Here's the rice cooked using the blue pea flower extract, served with the rest of the stuff we made during our Zoom cooking club sessions on the weekend. FYI I used 5g of the flowers, soaked in about 1 cup boiling water from the kettle for about 15 mins, then extracted. From that, I used about 1/4 cup of the extract for about 1-1.25 cups rice (substracted from the total amount of water you would need for boiling rice). In other words, about 1g of dried flowers would have been enough to yield this colour if cooking 1-1.25 cups rice. Recipes to come!

I bought these 80g packs of dehydrated blue pea (aka blue butterfly) flowers in a Thai grocery shop in Cabramatta for A$7.20 each. Let's see how the results compare for making Nasi Kerabu. My previous batch of Nasi Kerabu came out a grey colour using blue pea flower powder - it could be that the batch I was using was old but truthfully I've heard the same complaint from others who have had the same problem (ie. their kuihs turning out black) even using newer batches. Tagging @Swee Low since you were asking about the powder!

I made a pseudo Nasi Kerabu but without the blue colouring for the rice (I used some blue flower powder but the rice turned out grey, so I made a second batch just using pandan extract plus some coconut cream to compensate. Accompaniments are - solok lada (chillies stuffed with fish paste and simmered in coconut cream), ikan goreng (fried fish - I used tilapia fillets marinated with turmeric and salt and pepper), mixed herbs (laksa leaves, Thai basil & bunga kantan) with cucumber, keropok (usually fish crackers, but I fried up some prawn crackers instead), and serunding (shredded beef cooked with spices & coconut & coconut cream), served with budu (fermented fish sauce) and salted egg. I also separately fried up some lamb mince with cumin and korma curry powder (not pictured) - to be served separately another time. Nasi Kerabu recipe to follow!

During this morning’s Cookalong, Jackie expertly multitasked — preparing Nasi Kerabu along with all the complementary dishes. She fried Tilapia, made Serunding and cooked lamb mince. Cathy made Soya Milk from scratch using soya bean she had soaked overnight. I tried my hand at Pajeri Nenas, the dish Jackie demonstrated last week. Using canned pineapple instead of fresh, I was delighted to find it turned out beautifully. It was my first time both cooking and tasting Panera Nenas, and it was absolutely lovely.

Hi folks, I'm aiming to make Nasi Kerabu in our two upcoming Zoom sessions; I've previously published the recipes in a 4-part series on my website. Here's the link to them - https://jackiem.com.au/?s=nasi+kerabu (look for the ones that say Part x of 4) See you this Friday/Saturday my time :)