Fish head curry, anyone?

I am looking disappointingly at my score for Spider Solitaire - 26% pass rate. Yup I suck at this.

Anyway, back to my main topic for this post - fish head curry.

It all started on Monday night with Daddy getting a phone call regarding a 13.5kg garoupa that was caught and the fishermen were wondering if he was interested in buying it. Of course he was.. he always is, which is why we have a hoard of fish in our 2 freezers, all waiting for their turn on the dinner table). But a whole 13.5kg fish was too much for us to finish so we shared it with my dad's colleague.

Tuesday evening's dinner featured part of that fish, deep fried then drizzled with a mixture of oil, soya sauce, thinly sliced ginger and spring onions. We decided that night that this fish was PERFECT for a fish curry and so the next night's dinner menu was planned.

The head alone was a foot in length and mind you, since we shared the fish with my dad's colleague, we only got half the head, cut length-wise. Still that was too big for the 5 of us (maid included) so the parents started inviting ppl over for it.

Wednesday's dinner guestlist included Uncle Wai Keong, Aunty Regina, Uncle Max, Aunty Rubyann, Soon Chye, Ivan, Andy, Andy's wife and daughter, and of course godbro Uncle Lee who came after his usual badminton game.

Daddy went off to the Old Klang Road market early Wednesday morning to buy the curry paste, santan and all the other ingredients. Cooking started at around 4pm and there were quite a few disagreements between the two chefs (i.e. Mom and Dad) regarding what ingredients went in first and whether some of the ingredients were even supposed to be put in! We didnt have a recipe to follow and pretty much just "went with the flow" adding things along the way. Dad also added prawns and squid...

The ending result was not too bad for a first attempt, everyone said it was good (am not sure if they were just being polite though!). We also had some fried chicken that was marinated with curry powder which were mainly for Soon Chye, Ivan and Andy's daughter in case they didnt fancy the fish curry. At the last minute, Mom asked me to fry some Tori Karaage (Japanese fried chicken) in case the kids thought the curry powdered fried chicken was too spicy for them. I tried out this recipe from the Maranatha fund-raising cookbook my mom helped to create in church. Aunty Regina also brought some pork ribs steamed with fa tiew wine and bean paste which were really nice (I had the leftovers for lunch today). For dessert, Mom prepared bubur chacha.

Verdict: We cooked too many things and for me, personally, after spending all those hours in the kitchen helping to cook the curry, I didnt have much appetite to eat it! But I did have quite a few bowls of bubur chacha cos that wasnt too heavy.

Leftovers: Evelyn (our maid) made yam fried rice with the leftover rice and the extra yam from the bubur chacha for our lunch. We also reheated some of the fried chicken and the pork ribs. We still have about 3/4 of a pot of fish curry left. We definitely cooked too much!

You must be wondering why are we planning and cooking up dinner parties when Im supposed to be studying!? Well, I did manage to study and am more than halfway through my 3rd book. 2 books to go after that which is mainly revision. I need to read 2 chapters before I sleep tonight though and it's already 11.45pm.. Maybe I'll just read 1 chapter and rush the next one tmrw morning. Sigh...

Oh yes I did take pictures of the food but am too lazy to post them tonight. Perhaps another time..

- Petrina