Home Made Asian Sweets

Posted August 25th, 2009 in Food No Comments »

My mother-in-law (M) cooks everyday.  She sometimes cook Indonesian sweets for us and they are really nice.  Since the parents came to Perth I haven’t cooked any food at home. :p   She is always in the kitchen doing something, so there is no space for me!

Here are some of Indonesian sweets she made…

<Ketan Hitam>

Ketan = glutinous rice, hitam = black in Indonesian (according to M)

If you browse on internet you’ll see various forms of this dish, but M always make like this ↓↓↓

Like porridge.

On the photo it looks like azuki beans, but the texture is totally different.  This black rice is very chewy and juicy.  I love the texture!

 

  • 400g black glutinous rice
  • 1300ml water
  • 2 pandan leaves
  • 125ml palm sugar syrup (dissolve palm sugar with hot water)

You can buy a small packet of black glutinous rice from Asian grocery shops.

  1. Wash rice.  Soak the rice in water for few hours (to soften up).
  2. Place rice in a sauce pan with water and pandan leaves.  Bring to boil, then reduce the heat to low.  Cook for about 40 minutes.  You’ll need to stir constantly.
  3. Add palm sugar syrup, and stir until the liquid almost evaporates.  Add a pinch of salt.
  4. Remove from the heat and let it cool down.

They usually eat this Ketan Hitam with coconut milk.

<Biji Salak>

This is also a chewy sweet ♪

  • sweet potatoes
  • tapioca flour
  • palm sugar syrup
  1. Steam (or microwave) sweet potatoes.  (as much as you like)  Mash up.
  2. Add tapioca flour, 1 tbs at a time, and mix well.  Continue until you can roll up the mixture into a long stick shape.  Chop up  into 2~3 cm length.
  3. Boil water in a sauce pan, and add the sweet potato dumplings.  (not too much at a time)  Once the dumplings float to the surface, scoop them out.
  4. Serve with palm sugar syrup.  (and coconut milk)

 

They are very easy to make, but to me they are “foreign food”.  In Japan we don’t eat coconut milk/cream (now maybe they do) as well as palm sugar, tapioca flour etc.  These food are all foreign things in Japan, and the food contained these ingredients are called “Asian food”.  Japanese food is pretty different from other “Asian” food.  🙂



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