A Year In Redwood

When Alfie’s daughter, Stephanie, was home from Australia in October herself and her partner introduced us to Laksa… a dish found in Singapore and Malaysia.  We loved it!  I’ve been dying to try to make it myself and finally got around to doing so a couple of weeks back.  It lived up to my memory.

We were also exceedingly lucky that Stephanie had brought us some Laksa Mix from Herbie’s Spices in Australia.  Has anyone ever seen such a mix here in Ireland?  I’m sure you could experiment as here’s the list of ingredients that go into the mix (it is an awful lot!) – coriander seed, cumin, chilli, salt, fennel, galangal, coriander leaf, turmeric, sugar, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, lamellae, lemon myrtle, pepper and cardamom.

Chicken Laksa

Here’s Stephanie’s recipe:

Ingredients: (for 2 people)

• 1/2 tbsp Olive oil
• 1 tbsp. Laksa Mix
• Small red onion, chopped
• 200 ml can of coconut milk
• 1/2 tsp fish sauce
• 1/2 pt. chicken stock
• 2 chicken breasts (we buy whole free-range and Alfie dissects) chopped.
• 1/2 small yellow pepper, chopped
• 1/2 small red pepper, chopped
• Broccoli, chopped into florets
• 1 Pak Choi, chopped
• Rice noodles to serve

Heat oil.  Add Laksa spice to make a paste.  Cook for a minute or two to allow flavours to become aromatic and intensify.

Add the onion to the spice and fry gently.

Mix the coconut milk, stock and fish sauce together, add these to the onion and spice mix.

Bring the soup to a low simmer, add the chicken – cook for about 10 minutes.

Add the vegetables as you need to cook – depending on the thickness of the vegetable, i.e. broccoli first, peppers, pak choi, etc.

Cook your noodles separately.

To serve make sure everyone has some noodles and some vegetables.

Optional toppings include bean sprouts, finely sliced red chilli, squeeze of lime, freshly chopped coriander or basil.  We love the addition of finely sliced chilli and a squeeze of lime juice.

Enjoy!