Thursday, March 29, 2012

Indonesian BBQ

I haven't done much in the way of exciting cooking lately, once school went back life became too busy to spend time reading cookbooks and thinking about what I could make.  This weekend is my birthday so I have invited some friends over and am planning to have a BBQ with an Indonesian influence.  On the menu are sate chicken skewers, using the recipe in this months ABC Delicious mag and then a seafood curry, using a Balinese Spice Paste recipe as the base.  I have had this cookbook for ages, and have made the spice paste for chicken before but not this one for seafood.  My plan is to cook about a cup of the paste with some coconut milk and then gently cook prawns, scallops and some sweetlip fillet in that, served with basil and some steamed rice on banana leaf lined plates.  I often get disappointed living in a regional area as quite a lot of the time when I find a recipe I want to make the ingredients aren't available.  Last time I was in Brisbane I went to Chinatown and bought a few ingredients including the candlenuts needed for this recipe.  

Here are some of the ingredients I needed for the spice paste (along with a Corona which went well with the preparation!)

I love the colours of the ingredients, the candlenuts are the crinkly looking things next to the garlic and lemongrass.
 Everything except the lemongrass, tamarind and lime leaves gets thrown into a food processor. Actually, the recipe asked for Salam leaves, but I used Kaffir lime leaves as I love them and have a tree.  
 After the spices are processed you heat some oil in a frying pan and add the paste, lime leaves, lemongrass and then cook over a moderate heat for about 5 mins until the paste is fragrant and golden.  Then you add the tamarind pulp and stir through.  I made mine a couple of days before I want to use it to let the flavour develop.
Here is the recipe, a bit of the instructions are missing, but if you read what I wrote above you will know what to do!
I will post some pics of the finished curry after Saturday.



Oh, and for dessert I'm making a lime and coconut baked cheesecake.  I will finely shred young kaffir lime leaves and put some coconut milk into the cheesecake mix, serving it with some toasted coconut on top.  I will make this recipe up as I go, as I recently made a baked raspberry and chocolate cheesecake slice and it was really good!  I might go and finish the last piece off now...

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