WHITE CHILLI SAMBAL

Yes I'm back ~ It took quite an effort to come back. But here I am again. Again. But honestly.... I have good reasons. Yes I do. 

This was so quick to make, so delicious, so addictive that I had to blog about it. White Chilli sambal is something I learnt to make from my late Mother in law. Yes they are white chilies that she used and I have only seen white chillies in Sabah, East Malaysia. 

White chillies remain white and do not turn red when ripe. Unlike normal bird chillies or othere larger chillies which are green when young and red when ripe. I'm not quite sure why these are white. They were green at first, then they turned white and finally red. H says they are not true white chillies which never ever turn red. They are also not as big as the 'true' white chillies. But cravings make everything possible. So I made some. And they certainly will do. And I found that it really didn't matter if they were white or black. Or red.


This dish is so full of umami you just have to love it. Dried shrimps, belacan and of course the chillies. All sauteed to a fragrant aka smelly pesto. 

H 'banned' me from making this dish years ago because of its fiery spiciness. Bad for the health he says. Anything extreme is bad for the health. This is poison he says! Yes sir. Poison they are. And the more people I don't have to share my poison with so much the better for them. Yes. 

The recipe ~

A handful of white chillies ( you could use green chillies, sliced as well ~ I did once and it was good too)

2 inch square of belacan, dreid shrimp paste

1/4 cup of dried shrimps, soaked to plump and soften it up then drained

6-7 shallots, peeled

2 cloves garlic, peeled

3 T cooking oil

Pound shallots, garlic, belacan and softened dried shrimps until coarsely mushed up. There is no need to pound till fine.

Slice chiiles in half or leave real tiny ones whole.

Heat wok and pour in oil. When hot saute the pounded ingredients until fragrant and the mixture looks cooked through (the onion pieces will be translucent and limp and the whole mixture a slightly darker shade). Throw in the chillies and stir fry until the chillies lok slightly soft and limp. Add salt if necessary. I did not add salt because the belacan and dried shrimps are salty enough.

Serve as an appetizer with steamed white rice and other Malaysian dishes like fried fish, stir fried vegetables, Malay salad or a mild curry. Oh yummm ~

BAKED THEN FRIED SPRING ROLLS

I craned my neck to look at the translucent sheet of rice paper rain that H had pointed out to me. It was pummeling the ground, before us, a few meters away. Within seconds I heard it drench our black Hyundai as we entered its realm. I ducked. It sounded like a Niagara. But I felt the eerie-ness of a clenched fist, at first knocking then spreading its fingers, softly, on top of my head. Have you ever felt that?


Juxtapositions of weather never fail to fascinate me ....nature's abrupt seperateness of downpour and clearness existing within meters of each other...side by side, face to face, meeting up, merging, yet apart, clear on one side, grey on the other, dry over here and wet over there. How cool is that?

That happened a few days ago. And it has nothing to do with these spring rolls. I just had to tell you. Because the past month has been a sort of tropical winter. Wet and gloomy most times yet smouldering in between. And my enthusiasm towards cooking or baking have shifted according to the weather. You can tell, can't you?.... from my blog.


I feel paralysed and unmotivated most times but with short sunny bursts of enthusiasm in between. Today I have three things in the making after a period of relative dormancy. Sometimes I wonder what makes me tick. And then tock  :D

Anyway.....To cut a long story short.....with the excitement of eating healthy I had baked these spring rolls after swiping them with oil. But they looked so pathetic that I finally agreed to fry them in a little oil. That straightened them up, they came to life,looked perky crisp and sunny. What a difference a little frying made. yea...grease..tell me about it. 


I would have left them at baked if I didn't have to take photographs didn't spend 2 hours clicking 10,000 frames until the sky started to sulk and began to cry. 


The Recipe ~


Dip these in Thai Sweet Chillie Sauce. O. Yea.


Yield : About 16 rolls


A packet of spring roll sheets.


