EGG SAMBAL

What makes this dish unique from other egg dishes is that the egg is not just simply boiled and then thrown into a sambal or a sauce or a dip. It is boiled. Hard boiled. Peeled and then deep fried whole until the surface of the whole egg is golden brown and blistered.

The Thais have a dish quite similar to this where the egg is also deep fried to a golden blister. And they call this Son-in-law eggs. And "it is interesting to speculate from the grins of the Thais that it has something to do with a mother in law who doesn't have a very high opinion of her son in law.!" (Excerpt from Thai Cooking by Jennifer Brennan).


Now, this was the very first dish that I cooked when I visited my daughter and son in law in the US a couple of years ago (without hub). In fact I cooked this dish quite regularly when I stayed with them. In fact I cooked it so regularly that I would be surprised if my son in law did have a very high opinion of me or of my cooking.


I did so because my daughter had a ready bottle of homemade ground dried chillie paste in the refrigerator. I did it because I could boil eggs blind folded. I did it because it was my chance to eat really spicy food for a month without having to cook a separate dish for hub. And I did it because eggs do not need to be chopped, minced, fiddled with or skinned. In fact it need not even be fried into a golden blister if the fancy does not strike you. It just needs to be boiled. Hard boiled that is.

Because what makes this dish really really lovely is the sambal. In fact to a South East Asian being what makes any dish really scrumptious is the sambal. Period.

You could throw anything into a sambal....deep fried chicken, prawns, deep fried fish, deep fried brinjals or eggplants, squid, thin slices of deep fried beef, deep fried tempe, deep fried crispy anchovies, deep fried anything and it's heaven sent and good to go.

All that is needed to complete the meal is a plate of white steaming and freshly cooked rice. A big white and pristine mound of it.


And the rest they say is.............burp.....oops ...scoosh me

The recipe...........................

5 eggs, boiled, cooled and skinned
2 medium red onions or 6 shallots, peeled and sliced
2 or 3 cloves garlic
6 fresh red chiilies, seeded if you prefer it mild, which defeats the whole purpose of a sambal by the way.
2 teaspoons of ready ground chillie paste in a bottle
1/2 inch piece of belacan or shrimp paste
1 teaspoon of tamarind paste mixed with 1/2 cup water and juice squeezed out

cooking oil

Dry the boiled and peeled eggs thoroughly. Heat up a wok and pour enough oil into it to deep fry the eggs. When the oil is hot drop the eggs in gently one at a time and deep fry them until the surface is blistered and golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon and keep aside on a kitchen towel to drain of excess oil.

Pound the sliced onions or shallots, garlic together with the fresh large red chillies in a pestle and mortar until it becomes a coarse paste. Add the belacan and pound a little more. Keep aside.

Strain the tamarind juice and keep aside.

Take away some of the oil from the wok that was used for deep frying the eggs leaving about 4 tablespoons.

Heat up the oil again a little and then saute the pounded chillie and onion mixture. Add in the chillie paste almost immediately and saute until fragrant and the sambal turns a darker red and the oil rises to the top. Probably about 6 or 7 minutes. Pour in the tamamrind juice, add salt to taste and a pinch or two of sugar. Let it come ot a boil and then a slow simmer until the sauce is reduced to a wet, thick paste.

At this point you can throw in the eggs, whole, and mix to combine and cover the eggs completely with sambal of if you prefer slice the eggs in half and place on top of the sambal in a serving dish. Personally I would have preferred it the first way but because I wanted it to look a little pretty to be photographed I halved the eggs.

Enjoy.

FISH BALLS

Fish balls have always intrigued me. I have always been skeptical of recipes which tell you to dump fish meat into a food processor and then to shape the processed paste into balls. And you're supposed to get fish balls.

Simply because I've heard stories and seen recipes where fish meat is chopped up on a board with a mean looking cleaver until it becomes mush, then pounded in a pestle and mortar and then given a good beating by a pair of biceps. All the rigmarole one has to go through for bouncy, springy fish balls that deliver you a good bite.

Then I think of commercially made fish balls and I wonder at all those biceps hard at work in the din of the factory? The sweat of highly able-armed persons mixed with grunts, thin, white cotton T-shirts clinging to bodies and sucking up the sweat? And then those wet and glistening arms dripping with sweat? The whole place dimly lit in a far flung humid and tropical corner of nowhere? Add mosquito infested for some drama. And a murderer skulking by? Gosh. It must be quite a sight. If indeed that is how they make fish balls for commerce.

