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Tuesday 7 August 2012

Recipe - How To Make Chilli Paste

Onions are sweet. Chillies are hot. What do you get when you combine them into a paste? You will get hot and spicy !

Onions are a rich source of anti-oxidants that helps to prevent cancer. Chillies helps to improve digestion, blood circulation. reduce inflammation and prevent cancer. Together the duo will not only help to spice up your meals, but also gives your health a boost.

This is a mutli-purpose chilli paste. A teaspoon of this paste can spice up vegetable dishes, meat dishes and seafood dishes.

In this recipe, the chillies and onions are blended and sauteed or pan fried to cook them. This helps to take away the raw taste, preserve them and release the flavours.
For a right balance, blend an equal amount of chillies and onions by volume.

Ingredients
50 grams of dried chillies, cut into smaller pieces and soak in water for about 15 minutes. By soaking the dried chillies, they are easier to blend and also to clean away any impurities that come with the chillies.
large onions
5 large onions, about 400 grams, cut into smaller pieces
1 tablespoon of cooking oil
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar.

Method
Blend the chillies and onion into a paste (or you can pound them in a mortar and pestle).
You will need to add some water to help the blending in a blender or food processor.

Heat the oil in a wok or pan on medium till hot.
Toss in the blended paste, sugar and salt and stir.
fresh chillies
dried chilli
Lower the heat and keep stirring to prevent burning.
For this amount, cooking time is about 5 minutes.
Basically, the moisture in the paste will evaporate and the onions and chillies will be very fragrant.
It is done when the flavour comes out and the paste is still moist but cooked.

Let it cool. Store in small bottles. This paste can keep for about a week in the fridge or longer in the freezer.
For this amount, I can fill 2 small jam bottles and I use 1 to 2 teaspoons at a time.

       
To make sambal belacan, add a teaspoon of shrimp paste or dried shrimp paste (toasted). A teaspoon of dried shrimps can be added for extra flavour. This short video show how to do it with fresh chillies with mortar and pestle.



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