And yes, that's another long silence broken by yet another recipe. This one's for a Burmese noodle dish called Khau Suey, introduced to me by my college room mate's mum (for which i'm eternally grateful!). Its basically a D.I.Y bowl of noodles and stew, and the couple of times I've eaten it in a restaurant, I've always cribbed about paying for a dish that I put together!!
(but you see, I LOVE KHAU SUEY, so the cribbing only lasts till the first bite I take of it!)
I introduced Serenity to it (rather disastrously!) in the first few months of married life. (We didn't have such a well equipped kitchen then). All went well, until it came to the "spice" part of making the stew... Serenity, my sous chef, is one who likes adding random things to our cooking! (His favourite additive is carrots... in anything that he can put carrots, he will, and if he cant, it wouldnt be for lack of trying!!) But, I must admit, a lot of his "why dont we add a bit of soy?" and "a little bit of that thai chilli sauce would be good, no?" has worked for some of our collaborative culinary efforts. So here we are, cooking khau suey, and we wanted to add in some chilli flakes (which we didnt possess at the time!). So we throw in some dry red chillies into the chopper and lo and behold! they all fly to the top of the mixie bowl! So we keep adding chillies, to try and weigh them down so we'd have atleast some flakes and finally after adding some of it (the required amount), we discovered that we have a bit left over. Now since at this stage we had no handy containers to put it in and we figured that kashmiri chillies are all bark and no bite, we tossed the rest of the flakes in as well.... Needless to say, we passed our bowl of noodles back and forth, taking turns to pick out the chilli flakes during our (extremely burn ass!) meal!!
Here now, is a GOOD khau suey recipe. A note here, the toppings are SUPREME, and khau suey is quite pointless without these little crunchy bits!
Ingredients:
- 1/2 kg boneless chicken diced small. - 3-4 onions chopped fine
- ginger paste (1.5" piece) - garlic paste (6 - 7 cloves)
- coconut milk - turmeric powder
- chilli powder - lemongrass
- salt
Toppings:
- chopped spring onions - chopped coriander leaves
- chopped green chillies - crushed roasted peanuts
- chopped up boiled egg - fried onions
- fried garlic - fried maggi noodles
- lime wedges - soya sauce
- cooked dry shrimp
Method:
- Fry the onions till they're soft. Add in the ginger and garlic pastes and saute.
- Add the chicken, turmeric and chilli powder.
- cook till the chicken is done.
- Add equal quantity of thick coconut milk and water, add salt.
- Serve sauce poured over a bed of noodles and the toppings / garnishes of your choice.
One bowl of this and you're HOOKED!! Its filling and very very flavourful.
