I was not particularly excited about reviewing The Healthy Family Cookbook; anything healthy can’t be that wonderful. But then I like Cecilia Tan’s Penang Peranakan cookbook, and mine is an old and tattered copy because I often refer to it when I am not sure of a recipe and I can’t get my mom on the phone. So, I was willing to check out the book.
Cecilia is a Penangite, and most of the dishes she featured on The Healthy Family Cookbook is familiar to me. And as I turned the pages, I found many recipes that I wanted to ear-mark and try out.
I love Ginger Fried Rice, and so I featured in the the book review I did in StarTwo today. Check out the review in Kuali, and find out how you can get a 20% discount for the book.
But the recipe that I like most is Cecilia’s Soybean Milk Agar-Agar. In her notes, she wrote that it’d be a nice change from the usual coconut milk jelly, and she was right. It’s rich and creamy, and still feels real healthy… never mind the amount of sugar in it.
It’s also real quick to do if you buy ready-made soybean milk. I like the jelly well enough, but I also like my soybean milk with palm sugar, not white sugar. And in Penang, the stalls sell Michael Jackson soybean milk – ie soybean milk with cincau (black herbal jelly). So, I just decided that I’ll make my soybean milk jelly the way I like them with my drinks.
For the palm sugar version, just substitute the white sugar with 200g palm sugar. I added 200g of cincau to the soybean milk jelly, but you can use any amount you like. They are real pretty with the cincau, and the cool cincau is a good addition, especially in this blistering hot weather.
The basic recipe is below :
SOYBEAN MILK JELLY
(The Healthy Family Cookbook by Cecelia Tan)
Ingredients
25g agar-agar, soaked to soften
1 1/2 litre of soybean milk
4 pandan leaves,knotted
75g sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Combine agar-agar, soybean milk and pandan leaves in a saucepan. Cook over low heat. Stir until agar-agar dissolves. Add sugar and cook until completely dissolved.
Add vanilla essence. Stir well. Remove from heat. Pour into jelly moulds. Refrigerate.
The Hungry Caterpillar 