave to cool and store in an airtight container. – Recipe from Makan Kitchen, DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur.

(Make

Note: Buy the muruku mould at Indian grocery shops in Little India, in Klang or Brickﬁelds. There are two kinds, the plastic ones that are also labeled as putu moulds and a heavy brass one. They all come with interchangeable plates for various shapes. If you ﬁnd piping it in a circle tedious, you can also just press them into random shapes.

This North Indian dish uses the soft crumbly cheese that is cooked in a creamy sauce.

Bring to boil the onions, cashew nuts and the soaking liquid in a small pot. Simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Let it cool then blend to form a paste and set aside. In a frying pan, pan- fry the Indian cottage cheese for one minute. Remove and set aside. Heat the oil in a pot over medium heat. Add cumin seeds and green chillies; sauté for 5 minutes. Add ginger and garlic paste, chilli powder, turmeric powder; sauté for 2 minutes and add the tomatoes. Add the blended cashewnut paste, cream, fried paneer, coriander leaves and garam masala. Season with salt to taste. Bring to boil and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove and serve with cashewnuts as a garnish. — Recipe from Makan Kitchen, DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur.

80ml ghee 1 (5g) cinnamon stick 4 (3g) star anise 5 (3g) green cardamom pods 4 black cardamoms 5 (2g) cloves 5 bay leaves 2 teaspoons cumin seeds 300g onions, peeled and sliced 10g green chilies, sliced 2 teaspoons minced ginger 4 teaspoons minced garlic 80g chilli powder 4 teaspoons turmeric powder 50g tomatoes, cut into slices 300g chicken, chopped into pieces 2 tablespoons garam masala powder 2 liters water 1 kg basmathi rice, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes and drained salt to taste

Note: The cashew nuts need to be soaked in the water to soften it or else it will be difﬁcult to blend the nuts.

garnish 20g coriander leaves chopped 30g fresh mint leaves chopped

The recipes were extracted from a special Deepavali booklet prepared by the DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur. It showcases 10 dishes including popular items such as chicken varuval and

mutton saag from the three chefs, namely Chef Prem Kumar, Chef Lingeswaran and Chef Surendran from Makan Kitchen. The booklet will be given to the ﬁrst 500 diners at Makan Kitchen on Deepavali.

Taster Comments:

This was easy to make even thoug time to gather up the spices. The briy ﬂavour.” RACHEL MAH, STUDENT

FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2012

THE MALAY MAIL

FOOD bites

AN INDIAN EXTRAVAGANZA

es 10 servings)

Indian food enthusiasts should head towards Mosaic, Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur for their Indian food and culture festival that ends on November 11. Diners will have the chance to sample the best of Indian cuisine prepared by chefs V.D. Barua and Mehboob Alam, specially ﬂown in from The Ashok of New Delhi. The two talented chefs will be cooking up a plethora of Indian dishes including an assortment of curries, briyani, naan and sweets. The dishes change daily to keep the menu refreshed. Look for the Jhinga Malabar curry, a dreamy rich coconut prawn curry simmered with red chillies, tamarind and tomatoes, prepared in a traditional coastal style. Or zoom in on the divine Gosht e Josh, tender

lamb cooked in an onion and tomato curry flavoured with various spices. Nibble on a Samosa chaat, spiced potato snacks with sweet yoghurt and tamarind chutney, as you decide which fluffy fragrant briyani rice to relish. Pair those curries and briyani rice with an assortment of homemade pickles, made from mango, pineapples, garlic and raisins. From the tandoor oven, there is murgh malai kebab. Kashimiri lamb kofta, chicken drumstick tikka, Norwegian salmon tandoori and tandoori lamb chops. They also serve various naan breads, flavoured with garlic, onion seed, cheese and a Kashimiri version studded with a mix dried fruits. You also get a chance to try traditional non-alcoholic In-

dian beverages for RM16. Refresh with the Shikanjvi, sweet lemonade with rock salt and pepper. There’s also Nariyal pani, fresh coconut water. The restaurant will also serve two kinds of lassi: a plain version with a dash of cardamom and the mango version. Don’t miss out on the Indian sweets, as each dessert item is beautifully prepared with a reﬁned air. It’ll be hard to choose items such as creamy payasam made with rice, the syrup soaked gulab jamun or the bright orange jelebi. The buffet lunch is RM88++ per person while the buffet dinner is RM128++ per person. Mosaic, Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur, KL City Centre, Kuala Lumpur. For resevations, contact Tel: 03-21798881.

