Corn fritter

This corn fritter is one of very few repertoires I had during my days (years, to be fair) as a single, unmarried woman, a period where people ask me, "Why don`t you cook??" and I answered, "Why should I cook and harm my self  if I can buy so much better food out there?". This fritter recipe, however, has evolved from something resulted by hunger and ignorance, to something too good to be kept only for me.

Fritters in Indonesia are usually made by grinding corn/boiled potato, turning it into small fist-like shapes and frying them. I, however, have excuse(s) to avoid the labor- and time-consuming process in some recipes. So, for corn fritters, I simply use canned corn as it is. My excuse this time is, " I love to have chunks in my fritters", which sounds quite convincing when I say it with a straight face. I hope you`re buying it too.

Alright, I`d like to start with garlic. If you can`t have garlic for whatever reason it is, just skip this step. But if you are okay with it, I`m begging you please, use it, always. Chop or mince garlic, fry, and set it aside. Always fry it first. Adding fried garlic into batter will make it smells much much better and more flavorful. I used raw garlic and garlic powder and the result came out totally different. So, try it!

Now, the batter. Beat one whole egg seasoned with salt, pepper, and coriander. Cayenne pepper too, if you want some heat.

 Throw in sweet corn and mix.

I wonder if you are familiar with this ingredient, but Japanese people call this "kanikama", short for "kani kamaboko". Kani is crab, and kamaboko is steamed fish cake. Fun fact: this kanikama doesn`t contain real crab meat, but such name is apparently for the resemblance with the crab meat`s shape and color. Yay for me since I`m allergic to crab! Anyway, this kanikama has a sweet savory taste (and you might think you are eating real crab!) and it`s a common ingredient for preparing salad in Japan. 

So, back to the fritters, chop the kanikama sticks and dump in the batter. If you can`t find kanikama, try tuna flakes, corned beef, or simply use corn only. I just love playing with ingredients.

Now, cilantro. Chop up and dump it into the batter. I love cilantro. My life has definitely been so much better with it. The smell..oh..the smell....

 Last, fried garlic. Dump it in too, and mix the batter until everything combines.

 Smells good, huh?

Flour, don`t forget the flour. Now this is tricky, for me. I don`t really measure how much flour exactly I need to make the fritter crispy. And sometimes I add corn starch too. Although today I only used flour and my fritters weren`t as crispy as I wanted them to be, they still taste good. I know this will sound very unhelpful, but you can try to find your own ratio of egg : flour : corn starch. And for a starter, just try this recipe first, sounds good?

Heat a frying pan drizzled with olive oil. I hate deep frying, by the way. Oh, don`t get me wrong, I LOVE deep-fried food. Yet, aside from health concern (go D-U-H me away now), I hate the oil leftover, and I hate how the frying smell sticks on my hair. So, I always make my fritters flat to reduce the oil amount. Place a spoonful of batter on the pan and poke it repeatedly to make it flat and to fasten the cooking process. Okay, the latter one is just my theory. You may ignore it of course.

I burned them. Sorry, but this is the best-looking fritter I had today. Make sure to use a low-medium heat, okay?

You can have it with rice (that`s how it`s usually served in Indonesia) or just as snacks. I do both.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1-2 whole eggs, beaten

200 g corn

50 g kanikama

5 cloves of garlic (adjust to your taste), fried

cilantro, chopped

coriander

salt and pepper

8 (heaping ) tbsp flour

Shrimp sandwich

We were really hungry yet sleepy last night. It was 11:30 pm and raining outside. I asked him, "Grocery store?", and he said, "Okay". The 24-h grocery store across our apartment is a real life saver, I tell you. There are countless times when we think of the store as our bigger fridge placed 10-m away from our room. Anyway, I`ve been wanting to make a shrimp sandwich, supposedly for our "let`s have a picnic near the river someday" plan. It turned out that someday is last night, at our bedroom, not the river.
So, we got home with the ingredients I needed. He started nibbling the potato chips we bought until I scolded him, "Stop eating! Wait until the sandwich is done!".  
I love you, sweetie.

Now, here is how our sandwiches are made.

Start by preparing mushroom and shrimp.
Lightly wash shiitake mushroom, cut the stem (don`t throw it away!), and slice them up.

Deshell and devein the shrimp. Tell you what, I just started to devein my shrimp only recently and it was a real shocking experience when I first time saw what`s inside the "vein". It`s not vein, though, it`s the intestine.  Go figure yourself if you haven`t done so. You will never ever ever cook your shrimp without deveining them first again, unless you`re a brave person.

So I got hungrier and dizzier with the shrimp cleaning process, but I finished it.
See honey? This shows how much I love you. You do remember the Zara sweater we saw last week, right? 


Now, drizzle some olive oil or heat some butter (low saturated fat for me, please) on your pan and dump in the mushroom first. I love the nutty and meaty smell of shiitake mushroom when they are sauteed. Keep sauteing until the mushrooms shrinks, then set them aside.


Use the same oil and pan and throw in the shrimp. I still don`t know how to tackle this, but I always find the shrimps releasing water during sauteing even though I have wiped off the water after washing shrimp. So what I do is, I just let them get steamed a bit with the water coming out, let it evaporates, and increase the heat to caramelize the shrimp.

After the shrimp is done, turn down the heat a bit, and put back the mushroom to the pan. 
Then, add your favorite sauce and seasoning. Mine was soy sauce, pepper, and salt. I was too sleepy to go crazy. Keep stirring up until shrimp and mushroom are evenly coated with the sauce. Be careful, though, the soy sauce thickens fast, thus it gets burned fast too.

Now the bread. I had my bread toasted for this sandwich. But if you just want regular bread, go for it. You can go stack up your sandwich.
I actually thought of mixing tomato ketchup, mayonnaise, cayenne pepper, and black pepper for the sauce, but I just found last night that I only have a tiny drop of mayonnaise left. So I just squeezed it out from the tube directly to the sandwich.
From the bottom is: bread-lettuce-sliced tomato-sauce-shrimp and mushroom-sauce-lettuce-bread

We had an energy boost and went to bed feeling full. Don`t do this, I warn you.

Ingredients:
Bread
Shiitake mushroom, sliced
Shrimp, deshelled and deveined
Lettuce
Tomato
Soy sauce
Salt and pepper

Baking (if you want toast and you don`t have toaster):
Remove bread crust before baking
180 C for 15 minutes

Wonton pizza

I was craving for pizza. Recently, we had a medium chicken pizza from Pizza Hut and with the price, I thought that was quite a fancy meal for us. Then, when the craving hit me again (no, I`m not pregnant, I`m just hungry all the time), I remembered watching a TV show about what you can do more with microwave and toaster. One of them is gyouza skin toast. Gyouza is sauteed and steamed Japanese dumpling and the skin is similar with wonton`s. The TV lady showed some stuff like peanut butter or jam for the topping on the qyouza`s skin toast. So I figured, this should work like pizza! Even better, with thinner and crispier skin. Then, here they are, wonton skins spread with tomato ketchup and mayonnaise and topped with tuna, grated cheese, and mushroom.

After baking at 200 C for 15 minutes, sure enough, the adorable mini pizza! Look how small and crunchy they are! I think this can be a really good tidbits for your party. Tried with banana and chocolate and they were good too. Go explore the shop and your kitchen and you probably will find interesting stuffs for the topping.

And by the way, it`s powdered seaweed I sprinkled on top. I just got a bag of seaweed with a very good price and I love it!And most importantly, these babies are way cheaper (and lighter) than the one we ordered online ;)