One Day we made Onde Onde - more Cultural Exchange

Malaysia is famous for its Kueh - pronouned Kway. What the heck is Kueh I hear you say. Well, it's a bit hard to explain but let me try anyway. It's kind of the equivalent of the western pastry - although its not really a pastry. Maybe it'll be easier explained as a sweetmeat. Then again, that's not really all that apt. Maybe the best way to explain it would be to say it's an Asian Cake. Perhaps not quite the best way to explain it but possibly the easiest way!

Kueh-mueh is the plural of Kueh and Malaysia has many Kueh-Mueh. It's available at breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner - anytime at all and like the western pastry, is usually a dessert or mouth sweetener - usually sweet although sometimes there are savoury ones too. There are so many varieties of Kueh-mueh and all of them are delicious.

Mostly, the Kueh are usually made with ingredients that include coconut, or conut milk, pandan leaves(screwpine leaves also known as pandanus leaves) and gula melaka. Incidentally, my very first Cultural Exchange post featured Gula Melaka.

Another key ingredient in kuih is of course flour. However, wheat flour is seldom is hardly ever used. Instead, the flour used for kuih takes the form of rice flour, pulut (glutinous rice), pulut flour and even tapioca and tapioca flour. Sometimes green peas are used as well.





My son loves his Kueh while my little princess enjoys it as well, but not as much as my son. The Lovely Wife and I also enjoy our Kueh and it's always a treat to buy Kueh from the local market, hawkers or food courts. The Lovely Wife refers to the Kueh sellers as the Koi-koi man - a play on the word Kueh. This term is used by quite a few people in Malaysia too!

My son's favourite kueh is Onde-Onde (pronounced as Oanday-Oanday although the 'oan' would be very short). Basically, its a ball of glutinous flour with a filling of liquid Gula Melaka and covered in lightly salted grated coconut. The balls are boiled and the texture would be slightly sticky and chewy - perhaps like a gnocchi? When you pop the ball into your mouth and bite on it, the gula melaka explodes in your mouth - pure heaven to your taste buds!

The Lovely Wife has a couple of books on Kueh - one of which the kids got her for Christmas - and one day, she decided to make Onde-Onde. I decided to help and we consulted both the books. One is by Rohani Jelani called Malaysian cakes and desserts while the other is a collection called Hot Favourites Kueh - author unspecified.


This is what we did:

Ingredients
300g glutinous rice flour
10-12 pandan leaves
150ml water
1/2 tsp alkaline water
180g gula melaka - finely chopped
100g grated coconut
salt

Method
Combine grated coconut and salt and steam for about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.
Blend pandan leaves with the water in a food processor. Strain to remove the solids and set the juice aside. Mix the juice together with alkaline water and then add into the sifted flour.

Knead well to form a smooth dough. Cover the dough with a damp cloth to prevent drying. bring a large pan of water to the boil then lower heat to simmering. Pinch a small piece of dough (about 2cm) and flatten into a disk. Drop the dough into the water till it cooks and rises to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon, shake off excess water and knead the cooked dough into the rest of the dough.
If dough seems to sticky, add in a litte more glutinous rice flour.

Pinch of small balls of dough the size of small limes and roll in your palms to form smoot balls. Carefully make a small well in the dough and fill with some gula melaka. Pinch the top to seal the sugar inside and then roll gentlty Alternatively, flatten the balls a little like a dumpling and fill with gula melaka before sealing the top and gently rolling it smooth with your palms. Be careful as the gula melaka will cause the dough to sweat and it can leak out.

Drop the balls gently into the simmering water. Don't overcrowd. When the balls are cooked, they will float to the top. Gently remove with a slotted spoon and then allow the water to drain. Toll the balls in the salted coconut. Transfer to a serving plate.

Yes, all in all a rather complicated recipe but the results are well worth it! It takes quite a bit of skill to keep the gula melaka inside when rolling and some of it actually leaked out when cooking.

Granted, the onde onde that we made wasn't quite as good as the ones we get from the kueh man but it was still very good. Nothing is quite so satisfying as making something at home that you would never dream of making.

Best part though, is that my son was pleased as punch with the homemade onde onde. He too admitted that the bought ones tasted better but he was just so thrilled that we could make it at home!

He couldn't stop stuffing his face with them and that, in itself, was worth all the hard work!

