Malaysian-style Curry Laksa

This Malaysian-style curry laksa starts with a spicy paste, made soupy with water and coconut milk and loads of add-ins like shrimp, tofu, chicken and noodles. It is a rich, wonderful seafood dish for a chilly night!

One of my favorite dishes of all time from our many, many years living in Malaysia is curry laksa. I never had to learn to make it there since there were a lot of restaurants that served lovely or at least decent versions. 

When we moved on to Egypt back in 2012, that’s when my laksa cravings meant I’d have to figure out how to make it myself. There are tons of recipes online but it took meshing a couple together to come up with one that tastes the way I remember from my favorite restaurant, Madam Kwan’s.

It has a rich, fragrant broth that tickles your nose and delights your tastebuds. 

Malaysian-style Curry Laksa

The paste is made from a long list of ingredients but don’t let that dissuade you since this recipe makes plenty enough to freeze and you will be glad to have those little bags readily available next time the craving for curry laksa hits you. You need 3 1/2 oz or 100g paste (a rounded 1/3 cup) to serve curry laksa for four people. These ingredients are available at most Asian markets.

Ingredients

For the laksa paste (rempah):

15 dried chilies, soaked in hot water (about 1/2 oz or 15g before soaking)

1/4 cup or 25g dried shrimp, pounded to powder

7 lemongrass stalks, white parts only, sliced

30 small shallots, peeled and chopped (about 6 1/3 oz or 180g)

2.8 oz or 80g galangal, peeled and sliced 

2.8 oz or 80g fresh ginger, peeled and sliced 

10 candlenuts (available at Asian markets or substitute macadamia)

1 tablespoon ground turmeric

2 tablespoons shrimp paste 

6 fresh red chilies

8 cloves garlic 

1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil

For the curry laksa:

3 1/2 oz or 100g paste (a rounded 1/3 cup)

2 cups or 480ml water

1 can (113.5oz or 400ml) coconut milk 

14 oz or  400g fresh yellow egg noodles or thick rice vermicelli (or a combo)

1.75oz or 150g bean sprouts, blanched (throw them in at the very end of the noodle cooking time)

7 oz or 200g raw, cleaned, peeled shrimp or prawns

7 oz or 200g fish cakes or balls

3 1/2 oz or 100g tau pok (deep fried soy bean curd puffs)

Garnish options: 

Curry leaves and/or fresh mint

Hard-boiled eggs, halved or use whole quail eggs

Shredded chicken

Sliced chili peppers

Method

First, we make the paste: Use a blender to combine all the ingredients until you have a homogeneous paste. 

Cook the paste in a heavy pan over a low heat for about 20-25 minutes or until the onion/garlic smell is not so prominent and the paste has darkened a bit. 

These ingredients make 4 cups of paste before cooking – about 2 3/4 cups or 700g after cooking – enough for about 7 batches of curry laksa for four people. Freeze the balance until needed in airtight bags, up to three months. 

To make the laksa, add the paste to a pot with the water and whisk till combined. Bring to a slow boil.

Add in the shrimp, fish cake or balls, tau pok and coconut milk. Simmer till the shrimp are cooked, just a few minutes. 

Meanwhile, cook your noodles to package instructions. To blanch the bean sprouts, throw them in right at the end of cooking time for your noodles. Drain and rinse noodles and sprouts in cold water. Dry the sprouts on a paper towel and set the noodles aside in a colander till ready to serve. 

To serve, share out the noodles and sprouts between four large bowls. Add shrimp, fish cake (or balls) and tau pok. 

Ladle hot laksa broth into the bowls. 

Garnish with curry and/or mint leaves, eggs, chicken and sliced chili peppers. 

Enjoy! 

It's time for Fish Friday Foodies, when my blogger friends along with group organizer Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm share our favorite seafood recipes. This month the theme is soups and stews. Many thanks to our host, Sneha of Sneha's Recipe. Check out the links below. 

