Achar
A-char in Southeast Asia is a spiced pickle. My mother makes this a lot, and she loves to eat achar. When she comes to my house, she will look into the fridge and see what we have and then a bottle of achar will result. We keep the achar in a bottle and it is always a hit.
I always toast the nuts and sesame again just prior to making the achar, it gives that extra aroma. That is secret #1. The second secret I have which is quite special: I add dried shrimps/prawns or hebi. It is ridiculously fragrant and wonderful!
Have a bottle at hand always.
We have it with chicken rice or just for the fun of it!
Today, I made it because I didn’t like the way the chicken rice looks even though our Hainanese chicken rice is always wonderful. It looks so washed out, but nothing a nice colorful bottle of achar cannot fix.
This is a fun thing to do with the kids, just hold the chillies. Decorating with the achar ingredients can be so satisfying too!
Achar
- 准备
- 0 分钟
- 烹饪
- 0 分钟
- 总计
- 0 分钟
- 份量
- 0
材料
- 2 tbspoil
- 2 tbspsalt
- Spices paste, grind everything to a paste or use the mortar and pestle
- 1/2 cuponions roughly chopped
- 2 clovesgarlic
- 2fresh chillies
- 4dried chillies, optional soaked in hot water for half an hour or so
- 20 gbelachan preferably toasted on a dry pan, toasting is optional
- 1 pieceturmeric, thumb size can be replaced by 1 tbsp ground turmeric
- Vinegar solution
- 4 tbspsugar
- 75 mlwhite vinegar
- A pinch salt
- Veggies, choose anything you like, in any combination!
- 2Cucumber cut like matchstick or any size you like!
- 2carrot
- 1/2cabbage of any color
- 1/2cauliflower
- 1/2 cupbeans
- 1/2 cuppineapple sliced the way you like!
- any peppers of any color seeds removed and sliced the way you like
- Toppings
- 2 tbsptoasted ground peanuts
- 2 tbsptoasted sesame seeds
- 2 tbspdried prawns/shrimp pounded and fried optional - this is my secret ingredient
做法
- 01Soak all the cut up vegetables with the 2 tablespoon of salt and leave it aside.
- 02Grind the paste and heat up the oil to medium heat.
- 03Add the spice paste to the oil and fry until oil exudes from the paste. This takes about 10 minutes at medium to low heat.
- 04Scoop up the paste and leave aside.
- 05Mix the vinegar solution.
- 06Squeeze water out of the vegetables and add the spice paste and vinegar solution to it.
- 07Top with toppings and stir through.
- 08Serve with anything you like!