Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Food Review: Lady's Fingers Masala Gravy

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 0 Comments
I never liked bendi to begin with but if its cooked right then I would eat it. Many guju cook it wrong so it comes out tasting bitter and sticky (remember the sticky substance that comes out with lady's fingers every time you want to cook it?)

Step One

Get all your ingredients ready. Blend a mixture of garlic, ginger and green chili. Blend 3-4 tomatoes separately. Grind about 10 pieces of cashew nuts. Cut an onion into small cubes. Cut the lady's fingers into 3 cm lengths


Step Two

Heat some oil in a wok. Add the bendi and dry fry them until the stickiness goes off


Step Three

Heat some oil in a wok. Add fennel seeds, and when they start to crackle add the onions and fry them till they're lightly browned. Add the ginger-garlic-green chili mix into the wok.


Step Four

Add the tomato puree and cover the wok with a lid to dry off some of the water


Step Five

Add the some yogurt, cumin-coriander powder, garam masala, and the grounded cashew nuts into the mixture. Mix well.


Step Six

Add the fried lady's fingers into the wok


Step Seven

Mix well and cook for a few minutes to dry off some of the excess water (if it looks too watery like mine did)


This is how the final product looks like. 

Food Review: Ipoh Curry Mee

Wednesday, March 12, 2014 0 Comments
I did this last weekend and it turned out alright!

Step One

You cut all the vegetables needed. The dry tofu into cubes and  the brinjals and long beans into 4 cm lengths. Wash some curry leaves for frying. Set aside few pieces of lemon grass ends (serai) I accidentally used daun limau but the smell was good nevertheless.


Step Two

Boil the long beans and brinjals in lightly salted water until they're soft


Step Three

While boiling the vegetables, get the curry paste mix done. Mix 4 part curry leaves and 1 part chili powder (depending on how spicy you want your curry to be) into a bowl and add some water into it. Set aside



Step Four

Heat some oil in a wok. I am using a heavy bottomed wok my mum bought from India




Step Five

Add curry leaves into the heated oil. Fry them for 1-2 minutes



Step Six

Add in the curry paste cocktail into the mixture



Step Seven

The recipe I referred to said to cook the curry paste till fragrant but what you really need to do is cook it until some part of the water has dried up, and it looks a little like the picture shown below. The other indicator to know when your "curry" is cooked is when you start seeing a light sheen of oil layer appearing on top of the curry. To cook curry quickly and dry up some of the water, dim the gas and cover the wok



Step Eight

Add in a whole box of unsweetened soy milk. This is the soy milk I used.



Step Nine

Add in the dried tofu, add some salt and sugar to taste. Because mine was less tasty I added some chili sauce



Step Ten

Throw in washed and blanched mee, and bring the whole thing to boil.



The whole recipe took me about 1.5 hours from preparation to cooking to dishing out to eat. Garnish the curry mee with kalamansi lemon and mint leaves

Sunday, March 2, 2014