Malaysian/Indonesian Curry Recipe

This is one of those recipes that gives a different result each time you use it. It can also be the basis of a whole range of dishes by changing some of the ingredients, by missing out some of the steps or by changing the order of doing things.

The Dry Ingredients

This time we used coriander, cummin and dried chillis. More than required was ground in a coffee grinder used only for grinding dry spices. For this dish one teaspoon each was used. The extras were saved in jars in the fridge.

Wet Ingredients - chopped

There are two sorts of wet ingredients. Some are blended and some are not. A critical component is blachan. A generous lump was wrapped in foil then heated on the gas - but it could be heated on a barbecue or grilled. The other ingredients used this time were onions, garlic, tumeric, fresh chillis and ginger. These were all placed in a blender and chopped to a paste.

Meat

Often this curry is made from beef. In this case a leg of lamb was cut into large chunks. There is no reason not to try anything and I expect that venison and kangaroo would work well. The wet ingredients are lightly fried with oil until it "sticks" together. The dried ingredients are added and then the meat is added and covered with the mixture. A tin of coconut cream is added.

Wet Ingredients - unchopped

Other ingredients are placed into the dish after all the above. These could include lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, pandanus leaf and galang.

The dish was cooked until the meat became tender. It can be served hot or cold and is often better on the second day.

One variation is to lightly fry fresh grated coconut until it becomes dark. This is then pounded into a paste and added to the dish. This thickens the mixture and gives a very distinctive texture and flavour.

Another variation is to use the wet chopped ingredients and coconut and to cook for awhile then add in deveined prawns or some other sea food like calamari.

Serve with?

White rice is preferred. This time we had stir fried thinly sliced cabbage cooked with chillis and a little fish sauce plus some sliced bananas in plain yoghurt.