Steamed rice cake with banana aka Putu Pisang
Steamed rice cake with banana is a popular snack in Indonesia. It's believed to originate from Cirebon, Indonesia. This is a very simple snack with minimum ingredients but a bit tricky to get the right texture.
Steamed Rice cake with banana
Ingredients ( Make 10 pieces )
120gm rice flour
45 - 50mls water
1/2 tsp salt
Topping Ingredients
Sugar to taste
1/2 bowl fresh grated coconut
3 to 4 ripe bananas
1/ Steam the rice flour for 10 mins. Sieve the rice flour and cool completely.
2/ Mix the salt with water and stir until salt dissolve.
3/ Put the rice flour in the mixing bowl, sprinkle a little water to moist the flour.
4/ Pour the water little by little at a time, same time using your fingers to mix the flour to resemble bread crumbs.
Test the correct texture by squeezing the flour mixture lightly, if it stick together, you got it right.
5/ This is the tricky part. If the flour mixture is too wet, you'll get a lump of hard rice cake. If flour mixture too dry, it'll taste like bird food, dry and grainy.
After pressed thru the sieve the flour should look like fine bread crumbs.
6/ Press the flour mixture thru a sieve with a spoon to get a very fine flour mixture. This is to ensure a soft and melt in the mouth rice cake.
To make banana cup, cut the banana leaves 4 in round disc 4 x 4 in square, scald in hot water for few minutes to soften it. Wash and wipe dry. Fold into a cup and secure it with toothpick.
7/ Grease a bit oil on the banana cup. Scoop 2 tbsp flour mixture into the banana cup, do not compact the flour mixture otherwise the rice cake will be hard. Don't make the rice cake more than 1/2 inch thick otherwise it won't taste nice.
8/ Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of castor sugar on top of the flour mixture, then sprinkle 1 to 2 teaspoon of fresh coconut. Put a few slices of cut banana on top the rice cake.
9/ Cover with a small pieces of damp cloth and steam in rapid boiling water for 5 minutes.
10/ Remove from steamer and serve warm.
The melted sugar and soft banana taste heavenly....
This texture of this rice cake is soft and fluffy
For the ultimate, try this with ice cream......
and you'll be hearing waves splashing to shore
and the moon coming up. Maybe your hubby will just lift you up and head upstairs after having it........WhooooHoooo!
Another tea time snack......
A Brief History of the Sweet Potato
When the Spanish explorers first came to the New World they were searching for an ocean route to India and its fabled treasures of gold, silver, spices and jewels.
They found them on these two new continents, North and South America, but they found many other things far more valuable, including three of the world' s most important food plants: corn, the white or Irish potato, and the sweet potato.
Sweet potatoes plants
Being a tropical plant, the sweet potato probably was found before the Irish potato -- by Columbus in the West Indies, by Balboa in Central America, and by Pizarro in Peru.
Like corn, it was not found growing wild, but it had been cultivated by the Incan and pre-Incan Sweet Potatoes in the Sao Paulo, Brazil Market races for thousands of years.
They had developed many varieties, as is shown by their ancient pottery. In most places in Latin America, the sweet potato is called "camote", but the Incans called it "batata" and that is apparently the origin of our word "potato".
Sweet potato flower
The sweet potato was carried back to Spain and thence to Italy, from where it spread to Austria, Germany, Belgium and England before the first Irish potatoes arrived.
It took 200 years for the English to accept Irish potatoes as being fit for human food, but the sweet potato immediately became a rare and expensive delicacy.
Now it is widely grown in Asiatic lands, including Japan and southern Russia, in the warmer Pacific islands, in tropical America, and in the United States as far north as New Jersey.
The sweet potato was one of a number of crops domesticated in the Andes and, like many of the rest, it became a global crop in the colonial era.
But there were some hints that the sweet potato may have already started its global sweep before the Europeans ever took a bite out of one.
Papua New Guinea market. Selling sweet potatoes.
Some of the early European explorers, including Captain Cook, reported finding it in places like Hawaii. All of which implies that the Polynesians, who managed to spread widely across the Pacific, had made it all the way to South America.
