How to Make a Balinese Spice Paste

This Balinese style spice paste tastes & smells wonderful and can be used in a whole host of dishes especially satay. It makes a fairly large amount - about 1 cup's worth, so the surplus can be frozen in small bags for future enjoyment. Give it a try!

 You can use one of these - or the food processor!

Ingredients:

• 7 chopped red shallots,
• 6 cloves of garlic peeled into cloves
• 3 large red chillies, or 5 small ones - deseeded and chopped
• 3 slices of dried galangal root (soaked in hot water for 30 minutes and cut off the peel before use). If you have fresh its about 2cm worth of peeled root.
• 1 t dried turmeric, or 2cm worth of fresh, peeled & chopped.
• 1 t dried coriander seeds
• 7 black peppercorns, or about 1/4 t
• 4 whole candlenuts use macadamia if not available
• 1 T fish sauce - or shrimp paste if available
• 1 stalk of lemongrass
• one good pinch each of nutmeg and ground cloves.
• Some cooks add about 1 T of crushed palm sugar, which is fine for cooking chicken.

Steps

1. Peel your shallots, garlic and clean your chillies.
2. Process these with all other ingredients in a food processor until fairly well blended - not smooth however, you want some texture, but really nothing coarser than a peppercorn size.
3. Or if you are feeling very energetic, crush in a mortar and pestle. This might take about 30 minutes though.
4. Heat a frypan with about 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. When hot, add the paste and fry until golden - about 2 minutes. Enjoy the smell - It smells lovely.
5. Allow to cool and then use about 1/2 a cup to 600g of meat as a marinade, or mixing it into to minced meats (about the same weight) or coating a whole chicken for a BBQ. You can also add it to curries and braises.6
6. Freeze your surplus spice mix and wash all utensils as quickly as possible to reduce turmeric staining.
7. Enjoy!

Tips

• A food processor saves ages. Shallots are fiddly to peel, but if are probably better flavour than pre-peeled ones.
• Definitely wear an apron. Turmeric is a powerful staining agent.

Warnings

• Don't let the paste burn, it will taste very bitter.
• If freezing the surplus paste, either portion it up or put it all into a zip lock bags. Put these bags in an air-tight freezer safe container. The aroma is quite strong so it will permeate other things in the freezer if its not sealed. A glass, freezer safe container is ideal.

Source : wikihow.com