8 medium sized prawns, shelled, de-veined and chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced finely
1 small Chinese cabbage, washed and finely shredded
2 small carrots, washed, skinned and julienned
1 sengkuang (turnip?) (tennis ball size, maybe larger), skinned, washed and julienned
A handful of shitake mushrooms, cleaned, stalk removed and sliced finely


2-3 tsp light soy sauce
1 T oyster sauce (optional) I didn't use this
1 tsp sugar
salt
pepper
1 T cornstarch mixed with a little water to a slurry


1 2/2 T vegetable oil


Make a paste from about 2 T plain flour and a little water to use as glue later.


Heat a wok until hot. Pour in the oil and saute the garlic for a few seconds until aromatic but not brown. Throw in the shitake mushrooms, carrots and turnips and stir to mix evenly. Add salt and pepper, sugar, soy sauce and oyster sauce if using. There is no need to add water at all. Just keep stirring and tossing and when the carrots and turnips are a little softened throw in the Chinese cabbage and mix and toss again. Adjust seasoning to taste. Keep stirring until the cabbage just softens. Add the cornstarch slurry and mix again and the cornstarch slurry thickens and the vegetable mixture is just slightly wet.


Note : The vegetable mixture should not be overly wet...just damp. And cool completely before making rolls.


Remove the spring roll sheets from the wrapper and cover with a damp cloth to keep them from drying out. Peel off one sheet and place on a board. Fill with the vegetable mixture (about 2 T) and roll into a firm and reasonably tight roll. Not too tight that it tears though. 'Glue' the end of the roll with the paste of flour and water that you made earlier. Keep aside on a tray while you make the rest.


If baking the oven should be pre-heated 15 minutes before at 375 F. Spray or swipe a baking tray with oil. Place all the spring rolls on top and swipe the rolls with oil on top. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the rolls turn a light golden brown. Serve immediately otherwise the rolls with get wrinkled and limp.


Alternatively, shallow fry the rolls to a crisp. They'll look better and stay crisp longer. :) 

THAI PAPAYA SALAD

Papaya trees grow from a seed to a fruit-bearing 20 foot tree in about eighteen months. And they fruit the way rabbits breed. In a bunch. They are not one of my favourite fruit because they have a slight bitter undertone. But young green papaya when made into a Thai salad transforms into something quite, quite wonderful. Utterly refreshing. 

My first encounter of a Thai papaya salad was at the Thai ambassador's cocktail party many years ago. In an effort to promote their cuisine they had booths set up to demonstrate the makings of various scrumptious Thai dishes. Surprisingly amoung all other mouth-watering dishes the one dish that I fell in love with was the Thai papaya salad. 

I think it was the combination and perfect balance of fresh fruit, toasted dried shrimps, hot chillies, salty fish sauce, tart lime juice and crunchy peanuts that won me over.

With the Thai papaya salad comes the above, right, which, I  believe, is a Thai invention. The papaya/fruit shredder. It looks like an ordinary fruit or vegetable peeler the only difference being that the blade is grooved intermittently across. 

I saw this device on Luke Nguyen's show and have been scavenging the shops ever since. I had asked the Thai girl at the organic shop which I frequent where to get one. She looked at me incredulously and said ...anywhere. Obviously I had not been anywhere. Well finally it wasn't anywhere that I found this pretty device but at Vivahome along Jalan Loke Yew....a large spanking new mall that has shops selling nothing else but kitchen things and home furnishings. From end to end and top to bottom. Finally mother and I had landed in heaven.

 

The recipe ~


I bought a very firm, dark green, young papaya, the inside a light orange and firm, the shredding of which was bliss.

Thai Papaya Salad ~


2 - 2 1/2 cups of shredded young papaya
Juice of 2 limes
1/4 cup palm sugar , grated
1 T water
salt
1 red chilli, chopped finely or 2 bird chillies crushed
1 T fish sauce
2 T dried shrimps, toasted or lightly fried in a little oil
a few sprigs of coriander leaves with stems, chopped finely


Put the shredded papaya into a large bowl. throw in the chopped chilli and coriander.

