Friday, June 20, 2008

Har Bee Luah aka Spicy Dried Shrimp


Inspiration :- This is a tribute to my grandma, she is a wonderful woman, she may have love-hate relationships with the family but we all know deep down she is a woman who worked hard all her life to raise 5 kids and now trying to grow old gracefully. As far as I can remember, tracing back to my childhood, she has always cooked this spicy dish. In Hokkien "har bee luah" literally translated to "dried shrimp spicy". I love this dish and probably where I picked up my palate for spicy dishes. So, here, I am in Dallas trying for the 1st time to replicate one of my grandma's signature dish.

Simple ingredients -
1) Dried Shrimp - one handful

2) Chilli paste - depending on how spicy you want

3) Salt and sugar to taste
4) Oil for frying


Simple steps :-
1) Soak dried shrimp for at least 30 mins. Then mince it. It does not need to be too fine. Some texture taste better.



2) Filled wok with 3-5 tablespoons of oil. You can also start with stir-fry of minced garlic and shallots. Then add in the minced dried shrimp. Stir-fry till fragrant in medium heat.


3) Add the chilli paste, mix well and continue to stir-fry.



4) For those with sensitive noise, be warned that you may accidently get a whiff of the spice through the nose and it may inadverdently spark a series of uncontrollable spicy "ah choooos".
I often hear it whenever my grandma or mom is cooking this dish.

5) Once the shrimp is aromatic, slighty reddish brown and then Voila! Ready to eat! Yum yum!








4 comments:

molly said...

That is my favourite when I was small. It started when my neighbour gave us some to try and from then on my mum started cooking that dish, but now I found the recipe again, thanks.
Will link you in my blog, ok?

cc said...

what is har bee luah? I never heard of this before. I know har bee is dried shrimp... but how do you eat it? With rice? or noodles?

Also, hello there! I'm in San Antonio, so we're pretty close to each other! :)

Pebbles said...

Hi Molly - Am glad that you like it. Try it, I hope it turns out well. Thanks for linking.

Hi CC - luah is a hokkien word for spicy... thus spicy dried shrimp. Best eaten with rice. it is kinda like sambal...so rice is best but for me, I also put some on noodles sometimes...just for the spice...

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