The garden…

These came from my garden…

*Archive photo*

– the ladies’ fingers that I planted sometime ago and so far, the labour is great but the harvest are few and I would only have enough to boil and eat them with sambal (pounded dip)…

*Archive photo*

However, the other day, I managed to collect enough to fry and these were the ingredients that I pounded…

…- a shallot, three cloves of garlic, a bit of ginger, kunyit (turmeric) and lengkuas (galangal) and of course, a chili.

Ah yes, I did add some belacan (dried prawn paste)…

…too, toasted lightly on a non-stick pan.

I soaked a handful of hay bee/udang kering (dried prawns) in water to soften and I pounded those too…

…and I did get a stalk of serai (lemon grass) from my garden, bruised at the end, as well for the added fragrance and taste.

I sliced the ladies’ fingers thinly…

…and yes, it did not look like much but I had quite a lot of the udang kering – the sambal would go great with rice, with or without anything else. I was wishing the whole time that there was something in the fridge that I could add to it, like baby corn or four-angle beans perhaps, but unfortunately, I could not find anything that would be compatible.

Ok, time to start cooking…so I heated up the oil in the wok and added the pounded ingredients and once, that had turned brown and fragrant enough, I put in the serai, followed by the udang kering. It took quite a while as I only used a little bit of oil but at the price of cooking oil these days, one will have to make do with a lot less and anyway, I guess that is, in fact, a healthy thing to do. Once the sambal was done, I pushed it aside and broke an egg into the wok and scrambled it. I was thinking that this would help make sure that there would be enough to go round. Lastly, I added the ladies’ fingers…and a bit of water sparingly to cook it. Ah yes!!! I did add a teeny weeny bit of soy sauce – my missus said it would make the vegetable less sticky or gooey but don’t add too much, just a little bit will do…or it would be too dark and the end product may not look as nice.

Once it was done, I dished it out and served…

Well, it did look kind of nice, don’t you think? I know self-praise in no praise but I would say it tasted great and there was more than enough for the three of us (along with a fish, ikan bawal hitam/black pomfret that I fried) for dinner that evening.