Lately I’ve been loving trying out my hand at some asian dishes. I am not the perfect purist when it comes to these things, I still like a little of my own flavour and with the Simply Asia restaurants around SA I think it gets us excited to try different things. So I’ve tinkered with a few recipes online trying to get a nice asian noodle recipe that could come close to the 514 that is made by Simply Asia.

Something was always missing though. And this was it!! This roasted chilli paste is the bizznizz! It’s the stuff that you need a dollop of in your asian dishes like indian aunties need a dollop of ginger garlic masala in their indian dishes.

It’s a roasted chilli paste. Make this and use it in your asian dishes. I will share my Simply Asia 514 copycat recipe soon. I adapted a recipe from Food.com and I didn’t have shrimp paste as many other googled recipes ask for. But even without it, this paste is so good. Pretty sure you can use this in most versions of Thai noodle recipes. 

You will need:

• 1 cup of packed dried red chilli (whole, ends snipped off)
• 1/2 cup of chopped shallots (I used spring onions) 
• 8-10 cloves fresh garlic 
• 3 tblsp palm sugar or brown sugar (I used brown)
• 2 tblsp tamarind paste
• 1 tblsp soy sauce
• Pinch of salt or a dash of oyster sauce (I did salt) 
• 1/2 cup of oil
• 1 tblsp shrimp paste (I didn’t have this so I omitted it, if you add it, then taste for salt before adding more salt)

Method:

Dry roast the chilli in a pan for a bit until it’s lightly charred. Remove and let cool.
In the meantime add a tblsp or so of oil, then add the onion and garlic and lightly fry for a bit. 

Remove and keep aside.
Chop up the dry chilli. 
Add everything into a blender/magimix and grind until a paste, add 1/4 cup of oil to help it blend into the paste. 
Add the remaining oil to a pan, put it on medium heat and empty this paste into the pan and cook again for 3-5 minutes.
The paste will become very fragrant and roast to a very deep red colour. 
Take it off the heat and pour into a bowl to cool.
Add the salt, sugar, soy sauce and tamarind paste.
The mixture will be oily, it needs to be this way. 
Bottle it and store it in the fridge.

You need about 1-2 tblsp when you make an Asian noodle dish. 
Try it! (Or buy Naam Prik Pao if you see it anywhere, and let me know too. It should be a dark almost black oily paste)

Enjoy! Fehmz

xoxo