Double chocolate cookies

So I got myself another cookbook, which was actually a generous gift from him. Thank you, sweetie!
It`s Nigella Lawson`s newest book, Nigella Kitchen. I mean, who doesn`t love Nigella? First time I watched her TV show here in Japan (rare!) not knowing what her name was, I was just like, hey, this cooking show is good! One thing captured my mind was her whatsocalled mezzaluna, a half-moon shaped double handed knife (I finally knew the name from the book). Until now I`ve never seen anyone using that! But then years passed by and I have completely forgotten about the show (and her). Of course I have. Cooking wasn`t my thing back then. Or at least, I didn`t realize how I always enjoy watching food being cooked aside from eating itself.
And just last year, a friend of mine (big thanks, Ry!) who just looked at my food pictures mentioning about Nigella and I said, "Who??". So I quickly googled her and sure enough, it`s the gorgeous lady with her half-moon knife. I watched her videos on Youtube over and over again. Warm, cozy, and soothing are the impressions I got from the videos.
Anyway, I picked up something to make from the book, and it`s Chocolate chip cookies. Yes, from all of the oh-yummy!-I-want-this! recipes there, I chose that one. I sometimes don`t understand my self.


I know the name says choc chips, but I bought choc bars, which are cheaper yet with extra work on chopping them up. If you have choc chips, please, by all means, use them. You`ll be happier.
I was planning to use same amount of dark and white choc, but then he had been "stealing" the white bar every day until I noticed only half of it remained.I don`t know, husband..kids..they`re just the same I guess.

Chopping up the bar is quite a work. Watching a chef doing this very easily completely misled me. Place the choc chunks in a bag, shake it to mix them, and set aside.

Her recipe calls for melted unsalted butter, but I used margarine. Place it in a microwaveable container and heat up in microwave at 800 V for 1 min.

Transfer the melted butter to a mixing bowl and let it cool a bit.

Throw in sugar and whisk up. I only used caster sugar. Her recipe calls for brown sugar and caster sugar, but I`m running out of brown sugar. Pffff....I keep using different ingredients here...

Here`s how it looks like after 5 minutes or so.

Add some vanilla essence and beat in one egg yolk and one whole egg. She suggested using fridge-cold eggs. I haven`t researched the reason yet, but I followed it anyway.

Whisk up until the batter turns creamy.

Mix in flour blended with baking powder in batches.
By the way, you can start preheat your oven at 170 C now. 

Oh...heavy..heavy....I said it loudly hoping he would come helping, but nothing happened.

Fold in the choc chips chunks.

 Heavy...heavy..I said it louder, still nothing happened. Then I saw him wearing headphones.
Oh, maybe next time.

 
Line a baking tray with parchment paper. You can butter it of course, but I didn`t and there was no problem with it at all. Now, if you have an ice cream scoop, use it. I don`t have it, so I use my soup ladle. Did it work? Well, sort of. Only sometimes I needed to use my finger or spoon to help taking the dough out of the ladle.

Alright. Ready for baking now. Don`t they look like ice cream??

I kept checking if the "ice cream" melted. It did, but not as much as what I expected. Maybe more butter next time will do the trick.

So this, is how I expected how the cookies look like. Pretty, right?

And this, is my double chocolate cookies. They look way paler than the ones shown in her book.  Probably because of the no-brown-all-white sugar I used. And less pretty too, lol. Nevertheless, these cookies came out chewy and a bit bready inside with crisp edge.

The white choc bits inside totally rock! Next time I`d keep the choc bars in a locked place. Lesson learned.


Ingredients*:
300 g chocolate bars, chopped
150 g margarine (or butter), melted
200 g sugar (or use in 1.25:1 ratio if using brown and caster sugar)
1 whole egg, fridge cold
1 egg yolk, fridge cold
vanilla essence
1 tsp of baking powder (original recipe using 1/2 tsp of baking soda)
300 g flour

Bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 17 minutes
*I slightly modified the original recipe

Sambal goreng ati (chicken liver and gizzard in spicy coconut milk)

If you read my previous posts about opor ayam and rice cake, then you need to keep reading now because the dish I`m about to show you here makes them a set. Rice cake, opor ayam, and sambal goreng ati. A yummy trio.

Grind garlic, onion, ginger, and chili into paste and saute them. Add lime leaves, Asian bay leaves, galangal, and shrimp paste during sauteing. I added sliced dried chilies and gochugaru (chili powder) to add some more redness the dish. Yes, this has to be red.

I love looking at this big ball of liver and gizzard. What did I do? I just washed them, chopped up the liver, sliced up the gizzard, and put them in a bowl. But then the room temperature in my kitchen was probably really cold that they clumped up together and shaped into a ball.
Many other recipes require you to cook the liver and gizzard first by steaming, boiling, or frying. I never do any of these methods for the sake of speediness. At first I was concerned about them not being cooked through, but so far they always turned out fine, even without precooking them. Just make sure that you cook them long enough in a very hot gravy-to-be soup.

Stir up the liver and gizzard and pour in coconut milk. As the liquid should turn into gravy at the end, it`s better not to pour in too much liquid.

This amount is good enough. Stir well, stir well.

At the beginning the color will be creamy, but after the liquid has reduced in volume, it will get darker.

Now, when the liver and gizzard seem done, stir in potato chunks. Same with liver and gizzard, many other recipes call for fried potato for this. If you have time, go ahead with frying (grilling sounds very good too!). But if you`re like me, just dump in the potatoes in the pan.

Keep stirring up until you can see it turning into red thick gravy. Season it with fish sauce, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar.

And this, everyone, is how you serve the marvelous trio. A heavenly combination of the creaminess of the braised chicken soup with the deep spiciness of the liver and gizzard gravy on top of rice cake.
Enjoy!

Ingredients:
Spice paste:
Garlic
Ginger
Onion
Chili

Chicken liver. wash and dice
Chicken gizzard, wash and slice
Coconut milk
Chili powder
Lime leaves
Asian bay leaves
Shrimp paste
Fish sauce
Salt pepper to taste
Sugar, a pinch

Rice cake

I was really happy to see a post on Ellie`s Almost Bourdain about rice cake. She calls this rice cake as nasi impit. Indonesian usually refer this rice cake as lontong or ketupat. Lontong is a log-shaped rice cake wrapped in banana leaves while ketupat is rice cake wrapped with coconut or palm leaves shaped into a rectangular pouch. Since I came here, I only made rice cake once. Just once, because the only method I knew back then was quite complicated. I know, I know, I`m just a lazy person.
So, when Ellie showed an incredibly easy method to make this rice cake, I was like, WOW! Now this, is what I call FUN!

I slightly changed the method simply because I was hurrying when I made this and didn`t have time to look up her post. So I just did what I could remember from what I`ve read. I hope she forgives me for this.

What you need is simply a container (I used a casserole dish like she did), saran wrap (cling wrap), hot steamed rice, and a rice spatula. Seriously, no fuss whatsoever involved. Not even your stove!


Cover the dish with saran wrap. Not a neat person here.

Place some amount of hot steamed rice in the dish, and start pressing the rice with the spatula. I did this layer by layer because I thought that would be less tiring for me to press it down and it would make the rice tighter.

After done with the pressing (I was quite tired, though), cover the top with saran wrap and let it sit until the rice is cold.

Look! This is how it looks when it`s cold. If you`re Indonesian, please tell me that you`re seeing an unwrapped ketupat!

Cut it up to mouth-bite sizes and serve with curry, rendang, or anything you love to have with rice.
Thanks, Ellie!

 p.s. Placing white on white is definitely not a good trick, which reminds me how desperately I need multicolor tableware collection :D