There's a first time for everything and last week it was laksa ayam's turn to be my experimental dish. Laksa ayam is rice cellophane noodles with chicken in a coconut sauce.
1. I started by placing few chicken pieces in water and and allowing them to simmer until cooked. I then removed the chicken, sliced, and reserved the liquid (after skimming the top).
2. Next I made a spice paste by grinding 4 shallots, 3 garlic cloves, and 4 candlenuts (I used macadamia). I then heated some peanut oil and fried the paste, adding 1 stalk of crushed lemongrass (crushed, cut into sections). Once fragrant, I deglazed the fried paste by adding the chicken stock and a can of coconut milk. This I brought to a slow simmer, adding salt to taste.
3. Meanwhile, I prepared the rice sticks by bring a pot of water to a boil and then turning off the heat completely. I then added a sheet of rice sticks, covered, allow to sit for ten minutes, and then rinsed the noodles with cold water.
4. Finally, I placed the noodles into a bowl and poured over the coconut sauce. I garnished the noodles with some Thai basil, sliced chicken, peanuts, krupuk, and fried onions.
Result: this dish turned out relative well, though I felt it lacked heat. Granted my recipe didn't call for any use of chili, I couldn't stop myself from adding a little chili shrimp paste in for color and body. Next time I will also get a little more creative with the garnishing, as I felt the overall appearance was a little boring and might use some more color, such as freshly sliced red chili to help visually replace the egg slices and shrimp which I left off.
By the way, does anybody have a good recipe for kueh bakar manis? I also tried making this dish, but as you can see I failed pretty miserably. The taste was tolerable but the cake looked nothing like the one pictured in my cookbook, which frustratingly did not list a recipe. My attempt was only gleaned from what little I could find on the Web. I'm anxious to figure this out, as I love the taste of pandan and have a flourishing pandanus plant in my backyard which is simply yearning to be made into sweets.
Comments
I was just in Darwin, Australia, and a number of places had kangaroo laksa! Yours looks much better though.
Posted by: venitha | July 3, 2006 04:03 AM
couldn't locate your email to reply you. so on your question on turkey....they're pulling your legs. However, soursop (http://www.floraexotica.ca/Fruit-SourSop.htm) is called whiteman's durian ('ang moh' [degatory for red hair] durian) because it's thorny like a durian on the outside, and the fruit is white on the inside.
Posted by: kongkay | July 3, 2006 10:03 PM
Jon, my mum used to make kuih bakar (also known as bengkang kemboja in the northern Malaysian states) for sale, but her recipe is for several trays/moulds. I found 2 recipes in English (the recipes on the web were mostly in Malay). You may want to give these a try.
http://www.bawarchi.com/nonveg.
http://food.sify.com/recipe.
Boo_licious has nice photos of kuih bakar and kuih bakar berlauk (savoury kuih bakar).
http://masak-masak.blogspot.com/2005/10/ramadan-bazaar-bangsar-kuala-lumpur.
Scroll down to the 5th photo. My mum used the same mould for kuih bakar.
This post shows photos of some kuih including kuih bakar berlauk.
http://masak-masak.blogspot.com/2005/10/ramadan-bazaar-kampung-kerinchi.
Posted by: SkyJuice7 | July 4, 2006 05:23 AM
Venitha: 'roo laksa, wow, imagine that! I don't think I want to try any... :-)
Kongkay: haha, that is really funny considering that I just started growing some soursops in my garden. I guess that's appropriate for an ang moh garden, eh? ;-)
Sky: oh goodie, can't wait to look at these links now. THANK YOU.
Posted by: Evil Jonny | July 5, 2006 02:59 PM
I'm crazy about Laksa, anytime, anywhere... yummm!
Posted by: Dhi | August 20, 2008 12:01 AM