As I've mentioned before, I really love squid. It's one of those seafood that I enjoy eating a lot! Aside from the Filipino squid dishes that I've shared here before like the adobong pusit (squid adobo), calamares (fried squid rings), and rellenong pusit (stuffed squid), there is this other dish which is non-Filipino that has so much appeal to my taste buds. It's called Sambal Sotong (Squid Sambal). This is a Malaysian dish that has become my favorite since the first time I tried it at a restaurant. For those of you who aren't familiar with Malaysian cuisine, sambal is a chili based sauce prepared mainly from dried chillies and garlic. Sambal dishes are easy to cook but they say it takes a lot of practice to make a good sambal. I've heard that the secret to a delicious sambal is to sauté the chilies until the paste separates from oil.
I requested my good blog friend, Nava of Nava-K.com to share with us her recipe of Sambal Sotong for our PiTCC's Favorite DIshes From Around The World series, and I am truly honored that she granted my request. I'm pretty sure that a lot of you in the blogosphere know Nava. But for those who don't, Nava is the very warm lady from Malaysia who has this very wonderful lifestyle blog where she shares her love for beauty, fashion and food. She's one blogger who has never failed to show her support for me and PiTCC since last year when I was just starting. For that, I'm truly thankful to her! She's definitely one of the Asian bloggers that I look up to. She's not only a good blogger, she's also successful with her profession as a college lecturer.
Nava is someone who travels a lot, and with her very busy schedule, I'm truly glad that she found the time to be here with us today! Words are really not enough for me to thank her! Without further ado, I give you Nava Krishnan...
Hi everyone! Let me start off by extending a big thank you to Tina for the invitation in sharing my recipe on her blog. I came to know Tina via blogging and from there on, we have developed a great friendship although we are far away from each other. I suppose like how the rest of the world is connected via technology, we are the same. We take time to visit each other’s blog, and of course her comments on my blog always brighten up my day.
I was asked to share a recipe on squids or sotong as we call it in Malaysian term. Honestly I don't cook squids often, not that we don't like it but squids are not one of our favorites. Therefore I was quite worried, wondering if I will do a good job cooking the squids. Thank God all turned out well and my number one food critic at home, my other half, said that the dish was great and the squids were cooked just right in texture.
This recipe is a typical Malaysian style with the spicy, tangy and a mild sweet taste. I added another extra ingredient, that being the Petai or stinky beans. I am not sure whether you can find the beans over at your place and if it’s not available, you can do away with it. The other option will be using long beans or French beans to replace the stinky beans. I did have some difficulties in looking for the squids and the nearest I found was the smallest type. After cleaning and slicing them into rings, they became even smaller. Small squids does not take a long time to cook, thus I was done with cooking within 10 minutes or so. If you are using the bigger type of squids, you probably will have to cook them for a longer time. Do not overcook the squids as they will become rubbery.
I shall stop here and move on with the recipe now. Hope you will like this...
