Udang Asam Belimbing

Well! It's been a while since I shared a recipe with you. So here's one of my old time favourite. A very simple Peranakan dish that requires minimal ingredients but produces a whole lot of flavour. You'll find this dish a winner if you dig the 3 S's; sweet, sour and spicy :)

Ingredients:

• 200g fresh prawns, off with the head! or leave the tail on if you fancy
• 1 tbsp tauchiu (preserved soy bean paste)
• 2-3 fresh green chillies, halved lengthwise (try to retain most of the seeds for that extra zing)
  
• 3-4 belimbing asam/buluh, quartered lengthwise (for best description of this starfruit like plant, please check out this fantastic link)
  
• sugar to taste
• 1/4 cup water
  
• 1-2 tbsp oil for frying
  

Method

1. Heat oil in a wok.
   
2. Add in tauchiu paste, green chillies and belimbing asam, stir fry till fragrant. Careful, the pungent smell of the fried chillies might just make you sneeze :)
   
3. When tauchiu paste starts to 'clump' (that's when the vegetables start to wilt too), add in prawns and give it a good stir, followed by some water and sugar.
   
4. How sweet you want the dish to be depends on you. For me, I like a good balance of sweet and sour. So I normally add in about 1 tablespoon. But then again, it depends on how sour the belimbings are. So do the taste test before adding more sugar.
5. Fry for another few minutes and you're done!
6. Serve hot with white rice.
   

Fresh green chillies are normally not overly spicy but they add that nice pungent flavour,
a few bird's eye chilly would definitely turn the heat up

We had this dish with herbal corn soup and stir fried spinach, wholesome goodness I tell ya. Do try it soon!