Ebi Chili aka Sambel Udang

Yeah, my fave Japanese cooking show made this ebi chili. It looks ridiculously nice because... the prawns are damn huge! It'll cost a bomb in here, so, I ended up with the cheapskate on sale tiny puny shrimps LOL. I didn't follow the recipe in the show because... I'm lazy and I have my own idea of what my ebi chili should taste like, but the procedure is almost the same (minus the food processor thingy, that's because I'm too lazy to chop LOL). But, it's OK, taste is more important ne?

What you need:

1 pack of shrimps or tiger prawns - butterflied, take out those black parts, if you're lazy, just buy the already peeled ones, w/o the heads, but it doesn't look pretty (see pic above)

4 cloves garlic

2 pc small shallots

1 red chili

for breading - potato startch, salt, sugar, pepper

100ml bonito or chicken stock

100ml milk

seasoning: sugar, sambal belibis, sambal jempol, tomato sauce

How to:

1. in a plastic bag, add in the breading ingredients and shake the bag until well combined. Then add on the shrimps (by batch) and continue to shake the bag until the shrimps are nicely covered. Shake off the excess flour when you take out the shrimps from the bag.

2. Pan fry the shrimps on a skillet and set aside.

3. Add in garlic, shallots and chili into food processor and blend it until they're chopped and well mixed.

4. On a wok, saute #3 until fragrant and browning. Add on the seasoning until you get the taste you want and then add on the stock.

4. Once the sauce is ready, add on the shrimps and milk and mix well quickly until all shrimps are well covered with the sauce.

Tips:

1. Shake off as much as flour as possible from the shrimps when you take them out from the plastic bag because too much flour will make the sauce thickened. If the sauce too thick, you don't have any gravy to smother your rice with. But then again, it depends on your taste, I personally like thick sauce, so it's no problem for me.

2. If you can't find any sambal (chili sauce) at your supermarket, you can make your own by doing the following:

• In food processor, place in about 200gr of combination of red chilis (big and small for the kick), garlic, and blend it.
• On a wok, add in about 50gr of oil and heat it up. Once heat up, add in the mixture and start stirring until it's cook and you can smell the chili (it'll kick your sense of smell). For a bit of seasoning, add on salt and sugar to your taste.

3. I use all the sambals because I too lazy to make my own. The down side of using bottled sambal is that you can taste bit of bitterness (probably it's because it's bottled). So, to get rid of that taste, tomato sauce comes to play. Tomato sauce adds color (make it red) and it tones down any weird and funny taste when you use too much bottled sambal. But nevertheless, I still love my sambal jempol and sambal belibis.

Enjoy!