I do love a good bowl of prawn noodles. Especially when the weather is 7˚C outside. Inside my house though the heating has not even come on as I live in a new build eco-friendly house. After a bowl of my extra spicy Hae Mee noodles, I do not feel any cold at all.

Peeling 5 minutes eggs is not a joke. I have to be gentle and do it slowly. Should have boiled it yesterday and put them in the fridge. TIP – doing this makes them easier to peel.

Having a bowl of spicy prawn noodles that you made from scratch and not from a packet of shop bought paste feels like singing …..I’m walking in the air….. I have been planning this cook for a week. Last week I fried my collection of prawn heads and made into a small pot of sambal ready in the fridge and prawn oil for my chicken rice noodles (Hor Fun) https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2019/03/05/kai-see-hor-fun-%e9%b8%a1%e4%b8%9d%e6%b2%b3%e7%b2%89/

This makes life a lot easier. I have also made some prawn stock and freeze. I defrosted the stock last night as I decided to cook today because I saw some amazingly fresh Kangkong at the Asian supermarket during the weekend. To me a good bowl of prawn noodles must come with its partner, the Kangkong, morning glory vegetables.

Today I am making it with pork ribs. Lately it is very difficult to buy raw pork ribs in the normal supermarket. Most of them have been boiled and marinated, prepared for the masses to oven bake. As I am not a fan of BBQ sauce or sticky sweet sauce myself, I hardly buy, cook or eat those. Nowadays if I want nice raw pork ribs, I find I have to go and get them from Costco. Luckily Costco is nearby and not too far away. The accompanying pics below are the stages and TIPs of my way of cooking this dish in the UK. Enjoy.

p/s Of course, you can make more of the prawn head paste aka otak udang sambal and keep it in the fridge for adding to other dishes like I did with my Asam curry fish dish. The possibilities are endless, and it is not wasted – https://www.julieolive.co.uk/2022/11/24/asam-curry-fish-asam-hue-%e4%ba%9a%e5%8f%81%e5%92%96%e5%93%a9%e9%b1%bc/

Today I make sambal belacan chilli paste again. The ones I made last week were all gone and I only gave 2 cups worth away. The daughter complained she wanted to eat more.

We happened to go near a Chinese supermarket yesterday so I bought the biggest bag of dried chillies and 3 packets of fresh chillies I think amounted to a kg. I spent yesterday deseeding the dried chillies of as much of the seeds as I could. Took quite awhile but I have breaks for chocolates and coffees so no hardships.

Today daughter is home to help do washing up so she asked me to cook. In return I have to mark a big tub as hers and everyone don’t touch.

The recipe is simple and please adjust to your taste.

NOTE

• How spicy you want your sambal is entirely up to you. Sometimes you just cannot get spicy chillies and at other times they blow your head off – so there cannot be a fixed recipe.
• If the sambal is too spicy add more sugar. I prefer to use brown sugar but it is entirely up to you.
• Chillies seeds do not make your sambal more spicy. Please Google and read or should I say educate yourself. I hate to eat chilli seeds.
• Toasted belacan gives a more umami taste.
• Salt helps to draws out taste of everything so add some.
• Adding vinegar helps in preserving your sambal but hey it never last in my house! You can bottle them, vacuum seal them and they last forever.
• It took me on low heat about 2 hours for this batch discounting the deseeding dried chillies time and boiling time.
• Remember the taste mature the next day and it taste more mellowed.
• Enjoy eating knowing that your sambal is cooked with love and you can eat as much as a jar a day – kekekekeke
• There are so many uses – can add in dried shrimps, ikan billis, onions, garlic and anything you like to it.

I make this sambal udang balacan/belacan a few times a year. It is when we, the family kept asking me when I am making again or when my friends persuade me “when you next make sambal udang belacan can I book 10 jars please” then only I make.

Now I am not sure how to write a fix recipe as I have never measured my ingredients. I taste as I make and add a bit of this and that to make it resemble the taste I know. The taste of how my mother’s sambal used to taste like.

When I was a youngin’ when my mother made this, we always make them into sandwiches Do you know dried shrimps sambal that has a generous amount of dried shrimps taste amazing with buttered bread? If you have not try before, try it. My husband loves this on buttered brioche rolls.

Now as I said I have not measured my ingredients. when I asked my mother she will tell me a bowl of this and half a bowl of that. So I will attempt to tell you. However sambal is one of those dish you can make your own. There is absolutely no right or wrong. When I first started making I tried to add this and that (not mentioned by my mother) but in the end I do not like the taste. Not nostalgic lah. so I stick back to the basic ingredients. If for any reason I want to use this sambal to cook other things then I will add other ingredients as and when.

Take this recipe as a guide and make your own as sometimes our onions has a stronger taste or our chillies is hotter. I remember one time I bought some chilli powder that were so hot! I of course had to add more sugar. I will give you tips to adjust.

Oh yes when using the dried chillies, snip off the heads a bit and empty out as much of the seeds as you can. When I was young grandma use to say don’t let the males eat chilli seeds or they can’t pee – kekekekekeke Funny things I remember from young but now that I am all grown up I know that it is the spicy hot food that can increase bladder pain and inflammation in some people thus making it hard to pee for them. BUT there is some truth in so called ‘old wives’ tales after all!

This is a dish that grows on me. That is to say the older I get the more I appreciate this dish. However I am fussy and I like it only if it’s cook ‘fresh’ and not like my ex mother in law. I have not been happy with my chai buey for the past year because I could not find and buy any asam keping (tamarind slices) for a year. I was told it is because people nowadays like to use tamarind juice in container. Tamarind juice is just not right for Chai Buey. Therefore I am thankful and grateful to good friend for buying me asam keping from my hometown, Menglembu and so I decided to cook this dish today.

Chai Buey in the Hokkien dialect literally means ‘leftovers vegetables’ My ex mother in law was from Szechuan. She was one of those boat people that escaped China on a big sailing junk with 2 young children in tow to join her husband in Malaysia. She did told me before that she was not going to give her husband any excuse of looking for a second wife in Malaysia She went on to have 4 more children. Truly a matriarch!

She washed laundry for a living and saved every cent she earned. When she passed she owned her own double storey corner shop lot +++ I really respect and admire her. Frugal and hard working all her life. Spicy Kiam Chai buey is one of her famous dish served weekly. We employed a lot of ladies to clean birds nests as the family was in Chinese medicine like ginseng, birds nests etc. We feed all the workers with lunch. At the end of each day leftover food that’s worth keeping will be kept in the fridge, usually protein. At the end of each week MIL would boil her ‘master stock’ for the spicy kiam chai buey, then sieve out all the bones before adding the asam keping, chillies, protein, mustard greens and others in. The then spicy kiam chai buey I never dare to eat and on that one day a week I frequent Ipoh Tuck Kee Restaurant for their ribs – memories ……..

I learned from this amazing Szechuan matriarch, that to make a good spicy kiam chai buey there are things we could not do without like dried & fresh chillies, the asam keping (tamarind pieces), tomatoes, pickled mustard and fresh mustard greens.