Lontong for Hubby!

The night we arrived home after a long week of Raya-ing at our kampung, Hubby had the cheek to jokingly ask for lontong when I asked him what he wanted for dinner. And me being tired, hungry and sakit buntut from sitting in the car through the massive traffic jam, immediately gave him the pissed off look, and prepared a simple meal of instant nasi impit with reheated daging dendeng that had been sitting in our freezer for the past week.

However, I never stopped feeling guilty whenever I reflect on that incident.

So, I decided to surprise Hubby with a fine meal of lontong! Googled for a lontong recipe (which looked easy enough to imitate) and went grocery shopping the day before to buy all the needed ingredients. Came home from work and immediately jumped into the kitchen. Perfect timing, Hubby called me on my phone. I wanted the meal to be a surprise so I didn't mention anything, but apparently Hubby knows me very well, that even from the tone of my voice he could tell that I was cooking something special for him that night.

I used a combination of two recipes: here and here.

Cut the tempe into cute squares.

Clean and rendam the foo chuk in a bowl of water. Make sure you clean it properly and rendam lama because if not it will taste like plastic - according to my sister who had a bad encounter with the foo chuk before. I love foo chuk, so I used nearly half a packet!

Cut the chilli and kacang panjang.

Cut the tauhu into cute squares as well.

For those who are not kitchen savvy (like me!), this is how an unsliced sengkuang looks like. I went up and down the aisles of Tesco at least 3 times looking for a sengkung which in my mind, looks like white strips (like the sliced ones). I laughed my head off when my sister showed me this brown potato-like thing!

Cut the cabbage thinly. Chilli for decorative purposes only.

Blend dried shrimps, garlic, kunyit hidup, halia and shallots. (For Bibik's version, add two tablespoon of ground black pepper, three buah keras and lengkuas.)

In the meantime, boil the instant nasi impit.

You can choose to either use coconut, or instant coconut milk.

Of course, lemon grass!

Aiden playing with the serai.

And daun limau.

Fry the tauhu until golden brown.

Aiden imitating Bibik.

Aiden wants to help as well!

Boil the hard ingredients (sengkuang, carrot, kacang panjang, chilli, tempe etc.) to lessen actual cooking time.

Then angkat.

Bibik insisted on heating the coconut milk. And it was a good thing that she did, because I could smell a foul smell, indicating that the raw coconut dah basi! In the end I had to stick with just instant coconut milk.

This boy was busy playing with cooking oil!

Tumis the blended items until pecah minyak. Add a bit of blended dried chilli.

Add coconut milk and water. Add lemon grass and daun limau.

Season as needed with salt and chicken stock.

Nyummy!

Throw in the boiled ingredients.

And the tempe and fried tauhu. Make sure the fire is small.

Mix it well and add the foo chuk.

Last but not least, throw in the chilli.

And you're done! One nyummy lontong coming up for dear Hubby!