Shrimp with a Malaysian Touch

There are various recipes for shrimp in Malaysian cooking, and this is really my version of a recipe that sort of fits in with Malaysian style shrimp. As I note below, you don't have to go looking for special soy sauce, as you can use regular soy sauce, but just add a little molasses or brown sugar to sweet it up a bit. Further, you also don't need to buy curry leaves, an ingredient common in Malaysian and some other south Asian cooking. Curry leaves have nothing to do with curry powder. The leaves are a bit citrusy in taste, but you can substitute the zest of 1 1/2 limes. I first made this dish with tomato sauce and rice wine vinegar, but I had noticed some similar Malaysian recipes that simply used ketchup, so I tried it, and I found that I liked the ketchup version better. This dish was certainly not spicy hot, but rather the hot chili pepper gave it a little zip and that's what is intended; however, remember, as I've noted here before, hot chilies can vary tremendously in heat. I've actually had habanero chilies that were extremely mild, like a "1" on a scale of 1 to 10. On the other hand, I've had some jalapeño chilies that brought tears to my eyes. Further, cooking often reduces the punch of chilies a bit. Similar dishes in Malaysia are served with bread to help sop up the great sauce. 

Ingredients:

1 pound large shrimp, deveined
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped or grated ginger
2/3 cup mild red chilies (red bell pepper is fine), chopped 
1 hot red chili pepper
12 to 15 curry leaves, or zest of 1 1/2 limes
2 tablespoons soy sauce*
2/3 cup ketchup
2 teaspoons sesame oil
3 to 4 tablespoons oil

Add oil to skillet and set over medium heat. Add garlic, ginger, mild chilies, hot chili and curry leaves. Cook until the ingredients soften, stirring often to prevent sticking or burning. Stir in the soy sauce, the ketchup and the sesame oil, mixing everything well. Add the shrimp and cook until just cooked through. Serve with rice or bread or both.

*  I used "Ketjap Manis," which is Indonesian soy sauce. It is syrupy and sweet. Some supermarkets or Asian markets will likely have "ketjap manis," but the keyword here is, "some." You can substitute regular soy sauce with some molasses, or even brown sugar, cooked together for just a few minutes.

Click on photo to enlarge ...

WORD HISTORY:
Shawl-The history of this word is difficult, but it "may" have originated from the textile town  "Shaliat" in southwestern India, also known as "Chaliyam, Saliyam, Chale." Historically that area of India was influenced by the Persians, Arabs and Portuguese. The idea is, "shawls" were produced in the town, which gave transliterated Persian "sal," seemingly originally with the meaning, "neck scarf." This was borrowed by Hindi and Urdu ^ and English borrowed the word in the mid 1600s with the heavy involvement of the English on the Indian Subcontinent. By the mid 1700s, the meaning had expanded to a "large piece of cloth used by women that is draped over the head that also covered the upper body." German borrowed the word from English as "Schal."  

^ Both Hindi and Urdu are Hindustani languages from the Indo-Aryan part of the Indo Iranian branch of Indo European. They are related to English, but much further down the family tree.

Indonesian Chicken

I'm calling this "Indonesian Chicken," as it is based upon some recipes I've seen from that island nation. It is a good dish for a slow cooker. By the way, Indonesia is a group of islands; that is, it is an archipelago. It consists of more than 17,000 islands, although many of the islands are uninhabited. The best known islands are Sumatra, Java, Bali and New Guinea, although only Western New Guinea is actually part of Indonesia. Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta is located on Java, and that island's name was applied to coffee from there, and this was taken by American English to eventually become a slang term for coffee in general, as "Java coffee" arrived at West Coast American ports. Much of Indonesia was a Dutch colony (called the Dutch East Indies) until the area was overrun and occupied by the Japanese during World War Two, and the end of that war brought Indonesian independence. How many Indonesians died as a result of the Japanese occupation is unclear, but it certainly seems to have been in the hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even a couple of million. The long association between the Netherlands and Indonesia gave many influences to Dutch cuisine still in evidence to this day.

I highly recommend boneless chicken for this recipe, as when I first made this, I used whole chicken legs and it left small pieces of bone in the finished dish, and that's not fun.

Ingredients:

8 chicken thighs (preferably boneless) or whole chicken legs
1/2 cup ketjap manis (or substitute*)
1/4 cup water
1 heaping teaspoon sugar
4 garlic cloves, chopped
juice of 2 limes
6 green onions, chopped (with green)
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 chili pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons cornstarch mixed with 3 tablespoons water
1/4 chopped parsley

Add everything, except the cornstarch and water and parsley to a slow cooker. Put on "high" for one hour, then turn the setting to "low" and cook for about another 3 to 5 hours. Add the cornstarch/water mixture and stir it in, as best you can. The liquid should begin to thicken almost immediately, but let everything cook for a few minutes before checking to see if the sauce has thickened enough. Serve with rice and with the parsley sprinkled on top.

* "Ketjap Manis" is Indonesian soy sauce, which is syrupy and sweet. Some supermarkets or Asian markets will likely have "ketjap manis," but the keyword here is, "some." You can substitute regular soy sauce with some molasses, or even brown sugar, cooked together for just a few minutes.

I had the chicken with rice, raw carrot pieces, tomato slices and fresh basil leaves...

WORD HISTORY:
Parsley-This is a compound word, with the first part related to the name "Peter," and the second part related to "celery," a word borrowed by English from French, which borrowed it from Italian, which got it from Latin, which got it from Greek (whew!). "Parsley" goes back to transliterated Greek "petrosélinon," which meant "parsley" (literally, "rock/stone parsley," because it grew on rocky slopes). This came from Greek "pétros," which meant "rock, stone," but where Greek got the word is unknown. The second part came from Greek "sélinon," which meant "celery." "Sélinon" is also a word of unknown history. Latin borrowed the compound Greek word as "petroselinum," which then became "petrosilium." This was borrowed into English as "petersilie," meaning, "parsley." Meanwhile, the Latin form was passed to Latin-based French in the abbreviated form "peresil," which heavily influenced the English form (essentially merged with it) in the 1300s. The other Germanic languages all use forms from the Latin; and in fact, German uses the same form as English once had, "Petersilie."