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 !!

白斩芽菜鸡 Bean Sprout & Chicken (Nga Choi Kai)

Chicken time! I have been looking for real easy way to this boiled chicken. After lots of reference here and there, I finally found this easiest one from one of the GURU demonstrating in youtube.

To cook 白斩鸡, you can opt for whole chicken or drumstick. To me, I like drumstick as it is easier to cut ;)

Ingrediants & Steps:

Chicken
1) Rinse and clean drumstic (In my case, 7 pieces)
2) Slice fresh ginger (about 1-2 inches)
3) 2-3 pieces of spring onion, chop the white part into 1 inches length (the green part about 2-3cm length reserved for garnishing later)
4) Prepare a pot of cold water, place chicken, sliced ginger and chop white part of spring onion in pot and make sure the water cover the chicken.
5) Bring to boil over medium heat. Turn off heat then cover pot with lid. Steep chicken in covered pot for 30 minutes.
6) Remove cooked chicken from pot and rub all over with salt and bit of sesame oil. Allow to cool then cut into pieces.
7) After pour over the source onto chicken pieces (refer below for source), garnish with spring onion.

Source
1) Chop finely bit of garlic and ginger and place into bowl.
2) Prepare 1/2 tbsp oyster source, 2 spoonful of soya source, 1 spoonful of sesema oil, 5 spoonful of water, pinch of sugar into the bowl with garlic and ginger, and pour over the source over the cut chicken.

Bean Sprout
1) Bring a pot of water to boil, put in the bean sprout and cook for 2 minutes.
2) Take the bean sprout and place them on plate.
3) Prepare the same source used for chicken except without garlic and ginger, pour over the bean spout, garnish with cut spring onion and pepper.

Chili Sauce
1)Blend chilies, garlic and ginger together. Dish out and add salt and sugar. Drizzle with hot oil.

Soup
1) Bring remaining chicken stock to boil then add cabbage and cook till softened. Season with salt to taste.