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The Spiced Life Style Sambal with Veggies, Eggs, Cashews and Rice (and Turkey?)

Course condiments
Cuisine S.E. Asian
Keyword cashews, eggs, rice, vegetables
Author TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

  • 1 medium onion
  • 5 dried california chile peppers,, soaked in boiling water for 20 minutes, soaking water reserved
  • 4 green anaheim chile peppers, prefer red, chopped (and seeded if you want to avoid too much heat)
  • 1 T shrimp paste, I used Thai because that is all I have; by all means use Indonesian or Malaysian if you can find it
  • 1 T tamarind concentrate
  • 6-8 cloves garlic
  • 1 T toasted coriander seeds
  • 1 t toasted white peppercorns
  • 2 t toasted cumin seeds
  • 1 T brown sugar
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil, peanut is preferred

Instructions

  1. If you have a wet-dry grinder or a Vita-Mix, then place all of the ingredients except the oil into the grinder and blitz, using the chile pepper soaking water as necessary to loosen the paste. However, if you do not, you will need to grind the spices separately in a spice grinder and then add everything to a processor or blender. Either way, puree until fine (because of the dried chile peppers, you will want this very well well pureed--some would even suggest pushing it through a mesh strainer, but I am not so bothered by pieces of chile pepper and honestly now that I have the wet dry grinder it is not an issue anyway).
  2. Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet, such as cast iron. When it shimmers, add the paste. It should sizzle gently, not violently. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes. At this point taste for salt or additional cooking if it still tastes too raw. You might want to use a cracker or some rice, as its flavor is quite strong. If it looks like it is drying out, add some water.
  3. Keep the sambal in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Oseland says 1 week; I would think you could keep it a tad longer, but not much as its strong flavor could mask mold or germs.