Malaysian Monday #2: Muah Chee

Posting a little early for MM, but here's something which you can whip out in less than 10 minutes (if you have the ingredients available in your kitchen) and best thing is, it's gluten-free! :]

Muah chee is a treat right out of my childhood. I will always buy it (or rather my parents would buy it for me) when we were out and about on weekends and if we chanced upon random roadside uncles/aunties hawking this delectable treat. Also, I love everything to do with peanuts. I love peanut pancakes, peanut snowballs, peanut soup, peanut tang yuen, peanut ang koo kuehs - you get my drift, basically anything peanut = my favourite. My mom usually dry fries the peanuts, grinds them up and keeps them in a jar in the fridge, so that whenever we want say, peanut toppings, we can easily whip the jar out of the fridge and add them in. She also has a jar of whole peanuts, which we pop when we have a craving for peanuts. This is also used when we have our traditional "thunder rice tea" or (客家擂茶) since my mom is Hakka :] My mom also uses the same ground peanuts (with peanut butter and sugar) in her peanut baos, which I absolutely love. I'm somewhat of a picky bao eater, so I only eat my mom's peanut and vegetable baos. Peanut bao is not something you can find anywhere - anyone knows where you can get nice ones in Singapore or Malaysia? Anyway, the point of the story is: always keep peanuts in your fridge, you never know when you need them - like when you have a craving for apam balik or muah chee :]

I specifically searched for a recipe which didn't require steaming, because my craving had to be satisfied now! So microwaveable muah chee it was! (Btw, I use my microwave for many other purposes, including making sausages and instant noodles when I'm lazy.) These photos are again, taken with my iPhone, because the muah chee was done in minutes (literally) and went into my stomach within seconds! So, there was absolutely no time to take the camera out =p

What was left of my muah chee after I remembered to take a photo of it.

Muah Chee

Makes enough to serve one 

Ingredients

25 g glutinous rice flour

40 g water

25 g peanuts, toasted and chopped (or ground)

  5 g sugar, or to taste

Method:

1. Combine the peanuts and sugar together in a bowl. Set aside.
2. In a microwave safe bowl, add the glutinous rice flour and water. Mix well and ensure that there are no clumps. Place it into the microwave (I used power at 70w) for 2 minutes. The mixture should be sticky but not gooey. 
3. Using a fork (or spoon), drop the microwaved dough onto your peanut mixture and use a pair of scissors or knife to cut the dough into smaller pieces and roll it about the peanut mixture. 

Janine's jots: 

• Modifications: The original recipe is from Ju. If you are serving the muah chee to a family, do use the original recipe which should serve 5 or more people for a light snack.  
• Taste: I left out the shallot oil, because I didn't have any, but in the future, I'd probably add a little bit of vanilla extract to make the muah chee more fragrant :]
• Texture: Just like those selling on the streets! You can microwave it on high (100w) for 2 minutes and it's fine as well. I tried microwaving it for 3-4 minutes and there was no visible change to the texture (ie, it didn't harden). 
• Storage: I doubt the muah chee can be stored in the fridge because it has to be continually steamed or kept warm for it to be soft and chewy. In any case, whipping up this dish takes less than 5 minutes if you have all the ingredients on hand!
• Would I make this again? Definitely! All you need to do is place everything in a microwave and that's more than half the dish done already :] On top of that, it's so much cheaper to make this at home (peanuts cost well, peanuts and the glutinous rice flour is <$2 for 500g!) and you know exactly what goes into the muah chee!

This is my second entry for the Muhibbah Malaysia Monday event hosted by Shaz of Test With Skewer and Suresh of 3 Hungry Tummies.