My mum is an amazing Peranakan cook.  We have amazing food on order, from mee siam, buah keluak, garang assam to bakwan kepiting…we’re really lucky.  Mum’s actually written her recipes down, so if you have a special request, I’ll dig up the recipe for you.  I thought I’d start with an easy one.

Makes enough for 4.  Savoury, sweet, tangy and slightly spicy.  Delicious, and easy to make, and ingredients readily available.

Serve with white rice and sambal belachan.

You’ll need:

• 500g medium-sized prawns
• 300g fresh pineapple
• 20g tamarind
• 40g sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups water
• 1 stem lemon grass (bruised)

To make the rempah (this is the paste that forms the base of the gravy):

• 40g fresh galangal
• 15g fresh turmeric
• 50g shallots
• ¼ teaspoon belachan
• 2 fresh chillies

And here’s how you do it::

• Use a food processor and blend the rempah ingredients until you get a paste
• Skin the pineapple & cut into squares
• Make tamarind juice: soak the tamarind in a cup of water, using a fork to break it up, then strain the juice & discard the pulp
• Put the blended rempah into a pot and add:
  • 2 cups of water, sugar, salt and the tamarind juice, lemon grass stem, pineapple.
  • Boil for 10 minutes
• Add prawns & cook for 3 minutes

• 

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 6:59 am and is filed under Eats, Recipes . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.