The Salty Experience

Here's a recipe to share with you guys... from my best buddy :) The dish has a special name to remind me of my own folly with this dish.

Ikan Tauchu ala Jab

Ingredients you need:

1. 3 mackerels (ikan kembung)
   One tablespoon tumeric powder + half tablespoon salt. Mix them and rub a dub them fishes. Don't forget to make vertical cuts in the fish so that the tumeric can get in.
2.  Four tablespoon tauchu (fermented soybeans)
3. One tablespoon sweet soya sauce
4. One big onion cut into rings
5. One half cucumber, cut into long quarters
6. Two cloves garlic, chopped
7. Four shallots chopped
8. Three red chillies cut into large pieces
9. One inch ginger cut into matchsticks
10. One level tablespoon sugar
11. Half cup water
12. Half teaspoon tamarind paste to soak in a small bowl of water
13. One teaspoon cornflour mixed with three tablespoon water

Instructions:

• Deep fry fish until its crispy (to prevent the hot oil from dancing and jumping on to you, put some slices of onions in oil first). Set aside.
• In a pan, put some oil and fry the shallot, chillies, ginger and garlic.
• Put in the tauchu, water, cucumber, sugar, sweet soya sauce (no need salt as the tauchu is already salty). Put in the tamarind paste water. Then put in the large onion slices.
• Let the cucumber be soft To thicken the sauce, put in the cornflour mix if u want.
• Pour the sauce on the ikan and eat with lots of hot rice.

If you follow the instructions and ingredients closely, you will get something like this.

If you do not read instructions before you cook and leave out some key ingredients, you will get something like this... (don't laugh so loud la)

Do you see the vast difference and the follies you will get them fishes into if you don't read instructions BEFORE you cook. And not WHILE you are cooking :)

Anyways.. the darkkkkkkkkkkkk one was mine. It was pretty salty because i didn't add the cucumbers and i didn't follow the measurements properly. (I won't make a good baker). Tauchu and tamarind paste are salties, so cucumbers are important here to soak up them saltiness a little. We forgot about them cucumbers.

While dad and i were having that with rice, i had to hang my head in shame and told dad... urmm urmm.. you might need to go easy with the sauce.. scrape the sauce aside and just eat the fish *LOL*

Well... my dad loves to have his food pretty salty. Sometimes he will even have a small bowl of light soya sauce and chillies to dip his chicken or meat. His sodium intake is no good for someone his age. I am not quite helping much for coming up with such saltiness for dinner.

I bet his BP and his PSA levels went sky rocket high that night.

For the sake of my dad's health... i think its best that i stick to steaming fish or chicken for dinner :) Steaming dishes are the safest :)

Thanks to my buddy for the lovely recipe. If you are adventurous enough, you might want to try this dish. Its pretty good :) Just follow them ingredients and instructions. Its a tried and tested dish. Not by me because i don't do instructions well :)

As for dinner tonight, i'm just going to go to the Pasar Ramadhan stalls and get some real delicious food :) Its the fasting month for our muslim friends. Every evening, we have quite a big selection of things to buy to eat. I am gonna get some mini murtabaks :D I'll catch some pictures for you if it doesn't rain this evening.

We might be going on the road this weekend :) I promised someone i'll check out her exhibition before it ends... and its gonna end soon. The little one above misses home too. Probably we'll be away.

Now we got to go back to looking at some crummie codes. I am not even a programmer. I do not understand basic logic for codes. *LOL* Some people do ask for the moon.