Pickled Cabbage

Assalamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

A very good Friday, the weather is just nice out there. I cannot expose myself to the wind after the rain for few minutes because I am subjected to Siddha norms. I am practicing Siddha and Ayurvedic methods for health practices. The wind at the flat land is not nice unless if I am on the mountainous region. Today I would like to share about pickled cabbage. Very easy and simple one since everybody could make it...

Ingredients

1 lb cabbage, remove the tough outer leaves

2 tablespoons salt

2 dried finger hot chili peppers

1 cup hot water

3 cups cold water

2 tablespoons vinegar

1/4 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorns

Instructions

Cut the cabbage to pieces roughly 1" x 1 1/2" and separate the leaves. Using a wide mouth jar, dissolve the salt in hot water and then pour the cold water down together with Szechuan peppercorns and chillies. Mix them well.

When cool, add the vinegar and cabbage into the jar. Non-Muslims could put the gin (some kind of vodka or rice wine) but I do not take alcoholic stuffs so I simply use plain vinegar. Cover it up and put in the refrigerator for four to five days. Remove the cabbage from the solution and serve cold. It could be use over and over again and add two tablespoons more salt every time we use it.

After the first use, it only takes about two to three days for the cabbage to pickle. Maybe we need to add some more chillies and another tablespoon vinegar after using it twice. We can also substitute it with different kinds of vegetables. We can use nappa cabbage, green beans, or carrots. We can also mix all of these vegetables together.

I used to make few kinds of pickle and most of all they are Chinese style since I am not good in Indian style cooking. I eat mostly like a poor Chinese guy since we could easily get Asian stuffs in our neighborhood. If I am closer to Indian shops then I will practice Indian style cooking, it depends on the location but mostly I prefer vegetarian since it is easier to digest and to eat. We also make Indian style pickles such as Acar and it is quite oily for me and more elaborate in spices. I have a whole notes about spices and I studied about them, lol. There are many kinds of Indian style acar and not only confined to vegetables but also fruits such as mango, lime, beans and stuffs. 

As for Chinese style pickle, we could take it with both noodles and plain rice. Indian style pickles could be taken with various kinds of rice and unleavened bread. I have heard about Sauerkraut (Sour Cabbage) in my beginner German class around 2011 but I have never tried that. For North Eastern Asian style pickle, we can put some chili powder in it with some blended ingredients such as garlic, ginger and other things. I think, the Korean call it as Chimchee or whatever it is, haha...   

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Assalaamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

Some people perhaps do not take tomatoes because it is a kind of foreign vegetable. But who cares about foreign or not. It is still from the same mother earth. Green tomatoes is actually perfect for pickling since it has sugar content which is less that the ripe ones. These are lacto-fermented tomatoes. Some people do not recommend vinegar fermented ones because good bacteria is not as much as in the lacto-fermented ones.

Ingredients 

All you need are:

7-8 small fresh green tomatoes, or 4 large green ones.

1 tablespoon fennel seeds or mustard seeds or cumin seeds.

1/2 tablespoon chilly flakes or any fresh chillies or mint leaves.

2 tablespoons celtic sea salt.

4 tablespoons whey (if not around, use additional 1 tablespoon salt).

2-3 cloves garlic (peeled not crushed)

Water

Steps

How to do...

Wash tomatoes well, maybe half or quarter of them if you want to fit them in the jar. Place them into a mason jar or anything. Add all the ingredients and at the end add water to fill the jar, but leaving at least one inch below the top of the jar.

Cover tightly. Shake to stir ingredients. Give at least two inches of head space and make sure all ingredients are submerged in brine. Keep at room temperature for about 3-10 days before placing it into cold storage. Be sure to "burp" the jar every 1-2 days just to let the gases out. It is difficult to give correct duration as it depends on several factors like ambient temperature, ripeness of tomatoes, type of salt and so on.

Other than that, you maybe can add some peppercorns, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, or peppers in the jar. Vegan food is easier to prepare as compared to meat ones since we do not have to waste time washing and washing the meat to get rid of that "blughhh" smell.... I avoided meat for so long. I could even tell the smell of those who take the meat which makes me feel nauseated. I am so sorry but that is the fact : S 

Anyway I tried some other simple recipes too such as Pumpkin Soup. Maybe I would keep the recipe here so I could make it again. Not so much complicated and suitable for those who feel lazy to cook, haha.

