Chinese Peanut BIscuits

We just arrived back from Malayasia a few days ago...both feeling rather jetlagged, and my sinus infection returned with a vengence, but otherwise intact. Despite sampling foods from a number of rather dubious looking stalls in Melacca and Singapore neither of us succumbed to a stomach bug. My only concern was that I couldn't eat more!

In Melacca we stayed at the most incredible hotel....probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, The Melacca Majestic. Around the Lounge, Library and Bar area near reception were large glass jars full of snacks such as peanuts, salted plums (not reccommended). coconut caramels and the most amazing little peanut biscuits. I must have scoffed more than my fair share and vowed to find the recipe when I got back to Zürich. It turns out they are Chinese New Year biscuits - Fah Sang Peng, and very popular in Malaysia.

Here's the recipe:
300g Peanuts
250g flour
200g castor sugar
1 tsp salt
250ml peanut oil

Roast the peanuts in a wok/pan until fragrant then finely grind. Add flour, sugar and salt and gradually mix in the oil until the mixture comes together (you may not need all the oil). Then need the dough until the sugar 'melts' and the crystals disappear.

Roll the mixture into little balls (about the size of macadamia nuts), glaze with egg, and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 200 celsius.

My impulse buy in Malaysia when I just happened to be wandering through a cooking supply shop was a moon cake mould, and I used this for the biscuits....worked beautifully!

I think these biscuits must be foolproof as I have a rather deplorable record with baking biscuits, yet these turn out rather well.....even Doug likes them!
They are very fragile, I think I need to grind the peanuts finer and then maybe increase the proportion of flour. Here are my final attempts:

Sausage Making

Doug bought me (us!) a Kenwood Chef for Christmas, we call it "The Beast" and if I'm lucky it gets to sit on the bench (Doug has a clean bench policy that is occasionaly enforced). I've used it to make bread, Challah, chapattis and pancakes....it's simply awesome! It also came with a glass blender attatchement but the quiet call of the meat grinder is what really attracted our attention. In Australia, I wouldn't dream of making sausages, but in Switzerland, I think it has become necessary. Wurst is what you buy in Switzerland, there is something called "Italian Sausages" which look more like "sausages" but considering how expensive meat is here, somehow I don't think they are saving the best cuts for these products. Everything we have tried has been a bit disappointing, if not a little scary, so we bit the bullet and ordered the machine :)

That was the easy part.

Suasage making in Switzerland doesn't seem to be the done thing. Finding the casings for the sausages has been frustrating and really a bit embarassing. We don't have a local butcher here in Adliswil so I asked the butchers at the large supermarkets for 'wursthällen' and told them I wanted to make my own wurst. This is not terribly hard to say in German but all I got was a blank look and then after further clarification, the feeling that I had asked him to chop up his pet dog for me......'We don't have that sort of thing here!'.

All the meat here is chopped and processed to the nth degree. Nothing has a bone (except what is either shanks cut up or ox-tail - very expensive) in fact you buy shiny clean bones seperate! At Christmas time there was no ham on the bone and Pork roast doesn't have crackling.....it's crazy! Somehow I don't think the butchers (Metzgerei) take delivery of whole carcasses and then chop them up, it arrives that way and they package and sell it.

Finally I was given the address of a Metzgerei in a rather out of the way place that looked promising. I wrote to them and asked if they had schweindärme (pig intestines....I didn't think I would have much luck with collagen here) and Hallelujah, they did! I can't believe I was getting excited about finding schweindärme. I now have a bundle of pig intestines and 4 kilos of pork in the fridge. I'm just waiting for the machine to arrive, and the courage to untangle the casings.
Here are the recipes I want to try (from - TheSpicySausage.com):

Hot Italian Sausage

2.26 kilos pork
1-cup cold red wineç
1-cup chopped fresh parsley
5-tsp salt
1-tbsp garlic powder or-4 to 5 garlic cloves, minced
1-tbsp fresh ground pepper
3-tsp cayenne
5-tbsp fennel seed
2-tsp crushed chili peppers
5-tbsp paprika

Seems to have all my favourite ingredients. Might need to add speck to boost the fat content.

Anyway, we'll see.

The Meat grinder arrived today! I've just finished making Italian suasages from 2 kilos of meat.......quite a lot really! The fennel seeds were rather strong so I reduced 5 tbs to 4 and mixed sweet and hot paprika together. I bought some uncooked speck (for the fat content) and then forgot to add it :( oh well.

The whole process did take all afternoon, but I was also reading the instruction booklet for working the machine. The recipe is rather hot and spicy, so I could reduce the hot paprika content, and also crush the fennel seeds. Here are the sausages cooking:



The other recipe I tried I made up (with some guidance from the internet). Equally Delicious! I also made meatballs out of the spicy Italian sausage mix and it used it for spaghetti bolgnaise with meatballs.....fantastic :)

Sage and onion sausages
2.26 kilos coarse ground pork neck
1-cup cold white wine
4-tsp salt
4- cloves of smoked garlic
1- bunch of sage (and some parsely)
2-tsp crushed fennel
1- onion minced
1 -tsp mixture of nutmeg/ginger/cloves
1-tbs freshly ground black pepper

Recipes to Die For

Ok, these are not that wonderful, but I promised a few recipes and to start a blog so thought I would combine the two. I don't know about the 'morality' of publishing recipes but there are mittigating circumstances I think:

• only about two people will read this (one of them probably my Mother);
• I often tamper with perfection and change a recipie; and
• I will aknowledge where they came from.

They should have pictures and bells and whistles to make it all look interesting and professional but the only going option at the moment was blog? or no blog?

Beef with Olives and 100 cloves of Garlic
Skordostoumbi

The instructions are a little kurz but I don't want to type forever. Do put in all that garlic it's fantastic! This is one of the tastiest beef stews I have ever eaten. The book is "The Olive and the Caper" by Susanna Hoffman.

1/4 cup olive oil
1.5 kilos beef in 2 inch chunks
100 cloves of garlic
48 Kalamata olives
4 cups dry red wine
1 tbsp tomatoe paste
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp freshly ground black peper
1/2 cup shredded basil leaves

1. Preheat oven to 220 celsius
2. Heat oil and brown meat batch by batch. Place in a clay pot (or casserole dish).
3. add garlic, olives wine, tomatoe paste, bay leaves and pepper to the juices left in the pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add this to the clay pot (or casserole dish).
4. cook stirring once or twice until tender for about 1 3/4 - 2 hours until beef is tender and sauce thickens.
5. take out of oven and let rest for 20 minutes. remove bay leaves and sprinkle basil.