.: evil jungle prince :.

It's guava season in my backyard, so this weekend it was time for me to decide how to best use the few pink guavas that managed to survive continual attacks by insects, birds, and gardeners. (Yes, last week I discovered that the gardeners had helped themselves to two of my earliest-to-ripen guavas, much to my dismay!)

I love the perfumed, tropical, sweet smell of guavas. They are an amazing fruit, rendered even more mesmerizing by their wonderful pink color. What a sight they are once cut through with a knife.

Yesterday I had a craving for both waffles and guavas, so I decided to experiment a little and try making pink guava waffles. I couldn't find a recipe for such a thing, so I experimented and came up with the following. To my culinary glee, they turned out great. For additional fun I topped them with some longan fruits and powdered sugar.

1. To prepare the waffles, I first combined 1/4 stick butter, 2 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, and 4 tsp baking powder and mixed in an electric mixer.

2. Next I folded in 2 egg whites, 1 1/3 cup flour, and 1 3/4 cup almond milk. (Any kind of milk will do, but I use almond milk to avoid American dairy products due to Bovine Growth Hormone contamination.) I also added 1 tsp of powdered coconut milk.

3. I then scooped out the flesh of two pink guavas and added them to the mixture, until the waffle batter turned light pink.

4. Lastly I cooked the waffles in a waffle iron until crispy and topped them with longans and powdered sugar.

Yummy American style breakfast food with a tropical twist.

Posted by Evil Jungle Prince at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

This dish is described as a drinking appetizer, or something to munch on while consuming alcohol. This suited me just perfectly as last night I found myself in the mood for both Korean flavors and beer. It's the weekend! It also happens to be chili pepper season in my garden and my Korean pepper plants are looking particularly vibrant.

Pootkochu yangnyeom muchim (or literally, chili pepper salad with a yangnyeom sauce) seems to also be known as gochujjim (고추찜). These are Korean chlil peppers dusted in flour, steamed, and then coated in a yangnyeom sauce. This dish is a savory snack to be enjoyed with alcohol, but be careful... the heat sneeks up on you and can pack a punch!

1. To make it, cut the stems off the peppers and then dust the peppers with flour.If you don't have Korean peppers, use Japanese shishito peppers instead. Likewise, if you don't like very spicy food, shishito peppers make a good, milder replacement.

2. Next, oil the base of a steamer lightly and then steam the peppers for about 5 minutes.

3. In the meantime, create your yangnyeom sauce by mixing 3 tsp soy sauce, 1 tsp rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp sesame oil, 1/2 tsp sugar, 1/4 tsp ground chili pepper, 1 clove of crushed garlic.

4. Dry toast 1/2 tsp sesame seeds until they begin to pop or become fragrant. Add them into the yangnyeom sauce as well.

5. Allow the steamed peppers to cool briefly and then coat them with the yangnyeom sauce.

All done. A remarkably simple dish that is packed full of classic Korean flavors: spicy, pungent, and sweet all at the same time. The perfect beer accompaniment for a lazy Friday night at home. Enjoy!

Posted by Evil Jungle Prince at 06:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Please pardon this less-than-elegant picture of today's dish. As I'm in the middle of photographing tons of items for sale on eBay, my food pictures were inadvertantly erased and I was left with only this picture of yesterday's dinner. Hopefully it at least gives a general idea.

I can't thank Cupcake enough for sending me a bunch of recipe books from Malaysia! (In addition to some much coveted roti jala molds.) I was thrilled, and so now I have a whole bunch of new recipes to experiment with. I love-love-love cookbooks produced in Asia because they do what all cookbooks should do: they give a picture of each dish (imagine that), break down everything into steps, and offer step-by-step preparation images to boot. I normally don't think of myself as a visual person -- I'm more text oriented -- but when it comes to food, text alonejust doesn't cut it. Something changes when I cook and I need visual information. (Another beef -- don't you hate it when a text-only cookbook attempts to describe how to fold something? Without pictures? Gah!)

Anyway, back to the food. This dish originally began as Prawn Sambal with Petai, but as petai beans are totally alien to my desert landscape, I decided to try the recipe using longbeans instead.

1. First I prepared a spice paste by placing the following into a food processor and blending: 1 cup chopped shallots, 2 candlenuts (I used almonds), 1.5 tsp ground dried red chili flakes, 2 tsp shrimp paste (belacan), 2 stalks fresh lemongrass, 4 slices galangal (ok to use ginger instead), and 1/2 cup water. (I added the water progressively as the mixture began to break down so that there would be less mess.)

2. I then fried the spice paste in a little oil until it became fragrant. I then added the longbeans (half a bunch, cut into 3-4 inch size) and 3 tsp tamarind water. (I also added a little extra water because of the large about of longbeans being used.) Added also was about 1-2 tsp of salt to taste.

3. Next I added the prawns* and cooked the mixture for a few minutes. I then allowed the mixture to stand and allowed the flavors to mature before serving.

* Here I used a special trick to mask the flavor of less-than-optimal prawns. Sometimes the only prawns I have in the house are frozen. Depending on your source, some frozen prawns can taste really disgusting. If I have less-than-optimal quality frozen prawns, what I like to do is (after they have de-thawed) drop them briefly into salted, boiling water. As soon as they turn pink, I take them out and drain them. I then set them aside and cook them as normal in whatever dish I'm preparing. This process removes any residual freezer tastes.

4. One last step -- open all the windows. The belacan is really going to stink up your kitchen!

Posted by Evil Jungle Prince at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Last night I tried out this recipe for Indonesian mixed vegetables in coconut milk. Not bad! I happened to have all the necessary vegetables on hand and I'm always anxious to try something new. This dish has an Indian feel to it while at the same time remaining more subdued and less complex. It was nice poured over a big bowl of hot rice.

1. First I made a "fragrant paste" by placing the following into a food processor: one knob of peeled ginger, 3-4 garlic cloves, a large shallot, and some macadamia nuts as a thickening agent. (Original calls for candlenuts. I have also used almonds as a replacement before.)

2. The fragrant paste was then combined with 2 tsp dried shrimp, 1/4 tsp tumeric, a few slices of galangal, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, and 1 cup coconut milk. (Original also calls for Indonesian bay leaf.)

3. While this mixture was brough to a simmer, I chopped the following vegetables and added them as well: long beans, chayote, carrot, corn, and 2 chili peppers cut into strips. Add salt to taste. Simmer for a few minutes until the carrot is cooked and then pour over rice.

A simple and quick one-dish meal.

Posted by Evil Jungle Prince at 06:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)