Sambal Squid with Nuts

I love Malay food and my all time favourite food is nasi lemak. Nasi lemak often comes with fragrant rice cooked with coconut milk, ikan bilis, peanuts, slices cucumbers and sambal. For those who wish to add dishes to go together with nasi lemak, fried eggs, curry chicken, rendang chicken, sambal squids and mutton curry are some of the local choices.

To cook yourself sambal squid with nuts, you will need the following ingredients:-

• 60ml vegetable oil
• 1 spoon of tamarind sauce
• 125ml of coconut milk
• salt and sugar
• 3 spoons of crushed peanuts
• dried squids
• red onions (big and small) and garlic
• shrimp paste
• chili paste

Steps:

1. Start by heating up the oil in a skillet and stir in the red onions, shrimp paste and chili paste until it is fragrant.
2. Add in the tamarind sauce, coconut milk, salt and sugar for taste.
3. Lower the fire and continue cooking until the sauce thickens. Then add in the crushed peanuts.
4. Add in the squids and cook for another 2 minutes. Then remove from heat and serve it with rice or nasi lemak.

Fried Squid

Ingredients:

• 300 g squid, cut into pieces
• oil for frying
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 75 g cornflour
• 1 red chile, very thinly sliced,seeds and all
• 2 green onions, cut into 1 cm pieces

Cooking Steps:

1. Clean the squids and cut them into pieces.
2. Heat up the oil.
3. Place the sea salt and the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and crush coarsely together.
4. Stir in the cornflour, then toss with the squid to coat.
5. Cook the chillies and salad onions in the hot oil for 30 seconds then scoop them out with a mesh spoon and drain on kitchen paper.
6. Cook the squid for 2 minutes until it rolls up and turns crisp and lightly golden.
7. Transfer the squid to a plate, scatter over the crispy chilli and salad onions and serve with soy sauce for drizzling and lemon wedges for squeezing over.

Squid with Chillies

Squids are very easy to cook. There are many ways of cooking squids and I love my squids fried with flour. But I can't have them fried all the time, can I? Since squid are generally tasteless, it is good to use chillies, just to spice it up a little bit. One thing I need to point out to you is that, squids tend to soak up the oil and when it does that, believe me, you don't want to eat it. I've had a very bad encounter with squid soaking up margerine when I had a barbecue + steamboat when I was in college. It was really awful. So, do make sure that you do not use too much oil when you cook squids.

• 1 lb squid, cleaned
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• 2 teaspoons hot chili powder
• 2 tablespoons sea salt
• 1 tablespoon szechuan peppercorns, dry-roasted and crushed
• 2 cups vegetable oil
• 4 leaves iceberg lettuce, chilled
• 2 lemons, cut into wedges

Steps:

1. Clean and dry the squid thoroughly.
2. Slice each squid tube horizontally and set aside.
3. Combine both types of flour with the chili powder, sea salt and Szechuan pepper. Then add the squid. Toss it to coat them and thereafter, shake off any excess flour.
4. Add oil and heat up the wok and fry the squid. Remove the squid and place them on a kitchen towel.
5. Arrange the lettuce leaves on a platter and top with the squid. Serve with the lemon wedges.