Mix the palm sugar and water in a small pot and heat until sugar dissolves. Keep aside and allow to cool. 


Meanwhile pound dried shrimps in a pestle and mortar and then add peanuts and pound gently to just crush peanuts. Do not pound to a paste.The mixture should be crumbly and the nuts in small chunks.


Mix the cooled syrup with the lime juice and fish sauce in another bowl and pour this dressing over the shredded papaya mixture. Add the pounded shrimps and peanuts and mix with your fingers or two spoons gently to coat the fruit evenly with the dressing. Add fish sauce or extra lime juice to balance the flavours.

Sprinkle more crushed peanuts over the top.


Serve cold or at room temperature as a side dish.

Note : A combination of shredded cucumber and papaya is good too.

BRINJAL IN DRIED SHRIMP SAMBAL ~ TERUNG MASAK SAMBAL UDANG KERING

Dried shrimps are one of the most flavourful ingredients to have around in the kitchen cupboard. It is pungent and like all pungent ingredients it is packed with umami, like bonito flakes, like fish sauce, like belacan etc. A dish becomes irresistible when pounded dried shrimps are used as a flavour base. The list of dishes for dried shrimps is endless...stir fried veggies, fried rice, fried noodles...as a sambal, as a filling, as a topping...hey-ho.....everything. 

Hub had just come back from a  trip to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah,  also referrred to as 'The Land Below The Wind' by the Suluks, a sea faring people from the Southern Philippines. So named because Sabah is located just below and lies just of reach of the merciless typhoons that hit and devastate parts of the Philippines every year. This name has been popularized by Agnes Keith's book, The Land Below The Wind.

Agnes Keith was an American born in Oak Park, Illinois. She married Henry G. Keith an Englishman who was appointed a conservator of forests and Director of Agriculture of North Borneo under the Chartered Company in the early 1900's.

Her chronicles of her life and unique experiences in the then  North Borneo as the wife of an English officer during the colonial era was submitted and won the prize in the non-fiction category in the 1939 Atlantic Monthly later to be published as a book named The Land Below The Wind. It received favourable reviews. Interestingly, one of her books 'Three Came Home' detailing the hardships and deprivations as POW under the Japanese became a bestseller and was turned into a motion picture.


Described by a friend ......"Mrs. AK has an unusual appearance, being six feet in height, very thin, with the stealthy lops of a red Indian. She dresses in startling and flamboyant fashion, in very bright colours while her hair is worn in two plaits,one over each shoulder, thus adding to a slightly Indian aura. " ~ excerpt from Wikipedia.


The bungalow in Sandakan, Sabah in which they spent many years as a family has been preserved by the state government.

In that sense Agnes Keith and Sabah have become inseperable just like what the best quality dried shrimps and the to-die-for whole, dried and salted red snapper is to The Land Below The Wind.

As I was saying, Hub had brought home a one kilogram packet of umami dried shrimps. Which is  a humongous amount but which I believe will be finished up in no time. Or ...perhaps not. I've got to give some away. Cholesterol my dear ...cholesterol.

This is what I made ~ Fired brinjals or eggplants in a dried shrimp sambal. Irresistible, to-die-for and totally...did I say  to-die-for? Yea....

The recipe ~

  
I had used the long brinjals or eggplants. They were sliced length ways and shallow fried. Then kept aside on kitchen paper while the sambal (paste, pesto)was being made. I also did not use belacan. After a frantic search in my cupboard I realized that I had run out of it. Waaaaaaaa.....

2 medium sized brinjals or eggplant
1/4 cup dreid shrimps, soaked in a little water to soften
1 inch square piece belacan (optional), slightly charred over a small flame
2-3 shallots
2 pips garlic
2 large red chillis 
2 dried chillis (optional) soaked in hot water for 15 minutes if using
1 lime
cooking oil
salt

Shallow fry the sliced brinjals in some oil until they get soft and cooked through. Drain on kitchen paper. Keep aside.


