Nochexxx, you grew up in Malaysia, is that right? Where laksa comes from? I had my first attempt at laksa over the weekend, and FUCK ME SILLY it was good (though I say it myself). I sort of cobbled it together from two recipes in this Rick Stein book I've got, and ad-libbed a bit too, so I'm not sure how authentic it was - but RS says there's no such thing as a canonical laksa anyway, just endless local and personal variations. Well whatever, it was lush. I made a spice paste by whizzing garlic, ginger, chilies, coriander leaf, basil, lemongrass, turmeric, some spring onion bulbs, sugar, fish sauce and lime leaves with 1/4 can of coconut milk to make a thick green goo. I poached sea bass and salmon (again, a bit dubious about the authenticity...) in chicken stock, then took the fish out, added the spice paste and the rest of the coconut milk and reduced it for about ten minutes. Then I added the spring onion stalks, the flaked fish, salt, more lemongrass and some lemon juice and cooked for another five minutes, then served it over noodles with extra basil and coriander on top. Aw hell yeah.
(BTW, anyone else here tried to use a Rick Stein recipe book? The one I've got has these gorgeous-looking recipes which look a bit complicated but basically doable, if you've got shops nearby that stock the necessary ingredients. Then you notice that one or two of the ingredients are in italics and say "See page 300" or whatever, and you go to the index and it's some kind of paste or sauce you're meant to have made already and which requires dried shrimps, pickled goji berries, Cambodian trumpweed, whufflegrass seeds and so on, and has to be left for six months in the fridge to mature. Some of these ingredients themselves required
further ingredients that you've got to make yourself. Fucking fractal recipes!

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