Homemade Kaya (Coconut Jam) & rant

A special note to my husband.

....it isn't even Mother's Day, our Anniversary or even my birthday, just an ordinary sleepy Sunday. So why, I keep wondering W-H-Y did you have to start the day by burning my expansive ecogreen pot?

Even though I admire your excitement of wanting to taste your favourite childhood food and the pure tenacity at your wanting to cook this by yourself (having declined my earlier offer to just get some from the shops), H-O-W did you ruin my precious pot?

Similar to your cars, tv, stereo and player - my pots and pans are my 'precious kitchen babies'! How could you even injure any of them??

...after one full tray of eggs, 1 kg of sugar, 1 burnt pot, an entire morning of stressful 'oh-shit' scrubbing and cleaning up the messed up kitchen - so I felt a tad bad for you especially since you've been dreaming and planning on tasting your childhood kaya for weeks.

Needless to say, you owe big-time.

Make it up quick by replacing another ecogreen pot!

*** **** ****

Used the 'jam' function of a breadmaker to make this. Have made this a couple of times before and its turned out well, can't compare to charcoal cooked ones, but still pretty decent.

You can cook it over the stove (double boil method) but that means that you will need to stick close the stove and stir until you get a nice thick chunky consistency (probably about 1.5 - 2 hours). Being a 'modern' cook, find it so much more convenient to cook this with a 'jam' function machine (or even a thermomix).

Ingredients (1:1:1 ratio)
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup eggs (about 4-5 small eggs) + 1 yolk
1 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp scant salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
10-15 pieces of pandan leaves, washed and wiped dry and knoted
1/4 cup pandan juice (made from pounded pandan leaves mix with some water)

Use a cheese cloth to help squeeze out the green pandan juice.

Method:
1. Lightly whisk the eggs and seive.
2. Pour all ingredients into machine.

3. Follow machine instruction and press 'jam' fuction and start cooking. While cooking you might need to scrap down the sides.
4. Cool mixture after cooking, remove pandan leaves and blend mixture until you get the consistency you like - super smooth, moderately lumpy or original ala mode.

Final cooked mixture right out of the machine. If you are cooking this by hand it will not be so lumpy. Not to worry, give it a few blitz in the food processer and it'll be nice and smooth!

The entire house smelled so delicious while it was cooking. Even Master Prince who was suppose to be sleeping came down and asked me what cake was I baking. When I told him it was kaya, he didn't believe me. As for DH, he also came down quietly to check on the kitchen activity and kept hinting that something smelt good and hope it would be ready soon.

Couldn't help but grab myself a cracker and slather on some hot homemade green goodness.

Now excuse me while I reward myself with a lip-smacking snack*ngom, ngom...* Best eaten with toast or original Jacobs biscuits.

Strawberry rhubarb jam

With the leftover rhubarb, decided to make some jam.

Based largely on an earlier recipe found here. This time added a mixture of rhubarb, strawberries and apple.

Turned out great, my niece loved it so much she took jam sandwich to school everyday for three weeks!

Homemade strawberry jam - Barefoot Contessa

Got two punnets of Cameron Highland strawberries on offer. As some of you may know they are not the sweetest but good enough for making jams!!

Yum! Perfect for scones.

Source from Ina's Back to Basics cookbook

Ingredients
3 pints strawberries, washed, hulled & cut into half
3 cups sugar
2 tbsp Grand Mariner or orange flavoured liqueur
1/2 granny smith apple , cored and diced finely*
1/2 cup blueberries, washed

Method

1. Mix together in a heavy base post the strawberries, sugar and liquor.

2. Boil using medium heat, stirring often.

3. Add apples and blueberries and keep fire at rolling boil, stirring occasionally until temperature on a candy thermometer reaches 220C degrees (about 25-35 min).

4. Skim any foam that rises to the top and discard.

5. Cool jam to room temperature before storing in sterilized jars in the refrigerator. Can last for at least 2 weeks.

*Note - Pectin makes jams gel and found in underripe fruit. Granny Smith Apples are available year-round and contain lots of pectin.

My version

320g (washed, hulled & cut) strawberries
75g caster sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
1/4 granny smith apple, diced
1 tbsp organic honey
zest of orange/lemon (optional)

Method - follow above.

This was an earlier batch I made but added some water to the jam ingredients while cooking. It all came together in the end - just longer cooking time. But realised from using Ina's recipe, no need to add the extra liquid as there's plenty from the strawberries themselves!!

Bench notes - The amount of sugar used in cooking the jam will usually determine the length of time you can keep/store the jam. So do keep this in mind if you plan to reduce the amount of sugar in your recipe.

Pretty tasty on toast too...ahh, nothing beat homemade stuff! :)

Kumquat marmalade

If you like orange marmalade then you just have to try making this.

Personally don't quite fancy eating fresh kumquat but turn it into a lovely jam and now you've really got my attention! Its really much nicer and so much more flavourful than normal orange marmalade. The kumquat skin has a much deeper and complex bite than the orange.

Made into jam (without any seeds), what you have is a sweet and yet slightly tangy flavour, just lovely with toast!

Making this kumquat marmalade is no rocket science - all you need is kumquat, sugar and water. How simple is that? To give it more complex flavour, I threw in a vanilla bean, seeds and all. It was a good combination. While I was cooking this jam, it reminded me a lot of making pineapple jam with cinnamon stick, cloves and star anise - can imagine that combination would yield a more 'spicy' flavour. Will give that a go another time but for the moment, I'm secretly enjoying this hoard - well you see, didn't get a big kilo bag in the first place, just slightly less than half and after trying to enjoy it fresh (didn't work - the seeds put a big towel on the overall experience, for me anyway) I was left with probably less than 2 cups and after cooking, you really only end up with probably a quarter of that (if you are lucky!!).

Anyhow, here's what I did:

Ingredients

2 cups (almost), wash, sliced and deseeded

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp honey

1 vanilla bean, deseeded

water, about 2 cups

Method:

1. Place sliced kumquat in a bowl and soak it with water overnight, making sure you have just enough water to cover the sliced fruit. Add in the vanilla bean and cling wrap the mixture. If the weather is warm where you are, best to store it in the fridge.

2. Pour kumquat slices and water into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add in rest of ingredients and reduce heat to a simmer.

3. Cook mixture uncovered without stirring for about 30 min.

4. As the mixture thickens a little, stir and cook it a little longer to make sure all the the liquid has evaporated.

5. When finally ready, remove from heat and scoop marmalade into sterilised jars and seal.

What do you do with a pot stained with leftover marmalade?

Tear off some bread and scoop it clean.....oooh, it was truly a glorious yummy moment. Made me wish I made more of a mess whilst transferring the marmalade into the container!! ;)