Home Made Chilli Jam

My collegue miss Donna, multi talented kitchen queen - marmalade & jam maker, best raspberry tart maker, curry, pies, or anything & everything from Donna's kitchen. She always make everything yummy and fantastico. Donna loves experimenting new recipes too & I am always happy to be her guinea pig. She does give me a bit of inspiration to be a bit more hard working in the kitchen LOL, here I am experimenting my chilli jam. This is my first time making chilli jam & it turns to be not as scary as I thought. A bit of prep time but I am really pleased with my jam - it is full of natural goodness, no preservatives added watsoever, and I used real tomatoes. Color wise, it is not giving me the vibrant red that I want (perhaps I have to use more capsicum than tomatoes next time), but dont judge the book by its cover, it tastes great !! Okie...my recipe was done using the long way method ..this can be short cut by using whole peeled tomatoes from the can.

Ingredients:
Part (1) - Put them in food processor, run till fairly smooth

• 3 stalks lemon grass - only use the white part, cut diagonally
• 100 gr ginger
• 2 red chilli - remove seeds if you want to reduce the spicy-ness
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3 kaffir lime leaves

Part (2) - Prepare diced tomatoes
** For short cut version, omit Part 2, replace with canned whole peeled tomato, cut each tomato into 6 **

• 800gr tomato - in a pot, boiled tomatoes till skins cracked open, scoop them out and cool them. Once cool, peel the skin off & remove core, cut each tomato into 6.

Part (3) - Other ingredients:

• 300 gr chopped onion
• 2 red capsicum, remove seeds & chopped
• Grated lime skin from 1 lime
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2-3/4 cup white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoon salt

Method:

1. Heat up olive oil in a pot (preferably thick based pot)
2. Stir fry onion, garlic, capsicum until fragrant and soft
3. Add remaining ingredients
4. Bring to the boil for about 15-20 mins, stir occasionally
5. Simmer for about 30mins-1hour
6. Cook until liquid is minimal, and you get thick and sticky jam
7. Once ready, transfer to glass jam jar

 Note:

• Total time required: approx. 1.5 hour
• To make approx. 2.5 litre of chilli jam
• If you store it in sterilised glass jar, it can last up to 3 months, for sterilising method, there are quite a few in youtube, this video is quite easy to follow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS7SC3UGkII

How to serve Chilli jam?
Chilli jam can be served with ....

• Corn chips
• Grilled corn
• Corn fritters - for recipe, click here
• Zucchini fritters
• Prawn Pasta
• I did brioche, avocado, ham/ falafel + chilli jam .. was pretty awesome !!

Getting all the ingredients ready

Starting to crack ....

Cooling ...

Ready for peeling & core removal

Home made chilli jam

Corn Fritters

Sunday, 18/11/12

Ever since I got my new toy, mini food processor, I always try to make something where I can use my food processor. Anyway ... last Sunday I had to go friend's party & I decided to make Indonesian style Corn Fritters (aka Bakwan Jagung in Indonesia). Corn fritters are quite common in Indonesia, it can be found everywhere especially from street stalls. Street sellers always use real corns, they slice them & make everything from scratch & tasted so good. Perhaps the street dust and newspaper (street seller's version of paper towel) also plays a part in making them taste great?? 
In Indonesia, it is very common for street sellers to use newspaper as paper towel, some friends screamed coz of hygienity issue, 'ink may run off & rub to the fritters'. I just told them to close their eyes off  & demolish the stuff. Taste great isn't  .... =)

And yeahhh since I got fresh great ingredients, I decided to do the lengthy way, making everything from scratch to copy the street sellers. I know it's a bit of an effort and seems lengthy but the results is pretty good. You can do a short cut version by using canned corn & it will make life easier and less mess in the kitchen.

Ingredients:

• 3 sweet corns (for short cut version, use 1 can of sweet corn kernels, drain the water and 1 can of creamed corn)
• 1 garlic, finely chopped
• 1 red shallot, finely chopped
• 3-4 stalks spring onion, finely chopped (only use green bits)
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• a pinch sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander seed
• 1/2 tablespoon white pepper
• 4 tablespoon plain flour
• 4 tablespoon rice flour
• 1 chilli - remove seed & finely chopped (optional)

Method:

***** For Short cut version - omit step 1 & start from step 2 *****

Step 1 - Prepare Corn

• Lay newspaper everywhere around your chopping board to avoid messy bench (slicing corn can be quite 'juicy')
• Slice corn in 4 sides, lay them flat and slice them
• Divide them into 2 bowls of corn kernels
• Bowl 1 - make creamed corn - just chuck everything into food processor, run it till fairly smooth
• Bowl 2 - stay as corn kernels - use pestle & bash them up (violance is allowed here - this will avoid the corn kernel to burst when we fry them). If you don't have pestle you can also spread them in chopping board, and use rolling pin.

Lay the corn, and start slicing the corn

Slice each side of the corn - 4 sides of the corn

Bowl 1 - Creamed corn

Bowl 2 - Corn kernels being bashed up

Step 2 - Make Batter

• In a mixing bowl, whisk plain flour and egg till not lumpy
• Add all remaining ingredients
• Batter has to be thick and heavy (if it's still runny just add plain flour)

Rice flour that I used ...Thai elephant brand

Corn Fritters batter - ready to go ...

Step 3 - Deep Frying

• In a wok, heat up cooking oil
• When ready, take 1 table spoon of batter each time till finish
• Lay paper towel in a plate & put the fritters here before serving to absorb oil

Deep Frying

Corn Fritters now ready ....
served with home made chilli jam 
(I will post recipe soon)

Note:

• Approx time for full method version 1.5 hr
• Approx time for short cut version (with canned corn) 45 mins
• Recipe can make about 16-18 pieces