Ondeh Ondeh (Onde Onde) - Sweet Potato Glutinous Rice Balls

South East Asian sweets and desserts are most strongly defined by the bite sized snacks known as Kuehs/ Kuihs.  Ondeh Ondeh has always been one of my favourite kuehs. I have never been able to resist these sweet chewy coconut coated balls ever since I was young. Soft and chewy in texture, this is probably one kueh that encompasses all the essential ingredients typically used in the preparation of exotic South East Asian desserts. Sweet potato is the essential root vegetable in this dessert while glutinous rice flour imparts the slightly sticky and chewy texture. Coconut milk and pandan juice provide the mild fragrant richness and Gula Melaka (brown palm sugar) rounds up the sweet experience with its distinctive caramel-like flavour.



A good Ondeh Ondeh should be tender yet chewy. The amount of rice flour used should be just enough to yield a bouncy softness that gives way to the burst of Gula Melaka sweetness when chewed. Very often, commercial Ondeh Ondeh loads up on the glutinous rice flour and stinges on the use of Sweet Potato which helps to soften the Ondeh Ondeh.

I have experimented with a few different sweet potato/glutinous rice flour ratio and my favourite so far is this one that uses equal portion of sweet potato with glutinous rice flour. As a result of the higher quantity of sweet potato, the colour will not be the typical jade green colour seen in the commercially sold Onde Onde. It will take on a mossy brown colour. For the photos in this post, I had added quite a bit of green colouring but otherwise, I would be most comfortable to leave it as it is without any artificial colouring.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #12: Traditional Kueh (October 2011) hosted by Small Small Baker. 


Recipe :

Sweet potato               100g
Glutinous Rice flour   100g
Pandan Leaves(1)       5 pieces
Water                          15ml
Thick coconut milk     30g

Gula Melaka               100g (chopped finely)

Grated Coconut           200g
Pandan Leaves(2)        2 pieces
Salt                              1/4 tsp

Method:
1. Cut Panadan Leaves (1) into small pieces and blend it with the 15ml water. Squeeze to get 30ml of dark green pandan juice.
2. Boil sweet potato in the jacket in a pot of water until tender. Cool down. Remove potato skin and mash well.
3. Mix 100g of mashed sweet potato with Pandan juice (1) and coconut milk. (green colouring can be added now if desired)
4. Add in glutinous rice flour and incorporate until the dough comes together.
5. Place grated coconut on a plate. Cut Pandan Leaves (2) into 5 cm lengths and embed in grated coconut. Steam over boiling water for 5 mins.
6. Leave steamed grated coconut to cool completely and mix in 1/4 tsp salt. Set aside.
7. Portion out (4) into 10g dough. Dust hands with glutinous rice flour and roll each 10g dough into a round ball. Use pinkie finger make a well in the center of the ball. Carefully fill the well with chopped Gula Melaka. Seal the opening of the dough and roll it into a ball again.
Place the ball in a shallow plate of glutinous rice flour to prevent them from sticking together.

8. Boil a pot of water. Drop (7) into the boiling water. Cook until Onde Onde floats to the surface of the boiling water.
9. Remove Onde Onde with a slotted spoon and leave it to cool for 2mins.
10. Roll (9) in grated coconut (6). Serve and finish on the same day.

Rainbow Kueh Lapis - Steamed 9 Layer Kueh

Singapore's National Day falls on 9th August. We are 46 this year and I thought it appropriate to celebrate the month of August with a little Heritage treat that we all grew up with.

The colourful steamed 9 layer kueh is one that we are all familiar with. I grew up enjoying this treat, mostly for breakfast. Hands up, those who would eat this by peeling it off layer by layer....for kids, this kueh offers a chance to play with food and savour them at the same time. As adults, as much as we are tempted to fiddle with the layers, social decorum in the grown-up world has taught us to eat it with more 'grace' and 'propriety'.