• Food Lust People Love: Malaysian-style Curry Laksa 
• Karen’s Kitchen Stories:  Shrimp, White Bean, and Kale Stew 
• Palatable Pastime: Shrimp and Crab Gumbo 
• Sneha’s Recipe: Seer Fish/Surmai Kujit- East Indian 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Sausage and Halibut One Pot Stew

Would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas.

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Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle is a great seasonal party sweet and perfect for wrapping up to give as gifts for teachers, friends and coworkers. The crunchy pumpkin seeds toast and pop in the syrup as it cooks and caramelizes, flavoring the buttery brittle.

When my girls were quite young, we lived in a small oilfield town in Brazil where we were one of very few American families. Our neighborhood was just four or five blocks square, with the tiny little international school within its perimeter.

Halloween was not celebrated in Brazil, at least when we lived there, so if I wanted my daughters to experience that great American tradition as I had when I was little, it was up to me to organize it myself.

I started in early October by asking neighbors I knew to give out candy then I’d make a map of all the participating houses and pass them out at the beginning of the evening. 

Some participating houses had children so one parent would join the groups going from house to house, leaving someone at home to hand out candy. Others didn’t have kids but they got into the spirit with enthusiasm, decorating their front doors and more, to welcome the trick or treaters.

After trick or treating, everyone would come back to our house where we had decorated the backyard for a spooky Halloween party and set up a table with cupcakes, sandwiches, chips and punch. We’d bob for apples the old-fashioned way in a big basin of water, pass oranges or small balloons under chins and play other fun games. 

And, of course, the kids would sort out their candy, trading for their favorites and eating much of it in the process. It was a festival of sweetness and fun! Such a sugar rush! 

One of my favorite candies to make for a Halloween party was, and still is, peanut brittle. This week I made it seasonal, using pumpkin seeds to celebrate Halloween.

Your Halloween party guests will love it! Or make some as a gift for your favorite teacher or neighbor. Add a creepy chocolate spiderweb for decoration!

Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Like peanut brittle, pumpkin seeds brittle is simple to make but take the time ahead to butter your foil and put it in a heatproof pan before you start boiling the concoction, as per the instructions. I don't have photos of the in-between steps because there wasn't any time to stop to take a picture!

Ingredients

1 cup or 200g sugar 

1⁄2 cup or 120ml light corn syrup 

1⁄4 cup or 60ml water

1⁄2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 1⁄4 cups or 180g raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (not toasted) 

2 tablespoons butter, softened, plus more for greasing the foil lined pan

1 teaspoon baking soda

1⁄3 cup or 66g semi­sweet chocolate chips for spider web ­- optional

Method

To make the pumpkin seed brittle, first line a large pan with foil and grease the foil liberally with butter. Set aside.

In a heavy pot, heat the sugar, corn syrup, water and salt over a medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Separate out a tablespoon of the pumpkin seeds and set them aside.

Stir in the remaining pumpkin seeds.

Continue cooking, stirring frequently until the pumpkin seeds start popping and the liquid turns caramel colored.

If you use a candy thermometer, you are looking for a temperature of 300°F or 149°C. Alternatively, you can drop a small amount into very cold water. It’s ready when it separates out into hard and brittle threads.

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the butter and soda. The syrup will froth up but just keep stirring till the butter is melted.

Pour the bubbling pumpkin syrup into your prepared pan.

Holding the pan securely, shake it from side to side and front to back, tipping it carefully this way and that so the pumpkin seed brittle spreads out. Quickly sprinkle on the reserved pumpkin seeds and leave it to cool.

To make the creepy chocolate spider web, melt the chocolate chips with a few quick zaps in a microwave or in a double boiler.

Fill a piping bag fitted with a number 3 tip with the melted chocolate. Pipe on a spider web following these instructions here.

Set the Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle out on your party table whole, then break it into pieces with a little hammer to serve.

Enjoy! 

It's Sunday FunDay and since Halloween is nigh, we are sharing Halloween party treat recipes. Many thanks to our host, Sue of Palatable Pastime and her able helper, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out all the links below!

