If Cikyah Can Cook, So Can You

Doughnuts? Is It J.Co? No, It’s Cikyah and Company!

I was brought up around food and people preparing wonderful dishes. I used to bring many packets of nasi lemak sold by my aunt to get extra pocket money until many teachers in school know me as ‘the nasi lemak girl’. It was also my duty to bring kuih prepared by Mak to a stall ran by one of the makcik every afternoon. Why, if you may ask, I felt great doing all those things mentioned. Being associated with good food was certainly a pleasure.

When it comes to cooking, I would say that I’m prone to the ‘heavy duty’ tasks. This means, I would prefer cooking chicken curry to baking a cheesecake. I like chopping, grinding ad stirring more than rolling fondant or putting buttercream on dainty cupcakes. I don’t have enough patience to shape biscuits and that’s why I enjoy bread-making. The kneading alone can bring much satisfaction!

However, I do have several exceptions. Having been brought up in the kampung, I do have a soft spot for traditional Malay kuih. Using basic ingredients like rice or glutinous rice flour,sugar and coconut milk, a delightful array of sumptuous tea time snacks are created. Don’t you feel indebted to those intelligent and creative womenfolk of the yesteryears?  Making do with what was available around the house. That’s creativity at its utmost level! As a way to appreciate what our great great grandmothers had started, I still enjoy ‘kuih koci’, ‘lepat pisang’, ‘bingka ubi’ and ‘bubur kacang’, just to name a few. Undoubtedly, a slice of blueberry cheesecake would tempt me but a slice of ‘bingka ubi’ would bring me way back to my childhood days. With that memories in mind, I tried making ‘Kuih Keria’ or easily translated as Sweet Potato Doughnuts. I could still picture out how Mak was trying to get the right consistency of her sugar syrup so that it would eventually turn out as a frosting to coat her ‘Kuih Keria’. After several attempts, she did find out how. True enough, cooking is about practice. You’ll get better if you keep on trying.

For my Kuih Keria, I had used a recipe by Rohani Jelani, from her book, Malaysian Cakes and Desserts. Making a traditional Malay kuih using a recipe in English. How contradictory is that? Just to let her know that I just retyped the recipe. All the words were from the book.Anyway, let’s have a look at my product.

‘KUIH KERIA’

Ingredients :

• 350g of sweet potatoes (I used the orange variety, which I found sweeter compared to the white)
• 75g flour
• 1/2 teaspoonful of baking powder
• Oil for deep frying
• caster sugar to coat

Method :

1. Scrub the sweet potatoes clean, then place them in a pan and cover with generous amount of water. Boil until tender. Drain the water and let to cool.
2. Once cooled, peel off the skins. Mash the flesh until free of lumps. remove any tough fibres and discard.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder together and add to the mashed sweet potatoes, kneading lightly until smooth. (I added another 25g  of  flour for I think my sweet potatoes had a higher water content so the dough was initially sticky.)
4. Roll the dough into 30g/1oz balls, flouring your hands lightly to prevent the dough from sticking. Flatten the balls slightly and make a hole through the centre of each one with a floured handle of a wooden spoon. with your fingers, lightly pat the edges around the hole to form a nice, smooth doughnut shape. Lay the doughnuts on a lightly-floured tray.
5. heat the oil in a wok over medium heat. Keeping the heat on low, fry the doughnuts until golden brown on both sides, about 6-7 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
6. Then, coat with caster sugar. Traditionally, these doughnuts are rolled in hot, melted sugar to create a frosting around them. The writer mentioned that caster sugar is a healthier option but I have to admit that I opted for caster sugar for sheer laziness for I stand by the motto, fast to cook, fast to eat!

Lord of The Rings

Ingredients:

• 2 large yellow onion (peeled and kept in the fridge for 1-2 hours)
• 75g flour
• 2tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• a pinch of paprika
• pepper to taste
• 1 egg (well-beaten)
• 125ml fresh milk
• oil for deep frying

• Heat the oil over medium-high heat. Allow it to heat up hot enough to fry, but not to smoke.
• Slice the onions into 1cm -thick rings. Separate them and place them on a tray.
• Combine the flour, corn starch, baking powder, paprika, sugar, salt and the pepper in a bowl and with a whisk, stir it together briefly.
• Add the egg to the milk and whisk together.Then pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and combine it together with your whisk until you are left a smooth batter.
• Gently dip some of the onions into the batter and coat well. Then place them into the hot oil using a fork. Let them cook in small batches, so they won’t stick together. When they are fried on one side, turn them over to fry and brown on the other side. When are they are lightly golden, place onto a tray lined with kitchen paper to drain.
• Serve hot!