NASI LEMAK
I travelled to Malaysia last year, where I had a great food experience. I was looking at the photos I took then, and thought I should share some of the food I had over there. Here's a snipet of some of the food I had in Georgetown in Penang.
I will start with with Nasi Lemak, the national dish of Malaysia. As we were walking to town from our Hotel to town, we had the incredible luck to pass a (weekly!) craft market where one stall was local women had made food to sell for charity. So we were very glad to be served home made Nasi Lemak! the tasty cold dish was excellent and so fresh!
For the whole holiday, I had been looking for any opportunity to find some roti canai, an ossession of mine, since I have heard that it is the same bread used in Thailand to make the banana pancake (see previous blog post).
The dish is a roti bread served hot with curries for breakfast and originates from India and can be found everywhere in Malaysia. We ate the best one at a little cafe in the Little India quarter.
The Roti Canai was perfect (sorry, I started eating it before I took the photo, I could not resist...):
And it was served with a selection of six beautiful curries!
I also took the photos of the'making of' since making the Roti itself is an magic art and requireexperience and skills:
I could not resist and ordered other breads, like roti tissue (ahem, this one got eaten before it could be photographed but you can see what it looks like here), Dhosa:
And all the breads were the best I've had during the whole trip. Unforunately, I was too full to be able to taste one of the puri bread from the mountain that had just been produced:
A few years ago, I tried the lamb handi for the first time in an Indian retaurant on the curry mile (Rusholme in Manchester, where Indian restaurants stretch on a mile of road, on both sides!). It dawned on me it was the best Indian Curry i'd ever had. BUT, never ever I tasted it that way again. So I decided that the best way to taste it again was to try and reproduce it at home. What got me in this curry is a particular and perfect tanginess, where I recognised fresh ginger, cardamon, tomatoes and tamarind (and maybe lime?).
To start it off, I looked on the internet for handi, and I hardly found anything. I used as a base the cooking method found in a recipe called mutton handi althought it missed the ingredients I had guessed.
So here's what I concocted in my kitchen:
Ingredients for 4
- 1 kg of lamb with bones
- 2 large onions
- 1 bunch of fresh mint leaves or a big spoon of dried mint
- 2 tsp mustard oil (or vegetable oil)
- 2 pieces of green cardamom)
- 2 pieces of black cardamom: I did not have any when I made the recipe....
- 2 pieces of cinnamon (or 1 tsp of powder)
- 1 thumb of fresh ginger
- 3 garlic cloves (remove the germ)
- vegetable oil
- fresh coriander leaves (cilantro)
- 2 tsp garam masala powder
- 1tsp chili powder or 2 fresh chilis or chili flakes, or chili oil... to taste
- 1/2tsp tamarind
- 2tsp turmeric powder
- 1tsp coriander powder
- 1 can chopped tomatoes (fresh tomatoes in season)
- salt to taste
- 1 small pinch of salt
Marinate the washed, dried lamb with the salt, the mustard oil, the turmeric powder, the chili powder and the coriander powder for 2 hours.
In a blender, place the onions onions, the garam masalas, the fresh coriander leaves, the mint mint leaves, the ginger and the garlic cloves and blend not too finely.
Heat some vegetable oil in a wok.
Add in the blended mixture and saute for 5 mins.
Add the marinated lamb pieces. Cook for 10 mins.
Add a pinch of salt, turmeric and chilly powder.
Add water tomatoes and tamarind and cover cook till the sauce is dense and lamb pieces are tender.Garnish with freshly cut coriander leaves. Serve hot with plain rice, roti or paratha.
I really enjoyed this dish. It was not exactly exactly as I remembered it, but still, I will do it again and will strive to perfection!! and I'll add some fresh lime...
Serve with a mango lassi:
In a blender, mix 500g yoghurt, 1 ball vanilla ice cream, 1fresh mango peeled and boned, 3 or 4 ice cubes, and adjust the texture with water and serve quickly to keep it fresh. It is great to calm the fire of Indian dishes.
Bon apetit!
Source: inspired from the handi mutton recipe on http://food.sify.com/