WOK FRIED CRABS WITH LEMONGRASS

CRAB-O-LICIOUS

TIP: Use Mohgul Basmati rice for the best results. The recipe can also be cooked in a rice cooker.

Heat ghee in a large pot. Add the cinnamon stick, star anise, cardamoms, cloves, bay leaves and cumin seeds; saute until fragrant. Add onions, chillies, ginger and garlic paste; saute for 5 minutes or until the onion is soft. Add chilli and turmeric powders; stir until the oil rises. Add tomatoes and cook until it is softens. Add chicken and saute for about 10 minutes. Add garam masala powder and water. Bring the whole mixture to boil. Pour the drained rice into the pot. Cover the top with a sheet of baking paper, and secure with a lid. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat. Once the rice is cooked, ﬂuff up the grains and remove from the heat. Place the rice on a plate. Garnish with chopped mint and coriander leaves and serve immediately. — Recipe from Makan Kitchen, DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur.

gh it took me some yani rice is full of

LADDU

JELEBI

PAYASAM

RASGULLA

GULAB JAMUN

DUM BRIYANI

PALKOVA

For the month of November, Zuan Yuan Chinese Restaurant at One World Hotel’s is going crab crazy. Diners can enjoy various seven cooking styles for the crustaceans. The pork free restaurant will feature three different crabs (ﬂower, mud and roe crab) mainly sourced from Indonesia. Prices range from RM10 to RM12 per 100 gram for the crabs. The dishes are concocted by Chef Woon Ting Keat, who joined the hotel this August after a long stint away in Indonesia and China, with Shenzhen as his last posting. Chef Woon was part of the opening team for the hotel back in 2007. Relish the sweet crustacean braised with XO sauce and glass noodle, or wok-fried with Kum Heong style or even stirfried with spicy black pepper dressing. The crowd favourite is the lip smacking salted egg yolk crabs. The crustaceans

are served on a bed of sautéed onions, which gives it a sweet taste, and alleviates the rich creamy taste of the savoury salted egg yolk sauce. For Chef Woon’s Wok fried with cheese and butter in superior sauce crabs, he uses Cheddar cheese, chopped garlic and superior stock to make an addictive creamy sauce, best eaten with a bowl of plain rice. The innovative chef even tinkered with the infamous Kum Heong style, and his version is much lighter and punctuated with the fragrance of lemongrass, curry leaves and crunchy dried prawns. For the sweet glorious taste of the crabs, enjoy the ﬂower crabs plain steamed with superior stock and egg white.

WOK FRIED CRABS WITH CHEESE

STEAMED CRABS WITH EGGWHITE

Zuan Yuan Chinese Restaurant, First Avenue, Bandar Utama City Centre, Petaling Jaya. For reservations, call 03-76811159.

GOHST E JOSH

ALOO GOBI

SAMOSA CHAAT

KAIRIWALY BHINDI

EDITORIAL NOTE by Lee Khang Yi

Crave Editor

Specially for the festive season, we have three recipes for you to cook up a feast for Deepavali. If you are lazy to cook, opt for the Indian feast in Mosaic, Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur. We also round up the various sweets for the season at the yearly Deepavali carnival. Enjoy the festivities. Email me at khangyi@mmail.com.my with any feedback. Happy Deepavali!

ADVERTISING SALES Rajan Gopal Senior Manager, Direct & Classifieds Direct line: 03 74951282 rajan@mmail.com.my

In the Kitchen with Eu Hooi Khaw TALK about turmeric and I think of nasi kunyit, those lovely, sticky grains of glutinous rice tinged yellow, served with chicken curry. It’s a Chinese celebratory thing: you get the sticky yellow rice for the full moon of a baby’s birth together with red eggs, and for birthdays too. The yellow rice also holds the same celebratory status in Malay and Indonesian life events too, appearing in weddings. You will see vegetables coloured yellow with turmeric at Indian food stalls, and it’s an indispensable spice for most curries whether Malay, Indian, or Nonya. Turmeric, also known as

