Cireng...

Cireng stands for Aci digoreng or fried tapioka, it's part of the local snacks known as gorengan or fritters (fried stuff). There are lots of types in this snack : such as fried tofu, fried tempe (I don;t know how to describe tempe but this is a fermented soyabean), banana fritters, sweet potato fritters and one of them is Cireng. I don't know the origin of this snack, but we have lots of this seller in Jakarta.

Since last month there has been lots of talks about the recipe of this snack at a mailing list which I joined, so Friday last week I decided to try the recipe in the weekend. On Sunday I tried a recipe from a blog I found :

175 gr tapioka
75 gr flour
65 cc santan / coconut milk
1 leaf of chives, cut finely
100 cc water
3 cloves of garlic, mashed
1 teaspoon salt or chicken flavoured powder
1 teaspoon pepper
1 spoon oil
oil to fry

Put tapioka, flour, chives and pepper all together in a bowl.
Fry the mashed garlic with 1 spoon of oil, till fragrant add up the water and coconut milk plus the salt or the chicken flavoured powder until boiling.
Add this to the mix flour, mix it till it comes together using a wooden spoon, after cooling down from boiling to warm you can use your hand to mix it.
After mixing, take some of the dough with spoon and make it a ball in your hand (oil your hand a bit so it won't get too sticky) then press it so it will shape like a chocolate chip cookies and fry it. Though the color is not as white as the ones sold but it's quite ok and healthier.

In my own experience of trying the recipe, my maid told me that the chicken powder

won't be enough if it's 1 teaspoon, so she used the who sachet, but it was too much as the after taste of the Cireng has a bitter MSG taste, which I need an ice tea to wash the taste down, so I'm sure it has to be 1 teaspoon or may be if you want to add up maybe just a bit more, not too much.

I made a little experiment by using crab finger divide it in 3 and put it in the middle of 1 ball of dough, then use the dough as if a blanket of the crab finger than fry it.
Everybody in my house loved it, including my BF :D