But I chose to brush those stories off as half truths since I was living in the 21st century. So I made fish balls. In my kitchen. In my food processor. Without biceps. No sweat.


I managed to make fish balls. Clean, full-flavoured and with enough bite to make me kind of happy. I squeezed one between my thumb and forefinger as I've seen some people do as a test for bounciness. It was there. Kind of. I bounced one into a bowl and it jumped right out. Need I say more?

It was bouncy enough for me. And had enough of a bite as far as I was concerned. And all without the lye water.That dreaded toxic substance used in commercial fish balls to add that ever sought after bounce and bite.

Terri from hunger hunger, my invaluable repository for Chinese cooking, guided me along. Bounciness, she says, is all in the fish, the whole fish and nothing but the fish. No lye water needed if you use the right kind of fish. And she named a few, well 3 to be precise.

1. The spotted mackeral
2. 'Tofu' fish with the yellow tail and
3. Yellow tail barracuda

The 'tofu' fish Terri says makes the smoothest and sweetest fish balls. Terri says she can never make fish balls as good as her maid, Vera, does. She wished me luck. I needed it.

So I went fishing and I got 3 'tofu' fish with yellow tails at the night market, all for 11 ringgit. Cheap! Cheap?

I had the surprised fish monger fillet them for me and all I did when I went home was to slice the fillet down the middle and sliced off the tiny spikes of bones that are embedded and that run down the middle. Then I scraped the flesh off the skin with a metal spoon. Easy. I made sure I cleaned the scales off thoroughly first of course.

A mackeral would have been a lot easier to deal with, I would imagine, but it would have cost me much more.

So that's the story of how I made fish balls. And from now on I hope to live happily ever after in my fish bowl...uhm....fish ball world.


The recipe......................uh oh... my son swallowed up half the fish balls before I could count them. But I think I got between 30 and 35 fish balls. It all depends on how small or big you make them of course.

The recipe.......................


300 gm fish meat of one of the 3 fish mentioned above
2 T ice cold water
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp oil
1 tsp cornflour

Place fish meat in a food processor and start to whizz.When the meat becomes a paste add in 1 tablespoon of cold water, reserving the other tablespoon in a bowl. Continue to process until the meat is a fine and smooth paste. Remove from the machine and place the fish paste in a medium bowl.

In the bowl with water add in the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine. Pour this mixture into the fish paste and using a fork stir vigorously until the two combine and come together into a firm and shiny mass.

Place in the freezer for about 10 or 15 minutes.

Using 2 teaspoons pick up a blob of the paste and shape by moving the blob from one teaspoon to the other until it is compact and smooth. (you could grab a whole mass of the paste in the palm of your hand, make a fist, squeeze and release a blob through your thumb and forefinger and scoop off the blob with a spoon).

Place the shaped fish balls in a bowl of water and ice or just on a medium stainless steel tray in one layer. Carry on until the paste is finished. If you used iced water you can skip the 'place in the freezer for 15 minutes'. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Take out the raw fish balls and drop them in one at a time until the bottom of the pot is covered with a layer of fish balls. Do not let water to boil vigorously....only a gentle simmer until the balls float to the surface by which time you can scoop them of with a spider web. Do the same for the rest of the raw fish balls.

Done. Let cool. Use for a noodle soup like here or in stir fried noodles, rice etc.

OLIVE OIL CAKE

Olive oil. Grapes. Olive oil. 5 eggs. Olive oil. Grapes? Seedless? Olive oil?

Never have I been so hesitant to make a cake until I watched French Food at Home and scribbled down this olive oil cake recipe. It sounded strange to make a cake from a very strong flavoured oil and even more so to drop whole grapes into the batter and make them pretend to be olives?!?


But it looked good. So when Laura Calda flashed her little winsome smile and cocked her head at me telling me how good it was I told her I might give it a try. But it was weeks before I finally made it.

However, instead of buying seedless grapes I had bought grapes with seeds in instead (silly me). That set the whole venture back by 2 whole days as I sat debating with myself. Shall I or shall I not go get seedless grapes? Or shall I use the grapes with seeds? Shall I or shall I not go get seedless grapes? Small mind, Big decisions.

