Cooking is not my true passion, but I'd better cook rather than buying ready-serve foods. I like to try something that I have never done before such as cooking. My other hobby is challenging myself on doing something different based on my memories. I love reading and a recipe book is one of my collections. I collected the books from the Women's tabloid in the past. I have a mother who loves cooking and she's the best chef in the world for particular recipes, especially the traditional Acehnese food. She made me such a picky eater.

Of course, I won't let myself starving when I couldn't live with her anymore. I learned the basic art of cooking from her by helping her cooking when I was a kid. My job as a main Chef in the house started when I moved into my Hubby's house in South Tangerang, Banten, in 2017. So Let's see how this Lazy Chef does her job!

Lazy Chayote-Pepper Soup

Prepare a medium-size Chayote/Sangyote/fak meao/chow-chow/labu siam. Prepare a bowl/small basin of water to wash it. Peel the outer skin and cut it into pieces according to your taste, not too thick and not too thin.

Because it has a bit of sticky juice after you peel the outer skin, it's better to soak it in the water before you cook it and wash it thoroughly. Remember to separate the seed inside, it tastes a little bitter.

---

Prepare 500 ml boiled water, slice one onion and one garlic then add into the water, add 2-3 Kaffir Lime's leave too, let it boils for 5 minutes on medium heat. Then add the sliced chayote, let it cooked about 15 more minutes or till the chayote soften. We can add more water if we think we want more soup.

Before put off the fire, add 1 gram white pepper powder and salt to the taste, let it chill for a while before you serve it with hot rice. I usually made this soup when I don't want to be in the kitchen too long and serve it with fried anchovies with the stinky bean in chili sauce or fried chicken.

---

---

_{Lazy Chayote-Pepper Soup with fried anchovies with stinky beans in chili sauce, a perfect combination for lunch!}

As My FIL (father-in-law) loves to have some desserts while spending his evening time watching TV, I need to rack my brain to use anything I have in the kitchen to make something soft and suitable for a toothless man with Hypertension. So far, He loves everything I made no matter it's just frugal but not cheapskate foods. For example This Frugal Uli. But this time, let's make something unusual and this is my first time making this dessert called "Bongko Kopyor" which not really like the original one. We need to be creative in the kitchen, remember, because it's our territory.

My Kitchen is My laboratory
-cicisaja-

Bongko Kopyor Ala Cici

Preparation

1. Banana leaves, cut into size 20x20 after we heat it for a minute on the stove to make it flexible and not easy to break when we fold it later.
2. 200 grams Rice Flour
3. 2 grams salt
4. 65 ml Instant coconut milk + 350 ml water
5. 150 ml coconut water
6. 200-300 grams Kopyor or young coconut's flesh from 2 coconuts
7. 100 grams Palm Sugar
8. 2 Pandan Leaves (screwpine) and skip this if you have pandan paste or pandan extract
9. Toothpick and Steamer

---

How To?

---

---

_{The Chayote-Pepper Soup is a well-known soup in Aceh, My Hometown. If we don't have chayote, it goes well with other vegetables such as young papaya, water gourd, or unripe pumpkin. If you don't have kaffir lime leaves, maybe Basil leaves will do, but just add it after the pepper and salt.}

_{Bongko is a traditional food from Gresik, East Java. The People there usually add Jack Fruit, Pearl sago porridge, bread, and not rice flour. But sometimes we can find it in other regions with Rice Flour and Tapioca flour (made from cassava) and you can add Plantain or pumpkin too beside the young coconut's flesh.}

Here we go with My signature Dried Fruit on Steemit!

I haven't made my next batch of this dried fruit yet, I just try my next experiment on it. But Let me show you how this become my signature on steemit, even though I'm not the one who discovered this recipe in the world, LOL. In My Hometown, people usually dried this fruit and make it salty (asam sunti)so they can preserve it for a long time and use it for daily cooking, not for a snack like mine.

_{The tree, flowers and the fruit. It is Averrhoa Bilimbi or known as Belimbing wuluh/sayur in Bahasa Indonesia or Boh Limeng in Bahsa Aceh. It tastes so sour or acidic. it is also useful to clean the fingernails (like acetone) and I use it to clean my bathroom sometimes.}

---

_{we can use this bilimbi to make a special sauce called Asam Udeung or hot and sour shrimp paste, with boiled/fried shrimp, onion, cayenne, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and salt. Mashed it all and you will get a tasty side dish for lunch too!}

Sundried Candied Bilimbi aka Sunti Mameh

_{This is my first batch in 2018 that I had published on steemit in April 2018, but no appreciation because I was a newbie and I couldn't get the link to the post anymore because my browser would be stuck and freezing when I scroll down too long. Later I made it again special for This Post on October 1st, 2018.}

To make this sundried bilimbi, I need more than a week to get a not too sour one, but if I keep it soaked in the sugar water for a month, the taste would be sweeter. let me show you the steps of the making.

1. Pick up the fruit from the tree and wash it thoroughly 2-3 times.
2. cut the tip and end of the fruits
3. stab the fruits with a fork to make it porous so the acidic juice can be reduced
4. wash it once again then put it into a big container
5. Add 50 grams salt for every 1-kilogram of fruits and mix it well
6. Close the lid of the container and leave it for 24 hours.

Next day, we wash the salt from the fruits, it has changed its color too. put it back to the container and this time we add 500 grams of sugar and leave it for another 1-2 days. Don't forget to put the lid of the container on.

The next step is to drain the sugar water from the fruits, it can proceed to be a syrup because it tastes a bit sour. Then boils another 500 grams of sugar in 300 ml water till it fully boiling and then pour it into the fruits in the container and leave it for another 2-3 days. After several days, it's time to move to the next step.

Filter the water from the soaked fruits, boils it with another 500 grams of sugar in a big pan (you can add more if you want it sweeter) add the cinnamon barks and cloves if you want it tasty too, and cayenne if you want it hot and spicy. After the sugar water is reduced by a quarter, add in the fruits and cook it for 25 minutes with low heat, we can stir it carefully once in a while. After we put off the fire, let it soaked for another 24 hours before we filter the water and dried the fruits under the sun for 2-3 days. we can use the leftover sugar water as a sauce for fruit salad too and keep it in the fridge to use it some other times. We need 2 kilograms sugar to sweetened 1 kilogram bilimbi.

---

Now we have the Sundried candied Bilimbi, ready to eat anytime we want and the taste will not be just less sour but also sweet, hot, and spicy.

_{looks tasty right? aahh, remember to put a layer of plastic under the fruits before you dry it under the sun, to make sure the ants won't come to taste it before us and the fruits won't stick to the container we use to dry them.}

This Post is created for siz contest| Share Best Local recipe By @siz-official and I invite @novaamalia and @pinabuloh to join the fun!

_{25% rewards of this contest set for @steemcoffeeshop and 25% for @siz-official to support community}

Thanks for reading and Have a wonderful week