Singapore laksa

If I only had one meal left to eat in this world, I would probably chose laksa. It's that scoffilicious. Essentially a dish of noodles, beansprouts and protein in curried coconut milk soup, you'll find versions of laksa all over Malaysia and Singapore. My Singaporean version uses seafood, but it's also very common to find this dish with chicken, tofu, and quail eggs instead.

This dish is sometimes called curry laksa or Nyonya laksa, to differentiate it from Penang laksa (also known as asam laksa), a sour fish soup with tamarind.

The hawker-stall version of this dish would likely include a greater variety of seafood (including cockles) and be topped with a sprinkling of crispy deep-fried shallots. Laksa traditionally only includes beansprouts, but I like to add more vegetables to create a more-balanced meal.

Recipe

1 tsp oil
1 onion, finely diced or minced
2 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
2 tsp minced lemongrass
2 tsp minced chilli (sambal olek)
2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
1 tsp shrimp paste (belacan)
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp fish sauce
1 cup coconut milk
3/4 cup chicken or fish stock
1/2 cup shelled prawns (raw preferred, but you could also use cooked)
2 medium squid, cleaned and sliced into rings
Thick rice noodles
2 cups beansprouts
Additional vegetables, as desired (I like to add thinly-sliced carrots and mushrooms or green beans)

Place the noodles in a large bowl and pour over boiling water to soften.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and add the onion. Cook several minutes, until translucent. Add the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chilli, peanut butter, and shrimp paste, and cook 2-3 minutes more, adding a little water as the mixture starts to stick.

Add the sugar, fish sauce, coconut milk and stock, and bring to the boil. Add your vegetables, starting with those requiring the most cooking (such as carrots and green beans) and simmering until the vegetables are nearly done. The beansprouts should go in near the very end of the vegetables, as they only take a very short cooking time.

Add the raw prawns to the soup. Simmer 30 seconds, and while this is happening ladle the noodles into bowls.

Add the squid to the soup, and simmer 15 seconds more, then ladle the soup over the noodles in your bowls. The seafood will continue to cook in the hot soup as you serve up this dish.

Serves: 2
Preparation and cooking time: 15-20 minutes