The 2018 Russia World Cup is on going! Reading the news abut how the events gonna take place ignites the good memories I had from last year trip to Moscow and St Petersburg, June 2017. FYI: My family of five did the ticket reservation 5 months before the trip and we got promotion ticket from Thai Airways that reduce the price to 50%: only Rp 5,6 Million/person for round-trip ticket! So many people thought that Russia is kind of bizarre place to visit; Moscow was listed as the most expensive city, the language is hard to be understood, the halal* food will be hard to be noticed ..read more

Veeeryyyyy long time no cook new recipe! Recently I've been focusing more on writing stories (check it out here: steller.co/nntmv) that I leave this blog. Anyway, office situation after post-Eid holiday was fulfilled by foods from friend's hometown. One of my friend gave me raw cassava from her hometown, Ciamis, West Java, and asked me to cook Thai Cassava Dessert. Well, challenge accepted! The original Thailand's name is Montad Chuame, however, people are more familiar to call this as "Thai Cassava Dessert", or "Candied Cassava Dessert". Its term is candied because the caramelized proces ..read more

Ramadan Mubarak! After two months hiatus in food blogging, I finally able to make time to cook and write about Ramadan cuisine. Ramadan itself is the holy month for the muslims; we abstain from eating from dawn until sunset thus we could pay more attention to Quran recital and daily night prayers. The eating before the fasting begin (suhoor) then must be nutritious, and easy to be made. So savory bread pudding, it is! For years bread pudding are relied upon as the easiest and simplest comfort food. Although on the first place it was stated as the food for poor man for the using of (sometime ..read more

Cooking traditional food from Indonesia is always challenging as no one knows which one the authentic recipe. It also happens with me cooking this Mie Aceh (Acehnese Noodle), it ended up me experimenting with all curry related spices I had from my stock. Thankfully it still tasteful, and I'm gonna make this one again in the future :) As I've mentioned above, spices used for this Mie Aceh were the same ones used in curry. How it finally be with noodle in somewhere far from India and China? During trading era a thousand year ago, Aceh was one of the transit place in main trading route from In ..read more

Cooked another biscuit this year ? When I suddenly craved for sweet spicy crisp to be dunk on milk, I opted to bake my mother's favourite: Speculaas! Just like the other Dutch sweet goodies, this Speculaas is also containing a lot of spices. Cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, and some recipe even list black pepper and white pepper on their ingredients. No wonder, eating it will generate warm feelings in your tummy, very matching food for cold weather in Europe. And I should be proud knowing that fact, as it is because Indonesia's treasury in nature the Dutch has those co ..read more

Let's we have a throwback to two months ago, where did you go for last December holiday? I was having a trip, visiting my brother who was on duty in Sorong, West Papua. When you might be having a thought "Wow, what a rural!", in fact, Sorong was not that out of town that it is the most developed city in West Papua! Being a coastal city makes Sorong become the city of transit from Makassar or East Nusa Tenggara. Plus, on 90s President Soeharto was empowering transmigration mostly from Java island to Sorong, and those were the most influencing things for culinary culture in Sorong. My ..read more

I am a big fan of Marie biscuit that I already tasted almost all of the Marie biscuit brands those are available in Indonesia. The melted in your mouth kind of texture, or you can have it by dunk it in warm beverages for seconds before it goes like sweet smooth texture on your tongue. How can I resist? Curious to make the copycat, so I made Homemade Marie Biscuit!  Have you ever wondered who is "Marie"? It was in 1874 when the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia married to the Duke of Edinburgh, and they had Marie biscuit specially created from London for their celebration ..read more

I know it's very very late, but I just had time to post this now due to very busy and hectic office hour. Actually I create this comfort drink about a month ago, but it is still wort to be posted :) Beng-beng is one of the most favorite of Indonesian chocolate bar. It is basically wafer, coated with rice Krispies, salted caramel, vanilla cream, and chocolate ..read more

Remember my recipe for basic banana cake? As it's just the "basic" one, the cake is actually can be developed to another toothsome cake! Combining the savory taste of cheese and bittersweet from chocolate would never go wrong, would it? Plus, this recipe will make double, so I used 20x30 cm and 20x20 cm pan. Perfect recipe for a family gathering! Niken's Chocolate Banana Cake with Cheese Crumble Total time: 1 hour 40 minutes Yield: One 20x30 cm pan and 20x20 cm pan Ingredients: - Cake: 3 tablespoon butter 1 cup palm sugar 3 eggs 2 ½ cup all-purpose flour 1 ½ teaspo ..read more

The 2018 Russia World Cup is on going! Reading the news abut how the events gonna take place ignites the good memories I had from last year trip to Moscow and St Petersburg, June 2017. FYI: My family of five did the ticket reservation 5 months before the trip and we got promotion ticket from Thai Airways that reduce the price to 50%: only Rp 5,6 Million/person for round-trip ticket! So many people thought that Russia is kind of bizarre place to visit; Moscow was listed as the most expensive city, the language is hard to be understood, the halal* food will be hard to be noticed ..read more