Penang Asam Laksa

My craving for Laksa hits the max as soon as I woke up in the morning. It's been 3 months since I had my last laksa in Penang. Before I came to Oz, I have already prepared and "stole" the recipe from my aunt, who cooks damn good Asam Laksa. Regardless of whether I could find the ingrediants, waiting no more and asian grocery here I come!

First of all, we need to have the chili paste ready.

chili paste
A handful of dried red chilies (tolerate to your hot level that you can take!)
A couple of red chilies
A Handful of Small shallots (I like this to be more as I like shallots)
2 tbsp belacan (shrimp paste)
1 stalk lemon grass

Put them all into blender and blend them. Put aside to be used later. Now look at what other ingrediants required for the soup.

Soup Ingredients:
1.5L of water
Daun Kesum (Vietnamese Mint)
5-6 pieces Ikan Kembung (Mackerel fish)/ Sardin Fish (Can)
5 pieces assam keping (peeled tamarind)
Tamarind (about 2 spoonful, add 1/2 cup water, extract the juice a few times ready to be used.
Some salt and sugar

To prepare the soup, first of all, clean the fish. Prepare a pot of 1.5L water, add the fish into the pot and boil for about 10 minutes, then transfer the cooked fish out and let cool. Next, strain the fish soup in the pot just now (so that fish bones aren't caught in there), add in the peeled tamarind, blended chili paste and the polygonum leaves and continue to boil in low heat.

(To me, I couldn't find the Ikan kembung here, therefore, Sardin fish (ayam brand) is chosen as substitute, and the result is nice and actually it saves some tedious fish flesh picking job)

While waiting for the fish soup to boil, pick the flesh out of all the fish and discard the bones. Break the fish meat into tiny pieces and put the fish back into the soup, cover the lid, and lower the heat.

Add in the extracted tamarind juice into the soup. Adjust the soup at your preference. If it's not sour, add in additonal tamarind juice. Add salt and sugar to taste.

While waiitng for soup to be ready, prepare below ingrediants for noodle and garnishing.

Garnish:
Laksa noodles/ Lai Fan/ Mihun (at your preference)
Cucumber (cut to strips)
Red onion (sliced)
chinese lettuce (thinly cut)
Small chili padi (bird eye)/ Red chili (cut into small slices)
Pineapple (cut into short strips)
Mint leaves (small branches)
Bunga kantan/torch ginger flower (cut into small pieces)
Heh Ko/Prawn Paste

Add in some laksa noodles in the serving bowl with all vegetables on top. Pour the fish broth into the bowl and serve immediately with a spoonful of Heh Ko/prawn paste.

And tang tang tang tang... here it is the asam laksa penang kia ! Awesome !!