There are many variations to the recipe. Most use a mixture of Tapioca flour, Rice flour, Mung Bean Flour and Sago flour. I had attended Valerie Kong's Kueh Class last weekend at Shermay's Cooking School. Her recipe is extremely simple and uses only Tapioca flour and Rice flour. The result is a very soft and tender kueh with delicious fragrance from freshly squeezed coconut milk.
For those who are interested in her class, I believe she is still conducting one more class this month.

I am not publishing her recipe but would gladly refer you to another recipe which I have found in my cookbook collection- Patricia Lee's Delicious Nyonya Kuehs and Desserts. Will definitely try this out to compare.


Recipe (From Patricia Lee's Delicious Nyonya Kuehs and Desserts) 

480g         Tapioca flour
150g         Sago flour
35g           Mung Bean flour
50g           Rice flour
720ml       Thick coconut milk
650g         Sugar
1liter         Water
3-4            Pandan Leaves, knotted
Pinch        Salt
Food colouring (red and green)

Method : 
1. Boil sugar with pandan leaves in 1 liter of water until sugar melts. Strain the syrup and dilute with water to make to 1.5 liters

2. Mix all the flour and salt together. Pour coconut milk a little at a time and mix till smooth. Set aside.
3. Pour the syrup from (1) into the flour mixture. Stir constantly till well blended.
4. Divide mixture into 3 portions. Leave one portion uncoloured. Mix each of the other 2 portions with red and green colouring.
5. Grease a 9" square baking tin with a little oil. Place the in in a steamer and steam until hot. Pour in the uncoloured mixture (90g) and steam for about 6-8 mins.  Repeat another layer with the uncoloured mixture.
6. Repeat step (5) with other coloured batter until all batter is used up. Top layer must be red. Leave the cake to cool at room temeprature for 7-8 hours before cutting.

Hei Bee Hiam - Sambal Udang Kering

I did it! For the longest time, I have been telling everyone that one of my culinary resolution for the year is to bake bread. I have finally succeeded baking a very soft sweet bun and the reason I am cooking this dish today is to use it as a filling for the sweet buns a little later.

This is another Nyonya/Peranakan dish that features dried shrimps fried with an assortment of spices. This recipe which is found in Shermay Lee's The New Mrs Lee's Cookbook Vol. 1, uses Tamarind juice to lend moistness and vibrancy to the traditional versatile dish.
As with most Nyonya dishes, the cooking part is easy but the prep work calls for alot of chopping, slicing and pounding. As such, to make all the effort worthwhile, this dish is normally prepared in a bigger batch and kept in the fridge to be enjoyed over a week.



This is delicious when served with steamed white rice. With the dumpling festival just round the corner, this can also be used as a filling for the rice dumpling. A more common snack food would be the Lemper Udang which is a sweet glutinious rice roll filled with this Hei Bee Hiam.

So, what is your favourite way of enjoying the Hei Bee Hiam?



Recipe 300g Dried shrimps
Garlic 6 cloves
Shallots 10
Lemon grass 2 stalks
Red chilli 2
Green chilli 2
Tamarind paste 1 round tbsp. (assam paste)
Water 6 tbsp

Oil 120ml (I used 100ml hence my hei bee hiam is a little dry)
Sugar 1 1/2 tbsp
Salt 1 tsp

Rempah
Tumeric 1/4 thumb size
Belachan 1/2 tsp

Method :

1. Wash dried shrimps and soak it in hot water for 10 mins. Drain and pound/process to get minced shrimp paste.

2. Prepare garlic, shallots and lemon grass by slicing them thinly.
3. Cut red and green chilli into fine slices.
4. Peel tumeric and pound with belachan to get a paste.
5. Prepare Tamarind juice by mixing paste with 6 tbsp of water. Rub the tamarind paste in water. Drain juice through a strainer.
6. Heat up a wok until smokingh hot.
7. Add oil. Reduce heat. Add in shallots and garlic. Fry quickly for 1 min. Add chilli and lemon grass and fry for another minute. Use a strainer, remove and drain oil into wok.
8. In the remaining oil in the wok, fry the rempah over high heat. Sprinkle some water and fry for about 2 mins. Reduce heat and add in dried shrimps. Fry for 2 minutes and add in the drained shallots from (7).
9. Add in Tamarind juice, sugar and salt.
10. Continue to fry over low heat until the shrimps become dry.
11. Cool down and store in air tight container.

