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Nonya Laksa Recipe

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by sue-ann in Nonya Laksa, recipes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

laksa, nonya, Singapore food

So here I am with the recipe for Nonya Laksa.  This is an extremely tasty and addictive dish, and although it may sound daunting to make since a number of steps are involved, you will find the result well worth it.  It is one of those dishes you shouldn’t rush, and it will definitely taste better with some TLC.  I cooked it in fairly large quantities, so the recipe here is based on a reduced portion. It would make 5 servings.  I really hope you will enjoy making and eating this as much as I did!

Ingredients

620g thick rice noodles (chu mee fen or chor bee hoon)
500ml coconut milk
1.8L water
400g prawns (medium) (approx 4 prawns per person)
2 fish cakes (each of approx 12cm in length), sliced
3 pieces tau pok (about 6cm x 6cm)
150g beansprouts
10 quail’s eggs or 3 chicken eggs, hard boiled and shelled
200g fresh blood cockles (with shells) (optional)
10 stalks laksa leaves
Rock sugar to taste
Salt to taste

For the Rempah (paste)

40g hei bee (dried shrimp)
1 whole garlic
8 shallots
1 small piece turmeric (approx 1cm x 1.5cm)
1 piece galangal (approx 3cm x 3cm)
3 candlenuts, finely pounded
1 stalk lemongrass
1 + 1/4 tbs belacan
10 dried chillies
Cooking oil

Method

Grind rempah ingredients in a food processor into a fine paste. Add about 2 tsp of finely chopped laksa leaves (from about 2 stalks) into food processor and whizz for a few seconds together with the paste.
In a wok, heat up 2-3 tbs of cooking oil, and fry paste until its colour darkens.  If it gets too dry before this happens, add a little oil.  Set aside rempah once it is done.
In a large stock pot, bring 1.8L of water to a boil and add the prawns, with shells on, then simmer till the prawns are cooked, remove quickly and refresh with cool water.  Once cooled, shell prawns and return shells and heads into stock pot. Set aside the prawns.  Bring pot to a boil, then lower heat and simmer about 1.5 hours.  Add a handful of laksa leaves to the stock pot (from approximately 3 stalks), and allow to simmer for another half hour.
While stock is simmering, prepare the other ingredients:
Slice fish cakes.
De-vein cooked prawns.
Hard boil the eggs, then shell them, and if using chicken eggs, slice them (quail’s eggs may be served whole).
Blanche the tau pok in a pot of boiling to remove some oil, then drain and slice them.
Rinse cockles thoroughly in a basin of cool water, changing the water until the water turns clear.  Drain.  Place cockles in a basin or small pot and pour boiling water over them and leave for a minute before draining them.  Refresh with cool water to prevent the cockle flesh from continuing to cook and becoming too tough.  Remove the flesh and set aside. Discard shells.
Blanche beansprouts quickly and drain.
Finely chop the remaining laksa leaves (you should have about 5 tsp)*.
Cook rice noodles in a pot of boiling water, refresh and drain.
Strain stock after it has been allowed to simmer for 2 hours, and return to stock pot.
Add rempah to the stock and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer till oil surfaces. Skim. Lower heat.
Add coconut milk (a little at a time), bring to a boil, the lower heat to simmer for a few minutes.
Add rock sugar and salt to taste.
If necessary, add more coconut milk.
Place a portion of the cooked rice noodle into a bowl. Arrange prawns, tau pok, beansprouts, cockles and eggs over the noodles and then pour some gravy over it. Sprinkle with 1 tsp of chopped laksa leaves and serve with sambal if available.
* If you are not able to get the amount of laksa leaves required in this recipe, try to ensure that you have at least 4-5 tsp of chopped laksa leaves for sprinkling over the individual bowls, and omit the laksa leaves in the rempah and stock if you have to.
(Edited 8/02/12)
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Nonya Laksa at Lunch with My Beautiful Cousins

04 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by sue-ann in family, Nonya Laksa

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Tags

laksa, nonya

On my Dad’s side of the family, I have 3 male cousins, and 13 female ones.  And then there’s my sister and me.  I have fond memories of the birthday parties we used to have when we were kids.  I’m not sure how many of these we actually had, but I remember the games we used to play at these parties and even going in costume for at least one of them!

