Assam Curry Fish 亚叁咖哩鱼 – Eat What Tonight
I haven’t been posting fish recipes for quite sometime. So let’s go for something fishy today ! How about this Assam Curry Fish ? Used to buy premix for anything Assam previously, but after trying out this recipe from scratch, it actually isn’t that tough to prepare either. I can jolly back forsake all premixes for now !! I am always in favor of any recipes that are simple and straightforward. This is seriously one good example. All you gotta do is to blend all the spice ingredients to paste in a food processor and cook them in a wok with the fish.
Furthermore fish cooks pretty quickly, so if you are game enough, you can challenge this dish in less than 30 minutes ! Of course, if you do have the time to spare, feel free to work on your own pace. I always feel I can cook better when I am in a relaxed mode though.
And this piece of Batang fish that I have ordered online from PurelyFresh was in particular a very thick slice. In order to reduce the cooking time and for better taste so that the sauce can seep into the fish easily, I sliced it into 2 sections. But when you slice it thinner, you risk it breaking into smaller pieces whilst cooking. To prevent that from happening, I rubbed the fish with some salt and sugar all over and set it aside in the chiller for at least 30 minutes before cooking.
I don’t really fancy anything sour, which is kinda weird right since women generally loves sour stuffs. But I have exceptions for assam, tom yum and sweet and sour though. And so I would be sharing something Tom Yum soon too ! Hehehe !
Enjoy !
Assam Curry Fish 亚叁咖哩鱼
Recipe type: Chinese
Cuisine: Main
- 200g batang fish, rubbed with some salt and sugar all over and set aside in the fridge for 30 minutes before use
- 2 tbsp chili paste
- 1 thumb size yellow ginger, sliced
- 2 slices of old ginger
- 6 pcs of shallots, sliced
- 1 lemongrass, cut into small pieces
- 400ml water
- 2 tbsp tamarind paste, mixed with 2 tbsp of water and drained away the seeds
- 2 pcs tamarind peel
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp salted soya beans
- 2 sprigs curry leaves
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- 1 tbsp cooking oil
You can always add additional vegetables, such as eggplants, long beans or ladyfingers to the Assam Curry Fish to complement it.
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Marinade the chicken wings with the marinade ingredients and set aside in the fridge for at least 6 hours or preferably overnight.
Blend some pandan leaves together with 100ml of water in a food processor.
Filter away the pandan leaves to retain the pandan juice. Further extract more pandan juice by squeezing the whole bunch of pandan leaves together.
After washing and rinsing the rice, add in the fresh coconut milk and pandan juice, together with the pandan leaves tied in a knot and cooked the rice in a rice cooker.
When the rice is cooked, remove the pandan leaves and stir the rice to mix in the coconut milk residue that might be floating on top. Close the rice cooker and keep it in warm mode.
Beat the eggs lightly with the salt and pepper. Heat up the 1½ tbsp of cooking oil and add in the eggs mixture. Reduce the heat to low.
When one side of the eggs is 90% cooked, flip it over gently. It should still be in one whole round piece and not break into pieces.
After flipping over, continue to cook the eggs for another 20 seconds and off the flame. Allow the eggs to continue to sit in the pan for another 1 minute in the pan before removing.
Add in 1 tbsp of cooking oil in another wok and saute 1 tsp of minced garlic till fragrant. Add in the julienned carrots and stir fried till the carrots are slightly softened.
Add in the cabbage, water, light soya sauce, kicap manis and sugar respectively. Allow the cabbage to simmer in the water till the water is much reduced, till 20% of the original amount. Off the flame and set aside.
Heat up some cooking oil and deep fried the dried anchovies till golden brown and crispy. Drain and set aside.
Blend the shallots, garlics, chilli paste, belachan and 1 tbsp of cooking oil in a food processor till the paste is finely blend.
Heat up 4 tbsp of cooking oil in a wok and add in the finely blend sambal chilli mixture from previous step. Keep stirring so that the chilli does not burn, till fragrant.
Add in the sugar and deep fried dried anchovies. Stir slightly more till sugar melts and anchovies are well mixed. Taste and add more sugar if preferred sweeter. Off the flame.
Heat up some cooking oil for deep frying the chicken wings. If you prefer a crispier skin texture, coat the chicken wings with a thin layer of corn flour + rice flour mixture and deep fried the chicken wings. Otherwise, deep fried once remove the marinated wings from the fridge.
Serve Nasi Lemak on banana leaves. Arrange the rice and ingredients neatly and served with slices of cucumber.
Marinade the pork collar with the marinade ingredients and leave it overnight in the fridge. Heat up a wok or deep frying pan and add the pork collar with all the sauce into it. Turn it over occasionally to ensure every parts of the pork collar is infused with the sauce.
In another pot, boil the water together with the dried anchovies (in a soup stock bag) and yellow beans for 15 minutes.
Going back to the char siew, after the sauce starts to boil and thickens slightly, remove from heat.
Place the char siew together with remaining sauce in a baking tin.
Grill the char siew in the oven for 180 degrees C for 15 minutes in the middle rack. (Depending on the thickness of your meat, as mine was relatively thick, hence I baked it longer in the oven.)
Remove from oven, flip the pork collar over to the other side and bake for a further 15 minutes.
When the char siew is done, remove and cut into thin slices. Top/serve the char siew with the remaining sauce.
Going back to the soup, after 15 minutes, remove the dried anchovies stock bag from the soup, but reserving the yellow beans in the soup.
Add the wantons into the soup. The wantons are cooked after they float to the surface of the soup.
In another wok, heat up some water and blanch the mee kia noodles in it.
Drain the noodles and rinsed them briefly over tap water.
Combine all the ingredients for the noodles sauce in a plate. Add the mee kia noodles and mix them well with the sauce.
At the same time, blanch the cai xin vegetables in a pot of boiling water with 1 tsp of cooking oil (This is to give the vegetables some shine.). Drain well.
Serve the noodles with the char siew, wantons, vegetables together with the wanton soup. Garnish the wanton soup with some diced spring onion.
