Today I tried to cook Laksa for the first time. Laksa is my new favourite food; it’s a Malaysian dish, which is basically a spicy coconut chicken soup with brown meat.
I first ate Laksa at a small Malaysian restaurant called “Aunty Anne’s” which is near to where I live. I have since then tried it at one other place, so my experience of what it is exactly supposed to taste like is somewhat limited.
My first attempt came out pretty mixed, on the one hand it was pretty nice tasting, on the other hand it didn’t taste like what I was expecting. It is my own recipe, I searched the web for lots of recipes, everyone was different, so I took the bits that looked nice and used them, Also as usual when I cook, I used stuff I had around, even though I did visit the local Asian market, I couldn’t find everything I needed, and in one case (the chicken meat) I preferred to use what I already had.
I’ll keep trying, and hopefully keep updating, but here is the recipe I used. Feel free to try it, and tell me what you think. I’ll endeavour to write this up as a well formatted recipe in the future.
Makes enough for 4 people:
First make curry paste, to do that, coarsely cut up the following ingredients and toss them into a blender, when everything is in there, blend for a long time until you have a fairly smooth paste.
2 Large pieces of Lemongrass. Just the fleshy white bit.
4 Red Chillies. Remove the seeds.
4 Red Thai Shallots.
¼ Cup of Coriander (Cilantro in North America)
2 Tablespoons Peanut Oil
1 Teaspoon shrimp paste (Yes, ground up fermented shrimps)
1 Piece of Ginger, about the size of your thumb. I had to cut this up pretty small to help the blender
4 Cloves of Garlic
Now heat up a heavy pot on medium heat, pour in the paste and cook for about 3 minutes, stirring pretty often.
When the paste is very fragrant, add in 500ml of Coconut Milk, bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 minutes.
While you are waiting for that to simmer, prepare your chicken. I used chicken legs, but in theory Chicken thighs are what you want. You want brown meat (white Chicken meat is too lacking in flavour), without skin, and without bone. Cut it up into medium chunks.
After the milk and paste have simmered for 5 minutes, add in your chicken and 800ml of Chicken Broth. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
I used pretty high quality broth, and I don’t think this recipe will work with powdered broth, but feel free to try.
While you wait for the soup to get ready prepare your noodles. No two places I could find agreed on what noodles to use, so I recommend following the example from my local place, so get some thin, long, rice noodles. Put enough for 4 courses (about 150grams each) into a bowl, and pour boiling water over them until they are fully covered in water, the cover the bowl and let them stand for 4 minutes, then drain and put aside. If the noodles are very sticky, toss in a bit of oil.
When the soup is almost done (about 15 minutes thru) add the juice of two limes.
When the soup is done, put the noodles into 4 bowls, into each bowl add a handful of bean sprouts, 1 ½ pieces of Puff Tofu, and pour the soup into the bowls. Serve, and enjoy.
I must mention hard boiled eggs here. I forgot to buy eggs, and we only had one, but in theory you want to add a hard boiled egg (peeled and quartered) on top of the soup when you serve.
About the Tofu, in theory you want Tofu that has already been deep fried. When I went to the market they had two kinds “Friend Tofu” and “Puff Tofu”. I chose the latter since it looked like what I expected it to look.
Hope you enjoy!
The next time someone posts an article about how bad the video games industry treats their employees; feel free to point them to this Guardian article about Nike's abuse of employees.
In case the article changes by the time you read this, here is a quote: (My emphasis)
In more than half of Nike's factories, the report said, employees worked more than 60 hours a day. In up to 25%, workers refusing to do overtime were punished.
So in the grand scheme of things, the hours I've worked the past few years don't seem that bad.
I'm not sure exactly what commentry to write about this, so I'm just going to give you the link to http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7959
Hopefully Fifa Street will be my first 1 million copy title! Been around the block a lot, nice to know I've made something really big.