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Cook Your Own Meals (3) - Curry Assam Fish

This is also a popular Penang dish. Nonya restaurants will serve this dish with silver pomfret (Tau Teh) but you can get it with ikan pari or black pomfret in most "economy rice" stalls in Penang.
The curry paste consists of chilli paste, shallots, kunyit (tumeric) and serai. Sometimes we add lengkuas and garlic also. For those of you overseas, it would be a good idea to bring some curry paste in sealed packets. But you can also use dry curry powder. Just mix the powder with chopped shallots before cooking.
Assam Curry fish does best with okra or ladies fingers and tomatoes. If you prefer Indian curry then you can add terung or brinjal (also called aubergine)For this version of curry fish, we use tamarind juice. And we add chopped bunga kantan. This is the traditional Penang nonya taste. Some people prefer the Indian style when cooking curry fish. You don't have to add tamarind juice and bunga kantan for Indian curry fish, just add a little santan. But actually it all happens on your taste, just experiment and see which is to your liking. Cooking is just like chemistry, you have to experiment and come out with something you like. Practise makes perfect.
First you heat some oil and fry the paste till fragrant. Add in the tamarind juice, tomatoes, ladies fingers and some bunga kantan. Add salt and sugar to taste. Let it cook for about 8 to 10 minutes. Check the taste, add in the fish and cook for a further 8 to 10 minutes. You have to try out the cooking time to know how long to cook depending on the size of your fish and ladies fingers. The skill in cooking can only come from experience. The fish should not be overcooked. This is where your technique comes in.

Cook Your Own Meals (2)- Fried Glass Noodles

When you have to cook your own meals, you'll love simple one dish meals where there is minimum preparation, not time consuming, tasty and balanced. Frying rice, instant noodles, rice vermicelli ( bihun) or spaghetti will be popular choices especially if you are eating alone or with only a few housemates. When you get bored with these, you can try this out. Fried Glass Noodles or Char Tang Hoon.
You just need some minced meat ( can be pork, chicken or beef) , some eggs, some tang hoon and some vegetables.
It's very simple. Soak some tang hoon, cut the vegetables, season the minced meat with pepper, soy sauce and corn flour. Fry some minced garlic until fragrant, add in the minced meat and stir fry till cooked. Add in the vegetables. Add some water and seasoning ( oyster sauce, soy sauce, dark soy sauce). Put in the tang hoon , mix and let it cook a short while. Add in the eggs , stir and it's ready. It only takes a short time. Remember to add in lots of pepper before serving. This dish tastes better with lots of pepper. If you have some sambal belacan, it would be even better.
For breakfast or supper, you can even try this "mee goreng" without actually frying. Just cook some instant noodles, discard the water and mix the cooked noodles with sesame oil, pepper and yeast extract Bovril or Marmite. It is very fragrant and tasty and tastes like fried noodles. You can also add some boiled vegetables and charsiew or some leftover roast chicken meat if you want to eat it for dinner.

Cook Your Own Meals (1) - my version of Chai Boey

In this series of posts I shall share some tips on preparing your own meals. Knowing how to cook some simple dishes will come in handy when you leave home and stay on your own. Firstly, it's very much cheaper. For those studying away from home and on a budget, you should learn up cooking. Secondly, when you get bored with the outside food, its a welcome change. Sometimes it may be troublesome to go looking for food especially during weekends when you don't feel like going out. Besides, it's healthier and and gives you a sense of achievement, too.
The first dish I'll introduce is the Penang favourite Chai Boey. If you google this, you'll find many blogs featuring this dish. In Wikipedia there is similar version which the westerners call Chop Suey but it is totally different from our tasty Penang Chai Boey (also called Kiam Chai Boey) Every Chinese in Penang probably loves Chai Boey. Many "economy rice" stalls serve this ever popular dish. The name actually means "leftovers". Usually most homes will prepare this dish after festivals like Chinese New Year when there are a lot of leftovers. But you don't need to have leftovers to prepare this easy and tasty dish. And when you cook this, you don't have to cook other dishes , just cook some rice and you have a balanced meal. This is what you need
Some roast pork or roast duck or roast chicken (for those of you overseas, you can easily get this from chinatown)
Some salted vegetables (not too much because it will make your dish too salty. You can omit these if you can't find it)
A few slices of dried tamarind (assam keping) a stalk of serai (lemon grass) some slices of ginger, a few stalks of dried chilli ( If you can't get these overseas just add a cube of Tom Yam cube but it won't be as nice)
One large onion, one carrot , some jagung shoots, some button mushrooms, some tomatoes ( This is to add variety to your chai boey because the authentic chaiboey will have lots of different dishes thrown in. If you can get some loh bak from the market, it will be even nicer)
For the main vegetables, we use Kai Choy. If you can't find these vegetables you can improvise with other vegetables.
The first step is to add a small amount of water into a pot, turn on the heat and add the ingredients one type at a time. I usually put in the roast pork first because it doesn't need any preparation. You'll need to add a cube of ikan bilis, other wise your chai boey won't taste nice. The original chaiboey has a lot of leftover tasty dishes so if you make it from scratch, you will need some tasty stock. You can add the serai, tamarind slices and dried chillies also because you only need to wash them and add them in. As the pot gets heated up, I'll prepare the other ingredients and add them in . Remember that you only need a small amount of water. Don't be tempted to start with too much water because the whole pot will overflow by the time you add everything. And the dish is not suppose to be a soup. As a guide, about 2 to 3 cm depth of water should be enough. By the time you add the jagung shoots, mushroom, carrots, tomatoes and onions, your pot should look like this. Note that the water barely covers the bottom layer. Later when the vegetables are cooked, the amount of water will increase. While this is cooking, you can wash and clean your vegetables thoroughly. Cut the stem into medium size pieces and add them in first. Then add in the leafy part. Don't be alarmed if you see your pot filled to the brim. It will all shrink when it is cooked. You won't see any water, but don't add anymore. It should look like this.
Cover the pot and let it cook a while. The vegetables will soften and shrink and the amount of water will increase. Mix in the vegetables and let it simmer for an hour. Check the taste and add any flavouring according to your taste. Usually I don't need to add any salt or sugar. The salted vegetables, ikan bilis cube, onions, carrots and roast pork, chilli and tamarind slices would have combined to give a very nice taste. By now your chai boey should look like this. The large pot of chai boey will be enough for a few people to share. Penang people can eat this alone with white rice without any other dishes. It is tasty, appetising, and quite a balanced meal, too. If you cannot finish it, keep it in the freezer or fridge and eat it later , maybe with other dishes like simple fried egg or omelettes.

