The singer not the song…

I wonder how many of you know her name – Khadijah Ibrahim and her songs. Well, for the uninitiated, she was a very popular singer in the local Malaysian/Malay music scene way back in the 70’s and 80’s, I think and in fact, she still sings…

…though not on a regular basis, I guess, not since she left the country to venture into the food business in New Zealand where she was running her Malaysian restaurant for a number of years. Of course, there’s no place like home and eventually, she came back to her homeland and to date, she is still involved in her restaurant enterprise – Khadijah’s Kitchen, located in Petaling Jaya, Selangor and it seems there is one as well in Setapak. Well, if you remember from this earlier post of mine, she has gone into distributing her special pastes for cooking all kinds of Malay/nyonya dishes as well.

I was saving them for some special occasion like Christmas or Chinese New year but since I had two boxes of this…

…I thought I would just go ahead and try one first.

The pastes are so easy to use – you just mix with water and boil, add the meat and bring it back to boil and simmer for 30 minutes, no oil added…

*Oopsss!!! Spotted a typo there!!!*

Isn’t that so very easy?

Of course, not one to follow recipes and instructions, I did add a sprig of curry leaves and one stalk of serai (lemon grass), bruised but yes, it is stated on the box that one can add some extra ingredients to make it “taste even better”…

*I think there’s a grammatical error there*

I even added a bit of milk, two tablespoons, just before I dished everything out and served. Now, don’t you think this looks absolutely gorgeous?…

So was it as nice as it looked?

I would say it was very good…

It looked like the usual curry but no, I did not think it tasted the same – something like a cross between the usual and asam curry or something like that. Actually, it is kind of hard to put my finger on the difference so let’s just say that this was good and anything this hassle-free and easy to cook is sure to get my double thumbs up anytime!

Oh yes, I love potatoes in curry so I just could not resist adding some when I was cooking this…

…and perhaps, I would go all the way and add all the suggested ingredients when I cook the other box.