V.I.P. Tamarind-Coconut Cookies (Vegan)

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. ~ Author Unknown

You must be thinking, what weirdly-shaped cookies are those? Yes they are weird-looking and for good reason. My sister, who lives in Switzerland, is currently home on holiday and she bought me this set of adorable V.I.P. cookie-cutters by Birkmann. The abbreviation stands for Very Important Plätzchen (meaning 'cookies' in German) and as far as sweet things rank for a sweet tooth like me, they are very important indeed. The special deal about these cutters is that they create cut-outs in the cookies to enable you to hang them off the edge of a glass or mug, or allow you to tidily tie a ribbon in a stack of these if you're gifting them away. Don't you simply want to hug the person who thought of this coolness?

My Very Important Plätzchen cutters

I was keen to try these cutters out, so I quickly rustled up an easy recipe the day after I got them (did I mention I was keen?). My initial thought was to pair tamarind flavor with white chocolate, but after running and tasting a batch of these, I decided that the tamarind would actually go better with coconut milk. That's the great thing about creating your own recipe, isn't it... it's yours to change whatever at whichever stage of the process. Total freedom, I'm all for it.

These two could well go down a dream, but I as matchmaker said 'No'.

Normally when I bake cookies, or anything for that matter but especially cookies, I would use butter. Chunks of it. I love the rich taste and melt-in-your-mouth texture that it imparts and not only I, but my thighs seem to love butter too (cellulite has a certain texture, correct?). Well, yes. I do feel slightly sorry for people who can't or won't take butter, but am enlightened enough to know that everyone chooses their path in this life for whatever reason they feel closest to. So yeah, mine is to bake cookies with butter...normally.

As you can probably tell, I'm far from being vegan but all those time spent cruising around to vegan bloggers' sites must've rubbed off on me. On the day I made these, I plucked up the courage to eliminate butter and create my first vegan cookie recipe.

Truthfully, the absence of butter didn't render these four-leafed clover cookies useless at all. In fact, they tasted wonderful if not exactly shortbread-like (hey, you win some, you lose some). The coconut milk added a certain sweet depth and next time, I would add more tamarind paste to accentuate its tart flavor. Out of curiosity, I dipped a few in melted white chocolate but the sweetness was overpowering so decided it was better to ditch the chocolate.

This has been a lovely experience. The truth is, though.... I can't wait to get back to butter!

Hang off the glass or tie a ribbon around the notch for gifting!

V.I.P. Tamarind-Coconut Cookies
Makes: 60 small cookies
Ingredients:
Wet mix
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon tamarind paste

Dry mix
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt

Method:

1. Mix the wet ingredients in a bowl, then mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Start pouring the wet mix into the dry mix and stir until well combined. You should get a very soft dough. Chill in the fridge for 15 minutes before rolling out.

2. To cut cookies, line workspace with wax paper, roll the dough flat to about 1/2 cm thick. Dip the cookie cutter in flour and cut shapes by pressing down on the dough. Dip cutter in flour in between cuts to prevent the dough from sticking to the cutter. Remove the extra dough around the shapes with a toothpick and transfer the shaped cookie dough onto a baking sheet lined with non-stick parchment paper.

3. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 170C/350F. Leave to cool on tray for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.

Tamarind Pasta with Muscovado Chilli Sauce

Hoping that I'd learnt something from my last Foodie Fight (Battle Cucumber and Pepper), I've signed up again for a new battle - Tamarind and Sugar. The possiblities of creating a myriad of dishes with these two adaptable ingredients seem endless, but I decided to go for a savory main course. 

Tamarind has a very distinctive sharp, sour and hmm...salty-ish taste. It therefore goes well with sweet and/or spicy dishes so those are the flavors I would play with. A pasta dish seemed to make the most sense to me, however instead of incorporating the tamarind in just the sauce, I decided to make a tamarind-flavored pasta and then make a sweet-spicy sauce to accompany it. I figured the pasta would only contain a mild taste of tamarind, so I made sure the tarmarind-ness permeated throughout this dish, being in the sauce as well as the poached pears. Subtle but viral.