Pound dried shrimps, belacan, shallots, garlic, fresh chillies, dried chillies (if using) in a pestle and mortar until it becomes a fine paste. Salt may be added to ease the break down of the ingredients. But be careful of the amount of salt added because the shrimps and belacan are somewhat salty.

Pour *2-3 tablespoons of oil into a wok and saute the pounded ingredients until fragrant and until they turn a darker colour and looks slightly crusty on the surface. Another sign that it is done is when the oil seperates from the paste. 

* Add more oil if the mixture gets too dry. This dish is greasy.


Add salt to taste and a squeeze of lime juice. Lay the brinjals on a serving plate and scoop the of dried shrimps sambal over the top. Serve with freshly cooked white rice.

I'll be submitting this recipe for this month's Muhibbah Malaysian Monday. hosted by Shaz of Test with Skewer and 3 hungry tummies.

SAUTEED LONG BEANS WITH GARLIC AND MINCED MEAT

I was planning on posting a funny post but it just could not be. The men in this house are sitting in their corners sucking their thumbs and sulking. Their all time favourite team are out of the finals for World Cup this time. That is serious matter to some. Mourn worthy.

So I'll just whisper to you.....I cooked long beans sauteed in garlic and minced meat. That's all I'm saying. It's good but it looks like it's not good enough to wipe out those long faces and furious eyebrows. As far as my men are concerned FIFA World Cup is so over. Yes. Who cares anymore. Yes. In this house FIFA World Cup officially ends here!

But the giveaway is still officially open a for few more hours. So go here for the GIVEAWAY !

The recipe ~


300 gn long beans
200 gm minced meat
2 pips garlic
1 red chillie
2 T oyster sauce
a few splashes of fish sauce
1 1/2 T cooking oil
some water or stock
salt

Rinse then cut long beans into 1 inch lengths. keep aside. Pound garlic and chillie pepper in a pestle and mortar medium fine. 

Heat a wok. Pour in the cooking oil. Saute the garlic and chillie paste until fragrant on medium heat. Drop in the minced meat and stir until the meat browns. Add salt, oyster sauce and some black pepper if you like. Drop in the prepared long beans, add some water or stock, about 1/3 cup and stir fry the meat and vegetables until the beans are tender. If necessary add water a tablespoon at a time to keep the dish moist but not too saucy. Add salt to taste.

GLUTEN FREE KOREAN PANCAKE

 Warning : Healthy Recipe Ahead! 

Don't be alarmed..... I'm not turning vegetarian or vegan. But I do enjoy some vegetarian food and sometimes I'm stunned how satisfying and lip smacking they can be. 

I remember the the sambal tempe, the dhall curry, the spiced chickpeas, the kimchi, the chutney, the spring rolls....Oh my god I counted and I actually have 20 vegetarian dishes on my blog!! 

Perhaps I'm in the process of evolving into one. Perhaps.... I'm healthy! GASP.

Divina of Sense and Serendipity has smitten me yet again with her fabulous and healthy recipes. It all started with the beautiful Mochi Chocolate truffles (well, ok, that's not exactly healthy. It's fabulous), then the sensational Tofu crusted in Bonito Flakes and now some fantastic Gluten free Korean pancakes. All from her beautiful and educational blog. 

And the fact that she has the wonderful gift of making all her healthy food look unhealthy doesn't hurt either.

Completely gluten free this pancake uses mung beans or yellow lentils and rice and includes a whole lot of vegetables to pack in all those heavenly flavours. 

It makes you feel that this is what breakfast could be. This is what lunch could be. This is what dinner could be.......this is definitely a pancake that could be. Good for you. 

It is also very adaptable to tastes. You can almost add anything else you fancy or heaven forbid make it high cholesterol and unhealthy by adding prawns, minced meat or top it with a poached egg (which I tried). I can't poach an egg. I tried and it looked weird. It had entrails.

