Kitchen Invaders

It has been a bit chaotic in my house yesterday. My younger brother and sisters were cooking in the kitchen! Hard to believe right? But that's the truth. They were making Dried Sambal Tempeh and I didn't have to give them a hand at all. Except for the tasting time...

They conquered the kitchen for a while. I don't mind though and left them to do their own cooking. At the same time, I was having fun with the dough! Making a cute version of the red bean sweet roll... ^_^ That's another story. You just have to see that yourselves. For now, lets focus on them. Shall we? ;)

Sambal Tempeh Acik & Aby:

• 7 packets of tempeh
• 3 cups of dried chili
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 medium yellow onion, cubed
• 2 Tbsp dried shrimp
• 2 cups anchovies
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp salt 

1. Slice the tempeh thinly, about 1.5cm x 2cm rectangle
2. Heat some oil in the frying pan. Fry the tempeh by batch until they are all brown and crispy
3. Clean the anchovies, and fried until crispy too. Set both aside
4. To prepare the chili : First, cut the chili lengthwise and remove the seeds. Using scissors, cut into smaller pieces. Put them in a big bowl filled with water. Let the chili soak for about half hour. Rinse and drained. Using mortar and pestle, mashed the chili a couple of tablespoon at a time as fine as you can. *we purposely using mortar and pestle, so no need to add any liquid in the chili as we need the chili to be somewhat dry paste* Continue until all the chili has been made into paste
5. Next, still using the mortar and pestle, mashed the garlic, onion and dried shrimp a couple of spoon at a time making it into paste
6. Reduce or add the oil until about 1 cup *there's going to be a LOT of chili, so we need a LOT of oil* and heat over medium heat. Put in onion paste and stir fry until you can smell the aroma, add in the 1/2 or 3/4 of the chili paste *this amount of chili is already hot, you can put it all if you're tolerant with the hotness!* Stir the mixture. 
7. Let it fry until the chili totally cooked. Seasoned with sugar and salt. Taste it. We want to achieve the sweet and spicy taste without being totally spicy hot. Add more sugar and salt if needed. 
8. When done, let the sambal/condiment cooled totally before add in the tempeh and anchovies and mix them all together. Perfect with white rice or as sides on noodles. 

Enjoy cooking! ^_^