Hot Prawn Sambal

LOve it! If it wasn't for the cholesterol I would eat this everyday. A thick, rich, red and hot sauce with a mound of blushing prawns hiding inside. Comfort food.

500 gm large prawns, skin and head intact, cleaned with their little leggies and top of the heads trimmed. Remove 'vein'. Rinse and pat dry with a kitchen paper and sprinkle a little salt on it.

1/3 cup cooking oil

Grind the following 4 ingredients :

3 large onions
6 -7 fresh red chillies, seeded
8-9 dried red chillies, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes, cut up and rinse under running water in a sieve to remove seeds.
3 cloves garlic

salt to taste
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup very thick santan, in a packet will do
1 tsp tamarind pulp mixed with 1/3 cup water and juice extracted
1 lemon grass, crushed

1/2 cup cooking oil

Serves 4-6

Heat 1/3 cup cooking oil in a pan and quick fry the prawns in 3 portions until just pink and half cooked. Drain and keep aside. Discard oil.

Heat 1/2 cup cooking oil in a pot or wok. Saute ground ingredients until the paste turns a dark red and oil rises to the top. Throw in the crushed lemon grass. It will take a good about 7-8 or 10 minutes on medium heat. Add the thick coconut milk and tamarind juice as well as salt and sugar. Let it simmer further for another 8 to 10 minutes or maybe a little more until the sambal is nice and thick, then add the prawns and let it cook another 4-5 minutes. Adjust salt to taste.

I'm just guessing the times as I did not time the cooking just now but as always cooking seems to take forever. But the prawns don't take long to cook at all. It is the sambal that one must ensure is cooked well until it is of a lovely thick consistency that it just dollops on your plate when you scoop it. YUM!

Spicy Mutton Soup

This dish is not spicy as in chillie hot but spicy in the sense that it uses spices like coriander, cumin, fennel etc. A deeply satisfying and quite rich soup, it is the typical 'Sup Tulang' (bone soup) in the Malay home. Beef ribs or oxtail are usually used for a soup of this kind but since I stumbled upon some shoulder of mutton at the supermarket today, mutton soup it is.

It's lovely eaten with a steaming mound of plain white rice of with some yellow noodles plunged into a steaming and soupy bowl of it. Either way its delicious.

1.5 kg of mutton shoulder, oxtail or ribs
2 potatoes , skinned ans cut into chunks
some baby carrots

1 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 inch ginger

2 tsp coriander powder
1 tsp whole cumin
1 tsp whole fennel
1 tsp white pepper

1 large piece of cinnamon stick
3-4 cloves
1 star anise

3 tbsp cooking oil

Serves 6

Process or pound in a pestle and mortar half the onion, garlic and ginger. Slice the other onion half. Keep aside.

Dry fry the whole cumin and fennel until it releases its aroma. Then pound in a pestle and mortar until a powder and mix wth the powdered coriander and white pepper. Add water to make a paste.

Chop the shoulder of mutton into smaller pieces if necessary and remove excess fat.

Saute the sliced half large onion until a golden brown. Add the pounded onion, garlic and ginger and saute furhter until aromatic and the onion mixture is soft and slightly brown at the edges.
Add the spice paste and stir and continue sauteeing until aromatic. If you find it a little dry add some water and saute until it turns a darker and it seperates from the oil a little.

Add just boiled water and then the mutton bones/shoulder and add some more water until the bones/meat is covered. Add salt and let the soup come to a rolling boil and then reduce the heat and let it boil gently until the meat is tender.

Add cut potatoes and the baby carrots and simmer until the vegetables are tender and add salt if necessary.

Chop some scallions and sprinkle them onto the soup just before serving followed by some sliced and golden fried onions if you have them (I did not).

TIP : the only reason I used powdered coriander is because I did not have any coriander seeds in my cupboard. I prefer to dry fry them myself and then pound to a powder rather than use the powdered ones as I feel it is fresher and releases more aroma.

Microwave Ovens - Boon or Bane?