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace and love, amin!

お腹がすいた

Assalaamu'alaikum wa rahmatullah

I can't eat anything since yesterday. There isn't much choice in our campus or around the campus and considering Penang is a hard place to find proper place for food though it boasts with it's Nasi Kandar and other Chinese cuisines. Well, it's hard for a person without a car nor motorcycle like me, hahaha... Most of Chinese cuisines around are non-halal even the vegetarian ones could still make people doubtful. I can't really take Indian food or anything related to it because they have too much spices. I already tried hard to adapt and I am not trying to be a pain in the ass but I can't...  I had threw out everything when I returned to my room from canteen, that was so embarrassing!!! Fortunately nobody saw me.

Usually I will only become a veggie. The rice at the canteen was horrible but I avoid complaining to the Malay makcik because she might had tried hard. One of a phd Filipino guy had also complained about the rice and side dishes cooked in other hostel. Usually when we do business in large scale this kind of situation is unavoidable. 

I think I need a refrigerator and also an electric pan or rice-cooker... We have department store here but I can't store those fresh stuffs nor cooking them. I'm sick of foods cooked at restaurants and I am just wasting money for something which would be thrown out... Urm, just see if I am crazy enough to carry those stuffs after I buy them...

First I would keep this recipe that I get from sites here for Sukiyaki... If I can't cook here I wanted to do it at home and dip my head into the pan, hahahaha... Need to modify the recipe because sake and mirin are non-halal...

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Sukiyaki Sauce

100 ml vinegar (2/5 u.s. cup)

50 ml sweet soy sauce (1/5 u.s. cup)

50 ml soy sauce (1/5 u.s. cup)

2 tbsp sugar

Raw Items

Beef 

Eggs

Tohu

Vegetables

白菜 Hakusai chinese cabbage

葱 Negi (spring onion)

春菊 Shungiku (chrysanthemum)

椎茸 Shiitake mushrooms

榎茸 Enokitake mushrooms

小松菜 Komatsuna Japanese mustard spinach

糸蒟蒻 Ito konyaku Yam noodle

How to make?

Mix vinegar, sweet soy sauce with sugar. Boil them and wait until it simmer. Slice those raw items. Slice vegetables just to make it easy to eat and being placed into the pan. Put the sauce into the pan and put beef into sauce. Put chinese cabbage and tohu. Put ito konyaku but don't put it close to beef. Put mushrooms and mustard spinach. Put some more sukiyaki sauce when it began to dry up. Wait few minutes. We can also add eggs, have some rice and have some udon with it.    

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I was just too hungry... Just had a bowl of vegetarian instant noodle and later dipping some wholemeal bread in it. I imagined that I am having Sukiyaki... hehehehe... Previously in the age of my ignorance, I sometimes ate Japanese style foods with those alcoholic stuffs mixed in them such as sake or mirin. I didn't care even if there were pork elements or other things though elders are religious and strict. We perhaps also cook raw things and eat them together. Usually we would do crazy things with second sister. 

We wasted our money in Japanese restaurants and watch movies in theater when we wanted to celebrate anything just to release our boredom and tense. Quite funny that last time, I guess around 7 years ago, second sister and I ate like swines in a Japanese restaurant in KLCC and both of us almost fainted when the bill came to us. We had to pay RM90 and before that we didn't bother to check prices at the menu... After that I drank all of the shoyu and mirin in the vases on the table because we paid expensively and we must appreciate our money. 

Though I didn't take fish for long and I have to avoid seafood now but I still could take those like seashells or abalone by closing my eyes. I will perform ritual bath and ablution after taking all of those stuffs in order to validate the performance of prayer services since we live in a country mixed with other population. Sometimes when I go to relatives houses, I would have to take whatever they give me as to be polite to them and it also include seafood. Abalone is expensive, yah!

At our home, only three persons have their appetite more to Indian whom are my dad, my younger sister, and my third sister. They are used to curry. For me, the way to cook curry at home is different with the way it is cooked at Mamak restaurant. They used too much spices in curry and the spices used are fierce. We only use spices which are light like cinnamon. Malay curry and Indian curry is quite different.  

Sealed with prayers for mercy, peace, and love, amin!

