Image Slider

Monday, 31 December 2012

My 2012 Review

31 December 2012: A Time to Look Back
December 31st, 2012.
Sydney.
On my comfy bed.
Fingers dancing on Mac's keyboard.
Writing a blog post.
Waiting for the date in the calendar to change.
To a new year: 2013.

JANUARY 2012
My first Australia trip. Meeting my soon-to-be husband.

FEBERUARY 2012
Start of the Nielsen DA Young Talent project. More going home late. But becoming closer to one of my colleague who happens to have the (almost) same character in the past! We're so klop together in many things, somehow.

MARCH 2012
Gold Award for participation in the Young Talent project. (Actually I kinda forgot which month this happens) :D.

APRIL 2012
Engaged to my now-husband. Six years my senior. A senior whom I never met in high school or university, padahal we attend the same high school and uni.

MAY 2012
My first naik gaji :D, alhamdulillah. Why oh why does it have to happen when I'm about to resign :(.

JUNE 2012
New (cool) boss who brought me to the right path (translate: ke jalan yang benar), haha. So sad that I have to resign at the end of this month :(.

JULY 2012
Married. Officially off from the market.

AUGUST 2012
Struggling with Partner Migration Visa application to Australia. And finally reunited again with my beloved husband in Sydney. Got a sewing machine for my birthday, which I have never utilize to earn money until now.

SEPTEMBER 2012
The most boring episode of my life: being a housewife and jobless (and activity-less, and social life-less). Finally I have my own kitchen and was starting to learn-and-love cooking and baking.

OCTOBER 2012
Started working at Blogger (a job that I made myself). As an author of a photography blog, a cooking & food blog, and an interesting personal blog. Also as an amateur illustrator and photographer for my blogs. Can't believe I'm really doing something that I never have the time to even start! I guess, I do need a time off to be able to do the things I like. And I finally found a real friend in Sydney!

NOVEMBER 2012
Spending 3 weeks holiday in Jakarta while applying for another visitor visa to Australia. Gosh, I'm starting to get tired of this visa stuff.

DECEMBER 2012
Learning how to deal living with the in-laws. And marriage has never been this wonderful! We're working things out much much better than before :). I love you, husband.

ULTIMATE ACHIEVEMENT IN 2012:
Got married one year after my graduation. Allah left me amazed with His greatness. He gave me someone that I wanted without me ever specifically having to say it in my du'a. Nggak sia-sia istikharah berkali-kali sampai sempat hampir putus asa karena kebingunganku membaca "tanda". He made it very clear to me. Very very clear. So, then I believe that he was whom God chose for me. Sometimes when things go wrong between us, I know that God is never wrong :).

*reposted from my old blog

Panda Bread

I finally made a panda bread!!! I feel so bad to my former roomate in Japan, Risi, because I promised her a loooongg time ago that I would make a panda bread for her birthday. It never happened. But, I do really really want to try making one though. Bunbun got me a new mixer and I had to try it out so I chose this panda bread recipe for the try-out.

Before making this panda bread, I've seen a couple of image results of this panda bread in Google. Some has this nasty green color, seems like it was artificial coloring. I don't want my bread to look like that, so I stick with the green tea powder for the green coloring. And i was right indeed! The color turned out beautiful with green tea powder, but I do have some issues with the texture of the finished bread. It hardens too fast.