But if you only knew how hot it has been here...which is SCORCHING.....you'll know why I hesitate even to put my foot beyond the door. It's so hot I thought I felt my brain fizzle.

That's why on most days I spend a lot of my time debating on non-issues as the rest of the world hurtles by. Obama gets a Nobel Peace Prize, Padang folks struggle to resume life, Thinkers think, a naval ship gets a short circuit and burns up/down, MCA has a leadership issue while my mind tinkers feebly.


Finally I pulled the bag of grapes out from the refrigerator the way Nigella pulls things out from hers. With a cunning look.

Let there be seeds. They'll just have to pick at them, meaning the people who are going to eat the cake. And so the olive oil cake, with the grapes pretending to be olives, was born.

Let there be seeds.


The cake was indeed good. It was very moist and light with a delicate scent of oranges and lemons. The grapes as it turned out did not look like olives after all. As it baked, the grapes lost some of their colour and turned out looking slightly sickly.

And no wonder Laura had suggested that some of the grapes be dropped into the batter half way through the baking. Which I did.

But when I turned the cake out and cut it, I began to wonder where the grapes had all gone. I could swear I put quite a fair bit in. At least 10 of them. But one thing was for sure. They all sank to the bottom. Well they were all pretty big and heavy so perhaps I should have used smaller ones.


But, nevertheless, the cake was really lovely..... and did I say that it was moist and light with a wonderful citrus flavour?

And the fact that it had olive oil in it made me feel better than if there had been butter. Better than butter. Almost.

The recipe...................


3/4 cup olive oil (I used extra virgin)
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 cup flour
5 eggs, separated
zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
some red grapes (I used about 10 or 12)

Preheat oven 350 or 180. Prepare a 9 inch or 8 inch spring form pan, greased and floured.

Beat yolks and sugar until light. Add the zests and then the flour. Mix in the flour until there are no lumps. Add olive oil and stir until well combined to a smooth batter.

Beat egg whites with a whisk until soft peaks form.

Fold in the egg whites into the flour-egg yolk mixture, a little at first, to loosen the mixture. Then add in the rest of the egg whites and fold in with a spatula gently so that not too much air is lost.

Pour batter into prepared pan and drop in half of the red grapes and halfway through baking drop in the rest of the grapes. Bake from the beginning for 35 or 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven brush it with olive oil and sprinkle some brown sugar on top. Let the cake rest for about 10 minutes before turning out. Serve.

PRAWN AND FISHBALL RICE VERMICELLI SOUP

Nothing like a good wholesome chicken stock to make a good soup with. So with 3 chicken carcasses that I roasted in the oven until they browned, 1 large onion, 1 head of garlic, a carrot and 2 celery stalks cut into chunks, some water and a large pot I came up with about 5 cups of lovely golden clear broth that was full of flavour.

Then I made this simple noodle soup the next day.


I might also mention that I made the fish balls too but since I avoided using lye water as one of the ingredients, because lye water is toxic, my fish balls, although full of flavour, were lacking in the bounce department. But it didn't matter to me as long as everything was homemade and safe. And good.


Making up the soup the next day was a breeze because there cannot be anything easier than making a clear noodle soup. It is simple, pure and refreshing yet so full of flavour.


The recipe...............for 2 or 3 persons.

Enough rice vermicelli for 2 or 3 people, soaked in just boiled water until softened and drained in a colander. Keep aside.

2 garlic cloves
2 spring onions, white part sliced
3 cups of good chicken stock, preferably homemade
6 or 7 large prawns
10 or 12 fishballs
some bak choy, washed and seperated
2 T cooking oil
a dash of soy sauce
salt and pepper

Heat up the oil in a medium pot. Saute the garlic and spring onions until fragrant and soft. Add the prawns and fish balls and stir to cook through. It will probably take about 2 to 3 minutes. Add in hot stock and bring the soup to a boil and then simmer . Add the bak choy and simmer only until the bak choy is a lovely bright green. Taste for seasoning and adjust if neccesary. Done.

Serve : Put a serving of the rice noodles in individual bowls and por the hot soup over it to cover the noodles. Top with prawns and fish balls and a few stalks of bak choy in each bowl.