Chilli prawns with whole spices

Recipe from "Fresh & Tasty Wok Cooking".

It was supposed to be like this..

... instead it turned out this way!

Hmmph.. the perils of following recipes, especially asian recipes by non-asians (I'm quite allergic to this actually).

The recipe calls for cinnamon stick, cardamon pods, cloves, turmeric powder (oopss I'd forgotten the turmeric powder when cooking this yst!), bay leaves and chillies (just chillies but what was in the book looked like cili padi). These are familiar ingredients in curry. Bay leaves are quite common in malay cooking. I think they are used in rendang, among others. And the marinade consists of garlic, ginger, chillies and lemon juice (which I substituted with calamansi juice). A closer look at the marinade sauce (after I blended the ingredients) made me realise that these are the same things used for mom's chic rice chilli. Which I did not think (and still do not think) will go hand in hand with the above said spices. And if you minus the ginger and throw in some candlenuts you'll get sambal cili garam!

In the end the prawns didn't turn out that bad. Will I cook it again? Most probably not. Do not want to waste my cholesterol quota on this one. But if I do plan to cook it again, I'll do so using bird's eye chillies. Oh and this time I must remember add in the turmeric powder!