Chik's Crib: November 2025

24 November 2025

Rawon (Javanese Beef Soup with Keluak) Recipe

Soup November 24, 2025 0

This is a Javanese soup that we really enjoyed in Yogyakarta, and I'm glad I have the chance to make this at home. With the surplus of buah keluak in my fridge from all the Peranakan dishes that I've been cooking (I bought a whole kilo!), as well as leftover candlenuts and turmeric, I made this recipe from Devina Hermawan, a cooking instructor and Masterchef contestant.

After all the rich Peranakan buah keluak stews that we'd been eating over the last week, this light herbal broth came like a breath of fresh air. My whole family is now fans of rawon, and this may actually be our favourite buah keluak recipe.

The soup is easy enough to put together on a relaxing off-day, but my schedule was pretty packed for the month. There wasn't an off-day to spare :/, and with the ingredients languishing in the fridge for the better part of a week, I finally bit the bullet and made the soup on a balmy Thursday night after dinner. It was the family dinner for Friday, and finally, I took these pictures of the leftover soup on a Saturday lunch. Life often gets in the way, doesn't it? Still, the pictures - and the soup - turned out really well.

Rawon (Javanese Beef Soup with Keluak) Recipe
Original recipe by Devina Hermawan, with the written recipe translated by ChatGPT
Serves: 4-5 servings

Ingredients
1 kg beef, chopped into palm-sized pieces (you can choose a tough cut like shanks or chuck, or a more tender cut if you prefer)
4 candlenuts
6 cloves garlic
3 cm turmeric
5 pieces of buah keluak paste
10 shallots, peeled and chopped into thirds
50 ml cooking oil
50 ml water (optional, if using a food processor to blend the spices)
2 stalks lemongrass, bruised and chopped lengthwise into thirds
2 bay leaves
5 kaffir lime leaves
1 red tomato
500m + 1000ml just-boiled water
1 beef bouillon cube
1.5 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon white pepper
1 stalk of scallion, cut lengthwise into 3-4 pieces
Salted eggs (optional, to serve alongside)
Fried shallots (optional, to serve alongside)
Lime wedges (optional, to serve alongside)
Bean sprouts (optional, to serve alongside)

STEPS

1. Season the beef lightly with salt, ideally overnight in a refrigerator.

When ready to cook:

2. Make the rempah (spice paste): In a mortar and pestle, pound candlenuts into a paste, then add garlic. Crush the garlic, then followed in turn by turmeric, then buah keluak, and finally the shallots. You can use a food processor for this if you prefer. If so, add 50ml of neutral oil and 50ml water into the food processor to help with the blending.

3. In a large wok or pot set over medium-low heat, add oil and sauté the ground spices until the paste breaks, becoming aromatic and releasing oil, about 7-8 minutes. (If you have added oil to blend the spices in a food processor, you can omit adding further oil to the pot). Then add lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and bay leaves and sauté for 1-2 more minutes until fragrant.

4. Add 500ml of just-boiled water to deglaze the pot, making sure to scrape up any of the delicious fond. If you're using a pressure cooker to complete the cook, you may now remove the pot from heat, and go on to Step 5. If not using a pressure cooker, add the remaining ingredients (including the 1000ml of water), then cover and cook for about 3-4 hours, stirring once in a while and adding more water if needed. Remove from heat when the beef pieces are tender, and let cool slightly before serving.

If using a pressure cooker:

5. In a pressure cooker pot, add the beef, red tomato, scallion, beef bouillon, white pepper, and sugar. Pour the cooked spice broth into the pressure cooker pot, followed by the remainder (1000ml) of the water.

6. In the pressure cooker, cook the soup for about 30-45 minutes (for more tender cuts), and about 60-80 minutes (for tougher cuts like shanks or chuck). Let the pressure cooker depressurise completely (perhaps another 45 minutes to an hour) before unlatching the pressure cooker to serve the soup.

7. Serve the rawon in individual bowls. Common accompaniments are halved salted eggs, bean sprouts, lime wedges, fried shallots and sambal.

How to Prepare Salted Eggs:

These need to be washed and cooked before serving. Scrub off the ash with a bit of water (if the salted eggs come individually packed in plastic sheaths, you can fill up the plastic sheath with water and rub the ash off, to avoid clogging up your kitchen sink with ash.) Shake each egg vigorously to centre the egg yolk, then boil in simmering water for about 10 minutes to cook the egg. Remove from the water, let cool, and peel. Quarter and serve.

09 November 2025

Sea Salt Ice Cream Recipe

Recipe November 09, 2025 0

The black stuff's volcanic salt from Scoop Wholefoods, which I thought it'll be a nice touch to the ice cream, but clearly, was mistaken. It stained the ice cream something fierce, and also made it much, much too salty. Skip the other fancy salt, but you should 100% serve this ice cream with caramel popcorn. They're a perfect pairing.

Without the caramel popcorn to sooth over the sea salt, the saltiness becomes a bit more pronounced. Adventurous eaters love it, but some other folks weren't exactly shy in telling me how weird they find this ice cream. It's a rather controversial recipe, despite being Murphy's Ice Cream best-selling flavour. It's a crowd-pleaser, but you do have to find the right crowd.