Roti Jala and Curry Chicken

Anyone interested in making roti jala and curry chicken? The curry chicken is very easy to prepare. The roti jala might be a bit time consuming. First the ingredients:
Curry Chicken :
1 medium sized chicken, cut into pieces
curry paste (can be bought at the wet market, just ask for curry paste for one chicken)
100ml thick santan (I usually buy RM1.00 and use half for the chicken and half for the roti jala)
(can replace with milk)
2 or 3 potatoes cut into wedges
2 tomatoes cut into halves
2 big onions cut into quarters
some tomato sauce
salt and suger to taste
First, heat some oil and fry t he curry paste.The trick in making nice curry is to fry the curry paste well to bring out the aroma. Don't be in a hurry to add everything inside. If you want the curry to look nicer, you can also fry the chilli paste separately to bring out the red colour, remove it add add it back when the curry is almost ready. This version of curry chicken I made is slightly different from the usual one. It is a bit sweeter and a bit sourish, less milky and more suitable for roti jala.
After the curry paste is fragrant, add the chicken pieces and mix well. The potatoes, tomatoes and onions can also be added. Add water gardually while stirring. Add enough water to cover all the ingredients. Add some tomato sauce, salt and sugar.Cover the kuali and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Check the taste and add salt or suger according to your taste. The skill in cooking is not just following the recipe but knowing how much flavouring to add. This is where your taste buds come into the picture. Just before simmering for 20 minutes, add the santan or milk. This will thicken the curry and give it a creamy feel. I do not like thick creamy curry, so this version is not so creamy diiferent from the usual taste.
Roti Jala
2 cups of flour (250ml X2)
2 eggs
100ml of santan (can replace with milk)
a bit of kunyit powder
a pinch of salt
1 and a half cups of water.
Mix the eggs and flour and add 1 cup of water to form a thick batter. The batter needs to be seived so that the gluten and egg white strands won't clog up the roti jala dispenser. This will take some time so I usually do this before starting to cook the curry. Use the remaining half cup of water to pour into the seive to aid the seiving process. After the batter is seived, add a pinch of salt and some tumeric (kunyit) powder to give the roti a yellowish colour. Add the santan and mix well.
To make the roti jala, you'll need a dispenser. This can be bought in supermarkets or markets. The bronze one is quite expensive, but the plastic one is very cheap about rm1. You'll also need a flat non-stick pan.
Heat the pan and oil the surface using a piece of cloth(or a paper towel) dipped in oil.
Pour some batter in the roti jala cup and make circular motion on the pan. You can try out various patterns and ways to do this. The speed you move and the height of the cup will determine the texture of the roti jala. This is where you have to figure out the best way to make nice roti jala. The first few pieces might be disastrous but once you can the hang of it, its quite simple. I usually let the batter cook until it is stiff enough for me to lift it on to a plate using a ladle of course. Then I'll pour the batter on the pan for the next piece. While the second piece is cooking, I'll fold the first piece into quaters. This way you save time. You don't need helpers if you plan your work. I made this curry chicken and roti jala all by myself in 2 hours, including all preparation like peeling poatoes, washing the chicken, seiving the flour. It is quite a lot of work and I'm quite lazy to do this wxcept for certain occasions like when my children come back for holidays.