Sahur Simple Menu: Mushroom and Chicken Spaghetti

Assalaamu'alaikum wa Rahmatullah!

It's already the first of Sya'aban 1432 H. Just a simple recipe. Lil sister taught me anyway. I am not good in cooking, hehehe. It's for our sahur or pre-dawn meal to begin fasting tomorrow. We cook it earlier and will keep the gravy for this early morning. Actually quite useful if we are alone, who knows if we live abroad or far from family so this might help to give us idea. 

We need chopped green onion. I don't know how many onions needed but two green onions would be enough or according to how big is your tummy or how many persons in your house. Then chopped garlic. Some vegetable oil. Two bottles of Kimball spaghetti gravy, hahaha. She bought them in Tafaz Maju grocery shop. Two bottles cost her about RM13. Then we have a can of straw mushroom or cao gu in chinese. And then, we have minced chicken. Just grab Ramlee burger minced chicken. Owh yeahhh, we need dried spaghetti as well!!!

Just boil our spaghetti for few minutes until it soften and toss them up. Then pour some oil in the cooking pot, wait until some white smokes show up. Make sure the flame is medium. Put the chopped green onion and minced chicken. Saute them for few minutes if the minced chicken is frozen to defrost it. I guess it is around 10-15 minutes although I failed my maths tests due to nervous breakdown, lol. Then put tomatoes, mushrooms that you had sliced into two, and olives if you have it in your fridge. We have Arab and Iranian shops as well here so these Mediterranean stuffs could easily be seen here. Then, put gravy in the bottles into the pot. It already contains oregano and everything spices in it so don't worry about the taste, ahahaa.    

I get the chance to talk to little sister while helping her with the cooking. She said that maybe I should stop reading and memorizing for few weeks because it could make my head being more complicated. She can't understand what I said to her last few weeks and afraid that I would end up in mental hospital or going back to my old self. I actually talked to her about Muslims attitude regarding friendship, amity, and assistance in protecting the creed of beloved brothers and sisters. I said to her that, we don't actually care about people around although we talk about brotherhood or sisterhood in Islam. 

When people going astray from the path, we might get angry, blaming other religious bodies and begin to publish it in papers on the Jews and Christians are envious to us but what we had done to prevent our brothers and sisters no matter the revert ones or the born-Muslim ones from being strayed into wrong path (vices, evil, and others)? Maybe I need to talk according to people's level but sometimes it just slips out of my evil mouth, lol. That's why I prefer to shut it up and it makes me think, think, and later lamenting myself because I am useless....

Well, what can I say if people don't understand me. I had faced this since I am a young kid. Mum also said I was crazy when I memorized English dictionary. It was near Lower School Certificate (PMR) examination, hehehe. I was so worried with my English that made me doing all of those crazy things. 

I did memorized few Arabic kitabs too but those were for exams. Now, my English wasn't so bad as before, and memorizing dictionary did helped me. I memorized Chinese characters as well although it's not in national or religious school syllabus, hahahahahahaa...... Mum said that I was just kidding her when she sneaked in my papers written in Chinese. She showed it up to Ah Fan aunty. She was our Hainanese neighbor. She told mum that I wrote about my feelings about environment around. I don't know how did I managed my lesson plan but I guess it is because of the spirit of curiosity in a young kid. 

Mum and dad could speak in Hokkien (Fujianese) and sisters could at some level speak in rough Cantonese but we don't know how to write in Chinese characters. That's normal for village folks in Kedah and Perlis because they would have to deal with those who rent their land or being money lenders like paternal uncles. Mums' elders who resettled in Jerlun of Alor Setar around 18th C, were actually Chinese Muslims with Persian ancestry from Southern China. I can't see any Persian face at all in them. But only Mongol face, hahahaa. Most had already passed away, some younger generations could not even speak in Chinese anymore because of the assimilation within mainstream society. I checked this in our ancestral book during our family assembly in Penang.

I don't really like spaghetti. I might just have some bread, plain water and dates for sahur. It's easier than having to make a mess on the table, wasting water to clean up dishes and I'm lazy to clean up the kitchen. We may also begin with humble donation to mosques in order to support the feast for others and religious activities for next month, insya'Allah His Will.

May everyone receives His guidance and success to perform the guidance. Sealed with prayers for peace, mercy, and love on brothers and sisters in faith.