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Thanks

• Pete Metro

 

Sambal

It’s popular now so you buy it by the bottle at the market, but I didn’t have any and wanted a more custom flavor and ingredients for an upcoming recipe. I recently bought some spicy tamarind paste which would have sufficed for the recipe but none the less wanted to cook up my own Sambal.

dried chili, plain and smoked, red onion,garlic, turmeric, scotch bonnet pepper,lemon grass,lime, galangal root,shrimp paste,ginger root,brown sugar.

The basic recipe calls for a paste made and then fried, and other ingredients added with some further cooking. Chilies are an essential element both fresh and dried. I had some scotch bonnet peppers frozen, some  dried chilies, but some were smoked  and would make a dark spicy sambal.

soaking the dried chilies

Processing the paste, it was first a bit thick but added some water that the chilies soaked in to thin and blend it further.

cooking the sambal paste

dark candy sugar added melted in to bring up the sweetness to spicy balance

 

The Sambal paste is put in jar and ready for use.

Stingray

In my haste this was first posted without captions

Here is the sting ray from the market, one of the two pieces I bought. The fish monger expertly cleaned them.

Most of the recipes I researched called for the stingray to be wrapped in banana leaves. I used parchment paper. Smear some of the sambal on a large size at least double the size of the fish ….

Add the fish, then cover with more sambal.

Added onions, because onions goes with everything !

Wrap the parchment,  en papillote

Then wrap in foil, not shown, and bake at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15-20 minutes.

Break open the pouch and plate.. either rice or couscous goes well with this. Sweet, spicy and hot the ray is tender and pulls away form the frame of the bones in thin flaky strips.

One side done, then I flipped it over and stripped off the remaining meat meat leaving this structure.

Well I’ve made an effort to get more fish on my plate and a new tasting experience done with one meal. Anticipating how to prepare the other piece of stingray, grill, fry, bake, blacken? Maybe too thin to blacken, possible breaded and fried, or with a plain tomato sauce or another papillote with butter and lemon. How about right on the outdoor barbecue. Could I use the raw meat for sushi ?

lo mein

With the abundance of fresh veggies and with the addition of noodles, lo mein was an easy choice, though prep would be essential to the recipe.

A slicing of the veggies was done using the rotary slicer of the kitchen aid attachment.

One of those recipes, the more you look the more variations you find , you settle as with most “authentic” recipes to the ingredients you have available to the village or are grown locally.

I didn’t  get to list all the sauce ingredients and amounts, but loosely followed several recipes that I researched by listing all the ingredients that compose the sauce to get an idea of the basics. I modified it by adding a bit more cornstarch and a good amount of stock as I prefer s saucy-er thick coating to the dish.

The sauce was a build up from the basic soy sauce/rice wine/sugar combo. Some of the associated components are: soy sauce, rice wine, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chili paste, ginger root, galangal root, garlic, sugar, honey, salt and pepper with sesame oil.

The sauce, less the stock.

The veggies are the same deal, use what you have. Pea pods and the baby bok choy were included as they were fresh and attractive from the market. The carrot was also crunchy as they were fresh, large diameter and not very tapered as the packaged carrots were.

Stir fry the veggies in oil.

 

While stir frying the veggies, prep the noodles, I used rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles, so just a brief toss in hot water is all that’s needed, drain and add to wok.

 

Mix well , then add the sauce… serve….

 

 

 

The result is as good or better result than restaurant  because you have control of the ingredients. So if you like salad with noodles with a sauce here it is.

I made this dish twice and this post is a compilation of the pictures from both.

shopping

recent prices / purchases

 Buy something you never had before : longan berries, galangal root and stingray.

The sweet yellow rice is more like couscous.