Curcuma longa, belongs to the ginger family. It’s an ancient spice, dating back 4,000 years, to the Vedic culture in India, where it was used as a culinary spice as well as for religious and medicinal purposes. It’s even used as a dye for holy robes by Hindus in India. Turmeric is a native of South East Asia and is now cultivated from India to China, Australia and the West Indies. Marco Polo encountered turmeric in his eastern travels in 1280, and thought it had the properties of saffron, yet it was not really saffron. And it should not be used as a substitute for it. It is mildly aromatic, with a pungent, bitter ﬂavour, so

you can’t use too much of it in your cooking. Curcumin, the active ingredient in it has been found to be a highly effective anti-inﬂammatory and arthritis patients can beneﬁt from it. It’s anti-bacterial and anti-viral, and is used for cleansing, both physically and spiritually by Hindus when someone is ill. A bucket of turmeric water would be put outside the house, a n d anyone

coming in would use it to wash their feet. Turmeric has been used traditionally in Asia to treat stomach, liver and digestive problems and to heal sores and wounds. It has also been shown to stimulate the production of bile, and has a protective effect on the liver and gallbladder. It is also a good source of Vitamin C and B6. It’s high in iron, with some magnesium, potassium and manganese.

life weet for s a b Gra nicolour h e in tec avali in th ck p e C e D n. li editio ail. l a t i dig w.mm on ww .my com

FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2012

THE MALAY MAIL

TURMERIC STICKY RICE 500g glutinous rice 4cm fresh turmeric, pounded and put in small cloth bag 3 slices lime 1 ½ teaspoons sugar 1 ½ teaspoons salt 125ml warm water 75ml thick coconut milk

Soak the glutinous rice in turmeric, lime and enough water to cover overnight. The next day, drain the rice and discard the turmeric and lime. Stir the sugar and salt in the warm water until it dissolves. Combine the warm water and the drained glutinous

rice in a deep tray. Steam over boiling water in a wok for 25 minutes, or until the grains are soft. Fluff the grains with a fork and stir in the coconut milk. Continue to steam for another 5 minutes. Remove and serve with chicken curry.

NATURE’S BEST FRIED ABALONE MUSHROOMS IN BUTTER SAUCE

FAN CAI XIANG NOODLES

FRIED SWEET POTATO LEAVES

ASAM FRESH FISH

IT’S getting easier to negotiate round a menu in a vegetarian restaurant. Increasingly fresh produce are the order of the day, instead of dishes fashioned from gluten. At Fan Cai Xiang in Taman Desa, Kuala Lumpur, our orders centred around vegetarian dishes that were of natural ingredients. Even the Asam fresh fish (RM16), as it is called, was made of layers of soft beancurd skin, topped with seaweed to resemble fish skin. What delighted us most at our dinner here was the Pa Dong ribs in curry (RM18). It’s “mutton” ribs, we were told, but made from the fibrous stems from black mushrooms. The lovely aroma of fragrant spices as the curry was brought to the table already convinced me it would be a good. The red hot curry in coconut milk with curry leaves embraced the “meat”, as well as potatoes and tofu puffs in it. A deepfried crispy roll was served to eat with this delicious curry. Fried abalone mushrooms in butter sauce (RM16) had been recommended, and this had the mushrooms dipped

BY EU HOOI KHAW

in thin batter and deepfried to a crispy texture, then finished in a creamy butter sauce with curry leaves and chopped chillies. The sauce with its spicy and lightly sweet notes, worked well with the mushrooms. More sauce would have been even better, coating the mushrooms completely and lifting their flavour. Would you order something that just says Home Beancurd (RM17)? We did and were pleasantly surprised by the deep fried chunks of soft, smooth tofu, drenched in a flavourful sauce of crispy “dried prawns” and chopped preserved radish (choy poh). Surrounding the tofu were siu pak choy, so even if we hadn’t ordered a vegetable dish, our meal would have been well balanced. But we did order a Stir-fried sweet potato leaves (RM13), which were fried with slices of ginger. The vegetables were crunchy with a sweet taste.

I found the Asam fresh fish a little disappointing. I had expected something Nonya, with the requisite bunga kantan, daun kesom and lemongrass, and balanced hot, sweet and sour notes. Instead there was a sharp, one-dimensional sourness about the sauce, with none of the herbs to give it a fragrant lift. Nevertheless, the texture of the fish was good, and I did like the slices of sweet pineapple in the sauce. There were also eggplant, ladies fingers and tomato in it. I couldn’t resist ordering the Fan Cai Xiang noodles (RM10) which looked promising in a picture in the menu. These were specially made noodles, I was told. The noodles were al dente, which scored high in my book, and were smothered in a dark sweet sauce with beancurd skin, Chinese mushrooms, and wood ear fungus. I enjoyed these noodles a lot. The restaurant has a nice, traditional Chinese ambience, with heavy rosewood tables and chairs, and a prominent Buddha statue at the front. In future, I would come back to try the Olive fried rice, Claypot curry fishhead, Sizzling lamb chop and Fried pumpkin patty. Fan Cai Xiang Vegetarian Restaurant, Lot 23G, Jalan 2/109F, Taman Danau Desa, off Jalan Klang Lama, Kuala Lumpur, Tel: 03-79819812. Open daily: 10.30am to 3pm, 6pm to 10pm.