Nyonya Egg Sambal With Steamed Nasi Lemak

Can you remember the first serious dishes you cooked in your new kitchen? I can... it was some 7-8 years ago when I excitedly cooked my first house warming dishes in my then shiny new kitchen. Among the dishes were 2 Nyonya dishes which I had learnt earlier from Shermay's Nyonya Cooking Class - Tempeh Goreng and Sambal Egg. The Tempeh Goreng, in particular was exotic and had a spritely appetising flavour which never failed to wow and I had repeated that for 3 separate house warming sessions... I didn't repeat this sambal egg dish as often because the vanity in me had felt that it was too easy and was not impressive enough.... Sigh.. I was much younger then and was more full of hot air! As age catches up,the character mellows and starts to appreciate the value of simplicity and functionality.

I have quite a few cookbooks on Nyonya Cuisine but the one that I refer to when I need reliability and authenticity is usually Shermay Lee's double volume 'The New Mrs Lee's Cook Book : Nyonya Cuisine'.  I have bookmarked the Traditional Nasi Lemak(Coconut Rice) recipe in the book for quite some time and have finally decided I would try this to go with the Egg Sambal which is also featured in the book. 

Forgoing the convenience of the modern rice cooker, the Nasi Lemak is cooked by gently steaming rice in 2 stages.For those who have tasted steamed rice, you will be able to appreciate the soft fluffy texture of the rice grain. The rice grains also tend to stay separated and not stick together in clumps as is sometimes seen in rice cooked in boiling water. Steaming the rice takes a longer time and requires one to 'watch and control the fire' more carefully. In addition, fluffing the rice with a pair of chopsticks also needs to be done to ensure that the rice is cooked evenly.

In Shermay's cookbook, apart from the tedious method, she had also published a simplified method. This calls for cooking the rice briskly in boiling water for 5 minutes before draining it out and steaming it for another 5-10mins.


I truly enjoy the rice with the Sambal Egg - which is a little sweeter and a little more tangy than the versions cooked with sambal belachan chilli paste. Hence for those who are less accustomed to flavours with more heat, this would be a delicious alternative. It has just occurred to me that this could be an interesting recipe for those who are looking to cook something a little more exotic for Easter :) 


Recipe : (Adapted from Shermay Lee's 'The New Mrs Lee Cookbook' )

Nasi Lemak (Simplified method)
Pandan Leaf           2 pieces
Water                    2.3 liter
Jasimine Rice         600g
Coconut milk         220g
Salt                        1 tsp

Egg Sambal
Quails Eggs            30 (or 10 small hens eggs) (Hardboiled and peeled)
Coconut Milk         80g
Oil                         4 tbsp
Tomato Ketchup    5 tbsp
Lime Juice              1 tsp
Sugar                      to taste
Salt                        1 tsp

Rempah for Egg Sambal
Ginger                   1 thumb size piece
Shallots                  12 bulbs
Garlic                    2 cloves
Chilli powder        1 tsp (I added more)

Method :
Rice
1. Wash rice. Boil water in a heavy saucepan and add washed rice and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Drain the water from the rice and quickly add coconut milk and salt. Stir well to combine. Cover to infuse for 10mins.
3, Transfer rice to a steamer. ( I place the rice on a shallow bowl and place this in a steamer) Add pandan leave and steam for 10mins.

Egg Sambal
1. Pound / grind the rempah ingredients to form a paste.
2. Heat up a wok until smoking hot. Add oil and (1). Fry for about 1minute. Add tomato ketchup and fry for another 1 minute.
3. Add eggs and fry for 1 minute. Add coconut milk stir well and simmer over medium low heat for a few minutes. Add lime juice and salt & sugar seasoning. Simmer for another 3-5 minutes until gravy turns thicker.