Sambal Seafood Medley

Happy new Year 2011!

Here's a posting to get me back on track with the theme of this blog, which is cooking.

Sambal tumis with seafood, especially squid is one of my favourite Malaysian dishes.

I managed to pick up some prepared seafood from a local supermarket and thought I'd make some fresh sambal (chilli ) sauce to cook this.

The ingredients for the sauce are red chillies, onions (preferable shallots which I did not have at the time), garlic, toasted belacan (fermented shrimp paste) and tamarind juice.

Its best to pound it manually in a pestle and mortar but I was lazy and used a blender. I added salt and sugar during the blending process.

Then heat plenty of oil in a pan, brown some sliced onions, then add sauce and fry till fragant.

Then add seafood and fry for 3 - 5 minutes. Not too long or it will turn tough and dry, especially if you are using octopus.

And finally here is the dish. Would have looked better with some coriander garnish, but I had none at the time.

Mee Goreng Udang ( Prawn Fried Noodles )

A quick, and simple dish, where the ingredients play a huge part in how good (or bad) it taste.

I had not bought anything to make dinner that night and decided to look around to see what was in the cupboard and freezer. What I found were the essential ingredients for this slight variation of a popular Malaysian mamak (indian-muslim) dish.

The noodles and prawns were fried separately, as the latter were quite big and I wanted to make sure they were cooked properly rather than frying them together with the noodles, and risk over or undercooking them.



Noodles:
I had some instant "straight to wok" noodles for emergencies, but its best to use fresh egg noodles. Not the thin variety.
I also had some sambal belachan frozen in individual portions. These were made by grinding belachan (pungent prawn paste), chillies, garlic and dried shrimps together.

Method:
Fry the paste in oil with sliced onions till fragrant - when the fumes start to make you cough and splutter, then that it the right time to add the noodles!
Sprinkle water so that noodles becomes soft and succulent. Then add tomato sauce, chilli sauce and sweet soy sauce. Add salt to taste.
When nearly done, crack an egg over it. Continue frying till egg becomes brown.
Then its done!




Prawns:
I used peeled and deveined raw tiger prawns (frozen). Fresh is better if you can get them.
Heat 50% butter, 50% oil, then add diced capsicum, curry leaves and garlic. Fry till brown (only takes seconds), then add 1 tsp curry powder paste.
Again, fry till fumes make you cough and splutter, then add the prawns and fry quickly. Add salt to taste. Remove when you start seeing moisture seep out of the prawns. You dont want to lose too much water from the prawns or they will not be succulent and juicy when you bite into them.

Serve noodles, topped with the prawns.

Prawn Kuey Teow ( Ho Fun)

I am really treading on old ground here. I have previously blogged on homemade Chow Kuey Teow here:
http://malaysiankitchen.blogspot.com/2008/01/chow-kuey-teow.html

This was made exactly the same way, but with just lovely juicy tiger prawns. It's not that I have run out of stuff to blog about, but that I dont have the time at the moment to do a lengthy blog, and yet still want to keep this blog active.

So feast your eyes on this dish. I am not sure if its because of the price of rice at the moment or something else, but the ho fun I have been buying have been very brittle recently. The price has not gone up by much while price of rice has doubled. Maybe they add less rice flour and more water in the ho fun these days. The result is that the finished dish is rather broken up. However, taste is still the same, fortunately!

Prawn Linguine

Here is one of the rare non-oriental dish I make occassionally. I have an aversion towards rich foods such as those made with cheese or cream or other dairy products, so the sauce used here is heavily based on tomatoes and various herbs and spices.


Below are the main ingredients for the sauce. The veg used are onions, garlic, red capsicum, and a medium tomato. I use pre-cooked prawns as raw prawns gives out too much liquid and dilute the sauce too much.



Firstly, I fry all the veg together, but careful not to brown them too much, as they still have to be stewed later on. I add mixed herbs and a generous portion of chopped dried parsley. Better to use fresh if you have it at hand though.



Then I pour in the can if chopped tomatoes, and also one T of tomato puree. After this, I add some stock. Knorr's chicken stock if you dont have any homemade ones at hand. I also add salt and sugar to taste. Sugar is VERY important here, otherwise the dish will taste too sour. Then I let it stew for about 10 - 15 minutes till all the veg goes just soft, but not to a pulp.



I also ensure that the liquid is reduced significantly, according to how thick I want the final product to be. Then I add the prawns. Remember that the prawns will let out juice as well and dilute the sauce, so do allow for this.


Give it a good stir till the prawns start to curl up. This should take only about 3 minutes. Any longer and the prawns will be overcooked. I also add the fresh tomato at this point. I know it sounds like a lot of tomatoes, but each different form of tomatoes gives it additional and unique flavours.



Then pour over your pasta and serve! I didn't bother showing how I cooked the pasta because if you need instructions on how to do that, then you probably will not be interested in reading this anyway. ;-)