plate 17: malaysia

I loved the MasterChef show last year and watched the second series for the first time the other night – I loved every nail-biting minute.

I talk of MasterChef because the recipe I cooked for plate 17 was supplied by the 2009 runner-up – Poh. Well, not personally. My friend Al found it online and passed it onto me.

The dish is nyonya chicken curry, and as Poh says: it’s quintessentially Malaysian. Nyonya is the name given to the blend of Malay and Chinese cooking styles.

A quick trip to the local IGA and my favourite Asian supermarket around the corner from our house, and I was armed with all I needed to make this famous curry. The curry of course needed a spice paste for the base and, forget packaged spice pastes, it’s so much fun to make your own. I’d never done it before but it was really simple to do. I used my makeshift mortar and pestle – a large glass mixing bowl and a cocktail muddling stick, which worked a treat.

The spice paste called for shrimp paste - known in Malaysia as belachan - said to be the key ingredient in nyonya food. When I lifted the lid it stank like dirty socks, but when mingled with garlic, eschalots, lots of dried chillies and crushed spices that I’d dried fried, it was mellow and delicious. Then I just heated it all in a wok, added some star anise, cinnamon, chicken, coconut cream and coconut milk, popped on a lid (upside-down frying pan), and let it simmer away for about 25 minutes.

The result was fantastic. A tiny taste revealed it was nice and spicy, but totally tolerable, even if you're like us and trying to increase your tolerance to chilli. It was really great and very easy to make during the week. I would've loved to have made the roti - the staple Malaysian bread - to serve with it, but that wouldn't have been very easy during the week -  unless you chucked a sickie of course. Enjoy! x