Assam Fish Curry

Today's dinner

Set too many tasks on my list today, strawberry ice cream, toffee swiss roll, prepare the chasu, bamboo shoot and eggs for ramen tomorrow and fish curry. Especially three out of four is my first attempt, sweat, sometimes I just considered myself too "smart". Since the curry is having the okra in there, I couldn't be bother to have another dish. In fact, it was more than enough for two of us to clear up the big pot of curry. Learnt this dish from my mummy, enjoyed the spiciness and the sourish from the hot curry, it may appear too much gravy to some people but I just prefer it to be soupy and goes with a bowl of white rice. Used the stingray for this curry, pomfret or snapper fillet can be another good choice. Anything to do with sourish and spicy, count me in.

Recipe for the Assam Fish Curry:

a cup of shallots
a tablespoons of belacan
3 tablespoons of chili powder (can substitute with dried chili)
4 stalks of lemongrass (only the white part is used)
one small galangal (sliced)
a bunch of laksa leaves
2 torch ginger flower(chopped)
2 tablespoons of tamarind paste mixed with half bowl of water
a pack of okra (optional)
salt and sugar to taste
4 cups of water (can reduce it according to your liking)

Blend the peeled shallots with the belacan and chili powder. Heat up some oil and saute the spice paste until fragrant.

Pour in the water followed by the lemon grass, laksa leaves and galangal. Add in the tamarind juice and season the curry.

Put the okra in the curry and let it sit inside for awhile. When the okra achieved the texture that you want, start putting in the fish . Before it's done, torch ginger flower can be put into the soup to getting more flavour out of it.

This recipe is for a claypot size of fish curry, quantity of fish to put in is on your own preference.