The sweetness of the sauce, of course, comes from the brown sugar and in this case, I used Muscovado which is dark brown, moist sugar because it would give the sauce a slightly darker appearance and distinct taste (it still contains molasses in it). Two chillies were used to provide the heat, I just wasn't brave enough to throw in more than that!

Now, the pears. They were actually a mistake gone right. You see, originally, I was going to make a dessert and the poached pears were supposed to compliment the sweet pasta sauce. However, my sweet brown sugar sauce had a mind of its own and couldn't, wouldn't turn out exactly the way I'd wanted it, so it was on to Plan B. The pears were already poached though! No sweat, they could still be used to lighten up the heavy, rich texture of the rest of the dish. No wastage here after all, phew.

Using the pasta maker reminded me not to take our dexterity for granted. I really wished I had 4 hands to do all the work! The flecks in the pasta and the sharp, tamarind aroma while boiling was well worth the effort.

Tamarind Pasta with Muscovado Chilli Sauce
Ingredients:
Serves 2 persons

Tamarind Pasta
2/3 cup plain flour
1 tablespoon plain flour, to adjust dough consistency
1 egg
1 tablespoon tamarind paste

Poached Pears
250ml water
¼ cup brown sugar
2 tablespoon tamarind paste
2 small pears, peeled, cored and quartered

Muscovado Chilli Sauce
1 red onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 red chillies, sliced thinly
2 tablespoons virgin olive oil
1 cup tomato puree
¼ cup rice vinegar
½ cup Muscovado sugar
½ cup tamarind liquid from poaching pears

Method:
Tamarind Pasta

1. Rub the tamarind paste into the flour to remove seeds, then place in a food processor. Add egg and process for 10 seconds until the flour is moist and crumbly. Adjust by adding some more flour to the dough if it is extra sticky and process further. Each time you stop the machine, pinch the dough between your fingers, it should feel firmer each time. After about 30 seconds of processing, the dough should come together and form a loose ball on top of the blade, and feel moist but not sticky when pinched.
2. Sprinkle some flour on a hard wood surface and start to knead the dough. With the heel of one hand, push the ball of dough away from you. Fold it back toward you and rotate the dough a quarter turn. Repeat this process until the dough feels damp without being sticky, then stop kneading (about 1-2 minutes). Shape dough into a ball and cover with a large overturned bowl, let it rest for 30 minutes.
3. Run dough through pasta machine as per the instructions and leave to dry for about 30 minutes before cooking.

Poached Pears

1. Mix the water, brown sugar and tamarind paste in a pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and add sliced pears to the hot liquid. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the pears become soft. Cover top of liquid with greaseproof paper with a hole on top to prevent the pears from sticking out of the water (which, btw, will oxidize them and turn them a darker color).

Pears poached under the cover of greaseproof paper

2. Drain the water but do not throw it away, as you will need it to make the pasta sauce below. Discard the tamarind seeds and leave the pears to cool before slicing thinly. Set aside for assembly.

Muscovado Chilli Sauce

1. Fry the red onion garlic and chillies in the olive oil until fragrant.

2. Add the tomato puree, rice vinegar and poaching liquid, stir in the Muscovado sugar. Lower the heat and continue to stir mixture until it becomes thick and more sauce-like.

Assembly:

Plate the cooked tamarind pasta in a shallow bowl and pour the sweet-spicy Muscovado sauce around the pasta. Place the sliced pears on and around the pasta, then serve. If you wish, garnish the dish with chopped cilantro and cherry tomatoes.

Ahhhh yes, don't forget to stop and smell the flowers...

Finally, I just wanted to share with you how beautiful the weather was on the day I made this dish. The sky was a brilliant blue and my garden looked so gor-jusss, here's a shot just for you!

If you want to check out my competition and vote for me (and I know you want to ;-)), please click this link to Foodie Fights on Tuesday. Thanks for your love and support!

Chocolate~Tamarind Cookies

Sweet-Sour-Salty, then add Chocolate. This is what these tamarind cookies taste like. Mmmmm..... You know, I'd love to add a dash of chilli powder in these too, but I was torn because I'd wanted to share these cookies with my young, fellow dwellers, and their palates are not yet fully developed! Maybe after a couple of years more of my kitchen experiments, they will develop worldly and 100%-tolerant tastebuds ... we shall see.

