Ikan Bakar and Steamed Herbal Chicken

It has been a pretty rough week for HB and me. What better way to cheer ourselves up than to whip up some good ol’ Malaysian food

 

I was at the market last week, and at the fish section when woooo! I spotted a huge HALF piece of a sting ray. Now, I LOVE LOVE LOVE ikan pari, especially if it is in asam pedas. Otherwise, I love it grilled (pari bakar). So I asked the fishmonger whether he could give me HALF of that half-piece. And he rambled on in Italian with plenty of gestures. He would only sell it in one huge piece. So I bought the huge piece for 10EUR :/

 

So I got home thinking that I would cut it into smaller chunks to make asam pedas. But I was defeated. By a fish. It was so hard to handle! And to top it off, the sting ray here isnt the same as the one we have in Msia. It had a very rough, almost spiky surface that grazed my hands so many times that my hands bled slightly at different spots. Darn that fish. I wasnt about to be outdone by a fish. Fine, fish. FINE. See if I dont eat you in the end. That’s when I decided to grill the entire piece Who has the last laugh now huh HUH HUHH.

 

Ikan Pari Bakar (Grilled Sting Ray)

 

I gotta say, it was almost like walking down memory lane when I was preparing this fish. I remember how mama used to make pari bakar on Fridays when I was much younger. Fridays coz back then, Friday and Saturdays were the official government off days. And I would have pari bakar for recess in school, much to the envy of my other friends But mama used to make THE MOST KICKASS pari bakar cicah air asam (grilled sting ray with tamarind dip) OMG I’m honestly salivating as I write this.

 

When I was about 4-5, I remember being bamboozled by my uncle. He used to say that the sting ray on the dining table was nothing but an elephant’s ear. And credits to him, it actually DOES resemble an elephant’s ear, doesn’t it?

 

Anyway, I had some chili paste, so I blitzed some onion, garlic and ginger into a paste and tumis-ed (fried till oil oozes out) it with some belacan and tamarind water. Then I spread the paste on to the fish and chucked it into the microwave which also has a grill function (yayy). And voila, grilled sting ray. It would have been a lot tastier if it had been wrapped in banana leaves, but beggars can’t be choosers. I haven’t seen a single banana tree, much less banana leaf in this country.

 

And oh, it wasn’t too big for us to finish

 

And the HB has been hankering for some Steamed Herbal Chicken the past few days, and I decided to try my hands at it, even though I’ve never eaten it myself. I did have my reservations about this dish coz I’m not too big on herbal flavours. But I must say, the outcome exceeded my expectations. I loved it!

 

Steamed Herbal Chicken

 

Credits go to my mum-in-law who gave me the step by step instructions on how to whip up this easy peasy dish.

 

Ingredients

2 chicken drumsticks

2 shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly

5 red dates

2 tsp kei chee (wolfberries)

4 slices dang gui (chinese angelica roots)

3 pieces pao shen (short American ginseng)

4 cloves garlic

 

Marinade for chicken

 

Dash of light soy sauce

Dash of pepper

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tsp oyster sauce (liquid chicken stock/concentrate would be better, but I didn’t have any)

 

Directions

1. Marinade chicken for a few hours.

2. Place half the herbs on aluminium foil. Place chicken on herbs. Place remaining herbs on chicken.

3. Steam on high heat for about 45 minutes.

 

Yepp its that easy I skimped on the herbs coz I have precious little with me. Maybe you would like to use more. I also didn’t have any “Dang Shen” roots (codonopsis roots), so if you have some, throw in 1-2 of those. We also added in some Bacardi rum(!!!!) coz HB wants to finish the remainder in the bottle, and we aren’t exactly avid drinkers :/

 

So there you have it, Ikan Pari Bakar and Steamed Herbal Chicken. I realized that I’ve not put up any Indian recipes in here. I’ve definitely been whipping up curries and dhall and what not, but LOL, curry seems like an every day thing to me; not worth putting up, but I’m thinking I should Gosh how I miss my mum’s mutton curry paired with droolicious peppery sour rasam.

 

Now excuse me while I go binge on some gelato. A pathetic attempt to curb my hunger, I know