Simple Homemade Chilli with no Shrimp

Well… i’ve been wanting to make my own sambal chilli for the longest time ever but never got the chance to. So now, i have.

The only thing is – it’s vegetarian. Fish does not like seafood, so there is no he bi (little dried shrimps) and belachan. It is just a really simple chilli.

There are also some changes to the ingredients.

Ingredients

15 big red chillis
10 chilli padi
Enough onions
Enough Ginger and Garlic

Directions

Okay. The ingredient list is slightly vague. In Singapore, we would have used small red onions called shallots here. However, these are expensive here so i used big red onions instead and added a white onion for sweetness.

Also, ginger and garlic is necessary to make it fragrant because of the lack of shrimp, so make sure you use a substantial amount of that.

I followed my grandmother way of measurement. Take a normal rice bowl. At the end after blending, my was about 3/4 onions and 1/4 garlic ginger. If you add a bowl of this mixture, you should also be adding a bowl of chilli paste. Give or take. It doesn’t have to be accurately measured, don’t worry.

The big red onions as i have found out, release a lot of water. Therefore, it takes time to fry.

In a big frying pan, add oil. I added my 3 onion oil (i haven blogged about this – have i? i will after this) and added the onion ginger garlic paste and fry till fragrant. Add the chilli paste after this and just keep frying and frying and frying and frying until the whole paste dries up into a slightly stiff paste and changes color to a slightly darker shade. Fry it till as dry as you like – mine wasn’t ultra dry.

This picture is when i first started frying – notice the amount of liquid and bright redness. Keep frying till if all comes together and end up like something you know or like the first picture above.

Obviously this is my first attempt, it turned out well but i think i will add more ginger and garlic next time to make it even better. You can experiment with different proportions of the different ingredients and create your own secret recipe!