I don’t really have a recipe to share today, but I am going to show you some pictures of one of my favorite Nyonya curry dishes—salted fish curry or gulai kiam hu kut.
My second sister is here in the US and she brought me some instant curry paste for salted fish curry. We went to the market and gathered all the ingredients: eggplant, long beans, fresh pineapples, fried tofu puffs, and cabbage. Other ingredients include salted fish bones (kiam hu kut), shrimp, and coconut milk. With the instant paste, making a pot of salted fish bones curry was rather easy. In less than 30 minutes, we had a pot of aromatic and intensely flavorful curry…
The brand my sister bought is Action One which is made in Penang. The recipe can be found here. If you are in the US, you can buy instant curry paste for fish at AsianSupermarket365.com and the result will be equally rewarding.
Enjoy!
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This salted fish curry is an unusual curry but I bet it’s very tasty with all the vegetables, shrimp, and the exotic taste of the salted fish bones!
Yes, you are right, it’s very exotic curry but salted fish curry is so very good. Yummy!
Yum Bee! I can’t wait to eat all these goodies when I get to Penang for CNY! Will you be around? Hoping you’re coming home so we can meet up.
Annie – no, not going home anymore…call me so we can chat sometime. :)
oooo this is one of my favourite curries! mom used to make it for us when we were young. but she stopped after she read about how ‘unhygienic’ the process of making salted fish was. so… no more salted fish bone curry for us :(
Aiya Lingzie, it’s OK, everything outside also dirty.
Oh! This is so scary! When I tried your Curry Chicken Recipe, I commented that never again would I bother with instant paste anymore….and guess what? I have been using the Action One curry paste as well!! They were delicious and adequate….until your Curry Chicken recipe….oooh how lovely if there is going a to be a do from scratch recipe for this one too…
happy 2010:-) looking forward to more great recipes ahead.!
This is also my favorite curry. Been eating since young and also cook for my children. They love it until I read that the Kiam Hu is no good. It causes NPC. So I stopped cooking it until now. I only put in pineapple and long beans and it’s yummy. I made my own chillie paste too.
Hi Suka Chiak, I love your name. LOL. Please share with me your chili paste recipe. By the way, if you eat kiam hu in moderation, it should be OK. I eat only once in a blue moon. :)
Hi Bee Happy New Year.Just came back from holiday at Cameron Highlands and Malacca with my classmates.Only today able to open my mail. My chilli paste recipe as far as i can remember is all agak agak, no measurment just like my late mum did.Hope it taste good too. I use dried chilli(according to how hot you want), shallots(about a small rice bowl or more if you are cooking a big pot), 1-2 cloves of garlic,1 lemon grass 1 small piece of fresh tumeric and a piece of belachan. I used to pound them which taste better than blend them but modern technology makes us lazy and want to do things fast.
Thank you and hope you have had fun. Thanks for the recipe. :)
Hello Bee,
I’m so glad I found your webpages through a mutual friend Naoyo in her Facebook. Your food looks so delicious for me who grew up in both Singapore/ Malaysia but now living in Victoria BC. Where are you located?
I should introduce you to Spicy Steve, a Canadian who used to be featured in a TV cook show programme featuring Peranakan cooking in the Vancouver area. Steve’s wife, Tricia, who was from Malaysia, sometimes helped out in these shows and she was profesionally known as Tasty Trish.
Steve is profesionally engaged in providing finanically services and is too busy now to be involved in TV cookshows. I’ll try to link the two of you.
George
Hey George, thanks for your warm comment, I am in Southern CA. Would love to do TV program, let me know how. :)
oh dear…. this curry looks absolutely drooling. Makes me feel like cooking it in the weekend. I tried once cooking vegetable curry with A1 instant curry paste (flew all the way from Malaysia) and it was really yummy. Although no salty fish n no prawn but it still lasted me some happy meals, perhaps out of deprivation. hahahha…..
Yes, I know how to feel. As long as you have something close to the real thing. ;)
Isn’t salting fish just burying fresh fish in a whole lot of salt and leaving it for I don’t know how long, and then drying it in the sun? So all you have to do to clean it before cooking is wash it?
Yes, you are right. Rinse it with water basically, and that applies to all dried foods – dried shrimps, dried cuttlefish, dried anchovies.
Miss this dish… I miss those salty fish bones. Do you know where we can find those salty bone in Southern California? I live very close to you, do you want to get together sometime for makan? I am from Penang too.. Being here for almost 12 years..
Hi Siew – sure, that will be great, I have a Penang friend close to me. Those fish bones are from Penang. Email me.
What is your email…
bee@foreverbee.com
I miss this dish, the best curry dish.