House of Annie

Mingling Sweet and Savory

The key to this dish is to intermingling of savory flavors with sweet creamy flavors. This dish is reminiscent of the Malay style of cooking with loads of coconut milk (masak lemak) but instead of coconut milk, Jessie has substituted evaporated milk instead.

Evaporated Milk

And the highlight of the dish is the fried curry leaves. If you’ve never had fried curry leaves, you’ve missed out my friend. There is nothing like it.

Fried sage can’t hold a candle to fried curry leaves. The aroma, pungency and savory factor of the leaves makes it one addictive eats! You need to get yourself to an Indian grocery store and find some fresh ones if you can because they are totally worth it. And in this dish, it is the star!

The other aromatics help of course—chopped garlic, minced shallots, and some small bird’s eye chillies. All these ingredients pack a wallop and make for an enticing dish that keeps you coming back for seconds and thirds and…you get the picture!

Curry Leaves, Shallots, Garlic and Chillies

Recipe for Fried Pork with Evaporated Milk

Ingredients:
1 lb pork riblets or pork belly, cut into chunks
2 Tbsp tapioca starch (or cornstarch will work too)
1 tsp salt
dash of pepper
enough oil to shallow fry the pork riblets

For sauce:
3-4 shallots, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
3-5 bird’s eye chilli pepper, diced small (number is up to you depending on how much spice you can handle but you must have at least a few)
a large handful of curry leaves (about 5-6 thick stalks)

half a can of evaporated milk, about 1 cup
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp chicken bouillon (or to taste)

Method:
1. Mix pork riblets or pork belly with the tapioca starch, salt and pepper and allow to sit for about half an hour to an hour.

Pork Riblets Marinating

2. Heat up oil in a wok and fry the riblets until golden brown on all sides, about 4-5 mins per side.

3. Once pork is thoroughly cooked through, remove from oil.
4. Remove all but 3 Tbsp of oil from wok.
5. Throw in the shallots, garlic, chillies, and curry leaves into the hot oil and stirfry till the curry leaves start to smell really fragrant and become slightly crispy. Make sure that you don’t burn the garlic and shallots.

6. Return pork to the wok along with the above ingredients. Cook pork a little longer (if fish, this part if not necessary but because it is pork, you want to meat to get a little bit more tender).

7. After about 10-15 mins, pour in the evaporated milk, followed by the sugar and chicken bouillon.

8. Let the whole dish simmer for a little while in this sauce (if needed, you could add a bit of water). Adjust seasoning—it should be savory with touches of sweetness and spicyness.
9. Plate up and eat with plenty of rice. Yum!

Fried Pork with Evaporated Milk

Try this dish and I guarantee you will love the combination of flavors. If you have a nice white fish (like dory), you could replace the pork for fish (except that the batter for the fish is slightly different and you don’t put the fried fish back into the sauce—you just pour it onto the cooked fish).

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

Since these curry leaves came from our neighbor’s tree, I am entering this in the Grow Your Own recipe roundup this month, hosted by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes.

Butternut Squash Casserole Sweet Luvin’ in the Kitchen Michele from Pleasant Grove, Utah

Salsa Amundsen House of Chaos Erin from Logan, Utah

Beetroot Salad Living Healthy in Kuwait Noura from Mubarak Al Abdulla, Kuwait City

Braised Mustard Greens Sippity Sup Greg from Hollywood, California

Liquid Gold Humble Ambitions Beth from Coldspring, Texas

Tomato Soup The Claytons Blog Gail from Exeter, New South Wales, Australia

Finnish Cloud Pudding Rich Food for Lean Times Sofya from Southwestern Wisconsin

The Best Cornbread in the World Grandma Linda’s House Linda from Snohomish, Washington

Fenugreek Dal Dil Se Divya from Los Angeles, California

Apple Blackberry Muffins Vintage Savoir Faire Amanda from London, England

Citrus Almond Cake Foodology Jackie from Palo Alto, California

Maple Syrup Homesteading in Maine Nancy from Ripley, Maine

Chocolate Espresso Biscotti Esmaa’s Sense of Things Esmaa from Loveland, Colorado

Bibb Lettuce and Parsley Salad Kitchen Gadget Girl Cooks Gudrun from San Francisco Bay Area, California

Cavolo Nero, Chestnut and Butterbean Soup Allotment 2 Kitchen Mangocheeks of Scotland, UK

Fig and Apple Crumble Luciousness Charles from Victoria, Australia

Pesto Pine Nut Bread City Home / Country Home Bonnie in Salt Lake City, Utah

Miner’s Lettuce Salad Fat of the Land Langdon from Seattle, Washington

Maple Sesame Noodles Playing With Food Ting from Walpole, New Hampshire

Jill’s Passionfruit Butter The Clayton’s Blog Gail from Exeter, New South Wales, Australia

