Cooking Chilli Garam

Before I go into the contents of this entry, let me just say that this entry was made possible with the help of:

1.
My mom for posting the recipe in the comments portion of one of my entries so if you wanna try this for yourself you can! Just click on the comments 2 entries ago and its there.

2.
The customs officer in the Melbourne International Airport for CONFISTICATING my chilli! =/ My grandma’s helper painstakingly prepared chilli for me to bring to Melbourne and I was so confident that I was able to bring it in cos well, I managed to the last time and there are no illegal products in it.. it’s just chilli, oil and salt. But well, she was good, she checked everything, asked me questions about it without me realising anything and then she said, I cant bring it in. I was shocked, a little disappointed but didn’t want to pick a fight with her. So I meekly said, “really cannot?” She shake her head and gave me a brochure which told me what were the things that were allowed. Dejected, I left. SO, that’s how we came to prepare my own CHILLI GAMRAM and boy am I proud of ourselves!

After coming home from school yesterday, since the temperature wasn’t too cold that afternoon, I decided to cook this precious commodity as I knew from experience that cooking this would stink up the whole place and REQUIRED doors to be OPENED for fresh air to come in.

So, chilli and chilli padi were prepared (with great ‘agar-ray-tion’), our grinder was put to the test (no photos sorry! Too engrossed in getting those chillies grinded!), the cooking began. While preparing the chilli, Selene decided to try how spicy it was and it was really spicy! Haha.. she went like, “wa! Very hot lor!” =)

Following instructions of is never easy especially when no exact measurements are given to you. It just called for oil for medium fry and salt to taste. We were like, okay how much salt, is that too little oil? Fry for how long?

Again, from past instances back home, I remembered that chilli was always fried until everyone in the house was sneezing and coughing so since we didn’t achieve that yet I knew it wasn’t done yet. After some more frying, it began! We started coughing, sneezing, taking turns to suffer from the effects of chilli fried with oil. Our apartment smelled and I’m pretty sure our neighbours smelled it too.

Oil started oozing out as stated in the recipe and I knew we were nearing the end. The next hurdle, how long more ah? So again it was another decision of ‘agar-ray-tion’. Here are the results below and it tasted very close to the one that my mom cooked. SUCCESS! =)

1. lining the floor with newspaper for easy cleaning purposes














2. Chilli in pan














3. Chilli in box - to air















4. and with any cooking, CLEANING UP!