When I was young, we made it a point to have a soup dish in every meal, in retrospect, I guess that’s a great way to have kids having enough liquid in our diet?
Anyway, I remember that one of my favorites of such soup dishes were the salted fish bone tofu and pork soup. So when I was at Kota Kinabalu not too long ago, I made it a point to get myself some good quality whole kurau salted fish that includes the boney bits.
So here’s the recipe I got from mom.
Ingredients:
- salted fish bone (preferably ikan kurau)
- a bulb of garlic, peeled
- an inch of ginger, sliced
- spring onion, cut into 2 inches length
- pork slices, 300-500 gram
- tofu, 2 blocks
- 2 liter of water
- 4-5 tablespoon cooking oil
Instructions:
- soak fish bone for half an hour
- fry garlic, ginger and fish bone till fragrant
- add pork slices and brown the exterior
- add water and bring to boil for at least half hour
- add tofu for the last minute, add spring onion too
Comfort food for rainy days for sure!
Welp, it’s been almost three years since I last have an entry on cooking, I guess it’s not better time than now to put in one of my favorite dishes mom used to cook when I was a boy – Nyonya seafood curry with salted fish bone. This really came about because I managed to get some really big whole salted fish from the Filipino market in Kota Kinabalu.
ingredients for seafood curry pot
As the name of the dish suggests, this is a classic Penang style Nyonya dish. Unlike normal curry dish, the presence of salted fish bone gives it a better taste character that’s much better than salt ever would. It is also a dish that has pretty much everything in it – vegetable, seafood, santan, and with steamed rice, makes a whole meal.
blending onion, ginger, garlic
Anyway, here’s the ingredient list of the version mom makes:
- 1 KG prawns and/or other seafood (mussels for example)
- 2-3 pieces of salted fish bone (kurau fish preferred)
- 1 clove garlic
- 1-2 onion
- 1 inch ginger
- 1/2 dozen cili padi
- spring onion
- curry paste (best if you can get them from morning market)
- 1 tomato, 1/2 dozen lady’s fingers, 1 brinjal
- 2 packets of coconut milk
- 3-4 spoon cooking oil
“tumis” chili paste with oil, and then add seafood
Cooking instructions:
- clean and soak salted fish bone for 10-15 mins
- grind up onion, ginger, garlic, and cili padi to a paste
- heat up oil and fry the paste for a minute
- add curry paste to the mix, stir for another minute
- add salted fish, seafood and stir until slightly fragrant, perhaps a minute or so
- add vegetables, stir for another minute
- add santan, bring to boil for a couple minutes
- cut up spring onion and add to the mix (for looks only lah)
add vege and santan next
Remember to serve this with a nice plate of steamed rice, low carb diet be damned.
viola, it’s all done, seafood curry with salted fish bone
I promise to not let another 3 years passed before putting up another recipe on this blog, and this is in fact, the 100th. You can find more of my simple recipes here.