Ingredients:
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • 3/4 tbsp salt
  • 2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup milk + 1 egg yolk (both should total 1 cup together)
  • 1 tbsp green tea (matcha) powder, mixed with 2 tsp hot water
  • 3 1/2 tsp cocoa powder, mixed with 1 1/2 tsp hot water
How to make:
  1. In a small bowl, microwave milk and egg yolk for about 30 seconds. Set aside.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine flour, sugar and yeast.
  3. Add in butter, salt and milk mixture, stirring on low speed with the dough hook attachment.
  4. Increase speed to medium and knead until dough comes together and pulls away from the sides, about 5-10 minutes. If the dough is sticky, add a tbsp of flour at a time until it is smooth and elastic.
  5. Divide dough into three pieces, two about equal and one about 1/3 the size of the other two.
  6. Place one of the large pieces in the stand mixer bowl and mix with green tea/water mixture OR green tea food coloring until desired color is reached.
  7. Remove dough from bowl and place in a lightly greased bowl, covered, to rise until doubled.
  8. Clean stand mixer bowl, then place smallest piece of dough in stand mixer and combine with cocoa powder/water mixture until color is blended through. Remove dough from bowl and place in a separate, lightly greased bowl, covered, to rise until doubled.
  9. Place plain piece of dough in a separate, lightly greased bowl, covered, to rise until doubled. All pieces should double in about an hour
  10. Once dough is risen, on a floured surface, divide plain dough in thirds, with one piece being half the size of the other two (as you did before). Use one of the larger pieces to form the face. Divide the cocoa dough in quarters and use two quarters to form the eyes.
  11. Quickly place the smallest piece of plain dough between the eyes to keep them in place. Stretch remaining piece of plain dough over the whole bread to lock everything in place.
  12. Take last two quarters of cocoa dough and form the ears.
  13. Divide green dough in two pieces, one twice the size of the other. Take the small piece to fill in the space between the ears. Take the larger piece of green dough and stretch over the whole bread to lock everything in place.
  14. Place dough in a lightly greased loaf pan, cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
  15. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 190 degrees C.
  16. Once dough is risen, bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown on the outside. Allow to cool completely on a cooling rack before slicing or serving.
 If you're confused how to separate the dough, here's the diagram how to do it ;) I literally made a mathematical equation from the directions above and translate it into a picture!
 
And if you are confused how to put everything together, just follow the picture diagram below:


The original recipe from Japan advised cake flour, but I used the Australian all purpose flour. After I found out that the bread hardens too fast, I googled about cake flour and how to substitute it. After some research, I found out that it is totally different... What I mean is that you can't substitute a cake flour with an equal amount of all purpose flour (especially Australian all purpose flour, some say it's too harsh). Some mixed it with cornflour or potato flours. But I think next time I'll just buy some from the Asian store or get the (more expensive) specialty flour. 

Source: Tablespoon
Friday, 21 December 2012

Crispy Chicken Fingers

After scrambling around the internet for good breaded fried chicken recipe, I was able to come up with my own by mixing and making adjustments to the recipes I found. As a good family friend taught me, "If you find different recipes for a food, make a side-by-side comparison. Find the ingredients that makes the recipes different with one another and then use them all. Those different ingredients make each recipe tastes good." I used her advice when cooking this menu. You know what, it tastes great!


Ingredients:
500 gr boneless chicken
Lemon juice
Salt

Dry ingredients: 
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cornflour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp chicken salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp mixed herbs
2 tsp black pepper

Glue mixture:
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs

How to make:
1. Cut chicken into finger size. Marinate chicken with lemon and salt. Let it sit for 1 hour or overnight in the refrigerator.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients and mix all the glue mixture
3. Prepare baking sheet. Dip chicken into the glue mixture and then to the dry ingredients. Line it up on the baking sheet. After all pieces are coated with the first layer, dip it again into the glue mixture and dry ingredients, making a second layer.
4. Heat oil in a deep fryer or saucepan. Give last dry ingredients coating before dipping it into the oil. Fry each coated chicken fingers until golden brown.

Note:
1. You can always adjust the amount of spices used
2. Keep the leftover dry ingredients mix in a ziplock bag for later use. You can also use it to powder the meat when making chicken katsu.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

My Traditional Wedding

As much as I would love to have a modern-muslim wedding, I also wanted a traditional one. Not only the decoration that is fully traditional (by mom's request) which we called gebyok, me and the moms wanted to me to wear the Solo traditional headpiece (kembang goyang) as well.

Marriage is only once in a lifetime (aamiin) and when else would you wear this extravagant inherited culture if not in your marriage - at least that was what I had in mind. So, at the end, I opted for a traditional Solo wedding. I opted for the Solo instead of Jogja because the headpiece fits the shape of my face better. But the Solo headpiece is actually more complicated than the Jogja headpiece if you're wearing hijab, because there's the sasak part that you can't simply shape & cover neatly. Thanks to my genius make up artist, tante Neni Nazeh, she was able to do the Solo headpiece really well and everyone said that my make up looked really good. Even I can't stop smiling looking at myself!


Makeup artist: tante Neni Nazeh from Rumah Kebaya
Photography: Viure Photography
Decoration: K-Jogja
Souvenir: Fine Souvenir
Invitation: pasar Tebet