As we grew up, we saw less of one another.  Some of us were overseas, and some of us were always busy with work, boyfriends, or other commitments.  It was only over Chinese New Year, on our Mama‘s birthday or occasionally over Sunday lunch at our Mama‘s home, that we met. And even then, there was seldom much time to chat, nor much to chat about anyway. After the passing of our Mama, I realised with sadness that we’d probably have even fewer opportunities to meet.

But things seem to have come full circle.  Most of us now have our own kids, and in the last couple of years, we’ve been gathering at birthday parties once again, and over Christmas and Chinese New Year.  Because of the resounding success of the “Two Is Enough” campaign of the seventies, most of us have only one, or at most, two siblings.  This means our kids don’t have as many first cousins as we do.  So it’s really good that all our kids get to play together. A bit of a riot maybe.  But in a good way.

Today my female cousins and their families came over for lunch.  On the menu were Nonya Laksa and Chicken Rice. Save for the garlic chilli which I made to go with it, I left the Chicken Rice entirely to W, who does it better than I do anyway. Besides, I already had quite a lot on my plate preparing the laksa.

Nonya Laksa is essentially a rich coconut-based soup with noodles.  It is extremely tasty – spicy, sweet, salty, very aromatic, and so addictive that it’s hard to keep from wanting to slurp more of the gravy. I tend to think of the soup more as a gravy because of how complex it is.  However, cooking it involves many ingredients and steps, which makes it rather time-consuming. So I reckon it only makes sense to cook this when you are going to be feeding a whole lot of people, in order to make it worth your time and effort.  Since we were expecting 20 adults and many kids (you’d think it was 20 of them from the noise level), I decided this was a good time to make this dish again.

This was my second go at it, so I already had the chance to re-think the recipe and work on it. Three days ago, I’d started by making the sambal with heibee (dried shrimp), belacan, shallots, galangal, lemongrass and red chillis.  Yesterday afternoon, I worked on the rempah (the paste for the laksa gravy).  This involved peeling, chopping and pounding heibee, shallots, garlic, galangal, lemongrass, dried chilli, candlenut, some chopped laksa leaves, and a little turmeric, then grinding it all up into a paste before frying it in oil over a wok for some time (in two batches because of the quantity).

This morning, 1.5kg of prawns were cooked, and their heads and shells (together with more heads and shells we’d stored in the freezer earlier this week) were used to make prawn stock.  For the two hours during which the stock was simmering, preparation of all the other ingredients began – prawns, eggs, beansprouts, tau kwa, fish cake, and cockles. I used fresh blood cockles this time, rinsed them something like 100 times till they were clean, blanched them in boiling water, refreshed them with cool water, then allowed them to cool, before removing the flesh.

Once the stock was ready, it was strained, the rempah was added to it, left to simmer for some time, before the coconut milk was also added to it. Then I chopped more laksa leaves for sprinkling over the individual portions.  I have observed that the aroma of laksa leaves is strongest when it is uncooked, just as with coriander.  Therefore, although many laksa recipes seem to call for laksa leaves to be simmered in the stock, I actually think what is more important is to have chopped fresh laksa leaves sprinkled over the dish before serving, as this is what gives the dish most of its characteristic aroma, without which it would be just a bowl of spicy prawn and coconut soup.

While all this may sound like hard work, I really enjoyed every minute of cooking this.  Like the H once said, even when I start out feeling tired, the high I get from cooking gives me a second wind which will keep me going quite happily. Besides, the result made it all worthwhile, and many of us went back for seconds, myself included!

It was a good lunch which we all enjoyed. W’s Chicken Rice was also quite a hit, as was the Devil Curry cooked by my cousin’s husband, C.  And it was so pleasant to just relax and hang out together,  playing with the babies, chatting and watching the older kids play together, as we sampled more Chinese New Year goodies as well as an assortment of Sri Lankan Tea which C had brought.  And of course the kids had a ball as usual!

It warms my heart that the bond among us cousins seems to have grown stronger than it has ever been, and often I imagine how pleased Mamawould be.

(Note: In case you’re wondering, I’ll be posting the recipe after I’ve worked on reducing the proportions for the ingredients).

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