Tamarind paste

Tamarind has a sour, tangy accent and in our home, it's mostly used to flavor savory dishes. Some cultures also use it to make sweets, since it's got that addictive sweet-sour-salty thing going on. Apart from the fruit, tamarind now also comes in several forms - tamarind paste, tamarind powder (normally with added sugar), and tamarind sauce. For these cookies, I decided to use the paste, seeds and all. Well, to be honest, the seeds are a bit troublesome to extract for this purpose, but if you try my "rubbing" method below, you'll do more than alright.

Rub tamarind paste into the flour (left) to remove the seeds (right).

It's always cool to be square!

The texture of these cookies is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, which is the way I like 'em best! You can make them plain or with chocolate, although I must say that the chocolate glaze is a distracting as well as enhancing flavor to the dough. There aren't many people I know on this planet who dislike chocolate (truly), and I for one love it - TONS of it! (On a similar note, but nothing to do with this recipe, you do know that some spas offer a yummy chocolate bath to smoothen the skin? I'd probably dip my face in it as well! If you want to DIY the bath at home... here's a recipe!).

I made both versions, plain and chocolate-glazed, and the former proved a hit as well. Ooops, I did kinda, sorta, white-lie-ishly omit to mention the "tamarind" part, and that's probably why the kiddies gobbled these up fast! No point in putting them off unnecessarily. Right??

Chocolate~Tamarind Cookies

Makes 25-30 cookies

Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup raw brown sugar
1/4 cup Muscovado sugar (moist brown sugar)
1 egg
2 cups plain flour
2 tablespoons tamarind paste
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
river salt, for sprinkling (optional)

Chocolate glaze:
2 tablespoons butter
250g dark chocolate
2 tablespoons tamarind paste

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with silpat or non-stick baking paper.

2. Sift the flour in a bowl and add the tamarind paste, seeds and all. Rub the paste into the flour, this will help remove the seeds easily. After that add baking soda and salt and stir the mixture evenly with a spatula.

3. Beat the butter and 3 sugars on medium speed in another bowl until mixture is light and creamy (4-5 mins). Add the egg and beat further until combined.

4. Fold in the flour-tamarind mixture gently with a spatula until just combined.

5. Scoop out a tablespoonful of cookie dough and place on tray 2 inches apart. I shaped mine with a square cookie cutter. If you want, sprinkle a dash of salt over the cookies just before they go into the oven.

6. Bake for exactly 12 minute. Cool for 5 minutes before glazing.

7. For the glaze, melt the butter and chocolate in a double boiler or on very low heat. Once melted, stir in the tamarind paste (complete with seeds). Stir until the paste softens and dissolves in the chocolate, then remove the seeds. I left the seeds in there and only discarded them when the glaze is almost finished. It’s just easier that way, and you don’t waste much chocolate!

Note: The chocolate glaze won't be smooth because of the tamarind fibres in it. You can always strain the chocolate while it is still hot for a smoother finish.

Black Velvet - Buah Keranji

Do you know what these black, round babies are?

I remember snacking on these fruits called Keranji or Velvet Tamarind as a child, but now it's hard to find them sold anywhere (I bought these in Kuching). When I handed them out in my palms the kiddies in the house, their immediate reaction was to recoil like they had seen tiny aliens from Mars or something! After a bit of persuasion, they cautiously ate several and their verdicts were mixed, from "Urrgh, it tastes hairy!" (meaning velvety, I think) to "Is it normal for a Keranji to have two seeds?"

Velvet tamarind or Dialium indum, is a tall, tropical, fruit-bearing tree, native to southern Thailand and Malaysia. It belongs to the Leguminosae family, and has small, typically grape-sized edible fruits with brown hard inedible shells. Due to its valued hard and compact wood, it is a threatened species, with its habitat being encroached upon by logging and human settlement. No reports of cultivation exist, information on propagation is limited.

The flavour of the fruit is similar to tamarind, where it derives its English name.

This is what it looks like on the inside...

                                     ... and once we were done eating them!

Lastly, no Keranji story would be complete without this classic Malay rhyme. Remember this?
 
Sorong papan tarik papan
Buah keranji di dalam perahu
Suruh makan engkau makan
Suruh mengaji engkau tak mahu

Those were the good old days!