As Malaysian as you can get - Sago Gula Melaka - Cultural Exchange

If there was one dessert that was truly 100% Malaysian, this would be it. Then again, that's not entirely true as I can also think of a myriad of other desserts that are truly Malaysian. So let's try again. If there was One truly Malaysian dessert that could be Home Made without any fancy equipment (like Ice Scrapers - think Ais Kacang or Cendol!) then this would be it. Hang on, then what about all the tradional Kuih (sweet cake like things but not quite cakes...)that can also be made at home? That's the trouble with Malaysia - just too many varieties of food and dessert!

Okay. How about this? My Favourite Malaysian Dessert, that can be home made without any fancy equipment would be this!

All said and done, Sago Gula Melaka is definetly a famous Malaysian dessert and a firm favourite Everywhere in the country and especially in my house! I would even go so far as to say that Sago Gula Melaka is the quintessential Malaysian Dessert!


Sago Gula Melaka is really not that difficult to make. All you need are 3 ingredients:

1. Sago (but of course!)

Sago is commonly sold as sago pearls and is actually the starch from the pith of the sago palm (Metroxylon sagu Rottboll). Sarawak, in East Malaysia, is the world's largest exporter of Sago. To get Sago, the trunk of the sago palm is split lengthwise and the pith is removed. The pith is then crushed to release the starch, washed and strained to extract the starch from the fibrous residue. The raw starch suspension is collected and this is then made into flour. Sago Pearls resemble tiny dried pearls that when boiled become transparent, soft and almost spongy. This is what is used for Sago Gula Melaka.

2. Gula Melaka

Gula Melaka or Malacca Sugar, is also known as Palm Sugar. Gula Melaka is made from the sap of the flower bud of the coconut tree. Some refer to Gula Melaka as Jaggery but technically, Jaggery is sugar made from the Palmyra Tree. I explained this (with pictures) in my very first post on Cultural Exchange

3) Coconut Milk

Sometimes you take things for granted and assume the whole world thinks the same thing. In one of my earlier posts, when I spoke about Coconut Milk, I realised that a lot of my Western blogger friends think that coconut milk is the juice of the coconut, meaning the clear fluid that you get when you break a coconut. No, no, no! That is what we call Coconut Water - the one that is very good for your daughter (Remember Harry Belafonte and his song Coconut Woman?). Coconut Milk is what the Westerners would call Coconut Cream although coconut cream has been thickened and would be far too thick. Coconut Milk is what you get when you grate the 'meat' of flesh of the coconut - the white flesh inside - and then squeeze it to get a lovely milk that is often used as a thickening agent. We refer to this as Santan
When we talk about Coconut Milk in Malaysia, we also regularly refer to the 'first milk' and 'second milk' or 'first squeeze' and 'second squeeze'. The first squeeze is always the thickest and best tasting and sometime you need to add a little hot water to the grated coconut after the first squeeze to get everything out. Very, very seldom would you do a third squeeze.

So there you have it. The three ingredients for Sago Gula Melaka.

How to make it do you say? Ahhh... well, no real recipe is required and neither do I have measurements for you because it is just so simple!

First, Wash the sago well and let it soak in water for a few minutes. Strain the sago and boil it in water till it becomes soft and transparent. Drain and rinse in cold water to remove the starch. Pour it into a large bowl (or smaller bowls if you like) and let it cool. Whisk in an eggwhite - this is to prevent the sago pearls from sticking together too much. Leave in the fridge to get cold.

Make some liquid Gula Melaka by melting some gula melaka shavings with a little water. Make as much as you like.



Finally, make the coconut milk by grating coconut and squeezing out the milk. If you are using canned coconut cream, thin the cream out with a little water. Some people like to use fresh milk as well but the taste is just not as good.

To serve, spoon some of sago out into a serving bowl, add in as much of the Coconut Milk and Gula Melaka as you like and enjoy!

This is really a most delicious dessert and is found in a large number of Malaysian restaurants and hotels. In fact, I remember many years ago when The Lovely Wife and I were dating, I took her out for dinner. After dinner, I suggested we have dessert at the Crystal Crown Hotel, PJ where I knew they served these Huge bowls of Sago Gula Melaka - for a reasonable price too. Not too sure if they still serve it there... Maybe it's time for a return visit. Good thing for me The Lovely Wife enjoys Sago Gula Melaka as much as I do!