Salaam alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuhu,
Let me introduce myself:
My name is Layla, a converted and married Muslima, 20 years young and with a Surinam
The reason why I started this blog is mostly because I was inspired by my "cooking blog addicted" friend; I saw that she didn't had any halal cooking blog on her blogroll. I know that there aren't a lot of cooking blogs or websites which use halal products, and I also know that Muslim woman love to cook! Imagine that you see a gorgeous looking dish, online, with amazing reviews. Watering you look at the ingredients and guess what, there’s bacon in it!!! And no, there is no alternative for bacon because of its distinctive flavor!
I also try to eat as healthy as possible and with that I also know that most of the traditional dishes in Muslim countries do not even come close to the first H of healthy! Second of all, and a lot of sisters can recognize this, is because once you’re married you spend a lot of time in your house, especially when you don’t have children. And as ambitious as I am, I tried a lot of different things to keep myself busy. The one thing I loved the most is guess what…? Cooking!!! Yes, I love to spend all day in the kitchen, trying all kind of different recipes from all around the world and after I’m finished with an hour’s long preparation of a dish with thousands of different spices (yes I love to exaggerate), I feel so satisfied when I hear the hmm from my husbands mouth when he licks his lips and when I see the glint in his eyes when he looks at the beautiful dish in front of him. What a wonderful image!
I also try to make my dishes look as good as possible because appearance does matter isn’t it?
I can remember one day that my husband had some guests. One of them had a special diet where he couldn’t eat spicy food, not even salt or pepper or meat. So what did I do? I decided to make fresh tuna steak with plain boiled rice and a salad of cucumber, cherry tomatoes and surimi sticks. And how can you make such a boring dish look good and tasty? Well, I used my imagination!
At first I boiled the rice, with no salt of course and grilled the tuna steak (I really love the look of grilled food). Then I chopped the cucumber, first lengthwise and then I chopped each half into pieces of maybe 1” thick. Then I cut the cherry tomatoes into quarters and the surimi sticks into long strings. So when everything was ready, it was time to start decorating the plate. I looked for the best shaped cup I had, greased it a little bit and then I stuffed it with the boiled rice, pressed it firm until the cup was full and then I turned it upside down on the plate TADAA! a great-looking pile of rice. On the top of the rice I placed two beautiful little attached leaves of basil. Then I placed the grilled tuna steak next to the rice. Now it was time for the veggies, the fun part! I arranged the cucumber in a nice design on the plate and on top of each piece I placed a piece of tomato. Finally I placed the surimi strings in elegant curls between the veggies, ET VOILA! A gorgeous looking dish in no time!
Of course I knew that it tasted like nothing but hey, at least it looked great, right?
Later my husband told me that the guests where taking pictures of my creation (blush, blush). There are some pictures on THIS website and she did exactly the same as I did!
I used fresh basil instead of parsley, but it is the same idea!
I used fresh basil instead of parsley, but it is the same idea!
This is also a nice idea. Make it in the shape of a cone.
This particular dish called "nasi kuning" and is a traitional Indonesian dish. They use this mold to shape it.