What's New and Beneficial about Sweet Potatoes
Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes may be one of nature's unsurpassed sources of beta-carotene. Several recent studies have shown the superior ability of sweet potatoes to raise our blood levels of vitamin A.
This benefit may be particularly true for children.
In several studies from Africa, sweet potatoes were found to contain between 100-1,600 micrograms (RAE) of vitamin A in every 3.5 ounces—enough, on average, to meet 35% of all vitamin A needs, and in many cases enough to meet over 90% of vitamin A needs (from this single food alone).
Sweet potatoes are not always orange-fleshed on the inside but can also be a spectacular purple color.
Sometimes it's impossible to tell from the skin of sweet potato just how rich in purple tones its inside will be.
That's because scientists have now identified the exact genes in sweet potatoes (IbMYB1 and IbMYB2) that get activated to produce the purple anthocyanin pigments responsible for the rich purple tones of the flesh.
The purple-fleshed sweet potato anthocyanins—primarily peonidins and cyanidins—have important antioxidant properties and anti-inflammatory properties.
Particularly when passing through our digestive tract, they may be able to lower the potential health risk posed by heavy metals and oxygen radicals.
Hulis Hagen warriors dance, Papua New Guinea
Growing your own sweet potato in your home
All you need is a sweet potato, a glass, 3 toothpicks. Add water.
Sing to it once a day....Maybe songs like, 'Macarena, ' Guantanamera'.
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| This is mine |
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Use room temperature water cos the ice cold water might give the sweet potato a shock. Don't forget to change the water every 2 days.
Go ahead, 'Wow' Impress your MIL when she visits. She'll be glad you married her boy.
But suggest you don't use a glass from that Royal Doultan wedding dinner set she presented you as a wedding present.
She might take her boy home! Instead of remembering you in her will.
Fried sweet potato
2 sweet potatoes
1/ Wash the sweet potato and peel off the skin, then wash and pat dry.
Slice 1/4 inch thick.
Best to serve while it's hot
Batter for sweet potato
3/4 cup flour
1 tbsp rice flour
2 tbsp grated coconut
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/8 tsp slaked lime ( optional )
170mls cold water
Slaked lime
1/ Sift flour, rice flour and baking powder together.
2/ Add grated coconut, salt, slaked lime and water, mix into a smooth batter.
3/ Dip the sweet potato in the batter and then gently coat them on the batter.
4/ Heat up oil in a wok or pot until very hot. Carefully slide the coated sweet potato into the hot oil.
5/ Fry the sweet potato using low/ medium heat to ensure the sweet potato is cook. Test by pricking it with a fork.
6/ Fry till golden brown, remove from heat and drain on the kitchen towel. Serve with dipping sauce.
Fried sweet potato with dipping sauce
Crispy batter on the outside with soft sweet potato
Dipping sauce
2 bird eyes chilies
1 tbsp black caramel sauce
1 tsp castor sugar
1 tbsp water
1/ Remove the bird eyes chilli seed and slice thinly.
2/ Mix with black caramel sauce, sugar and water. Combine till well blend.
3/ Dip the fried sweet potato in chilli sauce, take one bite and blink your eyes 3 times then flutter your eyelashes. Yeeeehhaaaaa..........
For those whose husbands ran away with the maid or neighbors wife, taking your poodle dog Rambo with him,
to keep you company in your kitchen or lonely, cold nights.......
And improving your singing voice....'Heyyyyy Macarena..."!
Impress your girlfriends when they come over for coffee and desserts to gossip about their office boss fooling around with the new exotic, sexy, bodacious Argentinian secretary.
Or how Sheila her neighbour seen with JoAnn'e hubby at Hooters.
Or your 2 year old baby boy downloaded when sitting on the cart at Walmart. And you wondering why shoppers holding their noses starring at you.
When your friends enquire how come your sweet potato look so healthy and vibrant, tell them you sing "Guantanamera" to it after your shower, in your towel and nothing else.
Once your sweet potato has grown, can pull out a vine and roots, you can grow it in bottles. Impress your friends, your cat or whoever....
This for those with no interesting gossips, or singing not one of your talents. Or you don't look good in a towel with nothing else.....
And still waiting for the right man to come along as you celebrate your 45th birthday.
Have a nice day.
Amelia
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