How Gorgeous Is This Chicken Curry Laksa?
Does anyone else find themselves happily tumbling into more project cooking lately? Maybe it's because I'm clinging to the coziness winter provides. Maybe I've watched too many charming, ASMR-adjacent YouTube videos of people calmly assembling wonderful dinners in beautiful locations. Or maybe it's because, if my hands are busy smashing garlic or deveining shrimp, I can't doomscroll on my phone. Whatever the reason, I've really been enjoying my quality kitchen time as of late.
So I'm very excited to make Lara Lee's chicken curry laksa, a gorgeous, hearty noodle soup that's kaleidoscopic in flavor: Sour tamarind and spicy dried chile punch through the sweet coconut milk; salty dried shrimp and gently bitter nuts balance umami-rich shrimp paste. Lara is a really thoughtful cook — as anyone who has read her 'Coconut and Sambal' and 'A Splash of Soy' cookbooks knows — so her recipe is full of tips and tricks for anyone needing ingredient substitution and shortcut advice, like how to boost store-bought laksa paste with lemongrass, garlic and ginger.
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This laksa also scratches a particular cooking itch of mine: making something at home that I'd normally order at a restaurant. I'll bet that a lot of readers behind the five-star reviews for Hetty Lui McKinnon's sweet and sour cauliflower — which rejects deep-frying those florets for a cornstarch-coated roast in a hot oven — are also happy for a fast, meat-free version of a takeout staple. If you add Hetty's salt and pepper tofu, some sautéed baby bok choy and a pot of steamed rice, that's a pretty epic Saturday night feast.
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