HEALTHY MALAY MEALS #1

The new wave of health awareness trends have hit our generation and those preceding us of course, and I could not be happier. I love that people are so into being healthy, eating good clean food, learning and incorporating good eating habits, garnishing meals with beautiful greens and seeds and all that jazz. Love it. I for one, love that it's no longer a chore to eat your fruits and greens and it's becoming more of a, well trend. For example, if that mega fit girl's eating a pretty smoothie bowl, you sure as heck will see me googling some smoothie bowl how-tos. So in summary, healthy is the new ombre hair. But better.

But I do agree that it can be pricey to want to follow health or beauty gurus' eating habits, I mean I for one don't think I'm able to afford eating avocados, and salmon fillets every single day. So I get the common struggle of trying to eat healthy and at the same time work with what you've got. i.e. money and time.

I have been away from home for a good few months now, and I find myself missing Malaysia a lot more than usual. I want Malaysian food or to be more exact, Malay food so bad but the common idea is that Malaysian food means oily, fatty, sugary food. But is it really? 

I have consulted a team of specialists, and lifetime researchers i.e. my mother and my aunts with the help of Facebook posts to come up with some easy Malay meals you could make yourself. I will spread out the meal posts 

I've put stars ** above some ingredients you can bring back with you from Malaysia-  that has a century's worth of expiration date and of  course, if you ARE lucky enough to be in Malaysia, you will have access to all the beautiful ingredients and i mean you especially, daun kesom. 

Obvious disclaimer: I am in no way a good cook whatsoever, so this post is just for fun and to maybe help out or give some sort of inspo(?) to all you penniless students I can relate so very much to.

NUMBER 1: IKAN REBUS MASAK ASAM (Cooks for 4)

Ingredients:

To be blended:

- Belacan**(half an inch)

- Red onion (half a bulb)

- garlic (2 cloves)

- turmeric powder (1/2 teaspoon)- now you could use a live one which is better for you but I don't know how accessible this is in Tesco so yes

- Dried chillis** (7-8 pieces)

To be thrown in:

- Fish of your choice (as many as you like really, I personally chose Mackerel because for sure you can find it anywhere )

- Tomatoes/ ladyfingers aka bendi/ large chunks of cucumber

- Assam keping**- this is the game changer, and what makes it asam (as a sub, you could squeeze in lime/lemon instead of course)

- salt to taste

Instructions:

1. Firstly bring water in your pot to boil

2. Pour in the blended ingredients into your pot

3. Now proceed with the ones to be thrown into the boiling pot, like your boyfriend's ex

AND YOU'RE DONE! no oil, no fuss, literally takes 10 minutes 

Serve with some brown rice, and if you wanna amp it up a bit, make yourself some stir fry.

ps: Sorry for the lack of photos, I drafted this post months back and I lost the pictures.
Happy cooking!

MM