PA DONG RIBS IN CURRY

HOME TOFU

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FESTIVAL OF SWEETS

Enjoy various colourful sweets for the Deepavali season

HITTING THE SWEET NOTES This year, a good one-stop shopping place for all your festive needs is the Nestle Everyday Deepavali Carnival at Bukit Jalil Sports Complex. The festival, which is in its eleventh edition, is a mindboggling place with

This popular shop from Brickﬁelds has been plying the Indian sweet trade for more than eight years. One of the unusual items available here is patisa, a concoction made with ﬂour and ghee. It is topped with assorted dried fruits like raisins and cherries, peanuts, cashew nuts and cheese, which gives it a savoury and

250 stalls that peddle clothes, shoes, and all kinds of food such as sweets, savoury nuts and snacks. Previously held in Brickﬁelds, this year marks its ﬁrst time on this vast site with ample parking. We round up

sweet taste. The shop also offers two kinds of carrot barfi, one made entirely from carrots and another layered with the milk barfi. Specially for diabetics, the shop also offers a sugar free kalkanad. The soft cake is made from solidified sweetened milk studded with pistachios. In addition, the sweet shop imports specially crafted

a few stalls within the carnival for you to satisfy your sweet cravings. Various activities such as muruku making competition, dance performances and a concert add to the festivities for the carnival.

barﬁ from India. The sweet confectionery made from condensed milk, is made from cashew nuts and dried fruits. The cashew nut barﬁ is perfect for the festivities, being inlaid with edible silver leaf. Aside from sweets, you can also pick up cookies from the stall. It’s not hard to spot the sweet shop within the air-conditioned

The carnival starts from 12 noon to 10.30pm daily. Its last day is on the eve of Deepavali, or November 12. For more details on the activities, see their facebook page: www.facebook. com/agendasuria.

tent, as they have set up two separate stalls within the area. The sweets are sold by their weight, 100g of sweets is RM10. For the laddu, it is sold for RM2 per piece. You can also visit their shop in Brickﬁelds for sweet supply. No. 84, Jalan Tun Sambanthan, Brickﬁelds, Kuala Lumpur. Tel:03-22746801.

This one stop shop sells clothes, accessories and an assortment of sweets. If you love coconut candy, this is the place you want to visit, as it has the largest variety of the sweet. Expect ﬂavours such as pandan, orange and even a local fa-

vourite, Milo. The s all kinds of creamy jelebi and the milky to this particular sh coloured pastry kno The sweet that rese

sweet shop also carries barﬁ, golden orange y kalakand. Unique hop is the orange own as balu shahi. embles a ﬂaky glazed

FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2012

THE MALAY MAIL

doughnut is made from ﬂour, sugar and ghee. Expect to fork out RM2 per piece or RM7 per 100 grams for the sweets. Lot 1-1, First Floor, Plaza City One, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur. Tel:0327212005.

Look for this Northern Indian restaurant’s large offerings of sweets and savoury items at the non air-conditioned area. You will be spoiled for choice with all kinds of barfi, including the unusual doda barfi, made from dried fruits. There’s even pink and white coconut candy layered with barfi. If you love the milky taste of barfi, the soft cham cham sweet is stuffed with

the creamy confectionery, nuts and assorted dried fruits. For a caramelised milky taste, there is also the harder milk cake. You can even get the soft crumbly kalakand, a pistachio barﬁ that melts in the mouth. The stall also sells two kinds of gulab jamun, one soaked in syrup and an unusual dried version, rolled in dessicated coconut. You can also get the milk and aromatic saf-

fron kesari, topped with nuts. This shop also sells rasgulla, the soft spongy ball-shaped sweets made from cottage cheese and semolina, which is soaked in syrup. Various types of laddu are also found like the motichur, made from boondi or deep fried nuggets of chickpea batter. There is also an almond variety, and an unbaked version fashioned with ghee. The sweets can be selected and packed

in boxes for RM5 per 100 grams. The laddu is sold for RM1 per piece. The almond variety is RM1.50 per piece. For more sweets, visit their two outlets. No. 153, Jalan Sultan Abdul Samad, Brickﬁelds, Kuala Lumpur, Tel:03-22725870 and UGF #06 & 07, Menara KL, No. 2, Jalan Punchak, Off Jalan P Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur, Tel:03-20708288.