Avigayil Damm

My mom makes a ‘mean’ oxtail soup. The oxtail is so tender and the soup is very tasty and rich, unlike the normal oxtail soup which is normally very clear and thin. Once, my hubby and I went to my parents and we were served with the oxtail soup. My hubby was so impressed with it that I just had to learn how to make it on my own. So I asked my mom for the recipe and one day I decided to try it myself.

The key to tender oxtail is the length of cooking time. If you have a pressure cooker then it’s even better because the length of cooking time would be reduced considerably.

(more…)

Lasagna is one of my favorite dish, and although I have often made it, I just realized that I have never posted about it, so here it is. The recipe is from my mom, so don’t ask me where she got it from. I love my mom’s cooking a lot, so I am going by her recipe for this one.

White (Bechamel) Sauce:

• 50 gr margarine/butter
• 50 gr all purpose flour
• 400 ml evaporated milk
• 1/4 tsp (or to taste) ground pepper
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg powder
• 100 ml beef stock
• 125 gr grated cheddar cheese

Melt the butter and add flour, whisk vigorously until fragrant. Add milk and stock gradually and stir to mix. Add grated cheese, pepper and nutmeg powder. Let simmer, stirring constantly, until it slightly thickens.

Meat Sauce:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 large onion, minced
• 500 gr minced meat
• 400 gr tomatoes, peeled and minced or crushed
• 100 gr tomato sauce
• 100 ml beef stock
• 2 tsp dried oregano (or Italian seasoning)
• salt to taste
• sugar to taste if desired (or add one grated carrot)

Melt the butter, cook the onion and garlic until soft and fragrant. Add the minced meat, stir to mix, cook until slightly browned. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce and beef stock. Cook and stir until the sauce has slightly reduced. Add oregano, salt and sugar to taste. If you use grated carrot, add it together with the crushed tomatoes.

The rest is just to stack them up in an oven dish (I used a 20×20 cm dish and had some leftover sauce). If you’re using instant lasagna plates, make sure you put some sauce on the bottom before you add the plates so it doesn’t dry in the oven. Otherwise, cook them as directed. Layer the lasagna plates alternately with the white and the meat sauce, with the meat sauce being the top layer. Add 125 gr of mozzarella (or more, depending on how much you like mozzarella) on top. Cook at 180 degrees (Celsius) for 35-40 minutes. Bon appétit!

Tonight’s dinner recipe was taken from Femina, an Indonesian women’s magazine. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 100 gr onion, chopped
• 300 gr minced meat
• 8 tbsp breadcrumbs
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tsp dry thyme

Mix all ingredients, shape into burger patties and fry on pan. Stack with tomatoes, onion rings or whatever you like to have on your burger. Easy huh?

Unfortunately neither my hubby nor I were quite satisfied with this, honestly. To us, the taste of thyme gave it an unwanted earthy smell. So I guess next time we will skip the thyme altogether.

Have you got any successful burger patty recipe you’d like to share with us?

My hubby arrived back last Friday and I had planned to make him a cheeseburger. Unfortunately I came home a little too late from the office so we called Izzi Pizza instead because we didn’t want to bother with the preparation and all that.

Yesterday when I wanted to make cheeseburger, I realized that I forgot to buy the burger bun. Doh! So my hubby and I decided to make burger steak instead. I thought this wasn’t such a bad back up plan. Since we had plenty of minced meat, we had enough burger steak for today as well, but we served them differently. Here’s how.

The photo on the left is how we served it on Saturday: with boiled potatoes, grilled tomatoes, caramelized onion and brown sauce. The brown sauce is nothing fancy, just cream stirred into the pan which was used to fry the steak and onion, and then we added a bit of brown food colour to make it less pale. Looks quiet and pretty plain eh. But I tell you, it tasted damn good.

The Sunday version was served with roast potatoes, sunny side up egg and béarnaise sauce. For a recipe of béarnaise sauce, click here. Which one looks to be to your liking? If you ask me, I liked them both.

This week’s theme is going to be what I cook or buy to eat alone. My hubby is on one of his business trips, and this time he is going to India for a training. He’s been gone since last Sunday actually, which means my solo culinary adventures have started since then.

On Saturday, my friend who moved to Bogor from Yogya came to visit and stay over the weekend, so on Sunday we went to Sushi Groove (second time this week for me), but this time I didn’t take any pictures to post here. If you want to know what I think about this restaurant/sushi bar, click here.

On Monday, I tried out an Indonesian instant food from a box. I forgot what the brand is, but it comes in a box, and is available in Hero supermarket. I forgot to take a picture of it, and although I would not recommend it to you, the picture would have at least showed which brand you should avoid. It didn’t even earn its right to be posted on this blog.

On Tuesday, I stopped by at Hero supermarket in Kemang to do some dinner shopping. Since I left late from the office, plus the bad traffic, I arrived at Hero quite late. I was determined not to have anything complicated for tonight, because I imagined that I would arrive at home at 7 or maybe later. So I took a box of ‘Quick & Tasty’ which was something like plane food, simple food that came in a box and that you only have to heat in the microwave for four minutes. I also took some other food that would be quick and easy to prepare, which I will review in later posts.

As suspected, I arrived home a little before seven. After putting the groceries in their places, I heated up my food in the microwave. I have actually tasted quite a few of this ‘Quick & Tasty’ food box, and I particularly liked the chicken terriyaki. They didn’t have that variant today so I picked up the black pepper beef. The beef itself was good and tender but the vegetables were not so good. Of course, what should I expect from such instant food right? Well, I was hoping, the instant food genre would not try to exceed its reputation once in a while. Plus, as I said, the chicken terriyaki was good, so I should probably stick to that one next time.