Wild Garlic Pesto Pasta Always Autumn Clare from Torquay, England

Vanilla Bean and Calamansi Flan Baby Rambutan Stella from Boston, Massachusetts

Small Winter Garden ThinkLady from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Strawberry Shortcake Always in Good Taste Tawanna from Miami, Florida

Arugula, Basil and Tomato Pizza Little Blue Box Megan from Houston, Texas

Bresaola Roll-Ups with Rocket and Dill Erbe in Cucina Graziana in Acireale, Sicily, Italy

Rosemary Butternut Pumpkin with Couscous Eco-Lesbo-Vego Aussie Elv from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Orange Almond Birthday Cake Cooking in Mexico Kathleen in La Cruz, Nayarit, Mexico

Roasted Tomatillo Soup with Chicken Andrea’s Recipes Andrea in Northern Virginia

Vegetarian Linguine Little Blue Box Megan from Houston, Texas

Green Tomato Sauce Raspberries & Trumpets Miss Anne from Melbourne, Australia

Spaghetti Squash Voted with Our Forks Leonie from Canberra, Australia

Rainbow Trout with Tarragon Mustard Sauce Stephfood Steph from Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Blood Orange and Olive Oil Cake TasteFood Lynda from San Francisco, California

Pesto Stuffed Flank Steak No Empty Chairs Kelly from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pasta Ponza Little Blue Box Megan from Houston, Texas

Stevia Tea Chapman’s Landing Cooking Studio Nancy in Nipissing, Ontario, Canada

Belacan Fried Chicken House of Annie Nate in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

Thank you to all our participants, especially for waiting the extra month for me to get this organized and posted. As for you, dear reader, what are you excited about growing in *your* gardens this year? 

Aloha, Nate

Belacan, pronounced “b’lah-CHAN”, is a Malaysian paste made up of ground-up, fermented shrimp. It is typically packed in blocks and sun-dried. We came home with a few blocks of belacan from our recent trip to Penang.

Block of Belacan Shrimp Paste

The Big Hit

So how did I come about this recipe? Last month, a visiting preacher, who happened to be a chef in his former life, had cooked us a feast that included asam laksa, tomyam soup and nasi lemak. He had fried up this belacan chicken to go with the nasi lemak.

The fried chicken was the big hit of the night and I was amazed when I found out how simple the ingredients were. Unfortunately, he (like most Malaysian cooks…sigh!) doesn’t measure when he cooks. Armed with the list of ingredients, I had to figure out the proportions myself.

Still, you should adjust your seasonings based on your own tastebuds and ingredients (this is becoming my caveat emptor in case you should find my food too salty, not salty enough, etc).

So here is a delicious recipe for belacan fried chicken. Yes, I know. Belacan is dried fermented shrimp paste and it’s stinky. But you know what? In this dish, belacan is the STAR and the taste is WONDERFUL! If you’ve never had belacan, you need to try this dish. You might just never go back to boring flavors for your fried chicken after this.

The trick with belacan is you need to roast the it till it is dry and crumbly. You can do this in several ways—you can cut up pieces of belacan and broil/bake them, or roast them right over a fire or dry roast them like we did in a wok/cast iron pan. NOTE: do this in a kitchen with lots of ventilation or else your house will really reek of shrimp!

Roasting Belacan

Once it is dry, you break it apart and either blend or pound it till it is powdery. Any extras can be kept in a dry jar to be used with other ingredients that call for belacan.

These days, you can find belacan at most Asian grocery stores. Look in the Southeast Asian aisle or if you really cannot find it, you can substitute with harm ha (fermented shrimp paste in a jar). It won’t be quite the same but close enough. You might not want to use as much as it will be saltier than belacan.

Curry Leaves

Nate and I decided to add a few sprigs of curry leaves from our neighbor’s tree to the marinade because we love fried curry leaves and thought it would work well with the chicken. It did. We thought that it might even be better if there was a little spice kick to the marinate. Oh well…next time! ^_^

This fried chicken is not like our crispy Thai fried chicken recipe. The batter is not crispy the way the other one is. You can really see the chicken and the crispiness is more on the chicken and its skin than an actual coating. It’s still very good though different. Give both a try and tell me which you prefer. I love them both equally.

Actually, there aren’t too many fried chickens that I don’t love. Teehee!

Belacan Fried Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:
4 boneless chicken thighs and 2 boneless breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces (or one chicken, cut into 16 pieces)
3 Tbsp oyster sauce
4 heaping Tbsp cornstarch
scant 2 Tbsp roasted and ground belacan (fermented shrimp paste)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp roasted sesame oil
2 sprigs curry leaves, stem removed (optional)
2-3 cups peanut oil or canola oil

Method:
1. Mix all the ingredients except for the oil together with the chicken pieces and let it marinate for at least 3 hours.

Belacan Fried Chicken

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

Since this recipe uses curry leaves from our neighbor’s tree, I am entering this in the Grow Your Own roundup this month. “Grow Your Own” is a blog carnival created by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes that celebrates foods cooked with ingredients you grew or harvested yourself.