Nyonya Food

I am always fascinated by nyonya food. Their taste is completely out of this world. Nyonya food, real good ones, command respect.

"...making Nyonya food is no simple affair. The unique and highly flavourful cuisine requires abundant amount of time, patience, and skills. A true Nyonya would spend hours and hours pounding her rempah (spices) with batu giling (a flat slab of stone to grind the spices) to cook up authentic Nyonya dishes such as Perut Ikan (pickled fish stomach with vegetables stew), Salted Fish Pineapple Curry(Gulai Kiam Hu Kut in Hokkien), and other scrumptious Nyonya concoctions". http://nyonyafood.rasamalaysia.com/introduction-nyonya-food/

Precisely, it is the amount of time, patience and skills involved that make nyonya food so different. Please do not mistake good nyonya food from "copycat" nyonya food where premix is being used to replace all the spices. Due to this laborious task of preparing the rempah, yours truly has no guts to take up the challenge until now.

I was flipping through some old food magazines and came across one nyonya dish which I thought (thought) was easy enough to give it a shot…

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Fatty? Well, at least it is not processed!

It was indeed laborious. Peeling those shallots alone have made me "cried" buckets. But the end result was extremely fulfilling. My highest respect for the nyonya who sit on a tiny stool, pounding the many spices manually and relentlessly just to produce a great dish. *SALUTE*

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