I received a bag of chilli from P&J's garden. As you know, I don't eat chilli in their original form. So the only way is to make chilli paste from them. I spent quite a while last evening working on it, staining my fingers orange from the tumeric. I made 2 batches, 1 from the fresh chilli & 1 from dried chilli.
This is the fresh chilli version. It turned out yellow so I added smoked paprika powder to enhance the colour.
This is made with dried chilli & the colour is more reddish. But I think I added too much dried chilli & it was too spicy.
The otah on the left is made with the dried chilli paste & the 1 on the right is made with fresh chilli paste. But alas, the dried chilli paste was too spicy. While I love my spicy fix, some food are best spicy in moderation. The chilli had overpowered the taste of all other ingredients. It gave me gastric pain as well.
I remember the only time I ordered a level 10 Bepu raman in Tiong Bahru Plaza. While I managed to finish it, I suffered severe gastric pain for several hours after that. Not a pleasant feeling at all. I walked bent over the entire time, hugging my tummy, unable to straighten my back. I won't have a chance to do it again coz they closed down & was replaced by MOF. Not that I'll want to experience that kind of discomfort again. I had a level 10 buffalo wing at Sunset Grill (if I didn't remember the name wrongly) in an ulu airbase. Just 1 bite (I haven't even started chewing) & I felt the heat spread up my face & down my neck. I couldn't talk for a few minutes & it was a miracle I finished the whole wing. Needless to say, that was the only piece I tried. Subsequent pieces I ate were level 6s. The buffalo wings didn't give me gastric pain. I can never work out why some spicy stuff gives me gastric pain & some doesn't.
Anyway, I declared both otahs as failed. The texture & taste is wrong. Edible but not good enough to give away. I was going to give some to P&J but sorry, I guess next time. The shallots here are much bigger than the ones we get in Sg & they cost $10 per kg. Tumeric costs $25 per kg but I only need a little. The only thing I couldn't get was blue ginger & banana leaves. I tried looking up otah recipes online but they basically use the same ingredients as I do. Hubs suggested adding 1 more egg. I'll just keep experimenting until I get it right. Or if anyone has a recipe that you've tried & deemed pass, please share with me.
I think they do have blue ginger and banana leaves in the Asian shops but frozen, although the blue ginger is in Malay name (can't remember what my sis told me it is called). Can check.
ReplyDeleteBlue ginger available at NP in Altone, both fresh & frozen versions. Banana leaf unfortunately only seem to have frozen ones, also at NP.
ReplyDeleteWe went to NP. I did check the freezer for the banana leaves. Maybe I didn't look hard enough. Haha. & I just realised blue ginger is galangal. We saw galangal but wasn't sure it is blue ginger so we didn't buy.
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