You can easily found curry laksa almost every single corner of Malaysia, from the North to the South. However, still different places give you different flavour of curry laksa. There are
Malay laksa, Nyonya laksa, Chinese version laksa and also Siamese Laksa. The Chinese curry laksa is the most commonly seen and available throughout places. I knew I have to try it out at my own kitchen at least once and I did !
Yay.....
At the beginning, I thought of using
daun kesum instead of
curry leaves in my laksa. But after a second thought, I still going back to
curry leaves. For your info, I did tried one bowl of laksa with
daun kesum and tasted really good & unique.
Ingredients for
blended paste :
10 candlenuts, pounded
5cm galangal/ blue ginger, sliced
5cm ginger, sliced
5cm fresh turmeric, sliced
8 large shallots, cut small
10 garlic cloves
30 dried red chillies, soaked in hot water till soften
50gm dried shrimps, soaked in water till soften
8 fresh red chillies
5 stalks lemongrass, take the white part only & sliced
(place all the above ingredients together & blend till smooth)
**2 TB
shrimp paste (belacan), toasted
**2 TB
coriander powder, toasted
**2 TB curry powder, toasted
(next, stir the remaining ingredients into the blended paste and mix till well cooperated)
Next, preheat wok with 1-1/2 cup cooking oil then stir in the blended mixture and cook till fragrant. It will take awhile to cook the blended mixture. At this moment, the red chili oil should be seen. At this point, remove 1/3 of the chili mixture and set aside for later use. Continue cooking the remaining blended mixture over low heat by adding in 3 branches of curry leaves, for another 5 more minutes. Then off the heat !
Now, bring 2 Litre of water to boil then add the remaining cooked paste and continue boiling it for about 15 minutes over medium heat. Finally, add in coconut milk, salt & sugar to taste and cook for another 5 minutes then off the heat. Now, you will have a fabulous creamy soup with a layer of red chili oil on top. And its time to soak in the bean curd puffs.
Ingredients for
curry laksa soup :
2 Litre water
2-2/3 cups thick coconut milk
4 branches
daun kesum / vietnamese coriander (
curry leaves preferably)
2 tspn salt (or to taste)
3 TB brown sugar
2 tspn vegetable granule
10 pieces bean curd puffs, sliced
2 slices beancurd sheet, fried till puffy
some
local cockles / kerang (Since I can't find any, I omitted it)
OK now, I have prepare here with me some sliced fish cake, fried bean curd sheet, blanched be.an sprout, blanched Malay yellow noodle. And I have some bean curd puff sliced and soaked into the soup once its ready.
I'm not sure about you but I am really hungry now. Though the curry soup looks so very spicy but it is actually not at all ! It is more to milky coconut flavour. I bet you going to love Malaysian food more each day !
