Curry Assam Laksa

An elderly chinese lady friend of mine taught me how to make curry assam laksa. She said it could be abit different from those cooked Ipoh or Singapore styles but i said, who cares...It was brilliant and my family loves it. This lady has been living in Terengganu all her life. She used to sell foods in stalls to bring up her children. Now that the children are all grown up and moved away, she retired from selling foods. But she started working again as an helper in a sundry shop since retirement made her restless.

CURRY ASSAM LAKSA

Ingredients:

12 shallots
5 cloves of garlic
an inch of ginger
an inch of fresh turmeric roots
an inch of galangal
2 candlenuts
a tablespoonful of dried shrimp-soaked and washed
about a teaspoonful of shrimp paste
3 tablespoonful of chillies( soaked and blended dried chillies). more if you like it spicier.
1 tablespoon of fish curry powder( add few drops of water to make it as a paste)
a cup of tamarind juice (abt 2 teaspoon of tamarind pulp in a cup of water)
about 12 fresh shrimps shelled and deveined but save the shells and heads
about 1/2 kg of cockles-washed, boiled and shelled(if you dont like cockles, omit them)
3 fishcakes (cut in rectangles)
2 cups of coconut milk
palm sugar and salt to taste (suggested 2T of the sugar)

Laksa beras (rice noodles)
beansprouts
cabbages, sliced thinly
a cup of thinly sliced daun kesum (laksa leaves)
thinly sliced cucumber
sliced fresh red chillies


Blend 9 shallots, 3 garlics, ginger, turmeric root, galangal, candlenuts, dried shrimp, and shrimp paste. Fry the blended stuff in a pot with hot oil. Add the chillies and the curry paste.Fry till oil surfaces. Add tamarind juice. Meanwhile, fry in a pan, with abit of oil, 2 crushed garlic and 3 sliced shallots. Add shrimp heads and shells and fry till fragnant. then add a cup of water. blend the mixture. Sieve to get the shrimp juice. Add juice to the pot. when it starts boiling, add fresh deshelled shrimp and cooked cockles. Add fishcakes and half of the laksa leaves. Lastly, add in the coconut milk, sugar and salt to taste. After it had been boiling, reduce heat.

To serve: place rice noodles in a bowl. Top it with shredded cabbages, beansprouts and cucumbers. Add the broth. Top with fresh sliced laksa leaves and chillies.

notes: bunga kantan (ginger flower/torch ginger bud) maybe added. But I find it overwhelming to add both bunga kantan and laksa leaves to make this curry assam laksa.