The ingredients for the above Sweet and Spicy Sambal Sotong:

Sotong (Squids)
Blended Chili (which contains shallots, betel nuts and dry chili)
Chili Sauce
Sugar
Salt
Sliced Onions
Minced Garlic
Oil

How to cook Sweet and Spicy Sambal Sotong:

1. You need to remove some water from the squid. In order to do that, stir fry the squids in the wok without using any oil. Remove.
2. Add some oil into the wok.
3. Fry the minced garlic then add in the blended chili and a teaspoon of salt.
4. When the chili is almost dried up and you start sneezing put in the sliced onion and 2 tablespoon of chili sauce.
5. Then add a tablespoon of sugar.
6. Next add in the squids.
7. Fry till the squids are cooked but not too long ok. If you do, your squids will turn into rubber and you will have a bowl of chewing gum instead.

Here is a link to another recipe for Sambal Sotong.

Let me start by saying “This is another Simple Nyonya Dish!” Since I need to put food on the dining table by 9.30am every weekday, I will always cook something simple and most importantly, my children will eat them.

The Ingredients:
1/3 Chicken
3 Potatoes
1 Stick of Carrot
4 Garlic
4 Shallots
A few slices of Ginger
1/2 Tbsp Mince Bean Paste (Taucu)
Water
Oil
and Salt to taste

How to Cook Nyonya Style Chicken and Potato Soup:
1. Pound the Garlic and Shallots.
2. Fry the pounded Garlic and Shallots then add in the Taucu and sliced Ginger. Fry till the aroma.
3. Add in one big bowl of water for the soup.
4. Throw in the Chicken, Potato and Carrot then add a dash of Salt.
5. Cover your pot.
6. Cook till the Potatoes and Carrots turn soft.

You are done! Easy right?

If you have guess coming for dinner, be sure to place the Nyonya Style Chicken and Potato soup in one of your beautiful dinnerware sets. If you have the Pfaltzgraff drinkware; use it when serving your guess, no point keeping them to collect dust.

Bon Appetit!

All this while this Ikan Chuan Chuan is known by me as Ikan Goreng Halia. Just recently my mom told me that the actual name for this dish is Ikan Chuan Chuan.

This is another simple Nyonya dish too.

The Ingredients:
Fish
Sliced Ginger
Chopped Garlic
Taucu (Salted Bean Paste)
Dark Soy Sauce
Water
Salt and Sugar to taste
Oil

How To Cook Ikan Chuan Chuan:
1. Deep fry the fish then set it aside.
2. Stir fry the chopped garlic and sliced ginger till aroma.
3. Add in a spoon of the Taucu. Fry it till the taucu smell pokes your nose.
4. Pour in some water then the dark soy sauce, salt and a lil bit of sugar (if u use MSG, then no need sugar ok).
5. Wait till the gravy boils then add in the fried fish.
6. Let the gravy soaks in the fish for a lil while then scoop it out onto your serving plate.
7. Enjoy with hot steaming rice.

I got the original recipe from here. When I saw the recipe, I said to myself, “Hey, this is an easy recipe and I have ALL the ingredients. No extra stuff like Cinnamon powder or baking soda or other ingredients that can be found easily in the Mat Saleh country but not in Malacca. Gonna use chocolate chips and not M&M for my kids. Too much colouring.”

Here’s my own version of M&M Cookie recipe turned Double Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sunflower Seeds.

125g Pure Butter
1/3 cup Castor sugar
1/3 cup Brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Essense
1 Egg
1 ¾ cups of Self Raising Flour
2 tablespoon Milk Powder
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
1/2 cup Chocolate Chips
1/2 cup Sunflower Seeds

1. Preheat oven to 175C.
2. Sift Flour, Cocoa Powder and Milk Powder, set aside.
3. Use a electric mixer to beat butter, sugars and vanilla.
4. Add egg and beat well.
5. Add the flour spoon by spoon until your mixer cannot move at fast speed then use spoon to mix the rest of the flour.
6. Add in the Chocolate Chips and Sunflower seeds.
7. Scoop about one tablespoon for each cookie and press them flat on the tray with baking paper. You have to press them flat ok, if not your cookies will be very fat coz we are using SR flour here.
8. Bake for about 10 minutes using top and bottom heating.
9. It will be a lil bit soft when the cookies just came out from the oven but no worries ya. Let it cool on the cooling rack and it will turn hard and crunchy.

This cookie will surely go into my Chinese New Year list of Cookies.

For this Nyonya dish, all you need is Fish, Tamarind Sauce, Water and Salt. That’s the basic. We add Onions to make it taste sweeter. And I’ll put lots of it coz my children loves Onions!

How To Cook Ikan Goreng Assam:
1. Scoop 1 Tbsp if Assam and dilute it in a bowl of water.
2. Soak the fish in it for about 20mins.

3. Remove the fish and deep fry it. You got to be careful here. Got water mah. I throw the fish inside the wok then run far far away! Once cooked, place it on a plate.
4. Once all the slices of fish are fried, remove some oil from the wok; leave just enough to fry the onions.
5. Fry the sliced Onions.
6. Pour in the diluted Tamarind Paste was was used to soak the fish.
7. Add Salt to taste.
8. Put the fried fish back in the gravy and bring to boil.

If you like it spicy, throw in some bird eye chili or sliced chili.

Some Nyonyas (like my MIL) prepare their Ikan Goreng Assam without the gravy. The fish will be soaked in thicker Tamarind Paste.

