Yesterday, I had coffee with the gorgeous Spice Girl of Spice and More.
She and I haunt each others’ blogs and after a few email exchanges, we decided it was imperative that we meet, before we bankrupted each other with our shopping suggestions. We had a great time, marveling at how similar our lives are – we went to the same university, shop at the same places, and we’re even the same age (although she looks ten years younger). By the end of a couple of hours, I felt like I’d known her for years.
True foodie that she is, Spice Girl brought me a container of her prawn balchao to try. This delicious paste of ground dried prawns, chillies and spices has an aroma similar to Malaysian belachan, but with a completely different taste. I’m always very excited by new flavours, so I had to try this one immediately (and started eating it in the coffee shop – probably not the best idea after chocolate truffles).
Because I was having so much fun chatting, I didn’t give too much thought to dinner, so the tribe ended up with another Römertopf meal. This time I really did throw it together. I mixed together a cup and a half of Basmati rice, whatever vegetables I could find in the fridge, two trays of chevapi and popped it all into the presoaked clay pot. I then added two cups of water and a cup of tomato passata, covered it with the lid, and put the Römertopf into the oven to bake for an hour and a half.
The finished dish could have used a little salt (the chevapis don’t flavour the rice as much as sausages do), but it couldn’t be beaten for ease of cooking.
Here’s a montage of the meal under construction. Incidentally, it was Spice Girl who taught me how to put my photos into this format. I’ll try and post a more detailed recipe at a later date – Pete does a wonderful sausage version of this dish.
Hmmm. I wonder if we could make biryani in the Römertopf? Might have to ask the Spice Girl..
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Ha ha you are such a foodie … I love the excitment of new foods which allow us to break the rules i.e savoury after chocolate truffles.
It was an interesting combination – particularly as the truffles were white chocolate over a praline centre..
I’ve had prawn balchao on toast for breakfast. Just starting to regret it the tiniest bit…but then again, it’s only 6.30am here.. :)
Celia I was so excited to meet you too. I particularly loved popping into a few shops at the end and seeing how you were warmly welcomed and engaged in conversations about food and your blog in every shop. It really is a good life in your urban village isn’t it?! Thanks for sharing it with me… and I look forward to our next meeting. How lovely to “connect” in cyberworld and then find that we live in the same city and have travelled similar paths all these years! Spooky…. :)
SG, don’t forget that we keep buying the same things too! It was spooky, but great fun as well. We’re going to have to get together again soon – maybe we need to meet at Chef’s Warehouse… (I can hear both our husbands groaning from here..hahaha).
So..do you think we can make biryani in the Romertopf? :)
Celia
Definately worth a try I think, given your other success with rice in the romertopf. My favourite type of biriyani involves uncooked meat (or whatever) rather than all cooked ingredients just mixed together – so that is certainly within the Romertopf’s ‘rules’ for raw ingredients!
Let me just find somewhere to stash the contents of the two boxes of stuff that arrived this week (one of them thanks to your influence) and then I can ‘justify’ a visit to chefs warehouse for sure!
I am eating rice with prawn balchao for lunch. I’ve eaten the entire container you gave me. Can I please have some more? :)
Hahaha….
Celia
[…] making the fish curry because the colour of it (so red and orange) made me feel happy. Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial has a photo of the balchao on her site because I took a tiny bit for her when I met her this week […]