Birthday Dinner at Gastro Dharmus

Yeah I know I'm late and I'm slacking on this blog but it's not easy finding the time. Anyway, August 10th 2013 was The Lovely Wife's birthday. The day coincided with the wedding of one of my cousins so we couldnt celebrate her birthday. Fortunately, the preceding Thursday and Friday were Public Holidays due to Hari Raya so we decided we would celebrate TLW's birthday on Friday night instead.

Initially I had planned on taking TLW and the kids out for a fancy dinner. Then I thought why not make her a fancy dinner at home instead. After all, unless I took her out to a really swanky restaurant, I would only end up humming and hawing about the food and especially the dessert. By cooking at home, I would save everyone from listening to my hums and haws...

The plan was to make TLW a seafood dish. TLW likes cod and I had grandiose plans of Grilled Cod with Prawns. I would serve it with a side of Pumpkin mash and a citrus honey salad. That was the plans but sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

On Friday morning, the kids and I went shopping for groceries. TLW had some errands she needed to run so that fit us just perfectly. When we reached the market in Bangsar, we ran into the first problem. Being the second day of Hari Raya, the usually active morning market wasnt at its full service. The fishmonger was sorely missing so that meant no Cod. Aaargh! There was no Cod in TMC (the nearby Supermarket) and Village Grocer (another Super) was closed as well. Things were not looking too good. Fortunately the flower lady was around and we bought a whole bunch of flowers for The Lovely Wife. We bumped into my father while buying the flowers and he insisted on paying for them.

Spicy Scallops

Some things get hidden away and you forget to post about them. I'm sure this isn't the first time I'm saying this and I'm sure it wont be the last. You remember
Sarah's BBQ? The one from way back in October 2008? Well, one dish that I plain forgot to post about was this one!


I love scallops but they are so darned expensive. I had gone to Sabah on a work trip and had bought some scallops in addition to some large prawns (that I used to make BBQ Prawns and also Baked Prawns but this post is about the scallops and not the prawns, so get back on track! The scallops that I got were the frozen variety and they were also rather small. Still, small scallops are better than No scallops!



This is what I did.

Ingredients
1 onion - chopped
3 cloves garlic - chopped
5 chilli padi (Birds eye chilli) - chopped
handful of curry leaves
300g Scallops
1 Tbsp light Soy Sauce
Black Pepper
Spring Onions for garnishing

Method
Fry the onion and garlic till soft. Add in the chillis and fry till fragrant. Toss in the scallops and cook well. Add in the soy sauce and season with black pepper. In a separate pan, fry the curry leaves till crispy. Toss in with the scallops and garnish with sprin onions before serving.

The scallops were really tasty with a hint of spiciness. The next time, I'd add in more chilli padi or maybe make it in a sambal kind of sauce...