#11 Balinese Curry, putting the glue into Sago Gula Melaka and redemption with chocolate oat cookies

Nici Wickes obviously travelled to Asia, although not explicitly stating the fact. Rather than getting out the photo's she would rather share her travels with her friends by replicating meals that she had experienced on her journey. For the Great New Zealand Cookbook, Nici shares a "Fragrant ginger and chicken Balinese curry" and a "Sago Gula Melaka".
I single handily attacked the pantry in search for the sago. I knew it was in there somewhere, spotting it some time ago and wondering why we had it at all. After reshuffling shelves, towering tins to enable some space for shifting items I found it. I had the purchased the coconut milk at the supermarket but had totally neglected to get the palm sugar. This was a disappointment as I also needed it for the curry. Palm sugar is made from the sap of various palm trees which is boiled and set into hard cakes. It tends to be caramel flavoured. You can substitute it with soft light brown sugar but as my google search informed me, it won't be the same. I will need to go in search of an Asian food store. Netherless I continued on. Blame it on being too relaxed and carefree but the next stuff up was cooking the sago for far too long. The recipe does warn you that the sago will go translucent and it will seem very gluey, however, I seem to have cooked out those cute little sago pearls and my mixture was one that was more reminiscent of PVA glue.
The curry was pretty easy enough, with an ensemble of tastes from garlic, chillies, cashews, turmeric, lemon juice, soy, and ginger. Coconut milk was used (I had plenty seeming that I didn't need any for the failed sago gula melaka) and of course the palm sugar (which was substituted with brown sugar). I really didn't feel that I captured the essence of the dish by not having the palm sugar. To compensate I did what the photo's in the book instructed me to do... add some green herbs, chuck a flower on the rice and ya look like a pro (would recommend an edible flower - I went for borage).

There were a few hours left in the day so I felt compelled to get some baking completed for the start of the new school term. I went for Jo Seagar's Chocolate chunk oat cookies found on page 406 in the Great New Zealand Cookbook.  With my ANZAC biscuits debacle, I was a tad nervous dealing with an oaty biscuit again, but these turned out perfect. The recipe did require 250g butter, which with the recent exorbitant price of this product you may either want to extend your mortgage or copy our NZ bakers and source the butter from France.




Adding the Borage and green


Glue!


Chocolate Chunk Oat Cookie









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