Kari Ayam - Malay chicken curry.

It snowed all Friday night and Saturday during the day.  Couldn't go out anywhere and was craving Roti Canai from Merlion - a local restaurant specializing in Singapore/Malay food. We're not that bad at cooking and we have the world at our fingertips!  Decided to look-up a recipe for Roti Canai curry. See my previous rant blog on trying to find a recipe.  Finally found something called Kari Ayam which seemed to fit the bill.  I took the recipe and adapted it to my kitchen - and decided to document the recipe with more detail.    I don't know why recipe's use measurements in grams - WTF - am I supposed to have a weight measure in my kitchen?  I use cups, spoons...etc.  I don't have a laboratory with a milligram weighting scale!

Results:
A good tasting curry - not quite what is served in Merlion :(
Something is missing or too much. My hypothesis is that the shrimp paste is essential and I went overboard on the corriander seeds.

Am going to now eat this with some Malay roti (bought frozen from store) and stare out the dining room window at the snow.
... After eating - Holy Yum!  Pretty good - will make again.

Ingredients:
Curry paste ingredients-
2 cloves
2 peppercorns
8 dried chilis - seeds removed
1/2 tbsp corriender seeds
1 teasp fennel seeds
1 teasp cumin
bottom of stock of lemon grass (2 in piece) chopped in small pieces
1 1/2 cup onion
1/2 teasp ground turmeric powder
1 teasp galangal minced

oil saute ingredients -
2 cloves
2 pepper corns
1/2 cinamon stick
1 star anise
12 curry leaves
2-3 in piece of lemon grass chopped finely

1/4 teasp anchovy paste - I didn't have dry shrimp paste
1 teasp fish sauce - again I don't have shrimp paste

Other ingredients -
3/4th tbsp salt
1 teasp brown sugar
1 teasp regular sugar

Process:

Put chilis in 1 cup of water and soak - 20 min - don't throw away water use later.
Start sauteeing onions - 20 min
Roast cumin, corriender, lemongrass in pan - once fragrance grind in coffee grinder with peper corns, cloves and turmeric powder

Put sauteed onions, teasp of galangal, soaked chilis and 1 teasp of spice powder into a blender and grind.

In a pan heat up oil - once heated thrown in cloves, peppercorns, cinamon stick, star anise, and curry leaves
sautee for 5 min

throw in the anchovy paste&fish sauce into the oil sautee - throw in chicken and sautee for 5 min.
Toss in the onion paste and the spice powder

after 5 min add in the the water from the chili seeds
add in 1 can (165ml) coconut milk
add salt & sugar

Simmer till chicken is cooked

Serve with rice or roti paratha (malaysian roti - found in frozen section of indian store)