Enough said ...here's the recipe, adapted a little,....from the wonderful Divina of Sense and Serendipity..... 

1 cups mung beans (skinned) I used yellow lentils
1/2 cup jasmine rice
1 cup water 
1 mediumm zucchini, cut into matchsticks
1/2 carrot, cut into matchsticks
3-4 stalks spring onions, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
a small bunch of coriander,chopped finely
salt
cracked black pepper

vegetable cooking oil


Soak mung beans (or lentils) and rice overnight.


Drain them the next day and place into a blender with1 cup of water. Blitz until it becomes a thick batter like pancake batter.If too thixk add extra water a tablespoon at a time until it reaches the desired consistency.


Sprinkle the shredded zucchini with about 1 tsp of salt and let it stand for about 20 minutes. Squeeze out excess liquid.


Add all the vegetables to the batter, add salt n pepper to taste. Mix well.

Heat up pan till very hot then add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil (I used grapeseed oil) and swirl it around the pan.

Ladle the mixture into the pan giving each pancake about 4 tablespoons of the mixture depending on how large or small you want the pancakes to be. I used an egg ring mould but it is not necessary at all.


When little bubbles become visible on the surface flip it over and cook until a golden brown on both sides.


Do the same with the rest of the batter.


Serve with a dipping sauce like this or with kimchi like I did or just enjoy it as is which is also perfect!!

KIMCHI

Kim Chi ~ Tell me how cute a name is that? Bimbim Bap ~ Tell me how cute a name is that? Soondooboo Jiigae? Kimchi Bokeum Bap? Have I made my point? And aren't those Korean actors and actresses just as cute too? I know my nieces definitely think they are.

And as cute as the name may very well be....kimchi is not a photogenic food, like rendang. It took me all 2 days of sweat, sweat and sweat to come up with some decent photographs. After all it was simply cabbage on a plate and the other just a brown mash of meat.

But like the Malaysian rendang there is nothing plain about the Korean kimchi. The spiciness from the chillie and the flavours from the garlic, grated ginger and a sweet edge from the fruit puree that I had used made it a fantastic appetizer. Plus I've had this craving for some kimchi-jeon (kimchi pancakes) ever since I saw photographs of my nieces enjoying a Korean meal in Korea with the said pancake in full view of my computer screen.

I was told by a lady herbalist that cayenne pepper was the closest that I could get to Korean chiilie flakes or chillie paste. I chose to believe her because I wasn't about to scavenge all over town in the present scorching weather in search of something that I may never find.

 I had also searched blogs for the recipe. Simple they all say and indeed it was. Finally I used a combination of  recipes from Closet Cooking and Dr. Ben Kim's site. Two very interesting and informative sites. 

I'm not sure if it will past the test with a Korean but it was certainly good enough for me and my craving. 

Tomorrow it will be kimchi-jeon for me lunch! YUMMM

The recipe ~ 

1 napa cabbage
1/2 cup salt
1 cup gochugaru (Korean chillie flakes) I used 1/2 cup cayenne pepper instead
3-4 stalks spring onions
4 cloves garlic
1 in grated ginger
2 T fish sauce
puree from 1/2 apple, and 1/2 pear as per Dr. Ben Kim's recipe


Seperate the cabbage leaves and trim away the hard core. Then slice the cabbage leaves to one inch lengths.


Place one layer of the cut cabbage in a stainles steel bowl and sprinkle some salt over it. The proceed likewise with the rest of the cabbage , sprinkling salt over each layer. Cover with a plate and leave for about 4 hours until the cabbage has softened.


The salt acts as a preservative for the pickle. Rinse away the salt from the cabbage and drain and put the cabbage in a  bowl.

Chop the spring onions into 1 inch lengths, grate the ginger, mince the garlic, place in bowl and to all of these add the fish sauce. Mix. Add the pureed fruits and mix again. Add this mixture to the to the cabbage and sprinkle on the gochugaru. Mix well. Bottle the kimchi and leave to stand for 3 days at room temperature and then keep in the refrigerator. Will keep for a month.


