If you may recall, in my previous post under this title, I was talking about durian flowers. Well, it looks like my mother-in-law’s durian tree is flowering again, so I get to eat the flowers. The other day, “inspired’ by the midin I had at the Ruby Restaurant a couple of nights ago, I decided to make some Thai-style durian flower salad. I boiled some water and after putting in the durian flowers, I brought it back to boil and after simmering for a while, I drained away the water…
Then I pounded some pre-soaked udang kering (dried prawns) with chillies and a bit of belacan (dried prawn paste) and mixed that with the durain flowers. After that, I cut some shallots into thin slices and some chillies as well, and added all that in as well. Having done that, I cut some kalamansi/lime and squeezed the juice over everything and mixed it all thoroughly. Finally, I deep-fried some ikan bilis/pusu (anchovies) and put that in too…
It was nice – sour and spicy, fragrant from the dried prawns and the anchovies…but something was missing. I know! They usually have roasted peanuts in the Thai-style salad and I did not have any of that. Never mind! Next time I’ll just grab a tin from the shops and sprinkle some over it.
Then, yesterday, my in-laws gave us some more of the flowers, so I decided to cook something different this time. I pounded two shallots, four cloves of garlic, 1 cm ginger and 1 chilli…and I got some serai (lemon grass) and crushed the ends and some curry leaves. Then I heated up some oil in a wok and fried the pounded ingredients until golden-brown and fragrant before adding in the lemon grass and some of the curry leaves. After a while, I put in the durian flowers. Incidentally, I had also added some baby corn, so there would be enough to go round…
I added half a tablespoon of curry powder to that and after mixing it well into everything, I added water and some ikan bilis (anchovies) stock. Finally, I added a bit of evaporated milk (in place of santan/coconut milk) and let it simmer for a while for the gravy to thicken. Then it was ready to serve…
It would definitely be nicer with a bit of udang kering (dried prawns) and belacan (dried prawn paste), but I wanted to give some to my mum and those stuff would trigger off her allergy. It was still very nice though and went perfectly well with rice. Perhaps you would like to give it a try?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 