Now when exactly was Stella in town? October? Or was it September? Well, Pollie was here too then and she gave me some instant fish curry mix from Bintulu. I guess the guy whatever-his-name-is-now who made it must be pretty good and well-known in the town. But somehow, I did not get round to cooking it until last Friday…
It was so easy really. I bought a pineapple, some ladies’ fingers and tomatoes and got the lemon grass (serai) and curry leaves from my garden. I noticed that in the restaurant, they did not cook the fish in the curry. Instead, they poured the gravy on it upon serving. So I took one piece of fish fillet and steamed it. After that, I drained the stock into a bowl and put the cooked fish fillet aside for the moment.
After chopping up one Bombay onion into fine bits, I fried that in a little bit of oil with the serai and some of the curry leaves. Then I put in the curry mix and stirred till it became really fragrant. Then I added the fish stock as well as some more water to let it simmer and cook the ladies fingers which I put in first together with the pineapples. Finally, after throwing in the pre-softened bean curd sticks, tomato chunks and the rest of the curry leaves, I added a tablespoon of sugar (to balance the sourish taste of the pineapples) and a teaspoon of salt before I thickened the gravy with half a tin of santan (coconut milk). I poured that over the fish fillet and there you have it! It was ready to serve…
I still had half a pineapple left as I did not use all of it, so I cut it into chunks and had them with ready-made kuah rojak (rojak gravy) which is now available in bottles. You do not have to buy the prawn paste from Penang and all the other necessary ingredients any more…
There! Isn’t it so very easy? And the best part is you no longer have to go to the restaurant and spend a fortune there to eat really nice fish curry! By the way, I’ve some more of Pollie’s instant fish curry mix left (I only used half of what she gave me), so is anybody coming to town? I can whip that up in a jiffy and we can enjoy a delightful dinner together! Wouldn’t that be great?
...STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! 