Ikan Jenahak Goreng Assam and Nigella's Cupcakes

Lately after bridging over twelve weeks of pregnancy, I feel much better, even though on not so good days I still mabuk in the morning. One thing good this time is that I am totally averse towards my nescafe or whatever coffee from the coffee joints. My comfort food now is rice and plain water! Also I can't stand the smell of my Olay Total Effects, so got rid of that and am using the organic face oil made by dear Zu of PureFlower and Living Nature, also organic, face lotion. I also cannot tahan the feel of lippies of my lips!

Last Sunday, I macam superwoman had this urge and strength to fill my entire day, well almost...cooking and baking in the kitchen. I made Ikan Cencaru Belah Belakang stuffed with chilli for lunch and later in the afternoon Khadijah asked to make cupcakes. Since Azrai, Umar's good friend was also spending the Sunday with us, I decided to jamu the kids with pizza...Punya masak, punya makan, unytil I forgot to snap some photos to put up here. Anyway, here's the copyrighted cupcake recipe from Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess book...I lah tu nak jadi domestic goddess!!

Cupcakes or Fairy Cakes
250 gm butter (I used Anchor or Tatura, salted, my friend Nigella recommended unsalted...think salted tastes more lemak)
4 large eggs (I used 5 small eggs, apa yang I found in my kitchen)
250 gm caster sugar
250 gm self-raising flour (think next time round I'll use 200 gm self-raising flour and 50 gm plain flour, to make the cake less fluffy and a bit dense)
2 tsp vanilla essence
5 tablespoon fesh milk

How To Make
Just blitz butter and sugar until creamy using a food mixer, add the eggs, add fresh milk, vanilla essence and self-raising flour (sifted) bit by bit. Spoon into cupcakes or souffle casing and bake about 20 mins in 190 degrees Celcius oven. Depending on the size of the casing, but I used medium cupcakes casing, which gave me about 30 cuppas.

As for the sugar icing, blitz 150gm icing sugar wt 200 or 300gm butter until creamy and spread on already cooled cuppas. Khadijah and DH helped to decorate the cuppas :)

It took me about 3 hours to prepare the cakes but kena ngap less than one hour by the kids, DH and Azrai.

As for the pizza, I thought of using the frozen based, but when I arrived at Bagus, where I normally get my baking supplies, the girl said, "Pizza base dah habis, kak! Akak buat sendirilah pizza base tu?!" And because I promised the kids pizza, I decided to make the dough using a premix from Bagus...easy beasy..just add yeast and water, knead a bit and leave to rise for about an hour...hmm definitely tastes nicer than the frozen base...hmm tak sempat nak ambik gambar, semua kena ngap by the kids!!

This morning, I decided to make Ikan Jenahak Goreng Assam or aka ikan masak orang dalam pantang...belajar belajarlah, tak lama lagi makanan I dalam pantang... Here goes, senang sangat and definitely loved by my family:

Ikan Jenahak Goreng Assam
2 keping ikan jenahak fillet (can also use ikan tenggiri or bawal, but think jenahak is manis so preferred by me)
garam and kunyit
oil to fry
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 inch ginger
1 green chilli, all thinly sliced
tamarind juice (from about 1 tablespoon tamarind paste dilute with 1 small bowl water)

How to make is very easy...just fry the fish until golden, remove into a serving dish. Tumis the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli until fragrant, add the tamarind juice and a pinch of salt, let simmer and pour onto fried fish....serve with nasi putih hangat-hangat and sambal belacan and ulam-ulaman, you dont mind having this everyday in your confinement...

Err for sambal belacan, why dont you try this: lightly fry with a tablespoon oil 6 large red chillies, cili padi if you want more spicy, 1 slice onion, 1 tomato and a bit of belacan or 1 tablespoon maggi belacan granules for friends who are living abroad until the chilli, onion and tomato dah layu, remove and tumbuk with a pinh of salt, a pinch of sugar and add air assam jawa or squeeze juice of lemon or lime..... gerenti menambat hati suami and anak-anak!!

Until further recipes and ideas, cuba jangan tak cuba!!