When I was in campus, most of the time I will eat at the hostel’s canteen which is mostly Malay food which I prefer more than Chinese food. You can’t blame me, I’m a Nyonya, I grew up eating chili. And the food that I miss most is the Sambal Fish.

Since the kitchen is mine now, I tried recreating the Sambal Fish that I ate 10-13 years ago. Amazingly, I got it right on the first try. Hubby confirms it when he commented that it taste like the Hostel Sambal Fish. So I shall name this dish Hostel Sambal Fish.

The recipe is rather simple. Btw, I will only cook simple to prepare dishes.

The Sambal:
Blended Chili (Chili, Shallots and Candlenuts)
Chili Sauce
Sliced Onion
Minced Garlic
Sugar
Salt
Dark Soy Sauce
Water

The Fish:
Marinate them with Turmeric Powder and Salt.

How to Cook Hostel Sambal Fish:
1. Deep fry the marinated Fish until cook. Set aside.
2. Fry the Garlic for a few seconds then add in the Blended Chili. Fry for about 10 minutes under low fire. (goreng sampai chili garing).
3. Add around 2-3 tbsp of Chili Sauce. The next step you got to do it pretty fast so that your chili won’t get burnt.
4. Add in the Onion then water for the gravy. Bring to boil.
5. Add in the Dark Soy Sauce. This depends on how dark your want your Sambal to be.
6. Sprinkle some sugar and salt to taste.

Lastly let the deep fried fishes have a deep in the Sambal.

There you go. It is ready. The Hostel Sambal should have sweet and spicy taste.

Oh ya! Scoop out the extra oil. I wonder why when I added Chili Sauce to my dishes the oil tends to appear way too much. They use a lot of oil to make Chili Sauce kah?

I had this for lunch just now and this is one of my favorite dishes. It is easy to cook too. This dish is called Cili Muda Masak Taucu which can be translated to Unripe Chili cooked with Bean Paste. According to my mom this is one of the Nyonya Dishes too.

In those days, the chili was not sliced like the above; they are cut into 2 parts only and cooked until the chili becomes very soft. In my mom’s recipe, she uses Anchovies instead of Dried Shrimp. The original recipe comes with Dried Shrimp (Udang Kering). We don’t really like Udang Kering.

The ingredient:
15 Unripe Chili (Cili Hijau) - sliced
A Handful of Anchovies (Ikan Bilis)
1 Tbsp of Minced Bean Paste (Taucu)
6 Shallots
3 Garlics
1 tsp Tamarind Paste (Asam Jawa)
Water
Salt

How to cook Cili Muda Masak Taucu:
1. Pound the Shallots and Garlic
2. Fry them till aroma.
3. Add in the Mince Bean Paste. Continue frying till aroma.
4. Add in the Anchovies and the sliced Chili.
5. Add in the Tamarind Paste.
6. Add some water and salt to taste.

Cook till the Chili turns soft.

This dish is not that spicy. My 5yo girl likes eating this dish.

In Nyonya dishes, we often use Tamarind Paste or the local here call it Asam Jawa. All this while we have been using the Asam Jawa that comes with the seed. Recently my mom tried using the Seedless Tamarind Paste by Adabi which she claims to be cleaner and easier to use. Of course but they are slightly more expensive.

In my coming recipes, I will use this type of Tamarind Paste coz it is easier to measure; by spoonful.

Here is another Simple Nyonya Dish that my children love. This dish is call Tempra. Besides fish, you can use chicken too but with a slight twist to the recipe.

The Ingredients for the Ikan Tempra:
Onion - Sliced
Lime Juice or Vinegar
Sliced Chili (optional)
Dark Soy Sauce
Oyster Sauce (Optional)
Salt
Water
Oil
and of course the Fish.

How to cook Ikan Tempra:
1. Deep fried the fish until cooked then remove it from the wok.
2. Fry the Sliced Onion till aroma.
3. Squeeze in some lime juice
4. Add in the Soy Sauce & Oyster Sauce
5. Add in the chili.
6. Pour in the water and bring it to boil.
7. Put the fish back in and let it soak in the gravy for a lil while.
8. Add salt then taste the gravy. If not sour enough, add in more lime juice.

In my recipe, there is no measurement coz I cook to eat, not to write recipe.

If you like more Onion, you can add in more. If you want more gravy, add more water. Just make sure you add enough the Soy Sauce, Salt and Lime Juice so that the gravy will have some sweet, sourish and saltish taste. That is the Tempra taste.

As promised, here is the Chicken Pong Teh recipe. We are having it for lunch and dinner (if it is still around. hehe) today.

For the above portion, I used below ingredients:

1/3 Chicken
3 Potatos cut in cubes
5 Chinese Dried Mushroom (sorry lar, dunno what’s the actual name) - soak in water to soften it.
8-10 Shallots
4-5 Garlic
1 Tbsp of Minced Bean Paste (Taucu)
Dark Soy Sauce
Gula Melaka (enough to make the gravy taste sweet)

Salt (add to taste)
Water for gravy

How to cook Chicken Pong Teh:
Pound Shallots, Garlic and Taucu. Fried them till you can smell the nice aroma. Add in the chicken. Stir fry for a lil while then add in the water and the rest of the ingredients. Cook them until the potatos are soft. Do cover your wok to expedite the process.

Today, I added 5 hard boiled eggs coz 2 of my children does not like to eat meat; eggs, anytime they will wallop.

Chicken Pong Teh is BEST eaten with Sambal Belacan.