I only let it stand for 24 hours at room temperature because it is so humid and hot here. 

PS  ~ Some of you may find 1/2 cup of cayenne a little too much....I find it a little too spicy myself ....so perhaps 1/4 would be moderately spicy.


Do take note ~ An anonymous reader has pointed out in the comment list that...."kimchi is FERMENTED like yoghurt and miso. It is not just 'pickled'". My sincere apologies for overlooking the difference. I must be more careful.

PINEAPPLE AND MANGO CHUTNEY

The only time I would encounter a chutney as a young girl was when we attended a wedding. And most of the time it would be a pineapple chutney.

Another kind of preserve that we have is called acar (pronounced ah-char). It is very similar to a chutney but it has a bigger proportion of vegetables to fruits. The sauce is made using more oil. Its a little sour and very spicy. Usually it is made up of cucumbers, julienned carrots, whole preserved limes, shallots, garlic cloves, whole bird chillies and sesame seeds or crushed peanuts.



And for the past 10 years or so we have seen the addition of little pieces of dried, salted fish. It became the the avant-garde ingredient for acar and added that oh-where-have-you-been-all-my-life oomph. And an acar without salted fish just wouldn't be right nowadays.

Needless to say acar is the preferred vegetable preserve over chutney in Malaysia simply because it is spicy rather than sweet.


However, I am making a chutney now because I was looking for an accompaniment that was on the sweet side for some black and white sesame seed crisps that I made recently. The recipe for the crisps will follow in my next post.


I had made some lovely Baba Ganoush as a dip at first but it lacked that crazy South East Asian spice factor that is a pre-requisite for my idiosyncratic biological make up.


And chutney seemed perfect because it is 'jammy' in texture, the fruits soft, the sauce thick and syrupy and is a little sweet, almost like a delicious jam. But with that wicked spicy edge to it. A perfect dip for those crunchy sesame seed crisps.

Besides I also get to use those lovely jars that I had bought ages ago but have had no occasion to use quite yet. Until now that is.



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

1 small pineapple, peeled and cubed
3 medium mangoes slightly underipe, peeled and cubed
5 whole garlic cloves, peeled
1 white onion, diced
1 inch ginger, grated finely
1 green chillie, cut into chunks
1 sweet red pepper, diced largish pieces
some raisins (optional)
2 T curry powder or less if you prefer mixed with some water into a slurry
1/2 cup pineapple vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 T of mustard seeds
The zest and juice of 1 lemon (optional)

2 T cooking oil

Heat oil in a medium pan until hot but not smoking. Saute the diced onions and garlic and ginger and mustard seeds until fragrant. Pour in the curry powder slurry and stir to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pan. Saute for about 6 minutes or more until the curry spice turns a darker shade is cooked well and fragrant.

Throw in the fruits, chillies, peppers, raisins and stir to mix well. Add the cider vinegar and brown sugar and mix again.

Let the mixture simmer and allow the the sauce to reduce to a thick and syrupy consistency. Add salt, the lemon zest and juice towards the end and cook a little while more to incorporate. Taste and adjust.

Leave to cool completely before storing.

This chutney is delicious eaten with the sesame crisps that I will be showing in my next post soon as a snack or a cocktail or as an appetizer. YUM...

SPRING ROLLS

There shouldn't be a recipe for spring rolls unless you like it in a certain way. And I do.

I like it when the spring roll skin has been lined with lettuce leaves for prettiness, smeared with 3 kinds of sauces for piquant-ness, heaped with julienned vegetables for crispness, piled with fruit for sweetness, sprinkled with crushed peanuts for crunchiness and maximised with shards of prawn crackers for saltiness. And only then will my spring rolls be perfect, nice, fat and outrageous.


That's the way I like it..... uh huh

But there is some work to be done beforehand. Don't be scared......just a little slicing, shredding and some Aristotelian compartmentalizing. And maybe a little boiling.... Uh huh...