• Creepy Pumpkin Seed Brittle from Food Lust People Love
• Ghostly Candy Apple Concoction Bark by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Jack O’Lantern Cheese Bites by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Halloween Ghost Hardboiled Eggs by Sneha's Recipes
• Spider Web Pretzels by Amy’s Cooking Adventures

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

 

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Crispy Green Herb Patties

From a reportedly Viking recipe, these crispy green herb patties are full of flavor from all the herbs and, of course, from being browned in butter. They make a great vegetarian main or appetizer. 

Today we are “cooking like Vikings,” at the behest of our Sunday FunDay host, Amy of Amy’s Cooking Adventures for Leif Erikson Day, which just happens to be today. 

I’ll be honest, aside from the fact that Leif Erikson was a Viking explorer, I didn’t know much else about him. And I had no idea that there was even a Leif Erikson Day! Turns out that it’s been on the official US calendar since 1964. You can read more about it here: https://www.wincalendar.com/Leif-Erikson-Day And even more about Explorer Erikson on History.com. Thanks to Amy, I am now much better informed!

I found this Viking recipe on a website from the Ribe Viking Center in Ribe, Denmark where archeological excavations have confirmed the presence of Vikings in the past. The original recipe title would translate to green meatballs but the description said that, of course, they were vegetarian so I changed the English name. Calling them green meatballs would just have confused people! And I hope you would agree that plain old “green balls” would have been weird. 

Crispy Green Herb Patties

I’m leaving the ingredients list intact, in case you do indeed have access to nettles, dandelion leaves, bird’s-eye grass, birch leaves and chervil. I don’t but I did find cress, chives and scallions to which I added some parsley and cilantro because they are green herbs and I already had them on hand. How much is a basketful? I have no idea but I leave you this photo of what I used. It’s a bunch of green stuff! 

The original recipe advises: If you do not make the herb patties early in the spring, you should remember to ONLY use the newest, tender shoots.

Ingredients

1 basketful of different, fresh herbs such as nettles, cress, chives, scallions, dandelion leaves, bird's-eye grass, birch leaves and chervil.

1 medium onion (mine weighed 120g)

1 large clove garlic

1 large egg

3/4 cup or 100g coarse wheat flour – I used stoneground wheat 

1/4 cup or 22g oatmeal

1-2 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Butter for frying

Optional for garnish: chopped chives

Method

Thoroughly wash the green herbs and discard any tough stems. Spin them in a salad spinner to dry them. If you don’t have a salad spinner, put the herbs in the middle of a towel and bring the sides together securely. Go outside and swing the towel around quickly. Works like a charm. 

Peel and roughly chop your onion and garlic. Put them in a food processor and chop finely. 

Add in the herbs, in two or three groups depending on the size of your processor.

 

Chop finely, occasionally scraping down the sides of the processor with a spatula. 

Measure the flour and oatmeal into a large mixing bowl. Add in the herb mixture and the egg. 

Stir until well combined. 

Add the milk one tablespoon at a time – you might not need it all – mixing well. 

You don’t want it to be too wet or too dry. A spoonful should hold together when you press it into a ball with your clean hands. 

Add the salt and mix well. 

Use a spoon or scoop to divide the mixture into 12-13 portions. Shape them into patties. 

Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet. Add the patties, being careful not to crowd the pan. Remember, you will need space to turn the patties over with a spatula. 

You may need to cook them in two batches, adding more butter to the pan for the second batch. 

Cook the patties over a medium heat until they are crispy and golden on both sides. 

Serve warm. Enjoy! 

As mentioned above, it’s Sunday FunDay and also Leif Erikson Day. Check out the Viking recipes we are sharing below. 

• Meatball Lefse Wraps from Amy’s Cooking Adventures
• Crispy Green Herb Patties from Food Lust People Love
• Kjøttkaker med brunsaus (Norwegian Meatballs) from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Norwegian Havre Kjeks (Sweet and Salty Oatmeal Rounds) from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Pannekaken - Norwegian Pancakes from Sneha’s Recipe
• Suaasat, a Greenlandic Christmas Stew from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Swedish Pickled Herring Appetizer from Palatable Pastime

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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