My name is Ejube. Ejube Kashineiro.
I was given a dirty proposal by my cousin last weekend as we were trudging along to our Saturday morning exercise torture session.
“Let’s make food porn on my website!” she screamed while bouncing excitedly up and down as our train pulled into Seng Kang station. The cabin fell silent as 12 heads turned slowly in our direction…
So here I am. I will now be irregularly blogging about one of my favorite subjects in the world: FOOD. I’ve always had an affinity for food, having cooked my first scrambled eggs at the age of 7. I am currently heavily involved in food, working in the day as a food technologist in a food processing consultancy and pretending to be a celebrity chef on weekends for my friends. As for food blogging, yes I am an amateur in the blogosphere of millions. But I hope to bring some cool science into my entries every once in a while so you can then impress your friends with unpronounceable food science terms.
Last weekend, I stuffed about 20 odd ingredients into my friend’s suitcase and brought them to her place to cook up a storm. I was feeling inspired having recently come back from a quick tour of Bangkok with a Danish grandmother and 2 heavily tattooed girls (and we were stopped at Suvarnabhumi airport but that’s a story for another day). So I decided to cook Thai for the girls as they have been craving for it since the trip. Especially since L, my tattoo apprentice mate, has been hounding me for forever to make her some Chu Chee Curry Prawns.
A lot of you may not have heard of Chu Chee Curry, but it is basically a Thai red curry that has less spices (usually just cumin and coriander), is thicker than a regular curry and maybe a bit sweeter and generally made with seafood.
Chu Chee prawn curry…mine needs to be redder, the yellowness comes from the turmeric in the curry paste mix. Taste good though, and when I cook this, it usually fills the whole kitchen with a heady aroma of fresh coconut milk, kaffir lime and lemongrass….ahh…kitchen bliss….
Then came the plethora of other thai dishes which I whipped up.
Now for those of you interested in making your own chu chee curry paste, just put everything listed below into a food processor and blitz the death out of it.
- ¼ tsp toasted shrimp paste (balachan, stinks)
- 5 large dried chillies, soaked in boiling water
- 1 tsp coriander seeds, toasted over hot pan till fragrant
- 10 white peppercorns, toasted over hot pan till fragrant
- 6 garlic cloves
- 4 small purple shallots
- 6 kaffir lime leaves
- 2 tsp lime zest
- 1 lemongrass stalk, white part only, finely sliced
- 2 tsp chopped coriander leaves and roots
- 1 tbsp finely chopped galangal
The end result should look something like this.
Stir fry 3 tablespoons of this in a little veg oil till fragrant, pour in 250 mls coconut milk and let it simmer at lowest heat for 5 mins, season with about 1 tablespoon of fish sauce and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. Taste and add more fish sauce and sugar if necessary. Then add in raw peeled prawns and simmer till prawns turn pink. Serve with coriander leaves. Enjoy!