Sengkuang or turnip I like. But I like them cooked. And I like them sweet. Because that's what my favourite spring roll stall does. I know because I asked. The turnip is shredded and boiled in brown sugar syrup until the turnips become gentle and soft and sweet. As sweet and gentle as you like it to be.


The carrots and the cucumber are to be brilliantly julienned, the sunshiny pineapple is to be peeled and chopped into bitty bits, some roasted peanuts crushed with a little love and some prawn crackers (or potato crisps) fragmented into tintillating pink shards. That's the Nigella part.

The 3 sauces are to be ready on the work top with a teaspoon dipped in each. Hoisin sauce from your supermarket shelf, taucheo sauce (yellow bean sauce) from the same shelf and a cooked chilli paste either bought in a bottle or homemade from blended dried chillies and sauteed in some amount of oil with a wisp of sugar and salt. That's the saucy part.


The spring roll skin would behave if separated and peeled before hand and covered with a damp cloth to prevent drying.

And the lettuce leaves would be very happy if they were washed and patted dry very tenderly.

Get a spring roll skin to lay quietly on the board. Introduce the pretty lettuce to the spring roll skin and let them be together. Spoon tiny dollops each of the saucy sauces onto the lettuce leaves to add some excitement. Bring the sweet shredded turnips (drained of syrup), julienned carrots, julienned cucumber and pineapple bitty bits together in a heap of fun. Then add a dash of crushed peanuts and the shards of pink prawn crackers for some wickedness.


Bring your fingers together and rock and roll.

Have a great party!

A MALAY BEAN SPROUT SALAD - KERABU TAUGEH

This is a Malay salad recipe that is one of my favourites. I love the combination for the dressing which happens to work superbly as a dressing for a bowl of boiled, fat and juicy cockles as well....absolutely mouth watering. However, if you would like the best of both worlds the combination of cockles and bean sprouts and the dressing makes a fantastic seafood vegetable salad and in my opinion it is salad heaven.

I just can't describe how much I love this dish. Unfortunately I could not get any decent cockles at the wet market today so I had to settle for a just a lovely bean sprout salad.

The dressing is made up of typical South East Asian ingredients. Tamarind juice for the sourness, lime juice for it's tanginess, a pounded golden coconutty paste (kerisik) for body and sweetness and chillies for some spiciness and bite. A totally absorbful, if there is such a word, and clingy dressing. The bean sprouts take in the flavours well and if I had used cockles the dressing would just coat, enter its crevices and cling to those succulent, juicy morsels.


Here's the recipe..........

180 gm of bean sprouts, tailed if you're feeling up to it, washed and drained.
3 limes
1 Tbsp of tamarind paste
2 large red chillies
3 bird chillies (optional)
5-6 shallots, sliced finely
1 cup of freshly grated coconut or 2/3 cup canned dessicated coconut
salt

Place the grated coconut into a small to medium pan and dry fry or roast until it turns a dark golden brown. This takes about 7 to 9 minutes over medium flame. Watch it carefully because the coconut can burn easily and keep stirring to allow the coconut to brown evenly.

While it is still hot or warm pound the roasted/fried grated coconut in a pestle and mortar until it becomes a thick brown paste and the oils exudes. Scrape it up and put it in a medium bowl.

Pound the fresh chillies and bird chilies, if using, until it is quite fine or pasty and throw that into the bowl too. Mix the tamarind paste with 2 tablespoons of water and strain and pour that into the bowl as well. Squeeze the limes, discard the seeds and pour that in as well. Stir the mixture until it is well combined, add salt to taste and adjust sourness with extra lime juice if necessary and sweetness with a tiny sprinkle of sugar if you like. Mix well.

Add the raw bean sprouts, sliced shallots and boiled cockles if using and toss well incorporating the dressing into the vegetables/cockles well. Taste for salt again and adjust. Serve slightly chilled or at room temperature. YUMMMMM.