Grocery shopping that fills me with joy.

I love going to my local Chinese grocery shop. It brings back all the memories of home for me. It is the only grocery shopping that fills me with joy.

I go there with a list or I would come back with the entire store. It doesn't really help to be honest but
I like to pretend.

Today, I wanted to make a special fried rice called 'Nasi Ulam'. Nasi is rice in Malay. This is a Malaysian/Straits Chinese dish made with fried shrimps and the leaves from the garden. Now, I do have leaves in my garden but I don't think holly and hebe leaves would do!

Nasi Ulam is a rice and herb dish. The recipe is easy. See http://rasamalaysia.com/ and search for Nasi Ulam. Not quite store ingredients as you do need dried shrimps and desiccated coconut. But you can make do with any herbs - as I didn't follow the recipe to the t. I used spring onions, coriander and chives.

To go with this - it can be eaten on it's own with a spicy sauce - I made the boys favourite lemon chicken.

 The other thing I made was carrot cake. Chinese carrot cake made with turnip! Char Tow Kway in Teochew (Chinese dialect). I found the turnip 'cake' - this is steamed turnip in the frozen section of the shop. Thawed it and fried it with 3 beaten eggs and fermented radish. Delicious. This is a breakfast and/snack in Singapore. Again I uses my rasamalaysia.com website for the recipe.





It doesn't matter that I am thousands of miles away from the 'real' food - I can make it my own kitchen in cold, rainy Edinburgh!

Chicken Curry with Tofu

Last night our good friends Sue and Dave came round. Sue loves tofu and Dave loves meat. So I put them together with Deema's Spices and made ChickenTofu Curry! 
I tried a new tomato rice recipe which was delicious. No left overs!

Recipe:
ChickenTofu Curry

Fried onions, garlic, one small red chilli (Dave's not keen on too hot curries) and curry leaves, then added chicken, fried tofu and Deema's Spices.

Mixed this around till it was covered in spices then added the coconut milk. Simmered it for 10-15 minutes. Just 3 minutes before I served I added chopped Choi Sim (longer leaves than Pak Choy) into the curry.To add to the fusion theme!




Tomato Rice

Fried cumin, mustard seeds, small onion, 1 clove garlic, nuts (I used mixed chopped nuts) and curry leaves. Add chopped fresh tomatoes and I also used a tin of chopped tomatoes as  I didn't have enough fresh ones. Mixed this together till aromatic and then mixed in the cooked rice and added salt to taste. Garnished with coriander. 



I think this would be incredible if made with fresh chillies and made to be hot. Going to do that next time!