Depending on how salty the sea salt you use, you'll need to adjust how much salt to add to this recipe. The team at Murphy's harvests sea salt from Dingle, and uses 2 teaspoon of the Dingle sea salt per recipe. They've suggested for people using Maldon, to use 20% less salt (roughly 1.5 tsp) instead. I used fleur de sel for this recipe, which I find 1 scant teaspoon to be the happy medium between the sweetness of the cream with just a touch of saltiness.

Sea Salt Ice Cream Recipe

Original Recipe from Murphy's Ice Cream

Ingredients:

5 egg yolks

120g sugar

220 ml milk

3/4-1 scant tsp of fleur de sel (or 1 1/2 tsp maldon sea salt flakes)

220 ml cream

Steps

1. In a medium-sized bowl, beat the egg yolks with sugar with an electric whisk until the mixture thickens up and lightens in colour, about a few minutes.

2. In a medium-sized saucepan, heat the milk until it starts to simmer. Remove from heat.

3. Slowly drizzle the milk into the egg yolk mixture while continuing to whisk. When combined, pour the mixture back into the saucepan.

4. Set the saucepan over low heat, and slowly warm up the mixture until it reaches 65-70C. Remove from heat once the mixture has reached that temperature. Cooking the mixture further to 76C will cook the egg yolks and turn them into scrambled eggs. (Though if this happens, you can strain out the cooked eggs and proceed with the rest of the recipe.)

5. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the sea salt.

6. In a clean bowl, whip the heavy cream to soft peaks (it should just about double in volume. Gently fold the cream into the custard. Let the mixture cool thoroughly in the fridge.

7. Using an ice cream machine and following the manufacturer's instructions, complete the ice cream recipe.

02 November 2025

Sungei Buloh, Singapore

Singapore November 02, 2025 0

We came to the mangroves of Sungei Buloh early morning one weekend. It’s been a long time coming! My wife enjoys nature and is a frequent visitor to these parts, and she’d been wanting to show me around this area for at least a couple of years.

Well, we finally came. It turned out to be a rather pleasant, peaceful walk. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and much to my own surprise. We talked about the neighbouring region of farmland before, but it’ll be my first time stepping foot into the mangroves here.

It’s a pretty chill excursion, and we didn’t have to pull a Yogyakarta (ie wake up at 3am) for this. Thankfully. The crowd’s pretty manageable when we arrived around half past eight in the morning, and for the most sun-adverse of us, rest assured that it isn’t that warm. The park was free to enter, and ditto for the parking. I celebrate all little joys.

We saw a cheeky squirrel furtively raiding a bird’s nest. I have photo evidence.

Picture by N. A second, more benign squirrel feeding while hanging upside-down.

The first sign that I’ve spent too much time in resorts and not enough time communing with nature was when I misread a post stating “Wetland Centre” for “Wellness Centre”. I had wholeheartedly believed there was a gym and sauna in the mangroves for a hot minute.

I’ve heard of crocodile sightings along Sungei Buloh, but I didn’t think it was common. Well, we spotted four different crocodiles during our walk. Three of them were drifting in the waters, and one of them was lying on land right next to the boardwalk. They're a common sight around these parts, as it turns out. My wife estimates seeing crocodiles in about 70% of her visits here.

Took us a minute to realise it's a crocodile amongst the tree roots, and it was sizing us up.

There were also plenty of monitor lizards around the mangroves, swimming in the brackish waters, or trudging on the boardwalk. The largest one we’ve seen was lying prone along the pavement, which just about everybody gave a wide berth.

We also spotted a wee green snake in the bushes.

At the bridge overlooking a broad stretch of water, we saw schools of fishes circling the mangroves, with constant splashes from the fishes as they jump out of the waters.

At low tide, it’s mealtime for the birds, and they hunt for food along the shallow waters of the mangroves. A heron spreads its wing to entice fishes with shade, and then snatches up the fishes that come near it.

Not far away, a flock of squat little puffs of birds (if I’m a better blogger I’ll know what they’re called) gather on another bank, pecking at the soil.

It was low tide as we came, and we saw plenty of mudskippers amongst the mangroves. These are amphibious fishes that have evolved to walk and breathe on land. It’s pretty incredible to see them hoist themselves over soil and roots.

Sungei Buloh is a pretty sleepy destination, but popular amongst certain interest groups. There were two tour buses pulled up to the entrance as we came, and there were small roving groups of guided photography tours carrying heavy telephoto lens. These photography groups are also the nature buffs too, and I shamelessly eavesdropped on them to learn what they know about this place.

Mangroves used to comprise of 13% of Singapore’s landmass, but prawn farming and the subsequent land reclamation efforts have transformed most of the land into what we see today. Most of the remaining wetlands are now located in the North-western part of Singapore. We could see Johor Bahru just a short distance across the waters. You might want to turn off roaming on your phone plan as you walk along the trails, because you might incur international roaming charges along some parts. We overheard this from one of the photographers, and it turned out to be true.

A complete walk might take about three hours at a gentle pace with plenty of stops, and is just the right amount of early morning sun and fresh air. Much recommended, even if you, like me, can’t distinguish between a heron from a stork, or a monitor lizard from a Komodo dragon, or call every squat cute little bird a puffin (none of these birds in any way resemble actual puffins). It was a good time nonetheless.