During a visit with some friends about a week ago the conversation steered towards the use of microwave ovens. Their microwave oven had been sent for repair and in the course of the event they were told by those at the fixit shop how to use the microwave oven safely.

They were advised that food cooked or heated up in a microwave oven should not be eaten immediately but left for about ten minutes before being consumed. They were also warned that when the beep of the microwave goes off it is advisable to wait for several minutes before opening the oven door in order to avoid ourselves being exposed to an unnecessary amount of microwaves.

This reminded me and confirmed that my refrainment from getting that oh-so-convenient microwave oven at all was the wisest thing I have done in my entire life. Very few other decisions can compare in wisdom, if there are any at all.

There have been reports of the dangers of consuming food cooked or heated up in a microwave oven for years but apparently the convenience that a microwave oven provides especially for working or single mothers far outshines the danger that it poses and as a result most who can afford do and will own one.

In all forms of cooking whether it be stir frying, steaming boiling or baking and so on, heat is applied to food. This heat comes from an external source. It is generated by some sort of fuel, firewood, charcoal, gas or electricity.

Microwave ovens however don't produce heat. Microwave ovens cook food by producing waves of energy, that is the microwaves, which is a high energy radiation that excite certain molecules within your food such as water and fat. Atoms, molecules and cells within the food are forced to reverse polarity, causing fricton which in turn produces the heat.

In other words the heat is produced in the food itself which in turn explains why the food that is microwaved is always hotter than the container that holds it. This oscillation tears and deforms the molecular structure of food and new compounds, called radiolytic compounds, which are not found in nature are formed. This deformation impairs the quality of the nutrients and the damamged cells also become easy prey to viruses, fungi and other microorganisms.

This 'tearing apart' of the food molecules sometimes rearranges them into toxic substances that cause many allergic responses.

Dr Hans Ulrich-Hertal, a Swiss biologist, in his study proved for the first time that microwave energy(retained in food) which promoted cancer could be transmitted to humans through the consumption of this food, and not by just being near the oven as has long been known.

Other studies done in the US and elsewhere lend support to Hertels findings

Russia banned microwave ovens in 1976 because of the negative health consequences.

Tests in Russia conducted on microwaved food showed that carcinogens were found in virtually all foods tested. We all know that carcinogen is a cancer causing substance.

Some of the other findings are:

1. Microwave alters food substances causing digestive disorders

2. It alters the food chemistry and can lead to malfunction in the lymphatic system and degeneration of the body's immune system's capacity to protect itself against cancerous growth.

3. Microwave foods lead to a higher percentage of cancerous cells in the blood stream.

4. Microwaving milk and cereal grains converted some of their amino acids into carcinogens

According to Russian studies one need not eat microwaved foods to suffer from its side effects. Exposure to the energy field itself when one uses it or is close to the oven can be detrimental to health.

This is because all microwave ovens leak.

In 1990, during a microwave oven testing programme conducted by the Berlin Foundation for Product Tests, it was found that all of the ovens emitted microwaves while in operation.

Slamming the oven door, basic wear and tear, broken or missing door glass, manufacturing defects and food particle build up around door seals can also cause microwave leakage.

While gas leak is easily detected,with microwave ovens there is no easy way to detect leakages. Leaked microwave can damage your health. They can cook the protein in your eye lens causing cataracts.

Parts of the body that can be affected by microwave radiation are those that cannot dissipate heat quickly like the lens of the eye, stomach, intestine and the bladder.

In 1991 Norma Levitt of Oklahoma had hip surgery only to be killed by a sample blood transfusion when a nurse warmed the blood for transfusion by microwaving it. Although blood for transfusion are normally warmed they are however not warmed in the microwave. It was reported that the microwaving altered the blood.

Other tests have shown that the practice of reheating leftover food in the micrwave is potentially dangerous.

In 1995, the UK Consumer's association reheated food in 14 microwave ovens, tested them and found temperature differences of up to 40 degrees C between the hottest and the coldest parts of the food. The presence of cold spots means that some bacteria in the food will survive and can cause ill health.

