Hey Hive!
We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some new recipes I've been trying at home since I've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I have some regular recipes I do like to try new things and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried.
A few months ago, I found this packet of sauce for Singaporean-style Laksa we had lying around and thought I'd give it a try!
If you're not familiar with laksa, it's a spicy noodle dish popular in Southeast Asia. It consists of thick rice noodles in a rich broth, often coconut-based, with toppings like prawns, fish cakes, tofu puffs and a hard-boiled egg.
It's one of my favourite noodle dishes but there are also a few different variations depending on the style. For example, Malaysian laksa is different from Singaporean laksa and within Malaysia there are varying versions as well.
Source: Rasa Malaysia
Singaporean laksa is my favourite though, so I thought I'd try this spice packet. They have the instructions on the back with a list of ingredients, which I mostly followed but I also added my own.
These are the ingredients I used:
- 400g laksa bee hoon noodles
- coconut cream
- firm tofu/tau kwa
- lady fingers
- eggplant
- Singapore Laksa Sauce
Laksa typically comes with shrimp or seafood, but since Sean and I are not big fans of shrimp I didn't bother adding them.
I wasn't sure if it was enough noodles so I also made a pot of rice that we could keep as leftovers.
Step 1: This is optional of course, but I sliced up the carrots, mushrooms and broccoli for my rice, as usual.
After washing the rice, I dumped the veggies and mushrooms into the rice cooker to cook them together.
While the rice is cooking, I prepared the ingredients for the noodles.
Step 2: Wash and slice the eggplant and lady fingers. Then press the tofu/taukwa to get out the excess water.
Step 3: Pan fry the tofu until it's lightly crisp on the outside. I didn't want to be stuck flipping the tofu so I tried frying them as-is just to see how it would go. It didn't have to be very crispy anyway since it was going back in the soup.
Once the tofu is browned it's take it off the pan.
Step 4: In a pot of boiling water, add the sauce packet and bring to boil.
Step 5: Once the paste has melted into the water, add the veggies in and boil until soft.
Step 6: Add in coconut milk and stir gently until the sauce has thickened up.
Step 7: Add in the noodles and boil until the noodles are cooked.
Step 8: Slice the tofu into cubes and add it back into the pot.
Once the tofu is well incorporated into the soup, it's done!
Then it's time to serve! The amount of noodles was actually just right for the amount of sauce I think, but we had an extra bowl of rice just in case.
The laksa tasted good, but didn't really taste like normal laksa though. Granted, I didn't add the shrimp but I think the sauce itself didn't really have the regular laksa taste anyway. Overall, it was still quite nice and savoury but not the same as laksa. At least it wasn't sour like asam laksa, but it didn't hit for me.
The ingredients were a good match though. I really liked the vegetables and the tofu with the sauce, and the noodles were good too. I think it would be even tastier with regular laksa sauce but this was alright.
Anyway, it was good but I don't think I will try this sauce again since it wasn't really to my taste. I'll definitely be on the lookout for other similar sauces in the future.
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