Heating up food is always a chore as I have to either heat up food in a pan over the stove or in the oven. It takes longer and is certainly not as convenient as heating up food in a microwave oven. Inspite of that I am still adamant about getting a microwave oven because I know that if there is one in the home the temptation of using it on a daily basis is very great.

However, after reading many articles on the dangers of microwave ovens I have opted very willingly to make my life somewhat miserable if just to go to sleep at the end of the day with a guilt free conscience and for the sake of my family's health.

Health before convenience.

The information above have been obtained from various sources, that is, an article that appeared in a paper by the Consumers'Asociation of Penang and here and here and here.

Was there life before?

I just came back from The Old Foodie and after having read "...a pounde or a halfe of suger, and myngle all those together over the fyre, till thyme they seethe, and then set it to cole...." Iwas reminded of how young I am. Thank god we have spelling checks these days.

However, I do have a history. And I would like to share it with you. Look at this :




Yes they are old aren't they? So old that it's verging on hilarity. These were/are my collection of recipes that I have kept for an unsaid number of years.

Just in case you were wondering : No, I'm not fraying around the edges nor do I look as helpless as those there things. But they are mine nevertheless. They are my precious hard-copies, touchable and age-able, of recipes that I had collected just for the sake of collecting. May I add too that I'm not particularly careful with my property so they actually age before their time. Snigger. So in no way should you equate from the way my property looks to the way I look. Really. Jokes aside. I insist. Swear to god.

That was life before blogging. That was life before friends and people were invisible and untouchable. That was life before, when the skills of typing were limited to typists or secretaries only. That was life at a time when you attended typing school while waiting for your A level results just in case you didn't make it beyond that point, deliberately or otherwise.

Most of the recipes that were collected were cut out from newspapers and women's magazines like Her World and Female or Wanita and so on and so forth. It was a preoccupation that did not necessarily include cooking. it was just the basic act of cutting, or copying in longhand and/or pasting with gum or sticky-tape that made the activity worthwhile and queerly satisfying. Most of the time I would be flipping those pages and admiring the collection that I had amassed and occasionally I would try out a recipe or two.

Apart from the cookery books that I also collected, of which some are as horrifyingly old as my children, cutting and pasting scraps of recipes was a normal preoccupation of us medieval women who had an interest in cooking or baking. Tips and recipes were also gleaned from friends, acquaintances and old folks. What I mean is, from actual and visibly embodied people, whom you could touch, see, smell and irritate where the only way of deleting them from your life was by deleting theirs.

But, thanks to the internet and blogging, things have changed. Incredibly so. There are people now to whom I talk, joke and laugh with but whom I have not met and have not compared heights/weights/figure/clothes/shoes(age of shoes) or meals with. It is incredible. It is phenomenal. Unfortunately there are also people whom I used to joke, talk, laugh and eat with but whom I don't meet, talk, joke or laugh with anymore. It is disgusting and shameful. The act I mean. The act of not meeting I mean.

But let not my aghast at technological advancement disturb you. I have advanced along with it more than comfortably so and bloggerin' on to such a stage that it would take a crane, Hulk Hogan, Arnold Swazzernager or a chain saw to pry me away from the laptop/keyboard/mouse and all other paraphernalia associated with blogging. It has gotten to such a stage that my children despise me, that I would claw at the keyboard if it was taken away from me,that I would wail and moan and rant if the computer broke down or was just excruciatingly s-l-o-w.

So I wonder now whether this is all worth my time and energy or what's left of it. Is it worth growing roots and getting attached to this here dining chair in the name of blogging? Is it worth being permanently disabled with an act that eats up your brains 24/7 and losing the sight of sun and moon? Is it worth the threat of blindness, back pain and an expanding bottom over blogging?

I can't quite decide yet. I'm in the midst of searching for the answers to my life and the worth of it. I'm in the midst of blogging. But when I get them I'll let you know. In the meantime I'll put away those dinosaur-recipe collection and carry on living in my impalpable, virtual world.